Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Meet the Beastles Again Mashing up the Beatles might be old news, even if you throw the Beastie Boys into the mix. But DJ BC played god in this collision, and the result - Meet The Beastles - a mashup from a master - is candy for the ears. BC's so good that I'm tempted to say that he makes it go down too easily, which is the danger in screwing around with pop genius. You could try to figure out what the folks at Eviltron have been smoking that inspires their brain-twisting, sometimes fabulous graphic design,. Their work is to the status quo what Kevin Garnett's ball-handling skills are to those of Todd Fuller (ask Golden State). They seem to be working on another planet. Don't stop 'till you find Rubic's confusing cube ("Brain"). Eviltron's game is played out at a higher level and you CAN NOT compete. Ok? Artist Nancy Spoelhof stepped up, and Eviltron designed an online gallery for her. The results were quite wonderful. Back to bed. posted by TommyT @ 12:50 pm | Permanent link

Monday, December 20, 2004

The Wire trades bullets for beds The Wire's rich street life and a cast led the strongest crew of African Americans actors ever assembled for one series pose an implicit challenge for an industry that hates away games, and for white people who aren't comfortable with anything that isn't white. Maybe that's why the shows creators decided to flip the script in the season-closing "Mission Accomplished." Instead of a shootout between the gang's headed by Marlo and Avon, they put the guns down and with two quick, righteously inflamatory gratuitous sexual encounters from hell - one between lesbians, the other an interracial couple. I hope the forces at HBO who want to cancel the series, along with any stray born-agains wound up in the E.R. when they saw Detective Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) caressing the nipples of her female lover with her tongue. Then, hopefully, they needed the undertaker, when Rhonda Pearlman (Dierdre Lovejoy) - lying naked, flat on her back, snaked her hands around the hips of a naked Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick - 0% body fat) lying between her legs, placed them on his ass, and pulled him deeper inside her. The white man's burden: Daniels and Pearlman. Are the rumors of casualties caused by the stampede of exiting advertisers true? Is it better to burn out or to fade away? I'd suggest HBO hostages and a beheading or two if a pink slip arrives, only they do it all the time in Iraq and those planes just keep on coming. posted by TommyT @ 11:08 pm | Permanent link

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Save The Wire: DON'T WHITEWASH HBO Tonight's the last night of the season for the world's best dramatic television series, The Wire. Karen and I have been sending astral projections or something to the show's writers, demanding that the spare Omar, Avon, Bubbs, Kima, Bodie, and various others (they can have Stringer, but we haven't gotten over last season's murder of D'Angelo Barksdale. Anyway, to make a long story short, it turns out the series hasn't been renewed yet by HBO! They simply cannot kill this series - and if they do, I'm going to do talk shit about the station's once-bold programmers until I can't talk anymore. The Wire features great writers, and the best collection of African American actors television has ever assembled on one show. To cancel The Wire would represent an unforgiveable white-washing of television. There's another word for that, too. posted by TommyT @ 4:42 am | Permanent link

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Tribute To Gary Webb Why add a part 2 to my Gary Webb post? Because in the days after the Bush victory, the papers I read every day - Times from L.A. and New York, and the S.F. Chronicle, suddenly discovered the "threat" posed by Iran. And, if that can be attributed to the fascist blathering of administration Strangeloves, I was struck by the way that reports relating to Iran - which boil quickly down to invade or not - were approached with the same wide-eyed quality that characterized reports relating to Iraq in 2002-2003. Did they not learn a lesson? I think they did - and the fact that we're being treated to what is only a slightly less noxious version of round 1 is alarming. The sad truth about the beating down and burying of Gary Webb is this: the retraction of his 1996 S.J. Mercury News expose of the of the CIA's involvement in the cocaine trade was a marker in the death march of an independent media in America. What we have today is little more than a willing propaganda arm - when it matters - for the most reactionary elements in Washington. It mattered when Webb nailed not only the CIA, but the rest of the media for sleeping on the story. He paid a high price - and by writing this I am not saying they hounded him to suicide. Who knows what was on his mind? But he was humiliated in papers from coast to coast, and lost his job a career he loved. And we lost a good reporter and a good man. Press And The CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career posted by TommyT @ 8:54 pm | Permanent link

Meet The Press: Bad News (Really Bad) So you read the Gary Webb item and you're not convinced? Check out Mike Whitney's report on the media's role in steamrolling the Intelligence reform bill over a slumbering populace. As Richard Pryor once said, "It'll have ya trippin." Pryor was talking about an acid trip at the time, whereas this might make you feel as if you swallowed a mouthful of battery acid. posted by TommyT @ 8:16 pm | Permanent link

Monday, December 13, 2004

The Doctor Is In: Condition Critical I'm not particularly sympathetic to the "America is losing its innocence" crowd, although I suppose I'd reconsider if, well, nevermind, it's something that just can't be reconsidered. Anyway, here's a quick glimpse of some guilty motherfuckers, courtesy of the fabulous Dr. Menlo, who dug it up at Nightweed.com, courtesy of Angry Girl. Thanks Doc. Thanks AG. And remember, when it's time to go, make sure you take someone with you. posted by TommyT @ 11:03 pm | Permanent link

