LARHULE!

Black Toad

2009-03-18T23:21:00.006-05:00

My latest musical work for H.A. -

Bad Art 101, Prof. Elizabeth Alexander

2009-01-21T14:48:00.006-06:00

Round two:

Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem "Praise Song..." was completely terrible. I'll take a chance on being redundant and try to describe this nightmare even further.

Not only was the poem's content trite ("We encounter each other in words...words to consider"), childish ("We walk into that which we cannot yet see."), uninspired ("Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.") and plain wrong ("All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din") but the delivery was stagnant as death and panderous to those who suckle from the dry teet of tenured 'art'. The delivery was out of place for any audience with a demand for nuance and aesthetic. I found the only connection between words and voice to be that they both fell harmoniously flat. The reading style perfectly represented dull academic lifelessness in performance where ideas are assumed to be more profound if they are delivered without force as a list of, unconnected, comma, delimited, words. And where professors masturbate over the illusion that they share a gift of improvisational syncopation with Miles Davis by randomly rearranging inflections. Do not pretend to be influenced by jazz if your shit is well-rehearsed. That qualifies for instant chump status and most certainly not a Pulitzer Prize.

And speaking of masturbation, I listened to the NPR interview with this artless woman just after it was announced that she would be allowed the chance to publicly humiliate herself. Asked if she was nervous she answered with an over-confident nervousness when stating that having nervousness would not help her to complete the piece. I believe it is precisely this dillusional confidence that leads to most bad art. Unfortunately it also allows such artists to increase their rank and popularity more rapidly than their more tentative, careful and far more interesting counterparts.

Inaugural review - In case you missed it

2009-01-20T14:51:00.004-06:00

...though I doubt you could given the masturbatorial glee with which the "media" is covering this apparently ground-breaking civil rights event. OK, so the only way I could tune in at work was through NPR's sappy and constant interjections. So now I know where Obama's Dad is from and roughly what he might look like and that today Steve Inskeep will be changing his underwear one more time than usual. Just the news, please? Thanks.

This is the limp slop heap of a poem delivered during today's inaugural events. I had to read most of this at a later time because the delivery was such a deliberate drone of faux-Beatnick and contrived jazz that I was too angry to hang on past the second stanza. Keep in mind this woman (Elizabeth Alexander) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for similar barf parading as incite:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking
past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or
speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn
and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a
hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in
need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of
wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love
that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence
begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Ack! This is how I would describe the world if I desired all meaning to be replaced by style, and borrowed style, at best. But the delivery, I can't even begin to describe...YouTube that bitch.

In stark contrast was an awesome string/piano/clarinet piece written by John Williams. It seemed to borrow from several American folk tunes and was performed perfectly by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma and others. The sound quality of YouTube won't do it justice. You might just have to NPR that bitch.

The dreaded pastor Rick Warren's speech was better than expected simply for that fact that he noted that America is not a nation of people dictated by their religion. A statement that surely required high-tech gadgetry to bypass his normally bigotted core.

I thought Obama's speech was good. It was centrist which begs the question of its honesty - if his past resembles his presidency it should be some lefty shit! He did mention that the US is a country of "many faiths, Christian...yaddayadda...and Non-believers", which, while incorrectly describing atheism as a faith, is something you would have never heard admitted by McCain much lest his campaign witch. It was reasonable, recognizing terrorism as incompatible with democratic secularism. It recognized terrorists specifically as radical Muslim religious groups. That's a big shift for him, which seems that he's able to cope with reality even if his supporters often cannot. However, not even a hint at gay marriage. Lame!

Collide Magazine: A Place for Religious Hacks

2008-12-05T14:17:00.012-06:00

http://www.collidemagazine.com/blog/index.php/470/stop-using-media-part-three

Herein you will find a ridiculous discussion between myself and some churchies. A half-witted article Part 3 in a multi-part series discussing overuse of media in churches (fair enough) by a hack editor, Scott McClellan (below-right), in a fledgling faith-based "entertainment" blog called "Collide Magazine". I was connected there when his article's reference to Trent Reznor was picked up by the "NIN Spotting" forum on NIN.com. I was making a post there because I was seemingly the first to discover what appeared to be a NIN logo in the most recent update to their photoblog (left). In the article he characterizes Reznor as an opportunistic businessman whose modus operandi is gathering your money. Evidence? None. Not that I would expect Collide readers to demand it.

