I've crossed the parking lot of mediocrity, walked through the lobby of the absurd and entered the theater of the ridiculous...While I've vowed to keep my politics personal, sometimes I just can't help myself so I'll post linkage to check -- should you choose to see how far the rabbit hole goes...Remember: get into the living of this life, get involved and don't forget to write it all down somewhere. Bob's your uncle...
...just bust the groove on that tune...whenever I feel like its taking too long for me to get my creative grind on, I have to remind myself of dudes like Greg Sage, Sam Henry and Dave Koupal who formed Wipers back in 1978...look in their eyes in that grainy-ass picture...young and hungry...I'm hip, son... even though they cut a couple of influential records that a grip of Seattle grunge scene machers would appropriate and use as a springboard for their respective sounds, Wipers really didn't get any dap from the world at large until Nirvana covered a couple of their cuts from their debut LP-- a decade and change later...
...that's not the first time I've heard such things, artists like Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Woody Guthrie and Ornette Coleman and their struggles to be heard, immediately come to mind...sometimes you're gonna have to be in it to win it-- and the only people who believe in you IS you...patience is virtuous and all that but, conversely, he who hesitates is lost...in short, don't forget to follow your heart and be ready when the opportunity avails itself...listen to the little guy/ chick inside...I spoke about Sage et al back in June and am steeled when I think of stories such as theirs and artists like the ones above, I get pumped up; the weight of waiting becomes a little lighter ...and although I've got "miles to go before I rest"...I know I can bear it...solid, son...
...so I got another editing offer downtown that'd last a few months...but first I had to go down there and take a bunch of tests...find synonyms for words like arbitrate...expedite...ameliorate...words I use all the time...then the grammar test (even when I didn't have the English skills, I learned at an early age that the best way to figure these out-- utter them aloud...there's always three clunky sentences, two of which just look dumb on the screen...that fourth one, the one that sounds like a butler in a P.G. Wodehouse book is the keeper...it works for me like a charm)...t'was a joke of an examination-- I sailed through the typing test and finished the boilerplate letter-- never seen the word committee used so fekkin' often-- I finished it about a half hour early so they left me in a room by meself...to my own devices...
...so glad I brought my MacBook along...thought I'd type something up for the blog while I sat in this "testing environment" waiting to be sized up by the suits because this is truly a ridiculous setting...based on what happened a couple of blocks over last week, I though I'd go in with the Blerd (black nerd) glasses...use high English and all that...just lookit that picture above...doesnt' that guy look harmless enough?...let's see where it gets me...I could use two months worth of the cash they're talking about while I ghost write this book for a musician in Atlanta and await the callback for that producing thing...I probably won't get this one...it's going too smoothly...I won't be "black enough" or something equally as simple-minded as that...what can I say?...I'm a sucker for punishment...nah, I could just use the cash, son-- I won't front on that and furthermore-- ruh, roh...I hear 'em coming down the hall...Blerd-boy out....laters...
...being a Southerner, with a father who loved TV shows like Johnny Cash's show on ABC, Hee Haw and listened to C&W when it wasn't hip to be black and reveal as much, my daddy would bump that shite anyway... still a country boy, West Indian roots or no...(grown men are allowed to call their fathers "daddy", where I'm from) so, there's a special place in my heart for bluegrass music...Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, cats like that...I've seen 'em play... (at an early age I learned to cut through the bullshite of the times and find my funk wherever it was)...
...years later, when I was cutting some tracks (in the same spot they cut "Purple People Eater") in Nashville, I stumbled out the back door of the studio looking for the parking lot at about four in the morning to smoke a butt and I looked across the street to find that we were right across the plaza from the Ryman Auditorium...that big red barn where everybody who was anybody in the old-school country pantheon played (or wished they did)...it was surreal...still, I ran across the street to see if I could peek inside the windows at the back of the building that was facing where I was standing....see the stage where Johnny Cash kicked in the footlights...I couldn't see dick but I was there....
...by that time the performances at the Ryman had long been moved to some replicated sound stage at a nearby theme park but I knew from pictures that this was the actual, factual...we might drop our accents in college but you can't deny who you are...most southerners-turned city-dwellers don't like to admit that there's any country music that they'd willingly listen to but I'll tell you right here, point blank-- just like jazz, say what you will, there's some phatness from the old school in the genre that should be checked out. It was quite cool rapping with Garrison Keillor in the hallway of the Four Seasons about the history of the Nashville landmark after doing an interview for his (then) new film directed by the late, great Robert Altman...I was reminded of all of this a few days ago when I copped the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack from a friend...she couldn't have known what the tunes on that LP would raise inside the depths of me...I'm glad she hooked me up with it because the tunes on that album reminded me of a time when I'd get in the wind at the drop of a hat...playing tunes...traveling...and feeling free...all of which reminds me of an alt rock band called Indian Summer...
...I remember that we did a gig with Indian Summer, who were based down in North Carolina and we'd never met-- just heard about them through the band grapevine...they played a style totally different from the funk-rock-ska that we parlayed but everybody meshed and they performed an original cut called "Land of Plenty" that they cut in a stylee years before DMB became famous for doing tunes similar to it...after that show, we were all prepared for that long schlepp back right after the show (nothing like a ride in a van with eight other guys, all of us soaked in post-performance stank) but the bass player, acknowledging one of those unwritten codes between traveling bands, asked us over to their pad in the Raleigh, Durham area-- a hop, a skip and a jump from where we were...showers 'n shite!...grub!...west-and-wewaxation...the next morning, er, afternoon, we all rose and they took us over to this quarry to swim in its cool waters and drink beer...the scene was more laid back, gulp, back in those days...
...after that weekend, whenever we played in that area or heard that they were in our neck of the woods in Virginia, we'd try to hook up...when I hear bluegrass songs like "I am a Man of Constant Sorrow" by The Soggy Bottom Boys, I think of the ride back home after that initial meeting. Well rested, having met a couple of stand-up friends, the jade hump-backs of the Appalachian Mountains rolling by as we snaked it on back up Interstate 81, out of North Cacka-lackey and on into Virginia's Shenandoah Valley...past Mount Pilot...through Blacksburg/ Radford...right on back into town...nothing like the countryside in my birth state especially just before autumn arrives...The Indian Summer, it's called...good stuff, son...real good stuff...I could try to make up stories like this but then, I'd be a fraud...I prefer keeping it on the real side and there's not one iota of fiction in the words above...still, I wonder where all those Indian Summer guys are right now...loved their sound...I miss 'em too...