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Stringer Bell: Down, Out, Dead, Gone. The Wire'sStringer Bell was killed a few minutes ago by Brother Mouzone and Omar Little. Bell was co-founder, with Avon Barksdale, of West Baltimore's most powerful, project-based family business. The pair were best friends, right up to the moment that Barksdale gave him up to be murdered. Bell wanted to leave the violent end of the enterprise behind, and to that end had invested profits all over town. Avon, meanwhile, was resigned to being a smart, cool, murderous gangster. There was a message in the murder - because The Wire is just like that, and maybe because murder's just like that. Bell was known for his level head and big-picture vision, but recently had been warned to keep his ambitions in check. As he reflexively fought against anything that got in his way, a local politician counseled that he should crawl, walk, and then, when the time arrives - run. When all was said and done, "Strang," as he was called, couldn't slow down. Hit parade: Avon Barksdale (riding shotgun) and Stringer Bell (behind the wheel) share a laugh. Via Con Dios Stringer Bell posted by TommyT @ 10:07 pm | Permanent link

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Dark Alliance's Gary Webb Reported Dead While we're on the subject of guns, drugs, police, and death, KPFA is reporting the death Friday of journalist Gary Webb in Sacramento, a suicide at 49. In 1996, Webb exposed the since Central American CIA-cocaine smuggling connection for the San Jose Mercury News in a series called Dark Alliance. The LA Times (where a 20-person reportorial team reportedly rallied around a motto that was essentially "let's get his Pulitzer"), Washington Post and NY Times - were embarassed that they weren't on the story themselves, and at the top were equally anxious to protect the plantation. The papers subsequently went after Webb with a vengeance - the kind of effort that they rarely work up on anything, and never put into covering the CIA's grim work in that region. Small problems in the series surfaced (nothing that undercut the essential thrust of the series), reactionary forces were screaming bloody murder, and the Merc caved in. The paper assigned Webb to cover Siberia, and before long he quit. I spoke with Webb several times since then, but never spoke with him for more than a minute or two, a state of affairs that isn't going to change. posted by TommyT @ 6:52 pm | Permanent link

From The Department of Lost Causes I read this subhed at Wired.com - "The messy fight between the recording industry and online music swappers will be decided by the Supreme Court, which agrees to hear the case next spring" - but I'll bet it was picked up from a wire service. Because who really thinks that the Supreme Court is in any position to be the last word on file sharing? The judges themselves don't, which is why they passed the last time.   posted by TommyT @ 4:02 pm | Permanent link

Friday, December 10, 2004

Smiley's People Not Smiling Although British novelist John Le Carre writes about spies, it's unfair to pigeonhole him as a "spy novelist," in the same way that Walter Mosley is not merely a mystery writer. In any case, I read Le Carre's latest, Absolute Friends, while returning from several days on the road. Those who like his work probably have heard that this is his best in some time - and it's true. The pleasure is in the small strokes, as it should be. And then there's the last chapter, where the author steps out from the pages, grabs a mallet, and clobbers the reader - lest anyone miss his point. It's worth passing on - the point, that is. Le Carre says, in no uncertain terms, that not only do America's true believers (and its British flunkies) and Osama-style terrorists depend on each other for a long, bloody life, but that it's quite possible that behind both one would find the same forces - with one eye on the carnage, and the other on the money and power they reap accordingly. He's not the first to put this forward, but there haven't been many novels written to underscore the possibility; and I doubt if any will be written that do so with the quiet power he invests in Absolute Friends. Until the end, that is, at which point the quiet part disappears entirely. posted by TommyT @ 1:13 am | Permanent link

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Theaters To Watch: Add One, Please San Francisco's Campo Santo did not make American Theatre list of a dozen "Theatres To Watch." I'm sure that their dozen are great. And I've got one more to put on the list - the aforementioned Campo Santo, the resident company at Intersection For The Arts, San Francisco's oldest living arts space. Campo Santo just closed Philip Kan Gotanda's Fist Of Roses a wrenching, imaginative look at male violence. To say the play is a departure for Gotanda is both wrong and right. In the early and mid-'80s he and David Henry Hwang put Asian American Theatre on the map with ground-breaking work. But Gotanda has always been about much more than that - and anyone who doubts that should investigate his work with Campo Santo. He has stubbornly refused to write exclusively about Japanese America, and while it may not pay well, Fist shows what was waiting to come out. As strong as Gotanda's play is, Campo Santo's best work had been done with novelist-poet-playwright Denis Johnson. He and Campo Santo crossed paths when Word for Word did a production of two stories from Jesus's Son, which Johnson attended thinking that perhaps they were being staged by a recovery center or something. He met Campo's Sean San Jose, and the results among other things have been the trilogy, Hellhound on my Trail, Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames, and Soul of a Whore. The list of playwrights who work with Campo Santo in addition to the two already mentioned, include Naomi Iizuka, Jessica Hagedorn, Dave Eggers, Octavio Solis, Greg Sarris, and Erin Cressida Wilson. The company, working side by side with Intersection's guiding light, Deborah Cullinan, have brought San Francisco living, breathing, incredible theater, the likes of which has not be seen in town in some time - and which many cities never enjoy. Here's to another 10 years of the same. posted by TommyT @ 9:27 am | Permanent link