You'll no doubt see that this guy's shamelessness knows no bounds. After refusing to engage any of my thoughts in a public discussion within the sparse comments section of his blog, he makes a post on Twitter asking his followers for "advice" and provided a link. The Twitter post describes me as angry and spewing "Hater-ade". Aside from the bad humor even that smile appears forced and cocky. Most of his friends jump in with the foolish idea that I'm somehow afraid to debate this guy through private email though public debate is obviously far more demanding of skill and fact. Two reasonable churchies ask me for my thoughts on the origin of morality. Upon my reply our pompous author chimes in to say that the discussion is off-topic and any further posts will be manually deleted by him. And to wrap it all up, he thinks the comments section is no place for comments:

If you have a blog or forum in which you’d like to host a discussion of your own or publish your own thoughts, I encourage you to do so. This space, however, doesn’t exist for that purpose.

I have replied asking what purpose a comment section exists for and I assumed that the post would be deleted (IT WAS, SEE BELOW) until I was followed up by a nice man named "Danny" who, though agreeing with my analysis of Mr. McClellan, laid out a huge winding sermon. A polite sermon meandering on concepts of morality and hypocrisy in the church, but a sermon nonetheless. Now I sit wondering if the author has the thickness to delete a sincere sermon from his religious blog at the price of keeping his silly promise, and his title of "Keeper of the Last Word".

UPDATE: He deleted them.
UPDATE AGAIN: He re-added them, minus mine.

My Hero Has Died

2008-06-23T09:16:00.003-05:00

"'You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun. Don't you think that's already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? 'Let's see... Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh...viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures, perhaps a human immuno-deficiency virus making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.'

Well, that's a poetic note, and it's a start, and I can dream can't I? Ya see, I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snales. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want, ya know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron...wooOOooh...wooOOooh...wooOOooh. It doesn't punish. It doesn't reward. It doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we, for a little while. Thanks for being here with me for a little while tonight."

~George Carlin (5/12/1937 - 6/22/2008)

Russian Circles on tour

2008-06-04T08:49:00.002-05:00

I saw the kickoff show last night @ the Picador in Iowa City. You must see these guys.

http://www.myspace.com/russiancircles

RIP Sir Arthur C Clarke

2008-03-26T13:43:00.004-05:00

May his thoughts be reconstituted from his cells by creatures unknown to us in far and mysterious reaches of time so that they might understand the wonderful and strange potential of a species of which Sir Clarke epitomized. Hope that he might be there to witness his imagination flourish and prosper as was so often the case during his life on Earth. And may his matter and his thoughts and all matter and all thoughts one day return to the swirling, glowing, molten vortex of space.

Drinking game

2008-02-21T16:24:00.002-06:00

Turn on CNN @ 7 p.m. central. At every utterance of "change" take one sip. You'll be dead by 7:15. Even if your drink is non-alcoholic you're going to puke.

Fuck you, Metal Sanaz!

2008-02-19T22:01:00.003-06:00

Somehow I stumbled across the video below and could not let it pass without commenting. It starts with some canned crap metal. Heavy stupid-core. It follows with the myspace.com logo (the friendly little lego-looking people) amongst some skulls and the words "a place for METAL" in a really spooky font.

The 40-something faux-celebrity named Metal Sanaz appears on camera with a snake resting in her sagging cleavage and begins her foolish introduction about how she has "been bringing you the best of metal for the last 3 years here on myspace". (Fuck you, Metal Sanaz)

Onward this bimbo proceeds by swallowing all her pride, along with the semen of every washed-up black-metal guitarist when she states that she has "teamed up with myspace" (Fuck you, Metal Sanaz) and because of that "we've now got a home for the metal genre". (Fuck you, Metal Sanaz) What the fuck, Elvira!?! Metal lives at myspace now? Get real, twat. Everyone knows that metal has no home! Since when did this skank become metal's realtor?

Fuck you, Metal Sanaz! You are to metal what dingleberries are to a fruit salad.

A not-so-surprisingly ignorant Iowa caucus

2008-01-04T09:55:00.000-06:00

I have a hard time believing that there should be any issue in this election more important than Iraq and I have a hard time supporting anyone who wants to walk away from the responsibility that we have to the people of Iraq.