On Brick Top, My Hollywood "Signs" and The Wheel in the Sky...
...see that sign...up close, it's just that...a fekkin' sign comprised of huge letters on a hill but it boggles my dome sometimes at all the drama that takes place in this town just below them when the cameras aren't even rolling...if those letters could talk...I started writing this last week, after a screener while waiting for a bus in front of the Larry Flynt building over on Wilshire and La Cienega, I continued writing on the subway and finished it up when I got to the pad...it was about 12:30 but the adrenaline from realizing that I was almost smoked an hour or so prior was still swirling through my veins...
...I just got in from that 3:10 to Yuma screening and will have to get right back up in a couple of hours in order get to the check in...I should be dead tired after riding around all day...but I'm not...I can't sleep because there's been a rush of adrenaline pumping through me ever since I almost lost my life, ironically, not that far from where I almost became a road burger back in March...but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...
I've mused on here once or twice about how long was I going to keep "Forrest Gumpin' " my way around this town before I either 1, got my grind on 2, tucked tail and skipped town or 3, buy the farm in some freak accident that involves me, some strangers I met in Venice Beach, a llama, a bottle of Ouzo...and a John Deere woodchipper...these have been a wild and woolly couple of months for me but I've been keeping the lupine lot loping on the lateral by writing, reading and writing some more...But just because you don't see 'em doesn't mean that they're not out to get you....my mother is a staunch believer in signs from the beyond that we all should look for when trying to get on with our lives and although I've been known to say shite like "man, the last time that occurred "X" bad/ good thing happened to me"...if I apply my Vulcan powers of logic, I know that it's a sham...a futile attempt to take control of the steering wheel of fate which is akin to ice skating uphill...you'll get nowhere fast...still things like what I'm about to explain make me think twice...
...I've noticed out here that when you talk to someone you don't know who's been here long enough, especially during a business call with some departmental dogbody (who already hates their gig and wants you to know it). At the end of the call, instead of saying "goodbye", the person says "thanks" but its not like "thank you-thank you" it's stated more like a "sit-and-spin, asshole"...sounds like "Thaay-anks"...with an extra emphasis on the forced second syllable...I fuggin' loathe hearing it...I call it the Hollywood hang-up...which brings me to a hang-up of another stripe...I had a meeting with an IT recruiter downtown today, just before the film, a meet and greet, nothing fancy...so I go down to meet her (forgetting how shitty people drive downtown when they're released from their cubicle cages)...I got turned around in the traffic and tall buildings (about two blocks from the one pictured in the center above) and instead of arriving at the address I was supposed to, I went to the same number in a building one street over-- meatheaded, right? Well here's where the "sign" part kicks in...I'd called the recruiter a few minutes prior...she knew what I looked like (from stuff of mine out there on the internets)...when I get there...she's gone! ...(she called me a half hour later when I'd gotten on a train)...I think I passed her in the hallway after I'd changed back into my riding clothes but by that point I thought, "fuck it...if they're playing games at this stage, who knows what's around the corner?"...so I left; cut my losses and headed west toward Sunset on the Red Line...they called ME!!!...I've always known that I'm not cut out for die korporative Welt and this was another confirmation but a man does what he must whilst he tries to get his creative cheese spread on the Tinsel Town Ritz cracker...I must be walking around with some weird light emanating from behind or, people see a colorized cloud of ominousness hanging over my head like that character in that Stephen King novel who's cursed by an old Gipsy with a piece of funky pastry...duly noted counselor. Stay away from tall buildings and questionable cakes while trying to keep the rain off your head...
Apocryphal: adjective - of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true. See spurious...noun/ (used with a sing. or pl. verb)1. The biblical books included in the Vulgate and accepted in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox canon but considered noncanonical by Protestants because they are not part of the Hebrew Scriptures. 2. Various early Christian writings proposed as additions to the New Testament but rejected by the major canons.3. apocrypha Writings or statements of questionable authorship or authenticity.
Apocrypha etymology: [Middle English apocripha, not authentic, from Late Latin Apocrypha, the Apocrypha, from Greek Apokrupha, neuter pl. of apokruphos, secret, hidden, from apokruptein, to hide away : apo-, apo- + kruptein, kruph-, to hide.]
...did I ever mention I'm a cyclist? Yeah, a rare breed here in Los Angeles for sure...A lot of people who live here tend to believe that the automobile you're sitting in defines who you are...I'm sorry, I'm not from around here and I've had my fill of shitty car leases, swarthy mechanics and extortionate insurance bills...so I use the MTA, take taxis and am unrepentant about that...deal with it Los Angeles, I'm well aware that many of you driving around in those fancy rides can barely afford them...the jig is up...at any rate, I get to the screener, I lock up outside where I've been doing so for years and go inside, sign in with the outlet I'm covering for and settle in for the shoot 'em up...midway through the film, a blue-blazered security guy comes in and tells me the people in the club next door want me to move my cycle...and have threatened to call the fuzz to have the lock cut and the bike removed...but a sister working the floor that night had interceded because she knew I was in the screening room...good looking out, girlfriend...I made sure to tell her as much...
...apparently the place next door was some new club down on the end of Sunset, close to BH and there was some red carpet thing going on and some celebrities were going to show...I more than likely knew most of the people covering it on the other side of the throngs of people...ain't that about a bitch? Luckily the guard in charge wasn't tripping (I found out later that she's from North Hollywood, so she wasn't fazed by the celeb stuff in the least) and she sorted me out so I could get on with what I was there for...I can still see the smirks on the faces of all those bald-headed schnooks in monkey suits as I rode off...their expressions said it all..."fuck you writer-guy"...I'm sorry...I'm not from around here, partner..so go fuck yourselves...I gave 'em a single-shouldered neck roll and sneer that would've done Snatch's Brick Top Polford one shite's sight better...like I'd just stumbled out of the Drowning Trout, stoked on pints of Irish Fighting Fuel...calm down, son...behave yourself...instead I shot down Sunset toward La Cienega....where I missed an appointment with my maker by about 30 seconds and 200 feet...
