As long as I’m posting messages from friends and messages about movies, here’s one about another movie (more or less) from another friend, a guy who calls himself Mr. Cheer, whom I’d tipped to Christopher Bray’s review of Clinton Heylin’s new book, “Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios,” in the Sunday (London) […]
Archives for January 2005
SCHECTER CALLING ALL FANS
Filmmaker Danny Schechter‘s latest flick, “Weapons of Mass Deception,” will be released later this week. Have a look at the 30-second TV spot to be aired in New York on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. He sends this message: Dear friends, I am writing to friends, colleagues, and anyone I can think [of who] might be […]
SIRHAN SIRHAN: ‘MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE’?
Sirhan Sirhan joined a conservationist suit, as noted in December, to preserve the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Why? Because he and his lawyers believe that bullets still lodged in the hotel walls would prove he was not Kennedy’s assassin. (Sirhan, below, in 1997.) Now comes news that he […]
DOWNTOWN TRANSCENDENTALISM
Jan — A few days ago Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner pointed out that women seemed to represent about 50 percent of the downtown electronic music composers. I wondered why there seem to be more women in that scene (if there are). I speculated that it might be because the downtowners have possibly rejected the concept of the […]
SECRET SECRETS
Still rolling along as it has been all week, yesterday’s Democracy Now! broadcast was another stunner, this time featuring an interview with William Arkin, whose new book, “Code Names,” exposes the obsessive secrecy of the U.S. government and its apotheosis under the current regime. Arkin, at right, a longtime investigative journalist and military-affairs analyst, has […]
BORIS LURIE’S ‘NO!ART’ & THE HOLOCAUST
By Jan Herman Today, when the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau is recalled with “the mournful whistle of an imaginary [death] train,” the little-known No!Art art of Boris Lurie looms like a signal from the remembered depths. See, for example, his “Red Shit Sculpture” (below), or “Immigrant’s Box”, or “New York-Rumbula” (bottom), or “Bowl of Chains,” or […]
THE GANG’S ALL HERE
Democracy Now! is on a roll. Yesterday it featured Gore Vidal and Matt Rothschild on Geogie Boy’s imperial God-mania. This morning it has video excerpts of Seymour Hersh giving a talk, “We’ve Been Taken Over by a Cult,” and Sen. Robert Byrd speaking in the Senate against the nomination of Ms. Mushroom Cloud for Secretary […]
REPULSKI’S REVENGE
A reader writes, “Pardon me, boy, is this the Ugly Hombre’s Station?” (Click the keys to start the morning off right, but pardon the instrumentation.) He continues: Alas, I’ve seen it before, the Calamity that comes when a Lifetime of Happy Dreams is crushed against the Rocks of Despair. Yes, we mistake Hapless Twits for […]
SCARY WORDS
Two pieces of essential listening from this morning’s edition of Democracy Now!: Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, on the hidden passages in Georgie Boy’s inaugural address, and Gore Vidal on the most un-American speech he ever heard. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
CANONIZING CARSON
Yesterday’s tonnage was not enough. Now comes David Thomson to lend his expert opinion on the subject of Johnny Carson with an eloquence that has turned spuriouser and spuriouser. Calling Carson “a great movie star” and “a romantic icon,” despite appearances, Thomson also declares him “a master spy” and “an immaculate secret.” Topping all of that, he […]
KING CARSON RULES, TAKES UP SPACE
In case anyone wants to know the relative historical importance of showbiz celebrity Johnny Carson and Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a revered World War II hero of the Polish underground who devoted his life to the cause of an independent Poland, the size of their obituaries in this morning’s New York Times ought to make it clear: […]
JOHNNY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
Old friend Bill Reed entered the competition to eulogize the late Johnny Carson in the first post of his brand new blog. The media was, as Reed says, “abuzz with all manner of hagiographic mudwrestling.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
OH, REALLY?
Writing about Georgie Boy’s $40 million inauguration and his overrated speech, David Brooks noted in his Saturday column, headlined “Ideals And Reality”: “What you saw in Washington that day is what you see in America so often — this weird intermingling of high ideals with gross materialism, the lofty and the vulgar cheek to cheek.” […]
THE TIANANMEN PARADOX
“1984” is alive and well in China, but 1989 is not. “For Beijing Students Now, Protests Aren’t Even a Memory” was the headline on Saturday in The New York Times. The story began by quoting 21-year-old “Yu Yang, a mop-haired biology major,” who says he barely knows of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising and doubts […]
THE FUTURE MEETS THE PAST
On Oct. 5, 2018, the 43rd president of the United States died at age 72, according to Greil Marcus. Have a look at Georgie Boy’s obit. It’s a killer. Coincidentally, Leon Freilich asks, “Did I see you at the inauguration turning your back to King Gorge?” And answers: BLOGGING IN 1776 Blogging’s really not that […]
326 YEARS OF HIP
The invitation said, “They’re Old, they’re Cool, they’re Wise, and they all lived on the Lower East Side.” Needless to say, it was not an invitation to Georgie Boy’s inauguration. It was an invitation to a group show, and “they” are octegenarians — Mary Beach, whose 1998 collage “Pepper Head” (right) illustrates the invitation, Taylor […]
PLEASE DON’T OFFEND MS. MUSHROOM CLOUD
Let us not insult the Bush regime’s nominee for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice by impugning her integrity or credibility, as she claimed Sen. Barbara Boxer did in yesterday’s Senate confirmation hearing. After all, pointing out her contradictory statements disturbs the nominee. It offends her dignity. And, gosh, Ms. Mushroom Cloud herself says she respects the truth. (Shame […]