Let me summarize that responsibility:

In 1963 our CIA put the Ba'ath party in power. Later in the late-70's Jimmy Carter encouraged current Ba'ath party leader Saddam Hussein invade Iran to remove the Islamic regime there. We armed his military, funded his party and in doing so we shut out all other political groups in Iraq. If Hussein and his regime eventually let the country of Iraq rot then whose responsibility is it to fix that situation? We have a duty to clean up the mistakes made by our previous meddling. Overthrowing Hussein was a start but that is not enough. The entire regime must be taken down and the Ba'ath party or any equivalent must not be allowed to form. Distribution of oil wealth must be worked out to ensure that funds are reaching the people of Iraq, not the people of America, not foreign investors, and definitely not dictatorial crime families like the Husseins. That process is currently under way in Iraq with proven upward results. And yet there is no Democrat running for president who plans to continue that process. This is why I will NOT vote Democrat. Even if Hillary knows what's going on in Washington, which I doubt she does, she most certainly doesn't know what is going on in Iraq. Neither does Obama or any other Democrat and their inability to support our current military efforts along with the widespread support they got in last night's caucusses are the clear, unquestionable proof of a wicked ignorance that is sweeping this nation.

So as much as I'd like to see gay marriage (pro), stem cell research (pro) and abortion (undecided) dealt with right now there are, safe to say, bigger fish to fry in the world.

High Caliber Entertainment

2007-10-10T09:52:00.000-05:00

There's a cover band from my hometown called Nine-1-1. The attacks of Sept. 11 nearly crippled their resolve but they held together like true patriots and kept their name despite it's now negatory negatives in the realm of connotation. I awoke in the middle of the night and found myself reading the bio's on their website. I was struck by the drummer's bio in which he is credited as having been awarded "the Certificate of Esteem from the Department of Defense for Patriotic Service, Outstanding Showmanship and High Caliber Entertainment".

If the last part of that quote doesn't strike you dead like a killer riff from a slaying axe, read it again. The military has a way with words, doesn't it? And by "way" I mean that every now-and-then they poop their pants just like the rest of us. Nine-1-1, a cover band, might be likened to a Deringer pistol; good enough to get the job done when you're drunk but certainly not enough to call on during a real rock-n-roll emergency. George Carlin once said, roughly, "the only public discourse we have for solving problems in this country is 'declaring war' on them". Now it seems the military, in the shadow of the failure of the Gay Bomb, has dimed their amps and will leave no power chord unchugged. "I hearby declare a War on Single-Coil Pickups." Our foreign policy may be far from optimal but now it could also be said to, as Count Jabula would say, "rock you like a hurricane". We'll soon be slathering unsuspecting brown individuals with napalm and shrapnel much like Jimmy Page's handwired Marshall Plexi stacks slathered the humbuckers in his Les Paul with creamy, rich, tube crunch.

In other amazing stuff, I've discovered a niche (but profound) market for custom printer design. I came across the market demand when printing a fax cover sheet yesterday. I went to the printer and when I was rollin' back to my cubicle-crib I felt that my usual gangsta lean was lackin', hella. Apparently no one had PIMPED MY INKJET! But now my H.P. (hizzle pizzle) is rollin' on 21-inch dubs. All the ladies be creamin' when bass beats announce these print jobs be droppin'. I neva let dem five-oh's peep my game 'cause that display screen be tinted. I got platinum print trays and hydraulics got all dem bitches poppin'. Step up to da hizzle pizzle and maybe dat 3-wheel motion be bustin' fresh copies in yo grill and in dat plush velvet tray. Stick a Philly all up in it and watch dat thang coallate some muthafuckin' blunts. Now it be time ta smoke up while steady makin' that salary chedda. Don't lemme catch ya slippin' on the back-nine lest I bust out my nine and make it rain on dem ho's!

Iowa City flute bonehead

2007-09-27T15:00:00.000-05:00

just before he realizes he's being photographed...

Ped-Mall floot player

2007-09-26T14:56:00.000-05:00

There's a scraggly fat bearded guy (I'd say 50's) in downtown Iowa City who plays the flute. You can usually find this guy playing any afternoon or evening just inside a large entryway to a business that has closed for the day. He sets down a hat for people to drop change in, then he goes to town, sending warbly, screeching woodwind tones reverberating across the brick facades of old & new downtown Iowa City.