...the intersection where La Cienega crosses Sunset is at the top of one of the steepest inclines on that side of town and offers a splendid vista across West Hollywood that goes clean out to Culver City, sometimes Santa Monica, on a sunny day. On weekend nights it's clogged with traffic too but not on a Monday...I shooshed on down the hill...I got a green at the 7 - Eleven three blocks down, so I kept on truckin' and then I got a red at Sunset so I started braking-- all of a sudden I heard a loud screech behind me as I pulled to a stop. I looked behind, where I'd been just seconds before, in time to see an intoxicated driver careen straight through the intersection I'd just shot by like a two-wheeled bullet and crash into a light post in front of that Seven - E...the signal was still green going in my direction so he'd run a red light, swerved uphill and hit a pole-- a couple of hubcaps kept rolling up the hill like they had better things to do...if I had hung out just a couple of seconds more fucking with those guards back at the night club, talking shite like I might've in the past, back in Manhattan, I would've probably been in that intersection when that dude punched through it...road kill...a sign?
...I don't know, maybe it was...maybe it wasn't but my ass is definitely circumspect, right about now...I can't call it but I'm certain that all of this shite transpired in the span of five hours the other day and it made me wonder if this town is trying to tell me something...we live our lives going forward with one foot on the accelerator and the other on "fast" so much these days it sometimes makes me think about those necessary pauses that we should take for sanity's sake but never do or think about until it's too fucking late to do anything about it...It'll put a grip into perspective when you get down to brass tacks and realize that tomorrow is promised to nobody...things might have been rough, but not so much that I was ever ready to punch the clock for good...sure it will no doubt get rougher at some point but who fekkin' cares, boyo? ...quiet as I keep it during phone conversations with her, I still don't cotton to my mother's notion that there's signs, signs, everywhere signs but I won't reject it outright, either...seen too much of the inexplicable to do so...she doesn't read as much as I do, but experience teacheth wisdom and all that jazz (she's definitely taught me that the surest way to see whom your true friends are is to call 'em when you're down and out...then the truth arises, sure as you're born)...I still lean more toward Marcus Aurelius' words on Stoicism because when it's all said and done, there's nothing left to say...just get on with it...do it...as cheese-ball as it might seem to some, I've embraced the thrust of this Journey tune from the album above long ago when I was still playing music on the road...the lyrics speak volumes and if you've ever written a tune with year heart on your sleeve and played it for people, you know what I'm talking about...fuck the VH-1-ish video sideshows, every time I hear Steve Perry sing it, I immediately identify with the protagonists' self doubt...there's some truth in there...an innate, inexplicable urge to carry on, despite how dark things appear...I've seen a lot since I started hittin' it and gigging out as a 17-year old university freshman and I haven't encountered any enigmatic burning bushes or talking coyotes out there since I started, either...nope, not one yet...having said all of that, I've learned its best to just push on toward your goals, whatever they are...embrace the challenge...ignore the sucker-ducks, nabobs and nay sayers (they're full of shite, I know I can be sometimes, though this ain't one of 'em)...a positive anything beats a negative nothing and that's word, yo...keep all lines of communication switched on and wide open...but don't forget to get a whiff of those rose blooms up in your face...when you're down, dust yourself off, post haste and get the fuck back up because that which doesn't kill us-- well, you already know the rest...laters...
3:10 to Yuma: Christian Bale & Russell Crowe (Q&A)
..I'd be a liar on the wink if I said that Gladiator wasn't one of my favorite movies to come out in the past decade...about a year or so before I started pursuing writing in this town, I recall walking down to the newly opened ArcLight Theater complex across the street from Amoeba records on Sunset to see a matinee of the film when it dropped before that weekend's bum rush...best line in the film was uttered by Joaquin Phoenix when he find out that the General of the Felix Legion is not dead and that his soldiers have lied to him: "That vexes me...I'm terribly vexed"...I was the only one who burst out laughing at the "Mel Brooksness" of that line...but whatever, son...
...I was in a roundtable with Maximus and Bat Man when I participated in a press conference with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale yesterday for James Mangold's forthcoming western 3:10 to Yuma...due to the obstreperous, borderline bellicose nature of one of my colleagues, it was difficult to get a word in edgewise but alle ist en butter... eventually, Crowe revealed that he's not the surly, virtriol 'n vegemite, telephone-throwing upstart-from-the-land-down-under with everyone at all times...although he did have to call somebody out for hogging the floor...here's what went down...
Q: You playing any music, got any gigs with your band lined up?
Russell Crowe: I think we've got some shows in Jacksonville, FL coming up...looks over to his right: Christian Bale...
Q: When you talk to a lot of actors and ask them why they became actors, they talk about 'wanting to dress up, be in a world of fantasy and all those kinds of reasons. Does doing a movie like this really enforce, in some ways, why you guys got into it?
Christian Bale: Dress up?
Q: ...doing a western, cowboy hats, guns and all that...
RC: That's pretty good, isn't it? And it's a good list...ride horses...ride with guns , speak in a funny voice, you know, wear pointy boots. It's a good list in terms of what you're talking about and you would approach something like this probably thinking "this is going to be a bit of fun." So I actually looked at it and I said "well, I spent this time of year in Arizona making a western [The Quick and the Dead] back in '93-'94 and that was pleasant. Warm during the day, a little cold late at night but I didn't think much of it, I thought it'd be fine. But then I realized, once I'd gotten there, that Santa Fe is actually seven and a half thousand feet above sea level and it was going to be significantly colder. So, you know, Peter Fonda actually decided [on] a scale. He said, one day he made a stand, he said that he couldn't act on location, in period costume at below 13 degrees and I think [the Screen Actor's Guild] should look into this and I think there should be a scale done. [laughs] And I think there should be certain temperatures, you know, for example [pointing to Bale] where you [can] wear a cape and stuff, and a rubber suit and certain temperatures where you shouldn't.
Q: You ride horses a lot in real life back back home, do you bring a lot of passion into a project like this when you're shooting.
RC: Yeah, I mean I really enjoy the thought of the story. The main thing is reading the script and seeing the dynamic of the character and on [3:10 to Yuma] it seemed like playing the character was going to be fun, so that's why I do it.
Q: So what appealed to you about the time period?
RC: That it was a short shoot. [laughs]
Q: No, the setting, the time period that the story was set in.
RC: Oh! I'll leave that up to you, Christian.
CB: I think it that period of all westerns. It being that period of almost anarchy compared to nowadays. You know, when a man really did have to be self-sufficient. And I think that nowadays we can get away with being very vague about having opinions about things, beliefs in something-- you can kind of get away with being vague about it because there's not that much that seems to directly affect our lives. At that time, you had to be a much stronger-minded individual in order to survive. I find that appealing, to watch people who test their mettle everyday.
