Five Before Chaos

Just wanted to let any of you in the VT area know about my Jazzfest gig at Nectar’s in Burlington, on June 5th at 5pm. It’s “The Know Show with Jon Goneau”, two hours of classic boogaloo funk n’ jazz (also known as ‘soul jazz’, the late 1960′s stuff made popular by Prestige Records, Idris Muhammad, Melvin Sparks, Gene Ammons, Grant Green, and others). Jon is a great keyboardist who was the the co-founder with me of the late great Leon Tubbs band. We had a good run in VT a few years ago, including opening up for guitar legend John Scofield at the Flynn Theater for the 2002 Discover Jazz Fest. He’ll be playing Hammond organ on this one. Jenni will be playing drums, and former DownBoi saxman Bannon Williamson will also be joining us. It’s free, it’s early, and it gives you lots of time to check out all of the other great music going on that night. Hope to see you there. And there’s also the opportunity to eat lots of greasy fries with gravy.

Info on the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival.
and Nectar’s.

Helping out a fellow VT blogger… pay a visit to NTodd over at Dohiyi Mir. He’s trying to reach his goal of 419,067 hits by his third anniversary online (yeah, I don’t know where he came up with that number either). I can relate because I remember how I wanted to have 1,000 hits before my 3rd month online, which I easily made thanks to that Buzzflash link a while back. So show him some love, and enjoy his great blog while yer there, too.

After writing my post about the manufactured ‘crisis’ of illegal immigration, it has been pointed out to me that living in VT, one of the whitest states of the Union, that I might not be so aware of the situation as if I lived in Florida or southern California. I’ll concede that point, but I still firmly believe that much of this is horseshit concocted by the GOP to throw some more read meat to the racist, knuckle-dragging base, now that gay-bashing doesn’t have as much effect as it did a few years ago. And they’re running scared in this next election, as they should.

Ok, so this Hugo Chavez thing is really sticking in my craw, mostly because of the amount of people I know who think this guy is the best thing since sliced bread. I know you’ve heard me rant about it many times before, but I’m quite disgusted by the fact that many of us on the American Left are so easily enamored with murderous anti-capitalist Latin American dictators, mainly because, I believe, an astounding lack of any true revolutionaries that make an impact here at home.

Now, this is tricky. Although my knowledge of it is limited (but still growing), I support the principles of the Bolivarian revolution that is underway in South America, namely the idea of the region forging ahead with its own destiny and giving the big f-you to western imperialism. I believe that the natural resources should be used to primarily benefit the citizens of the country, not the big extraction companies. But, here’s the tricky part… lip service. As you well know, many of the ideas of Marxism look good on paper… namely that of a more egalitarian society, etc., yet so few of them ever seem to come out that way, due to both human nature and wanton abuses of power. Sadly, what is going on in Venezuala seems to show those problems.

It is really hard to get good, truthful information regarding this. There is so much propaganda and bullshit coming from both sides, it’s really hard to make heads or tales of much of it. I’ve been doing some digging around, and over the next week, am hoping to shed some light on this. I was originally going to do it all in one post, but to do it justice, I think it needs to be spread out over several to give it the clarity it deserves. I’d like to touch upon several things, in particular the U.S. take on things, and the alleged human rights abuses, which from my preliminary research, seem to actually have some truth to them. Stay tuned.

Quick blurb over at Americablog on a Krugman article behind the Times Select wall… (if the actual article pops up shortly, I’ll link to it)

“Since 2000, we’ve seen what happens when people who aren’t interested in the facts, who believe what they want to believe, sit in the White House. Osama bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is a mess, New Orleans is a wreck. And, of course, we’ve done nothing about global warming.

But can the sort of person who would act on global warming get elected? Are we — by which I mean both the public and the press — ready for political leaders who don’t pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies? That’s a test of national character. I wonder whether we’ll pass.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve asked myself this question. I remember back in 2000 reading some article about G.W. being the candidate ‘people would most likely want to drink a beer with’ or ‘snort a line with’ (just kidding on that second part-or am I?). I seem to remember the same article alluding to the idea that ‘Al Gore was just too smart to be president.’ Whoa. Arguably the most important job on the planet, and Gore was ‘too smart’ for it? Only in America is intelligence viewed as a liability, I guess.