I was walking the Ped-Mall last Friday, after having attended the University of Iowa Law School Keg Race of 2007. I feel very drunk and yet there's another feeling, a nagging that I've felt before in this area at this time of night. Then I see the flute player. Just as I'm nearing him I decided to call a friend, R.Cofffeeee, whom I mistakenly thought would be in town that night. The flute music in the distance stops. You can always tell when he stops playing because, if you don't immediately notice the sound has ended, you at least have a sense that someone has lifted a great weight from your shoulders.

It appears that the fluter is also taking a phone call right now. No, wait, he is mocking me for being on a cell phone! I contemplate attaching a cord from my phone to an old telephone pole to appease him but I forgot to bring one with me tonight, and there are no telephone poles around. The voicemail had to be postponed so that I could tell this asshole what I thought of his crooked stance and his equally crooked flute playing. I can't remember what I said, but it was not nice, nicer than his mocking anyway. Maybe something about tuning his flute. Can you even tune a flute? Maybe that was the pun. Yeah, it wasn't that funny but I was really drunk and had to say something.

Two nights later, Sunday, I'm walking the Ped-Mall again, sober this time and I hear the god-awful howling in the distance. It sounds like a cat fighting and fucking a parrot.

The thing about sound in downtown Iowa City is that you never know where it's coming from until the source is right under your nose...er, ears. You round the corner by the Java House and the sound that was previously coming from due south is now coming from the northwest, reflecting off of the east wall of ColdStone Creamery. What sounded in scattered reflection like an interesting jazzy soundscape is beginning to sound like any one of your grab-bag Iowa City funk bands. So you round the corner of West Bank and now the sound is coming from further down Washington Street, near Whitey's Ice Cream...mmmMMM, ice cream! Normally the search for the source might continue or the search might end altogether in a large Reece's Peanut Butter Cup malt, but judging by this particular sound that fails to find a root note or a dynamic or harmonic consistency I think its safe to head directly towards Reprographics across from Etc to find our screecher extraordinaire...

This time I have a friend (Derek) with me and he has a very nice high-tech camera in tow. I ready my cell phone and, pretending to be mid-call, I walk near the east wall of the Ped-Mall. Derek circles around and heads down the middle of the thoroughfare, looking to get a good angle of the trainwreck. This time the flute player spots him first; apparently his problem with technology today is one of digital still photography rather than one of wireless communications.

"You better not be taking pictures of me!", he snaps.

"Oh come on, are you really afraid to have your picture taken?" D questions.

I end my fake phone call and eagerly jump in. "Dude, you're in a public place, not to mention THE PUBLIC SQUARE," I respond, "...and not only is he going to take pictures of you but he's going to print one out as a huge cardboard cut-out and put it right over there." I point to a popular corner about 50 feet away. "Then we're going to get a boombox that plays flute music and we'll get all of the money that you collect from people down here...except we'll play good flute music and the cardboard cut-out won't harass people. You won't be able to compete!"

The old flute player is so beet red and full of rage that he can't immediately respond as we turn and walk away. Perhaps today's gift to the grissled old Ped-Mall regular is not the usual respect given by snotty uncreative art kids to jaded, bitter regulars at towny bars but a much more deserving and equally obvious coronary. Derek puts the cap back over the lid and we laugh as the shots begin to ring out in the distance.

From 50 feet away... "yeah? yeah? Well yer...STUPID!"

From 75 feet away, even louder... "you better not do anything with thooooose pictures, youuu asshoooles!"

From 100 feet away, and at the top of his lungs... "....FUUCK YOUUUUUUU!", but the rest of the Ped-Mall doesn't seem to notice.

Fuck that guy and fuck his shitty ass flute.

Pictures coming soon!

---------------------------------------------------------------

PS. My friend Andrew Cantine @ the Physical Challenge blog had this to say about the 'tard in question:

"Oh MY GOD I HATE THAT GUY! I know your Ped Mall flooter, and he totally sucks assballs. Although, I did hear him finish an altogether un-rockin flute solo down by Iowa Artisans gallery once, and as soon as he hit the last note he did a underhanded air-grab and proclaimed 'YES!'….because he nailed it dude, he totally fucking nailed it."