Q: Are you very selective when picking a role? What are your criterion for doing so?
RC: It's the same as it's always been: "what's the story? What's the character?" That's my finite focus when I read a script. I don't think that I've become more selective over time, I think I came into it being selective, you know? I just do things that appeal to me. And they're not going to always be the sort of things that the head of a studio thinks will appeal as well.
Q: How do you define what is a good character, then?
RC: I think it's always been that way, especially in my life and in the movies, you know, you get a lot of opportunities that come with a big paycheck and all that sort of stuff that doesn't necessarily appeal to you. I know a lot of people that are absolutely dead-set certain that this is something that you will love to do and then you start to read it and there's nothing in it that turns you on. You know, I think you've just got to stay true to yourself in that way. [When] I read a script-- if I get goose bumps and I like what the potential of it is then that's the thing that I do.
Q: James Mangold said that Gladiator felt like a western to him with the story's structure. Is that something you agree with?
RC: Well, I supposed it could be considered a western if you were writing your review in Athens. [laughs] Yeah, I don't know, that's probably more of a film making sort of question, really because we didn't really think about it that way at the time. But, you have common ground, there's like, horses and stuff.
Q: Christian, have you been approached to do the new Justice League movie?
RC: -- he was offered the role of the Green Lantern but there's no cape, so-- no fucking way. If I don't get that cape, then I won't be doing your movie! [laughs]
Q: How do you think that would go, if they recast the character of Batman?
CB: As far as that goes, you know, as long as it doesn't tread on the toes of what we're doing, then it's alright. But I think we'd better figure out what we'd start before we start shooting the third one.
Q: The relationship that you two have on screen is sort of a friendship but it's based on hate--
RC: it'd be a "hate-ship", then? [laughs] ...a "dislike-ship"...
Q: -- a "dislike-ship"-- is that something that developed behind the scenes?
CB: We didn't do a whole lot of talking about it offscreen. I mean, I tend to feel that if it's working, it's working. We didn't have to sort of sit and dissect the whole thing. I mean, it was pretty evident, it was right there. We both, coming in, knew it was very strong and firm ideas about who we are, so, it was right there. It was self-evident.
RC: It's unfortunate that you get to talk 'till the end there because it wasn't fun to go do it again. Perhaps in a more moderate climate.
Q: [to Russel] Apparently you were the quickest draw on the set, Mangold was saying earlier, where does that come into play...
CB: I was a rifleman...with the pistols, I didn't even bother...
RC: I was really lucky when I came over to do The Quick and the Dead back in '93, that I met this guy Phil Reed, he's an armorer, and, you know, coming from Australia I didn't have any experience with the gun culture [in America]...so, I'd never actually held a hand gun before I was on the set of The Quick and the Dead. So what that guy filled was a complete blank slate, so he could sort of put the information in my head that you need to do that sort of thing. And, over time, and it's been a long time now that I've known Mr. Reed and I've probably done like, maybe half a dozen movies with him and he just keeps giving me the tips. We've actually done silly things like, a long time ago, gone off and done shooting competitions together as a team. But that's a very specific skill, you don't get to use that very often, so it's good when a western comes around.
Q: It's been a great career for you, the first time I met you, you were up and coming and now you're a huge success...
RC: Just for full disclosure, I went and judged a talent contest at a school that [the Australian journo] was a teacher at, of course he was very desperate to have some credibility with the kids. That would've been about '94 or something like that.
Aussie Journo: It was a little later than that, I think...I don't remember now...I also don't appreciate you bringing it up, Russell. Thank you very much.
RC: Oh, I just think that you've been asking all the damn questions in the room for a while...I just think everybody else needs an explanation as to why you've been so dominant in our conversation. [starts laughing]
Q: Christian, do you like being an actor? Is there any other kind of career that you want?
CB: I don't look at any difference between movies [and any other job]...movies are not a business to me. Movies are not a business to me, about where the financing's coming from, it's just about the [telling of] the stories and that's the end of it, you know?
Rewind: Open Range - A New-fangled Western...with a Familiar Formula
...in a couple of days I'm going to cover the new western 3:10 to Yuma and have a sit down with Russell Crowe, Chrisitan Bale and the film's director James Mangold (who, I found during an interview for another film with Joaquin Phoenix, talked the actor into playing Johnny Cash opposite Reese Witherspoon while having dinner with Joaquin and the Man in Black, himself)...the premise of this newer Western got me wondering if the genre itself had run it's course...I had similar thoughts a couple of years ago when I covered Open Range which, it turns out, even thoughKevin Costner got lampooned by some for shooting it, starring in it, etc... I liked it and seeing as the source I reviewed it for is defunct, I thought I'd repost what I wrote because I think it's worth seeing and I still feel now the way I did then about the film and the genre itself ....
...Just when it seemed like this summer’s cinema would be overrun with teen-bopper one-week wonders starring the usual Tigerbeat cover models, Kevin Costner returns with the old fashioned shoot’em up Open Range. The storyline is simple enough: four cattlemen (or free-rangers) drive their herd across the 19th Century American prairie only to encounter a ruthless landowner who doesn’t take to kindly to their ilk and wants to put them in a dirt-nap. After one of their crew gets brutally beaten by a gang of dirtbag lackeys at the general store, action ensues. All of this is standard horse-opera faire but this is a film directed by Kevin Costner so you know it’s gonna be a long one, 2:15 long to be exact - Giddiyap.
The group of free-rangers consists of Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall), Charley Waite (Costner), Button (Diego Luna) and Mose (Abraham Benrubi). It quickly becomes clear that the quartet are a tight knit extended family with all of the potential infighting that that would entail – a newer take on the timeworn home on the range cow poke persona. This wandering set of saddle bums are salt-of-the-earth types just trying to make their way in a word that’s learning to settle down so subterfuge is inevitable.
As the film flows, Costner’s portrayal of Charley comes off as what John Dunbar might’ve morphed into had he left Ft. Sedgewick on the wagon with Timmons in Dances with Wolves. Robert Duvall has brought the masses a wide variety of characters throughout the run of his long career on stage and screen. From Col. Kilgore (Apocalypse Now) to Compton (Colors) to the consigliere (Godfathers 1 and 2). Duvall’s turn as Boss Spearman is as textured as the craggy squint lines around the corners of the actor’s eyes. Boss is a composite of all those earlier Duvall characters tempered with age that settles like a fine wine – either you got it or you don’t and dude has got more presence in his pinky than entire casts of other projects out on the market.
In the middle of the film Costner’s direction begins to backslide toward his more maudlin tendencies (a hint of the Postman) but he soon regains footing and moves the storyline on as Charley and Boss saddle up and head into town to do what they gotta do. On their way, the longtime friends continue evaluating themselves (and their place in the changing world) as yet more layers are peeled off to reveal what makes them tick. The cowboy as an effusive conversationalist? The gun-slinger who upchucks at the thought of doing battle? These are a few more of the director’s revisionist twists on the classic western archetype but they work well here. At one point in the film, while talking to Sue Barlow (Annette Bening), Boss likens his relationship with Waite to that of an old married couple without one scintilla of sarcasm – Gold. These characters are not ten feet tall and bullet-proof which is why their realness radiates off the screen and bounce off the walls.
Annette Bening fits snugly into the role of Miss Barlow, the assistant to the town doctor who the free-rangers must visit on several occasions to get patched up – she and Charley eventually become attracted. Their romance is just a footnote, however, because the real meat and potatoes are the way that Boss and Charley lock horns with the wily landowner, Baxter (played by Michael Gambon) and the town sheriff (James Russo) who’s in Baxter’s watch pocket. Baxter is colder than a witch’s tit and the role of horse-town heavy is taken beyond Lee Van Cleef proportions but again, this direction feels appropriate given the setting. The supporting cast offers a memorable workout from the late Michael Jeter who plays a cantankerous (yet hilarious) livery stableman who befriends the main characters and Luna (Y Tu Mama También) has a couple of moments throughout but Duvall is clearly regulating at this particular ro-deo – look for the scene where they tell each other their real names...
Kevin Costner’s direction of Open Range points to both Sergio Leoni and Clint Eastwood (the marquee poster even looks like a knockoff of the latter’s Oscar winning film) but in the end it is clear that this film is all Costner’s. By reviving a genre that had gone the way of the buffalo, the actor/ director/ producer has brought an end to a ten year creative (and commercial) drought. Costner’s back on the trail and riding tall in the saddle – if you see it in a bin at your video store or it's not in your NetFlix queue, give it a whirl; put it on the list and check it out...it's actually better than a lot of the tripe that's being released as "new"...
Studio: TouchstoneStarring: Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Diego Luna, Abraham Benrubi, Michael Gambon, James Russo and Michael JeterDirector: Kevin CostnerRated: R
...I was chatting with a friend online in Spain last night and we came across the subject of Flamenco dancing; music and it jogged my memory about a post that I did months ago on my music blog and forgot to link back to on here for whatever reason...I think it's tale that should be told, so I'll post the original in it's entirety here...
...great stories I find buried in my scribbled notes (transcribed from post-its and bar napkins sometimes) is why I always tell my friends/ readers of my blogs never forget to write shit down…I’d forgotten all about this encounter with a great musician I’d had about five years ago, back when I scribed for a long defunct eZine called AtomicLife…I was over in Los Feliz and got an impulsive jones for some Spanish music, I was sitting in the Good Luck Bar (enjoying an after work oat soda, natch) and decided to walk down the street to El Cid, this Flamenco Dinner Theater a couple of blocks up, over on Sunset…(I used to frequent the joint when I first got back from NYC because it reminded me of a hole in the wall tapas bar west of 8th Ave. that I used to haunt back there)...the tapas were ok but the Sangria and the dancing is what puts the jam in your jelly donut…so I cross the street, walk over to the restaurant and order a glass of freshly mixed Sangria and begin to wait for the floor show when this wiry, olive-skinned guy walked in and sat on a stool next to me. He ordered what I was having and we raised our glasses with a salut, I noticed he had an acoustic guitar case so I asked him if he was playing and it turned out he was, I also picked up on a thick Italian accent and his English was kinda choppy so I took the liberty to start speaking to him in Spanish and things really took off from there…
...it turns out that this wild-eyed Italian was none other than Gino d’Auri, pictured at the header, one of the flamenco guitar greats along the lines of Paco de Lucia (whom d’Auri had played with often and was a friend of his since 1973… (I've written about Paco before here, on my music blog... Gino pointed me to other acts to check like Calo, deFalla and this Indian outfit called Gipsy Unstatia…then, at about our fourth glass of the red stuff, d’Auri delved into what to really listen for in a flamenco song, which I wrote down and will quote here word for word: “In playing flamenco, I search for the ‘cosmic clap’ [great word], the innate pulse that every musician strives for while playing his instrument,” he continued in Spanish. “Some say it’s ‘duende’ or the little devil, the word inspiration isn’t specific enough, and it comes by but briefly in a ‘pelizco’ or an infinitesimal moment.” ...Dude moved to LA in 1967 (from his mouth, not AMG ’s), began making the acoustic rounds and later started recording music with the fusion band Caldera…I see here on these badly scribbled notes from the convo [it quickly dawned on me to start writing down the shit he was dropping on me because it was profound and sincere ]...here’s a quote I found:”These days, many people think that flamenco is about playing 60,000 notes as quickly as possible…my flamenco (playing) is slower, very traditional and down to earth—I may use cello and percussion but it’s done in a traditional way, without lots of notes. For me, the music is about feeling and improvisation. I like to take chances—the communication is better that way”...just above this paragraph is the cover of his 1997 solo LP Flamenco: Passion & Soul which I had on tape but not on mp3…click the link to take a listen…
...Good stuff, yo…Gino gave me his phone number to call him if I was ever in the area again and he’d hook me up…shit, I’d forgotten all about this stuff because I put it in the back of a journal that night which filled it and I started a fresh one the next day…I wonder what Gino’s up to now…he got up from our little impromptu interview, got up on the stage in the other room and rocked the spot for hours as the dancers stomped all around the stage, throwing those frills, kicking those heels and proudly clicking castanets- sweetness…what a night…the whole thing the result of following my muse’s whim—one of those reasons why I don’t dis the musical ju-ju…I find, I’m losing my ability to hablo the ‘spanyole as well as I used to (need to get on that) but I’ve also found that my love for music like this and musicians like Gino and Paco has not ebbed in the slightest…here’s a cut by Paco from 1986’s groundbreaking LP Entre Dos Aguas called “La Nina de Puerta Oscura”...it’s fuckin’ brilliant…
Note: I looked up the number that Gino had given me but it was no longer working…I looked around the day I originally wrote the piece above and found out that d'Auri had passed two months beforehand, at the end of January, still doing what he loved to do…damn…I’m glad I met the guy….
...Whenever I hear of a newer jazz artist covering the tunage of one of the greats from one of my favorite musical eras 1953-ish to the late 60's (the hard bop period through the avant-garde movement; on into the early fusion stuff), I get a little twitch in the corner of my eye because more often than not, the newer take comes off like a copy of a duplicated facsimilie...in mimeograph...or the later effort, as ambitious as it may be, is being attempted by musicians who don't have the chops for the task they've set themselves...(I get a similar feeling when that jazz pianist in the house band on Michael Feldman's NPR quiz show, "Whaddaya Know"-- dude always attempts piano runs that he can never resolve...I turn the radio down every time I hear one coming...the quiz show itself is funny sometimes, though but I'm digressing...
....such is not this case when the Esbjörn Svensson (piano), Dan Berglund (double bass) and Magnus Östrom (drums) got together as the Esbjörn Svensson Trio and recorded 1997's "Plays Monk" for EST Records (later to be re-issued on ACT in 2001)...if you read me, then you already know that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Thelonious Monk fanso, when my homebiscuit, Erin turned me on to it I was skeptical...I'd heard about Svensson but never got around to him which I began to regret as the outfit hit the ground running at a crisp, brisk clip with a rendition of "Rhythim-a-Ning" that quickly brought a smile to my face about 20 seconds and the string stuff on " 'Round Midnight" brought a fresher feel to a classic I already knew inside out...and I'm not telling porkie-pies around the campfire, either...
...going deeper into the album's trackage, one finds that " Little Rootie Tootie" has some sweet, swinging drum moments and the best way to describe their lugubrious-yet-cheerful rendition of "I Mean You": brush-lush-tastic (another joint on which the drumming shines as Östrom lays down the lutefisk...on "Evidence" the Trio turns up the heat during a brisk workout that puts the spotlight on Esbjörn's who show's that he can punch his body-weight when he's hunched over a piano...unlike the professional amateur mentioned above, Svensson's got the Scandinavian minerals to pull it off...not to get hyperbolic but it's a real revelation to hear someone else vibe on Thelonious' "tongue-in-cheek-complexity" and nail it-- love the way he drops out of that oh-so-Monk run around 4:14...nothin' but the truth, son...they hook shit up later in a similar fashion on "Criss Cross" as well...I found myself liking their rendition of the Monk staple "Bemsha Swing" just as much as I like John Coltrane and Don Cherry's version of it as well...
...music: it's the gift that keeps on giving...I've been listening to this LP a great deal since I got hooked up with it last month...and the tune I've been really vibing on is the EST's version of "In Walked Bud" which I'll close out this review with (according to lore, this is literally the tune that Esbjörn's father, a jazz musician, himself had spinning on the turntable as his toddler son learned to walk...probably untrue but I like the circle-of-life feel of the tale )...I don't think the Plays Monk is OOP, so if you see that freaky-ass, cubist cover staring at you from a record bin across the room, calmly adjust that fedora (that you're no doubt wearing), look around the room...then slowly ease over to it and snatch it up ...then do that little "Eureka jig" like Walter Huston did in the flick The Treasure of the Sierra Madre...because, Bogey, you've just found yourself some jazz gold...
(to turn off iVoon to listen to track below, click pause on the clickwheel of the iPod in sidebar)
...If you've ever thought about picking up another language but don't have the time for all the classes; schlepping around town, let me pull your coat on something that I think will be right up your alley...I've been studying German for the last couple of months and after exploring several different means of study and looking around at the stuff available at the iTunes store, I've found the language learning system that has yielded the best results...
..."Man, those schnitzen grübens will wipe you out every time"...You can kick those audiobooks that begin with "Learn In-Flight" to the curb, if you're just beginning and plug into the titles that will hook you up with the Pimsleur System which was developed by the language professor and Fulbright lecturer Paul Pimsleur who, while researching the psychology of language learning, developed a means to speed up the language acquisition process-- he started with children who would learn languages without worrying about the mechanics and formalities of structure, the result: Pimsleur's Language Learning System...
...while I learned English and later Spanish the "old fashioned way", I've found that using audiobooks that utilize Pimsleur's method along with reading wörterbuchs and cross referencing those with Henry Strutz' "501 German Verbs, 3rd Edition, which holds lists of fully conjugated Deutsch, is helping me pick up aspects of the language at a much quicker pace than I ever did when I began the five years of Spanish classes back in High School/ University (I took two years of French in the 9th and 10th grades before that and didn't learn it nearly as quick as I'm picking up this Scheiße...
...the Pimsleur Methodology goes as follows:
* The student listens to a recording on which a native speaker speaks culturally rich phrases in both the foreign language and the language used for teaching (usually English, but the method is not tied to a specific language).
* At precise intervals (graduated intervals), the student is prompted to repeat a phrase after the speaker finishes it.
* The student is then introduced to a new phrase and the meaning is explained.
* After repeating a couple of times, the student is asked to repeat the previous phrase but borrowing from the words and meaning of the new one (recall and construction).
* More new phrases are introduced, while old phrases are prompted at random. The random recall prompts the learner's mind to associate words with meanings.
"Studies have shown that a relatively small core vocabulary accounts for the majority of words spoken in a particular language. In English, for example, approximately 80 percent of any written text are members of the 2000 most common word families."
...Corpus linguistics compiled for various languages show what number of words is required to cover a certain percentage of the corpus. Data for Indian languages in the CIIL corpus show the number of words required for 50% coverage varies from 199 words in Hindi to 7,699 in Malayalam, while 80% coverage for those languages is 2,874 and 126,344 respectively.
The Pimsleur method works by teaching core vocabulary that tend to be most often used in everyday activities (i.e. to do, to say, to be, numbers, buying, eating and drinking). Pimsleur rarely teaches grammar, rather letting the student infer the grammar through common patterns in phrases."...read more on the benefits of the method...
...I marvel at the learning tools out there today, I can only imagine how much more I could have absorbed back in the day...there's a grip of audiobooks on cassette teaching practically every language under the sun...there's just one cock-up with the means I'm using...
.
..the only real beef that I have right now is that after the first 10 lessons, the price jumps to $106.95 for the next ten (21 to 30)...after that, the German II, Lessons 31 to 60 bounces up to $249.00...but to get the whole ball of wax, Lessons I, II and III, all you've got to do is drop half a grand and you're set...that's a bit rich for my blood at the moment but if I had the means, I'd do it...I've found a couple of learn language sites online with content that has been middling at best and all hard to download...(click the header for the link to a "price beater" site with a grip of these Pimsleur books, both audio and paginated, for cheap)...
...I don't like to cut corners on stuff like this because you only end up cheating yourself out of a richer learning experience, so, more than likely I will pony up the dough for more of the lessons after I finish the ones I have in iTunes right now (that is if I don't find CD's of them in the big Library downtown or the one in Glendale or the Pasadena Central Branch)...it'll be well worth the effort if I can score these for the nice price...I'd imagine that these lessons would work well with someone brushing up after years of not speaking a language as well...as one who often has to twist his verbiage around in print, it's clear that I've got a long way to go mit mien Deutsch aber I must admit I've never had more fun picking up a new tongue...I'll be slurring my "r's" like Blazing Saddles' Lili von Schtupp in no time...it's like linguistic crack..."die Sprache ruft zu mir" it be calling me, I tells ya...
...Sometimes, There's a Man Who Fits Right in There...
..."Way out west there was this fella I wanna tell ya about...he called himself "The Dude". Now, "Dude" - there's a name no man would self-apply where I come from. But then there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place so darned interestin'. See, they call Los Angeles the "City Of Angels"; but I didn't find it to be that, exactly. But I'll allow it as there are some nice folks there...after seeing Los Angeles, and this here story I'm about to unfold, well, I guess I seen somethin' every bit as stupefyin' as you'd seen in any of them other places. And in English, too... sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? Sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here - the Dude from Los Angeles. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude. The Dude, from Los Angeles. And even if he's a lazy man - and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in all of Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide. Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man... "
...so the heat in this town has been abominable for the past week-and-change and I remember looking up one day and screeching to the sun in my best Jeff Lebowski/ Bridges drawl: Dude, new shit must come to light"...so I've been doing most of my online work/ studying at the library...from morning, through the day and into the night...what can I say? The A/C is boomin' and its good to see other people toiling at whatever they do on their laptops, sometimes you need to witness first-hand that you're not alone in your exploits (I've closed the joint about four times so far)...
...there's a cafe here that sells somewhat overpriced cups of joe/ sandwiches which isn't very cost effective or any better than shite I can bring in myself, so that's what I've been doing-- these days a fool is expediently divested of his loot, even at la biblioteca...after the first couple of days, I started to bring coffee I brewed myself, the way I like it...and I'd worked out a little tip scheme with this female barista wherein I'd get a couple of packets of brown sugar, a little cream and I'd tip her instead of buying a cup of that overheated, overpriced swamp water...und alles war mit der Welt gut...well, all was good with the world until today, that is...
..."This agression will not stand, man"...the regular lady wasn't there, so I asked this white-haired, white guy if it'd be cool if I got a couple of packets of the sweet stuff..."what and not buy any coffee?"...well, yeah, I have my own..."Well, I think not."...there were a couple of other people sitting around and, as I jacked into the vitriolic fury that only a man, jonesing for caffeine while trying to quit smoking can feel, I looked him straight in the eye and said: "thanks very much, punk"...I could've continued and offered to pay for the sugar, which I started to do...but then I looked at the way that fucking homunculous' attitude changed when he thought I wasn't going to proffer any loot and it sickened me...would all of the wheels have fallen off the wagon if he'd given me two packets of sugar? I understand the laws of supply and demand and all but damn son..."mark it zero, dude..."
...and then there's the "testosterone thing"...I wasn't going to give that macrocephalic oldster the satisfaction...something in his tone didn't jibe (women, I know this sounds crazy but men go through little pissing contests such as this all day, every day...whether we'll admit or not is another issue altogether...just accept it...I have)...I didn't threaten to throw him a beating as a younger me might've...I passed and am now drinking my coffee sans sugar and milk...as I do so...I'll live...the question is, would I ever sink to that if my life were so drab that I found satisfaction in condiment blocking (when one of those cardboard-hatted, fast food people standing behind on of those cash registers with the little pictures on 'em, act like they're giving you ketchup that THEY THEMSELVES BOUGHT, when you ask for a couple more...when they finally acquiesce to your plaintive beseeches, they do so grudgingly...like they're doling out loaves 'n fishes...what the fuck is THAT all about?)...would I suck the bullet out of a barrel, rather than take that exit to McJobland?...I think not...whatever's clever, son...keep your fucking sugar...I'll wait for that cool chick to return...hope this gig in foisting bad java on the world pans out for you...I'll live, besides, things could be worse...I could have YOUR GIG...and just to give you a feeling what straight black coffee does to me on an empty stomach, I leave you with this Jackie Treehorn, Gutterball Production...(to stop the tunes in the iVoon, just click stop on the iPod)...laters...
Karl Rove: Can the Turd Blossom Get His Frog-March, Please?
...man, that's one spooky picture, ain't it?...I don't know if its some primal, atavistic urge that I'm tapping into or not but I'm praying, with fingers and toes crossed, that Karl Rove gets frog-marched from the court room on C-Span, the cuffs slapped on his wrists just before he's man-handled, kicking and wincing out of the court room on C-Span...a fitting beginning to a punishment long overdue...say what you will about my tendency to lean left; think of my fellow human being but Karl Rove was never one of the "good ones gone wrong" he's been a radioactive turd of darkness floating in the back channels of beltway policy for years now, which seemed to be justified when his boy, Bush the Younger squeaked into office in 2000 on a technicality that Americans never saw coming...seems like he'd been honing that talent for a while...
"In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Illinois State Treasurer, and stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead. Rove then printed fake campaign rally fliers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon's rally (Dixon eventually won the election). Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973."
...just lookit...look at those two staring, ever so tenderly at each other...heckuva job, Turd Blossom...doesn't it just make you want to bust out crying...well, don't it?...it seems this guy's had a penchant for seeing around corners while working in the muck-filled runnels of Presidential campaigning...and lately, since it seems that members of Bush' administration walk around like those diplomatic immunity-crazy Afrikaners in the Lethal Weapon movie with some invisible force-field of media retardant Teflon while pulling the "Executive Privilege" card...they all but had Clinton drawn and quartered for getting a BJ...a small but politically influential group of people (of which Rove is a member) have pulled scams that make Iran Contra-era Reagan Admin Loyalists look like a bunch of Keystone Cops...hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilian Iraqi deaths, trillions of dollars spent on a war that the general public (and all but a few members of the House and Senate were frightened into making after 911 when Bush made that "smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud" remark......blessed be Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D) who was the sole "nay" when KR and his crew were "slam dunking" thier way to that fiasco of foreign policy that was originally going to be named "Operation Iraqi Liberation" until somebody dropped dime and pointed out what the acronym would spell out) ..."We must not rush to judgment. Far too many innocent people have already died. Our country is in mourning. If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children, and other noncombatants will be caught in the crossfire." here's a link to the verbiage of Congresswoman Lee's sole dissenting voice...her words proved prophetic (hindsight 20/20 and all that, I guess)...from what I've read on research on him, Rove's fingerprints are all over the place....not only does he know where all the bodies are buried...he knows what brand of lime was placed over the corpses...I think of all of this and other less known and it makes my skin start leaking when I wonder what he's up to now...what kind of political horror-show DON'T we know about...nobody can beat the clock...time always prevails...
..."A word to the wise is infuriating", if I might quote Hunter S Thompson...That Rove has actually deigned to leave at all while the level of hubris for this Administration reaches critical mass (a feat in and of itself) is telling, I don't know where all those rubes who fell for the skullduggery, truth obfuscating and misdirection that made minced meat out of John Kerry's message in 2004 but I do recall throwing up in my mouth when I heard of those Swiff Boat dudes...remember how the GOP trivialized the Purple heart by wearing those purple band aids?...Remember that purple ink on their fingers...that the media fails to report any of this in detail but can offer pages and pages of minutia about on Nicole Richie's dietary in intake is telling...I'm not saying that the latter is Rove's fault but he's definitely had a hand in making being uninformed and disenchanted with hard news on the political front what it is today...
...my stomach turned and I wanted to projectile vomit on multiple occasions while I watched this series about him on FrontLine: Karl Rove -- The Architect (the landing page itself is a veritable treasure trove of Rovian factoids that, when seen grouped together, really do bring this guy's life of political malfeasance into sharper relief...the stove-pipe hat and handlebar mustache were pencilled-on way back before he even worked for Bush the Elder (who fired his ass outright for trying to pull off the very shenanigans that would get Bush II into the Oval Office...twice...
...ever hear about the push polling he launched against Anne Richards in Texas where the automated voice-over asks in the thrust of it's campaign patter if the caller would still vote for Richards if they knew that her campaign staff was over-run by lesbians?...she lost...later, he pulled out the shower shank on John McCain with similar tactics in South Carolina...""would you vote for John McCain if you knew he had adopted a black child which he parented with a black woman?"...it worked like gangbusters in ultra-red South Cacka-lackey, where racism and politics still run as strident and free as the bulls of San Fermin on the streets of Pamplona...being a southerner, and seeing living, breathing "Dixiecrats" all around me coming up, it's hard not to see the irony in that last little act of treachery being committed in the home state of that hypocritical bigot Strom Thurman who had an extraordinarily lengthy political career built on a foundation of a race-baiting political platform...later, a little after his death it was revealed that he had fathered a child with a teenaged maid way back in the day...let's get real, there's been scumbags like Thurman and Rove involved in politics throughout the course of human history...
...not to put too fine a point on what I'm saying here but Karl Rove is one of those motherfuckers that I'd lay out long scratch to see tarred-and-feathered (by the same means that he'd done so with his political enemies past, some, like Valerie Plame's husband Joseph Wilson for simply telling the truth when all the Rove wanted was to sell us the big lie by any means necessary...I want to see his ass thrown under the jail and thrown under a jail and every nanosecond of a his stay chronicled on DVD, like an episode of Oz for posterity's sake; kept in that time capsule of our national brain trust...I'm dreaming out loud again, ain't I?...we already know that such is never has been and never will be tjhe case with the thugs running the current administration...they just screw things up, steal as much as possible (by way of kickbacks from corporate cronies who have all let themselves go)...it goes on and on...I just hope the Democrats have the political minerals to to stay focused on his slippery, eel-like ass...if they don't, they'll be complicit in letting one of the biggest criminals slip right through their fingers...
...politicos with "daddy issues unite: he was kicked off of Bush the elder's team, only to be hired by Bush the younger to do those things that got him fired by his father..."Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief Robert Mosbacher Jr. (Esquire Magazine, January 2003). Novak provided some evidence of motive in his column describing the firing of Mosbacher by former Senator Phil Gramm: "Also attending the session was political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher." Novak and Rove deny that Rove was the leaker"...
..."When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained."
--Edward R. Murrow --
...a few weeks ago thoughts similar to these surfaced in my mind vis-a-vis the recently released I. Scooter Libby...cheating has become such a substantive part of the GOP modus operandi, that it has begun to leak over into all other aspects of the political process so many ways that it's hard to recollect a time when things weren't so unabashedly covert and cut throat......the ubiquitous use of the underhanded tactics mentioned above and a grip of others that I haven't mentioned, (so check the links that I drop, son) ...see for yourself...take-no-prisoners-partisanship has became the coin of the relm while Rove was slithering around the halls of the White House...his tactics have made him politically radioactive (even for this administration) and he's being thrown under the bus...probably to pre-emptively run interference for something much more ominous but lets not get ahead of ourselves...one crook at a time, roight?...I've said it on here more than once and I'll re-iterate: what is past is prologue and based on what I've learned over the past six and a half years is that no matter what goes down, people like this guy will more than likely slide off and slip back into the dark swamp they rose from...only this time they'll have a lucrative lobbying gig, maybe even write a book or two...I know Rove's due at least one tell-all, as he begins working on re-writing the scandal and blood soaked history that he, himself helped bring to fruition...
...I don't think he'll be able to totally pull off that last caper, I mentioned...too many eyeballs...too many people wired in...maybe if this were William Randolph Hearst's day, he'd be able to...more and more people are getting the zap on their domes and looking beyond the info-holes run by that handful of media giants...that "the-bigger-the-lie-the-more-people-will-believe-it" angle has gone the way of the Schickelgrüber...slowly but surely the cadre of loyal anti-constitution crooks, corporate shills, arm-chair generals and draft-dodging chicken hawks is thinning in their numbers...the re-tooling that this lot has done on all the moving parts under the hood of our nation's Democracy will take decades to uncover...I shudder at the thought...laters...