Now, Gore made a lot of mistakes, independent of the constant lashings of half-truths from the MSM (while Dubya got a pass). I remember watching the first debate, and in with all the condescending demeanor, there were words he was using that I didn’t know the meaning of, and I like to think of myself as having a pretty good vocabulary. I was thinking, ‘Jeez, this is playing real well in Peoria.’ So, yes, he could have done things differently. But nevertheless, there is a really rather large streak of anti-intellectualism in this country. How else do you explain Bush’s acceptance early on? We have large segments of the population that view the scientific method as just another ‘religion’, easily dismissed.

If a candidate cut through the bullshit (and I mean REALLY cut throught the bullshit, not in the John McCain kinda way), and was able to talk about substantive issues in a way that was intelligent, yet didn’t bore us to death, would it fly? Or is that just expecting too much from this country at this point in time?

Like many bloggers, I’m always checking my sitemeter stats to see who’s here, and how they got here. Every now and then they get here by way of a Google search. This one takes the cake…. ‘Asian tradition + marriage + eating poop.’

Yep, somehow that brought them here. Go figure.

Ever have one of those days where you’re thinking about something, and lo and behold, it’s the topic of the editorial in your local paper? This happened to me a few days ago. I was thinking about how, seemingly out of nowhere, this country now has an illegal immigration ‘crisis’. Now, those of you who know me know I’m a news junkie; it’s not uncommon for me to spend several hours a day reading news from many sources. A few months ago, I’ll be damned if I could find any major goods about out current immigration ‘problem’. Then, whammo, it’ s the issue du jour. So I was looking in our local paper, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, and read this, called ‘Sending in the Guard.’ I love our paper’s editorial board, unabashedly anti-Bush, appropriate if you consider the political makeup of VT (often called the most liberal state in the union-yay!) The article mainy tackles the latest hairbrained idea of our Commander-in-thief of having the National Guard patrol our southern border (what about the Canadians? Isn’t anyone afraid of Canadians? Next thing you know they’ll be selling poutine at McDonald’s – sheesh.)

“…reliance on the military is Bush’s default mode when confronting a difficult problem. Sending troops off to Baghdad or Brownsville gives Bush the aura of command. The trouble is that the military is not the answer to every problem, and certainly the issue of illegal immigration is far beyond the power of a few Guard soldiers in Jeeps to resolve.

The first step is to identify the problem. A crisis mentality has gripped Congress on the issue of immigration, mainly because of the draconian anti-immigrant legislation originating in the House. But what is the crisis? There is no crisis of employment; unemployment at present is low. There is an increasing number of people in the country illegally, which challenges our policies and our law. But why is the presence of immigrants a crisis except to the immigrants themselves, who face a crisis of survival?”

This country seems to go through periods of demonizing the ‘other’, a period of irrational xenophobia. Seems like we’re going through one now. Over at Alternet, Robert Scheer’s ‘Our Fake Immigration Crisis’:

“There is no immigration crisis — other than the one created by a small but vocal stripe of opportunist politicians, media demagogues and freelance xenophobes. So it has always been throughout the history of this country when anti-immigrant hysteria periodically reigns during low ebbs in our national sense of security and vision.

The script is as old as the Mayflower: A false alarm is sounded that the values, wages and safety of the current roster of credentialed Americans are jeopardized by the “flood” or “tidal wave” or “river” sneaking across our porous borders — be they Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Russian, Mexican or even the freed slaves seeking to earn an honest living in Northern cities after the Civil War. Any and all manner of societal problems are to be laid on these scapegoats, and the same simplistic solution offered: Find and deport them, and don’t let any more in.”

Now call me a cynical bastard, but I think it’s mostly due to the Repugnicans being scared shitless about major losses in November, and this is nothing more than red meat for the knuckle-dragging GOP base. Also, they’ve kind of beat the gay marriage thing to death, and some polls are even finding people slightly more accepting of it than a few years ago. Who knows if it will backfire? It can definitely put a rift between the corporatist base (who benefits from all the cheap labor) and the social conservative/xenophobe types, the latter of which are starting to realize that they have been played for fools by the GOP anyways. I suspect this , as most of their other bad ideas, will ultimately backfire. It’s sooooo much fun watching the GOP metdown. Gloat, gloat, gloat… after all the bullshit they’ve put this country through, we deserve to.

Now, I also wanna make clear, I’m not one of those that feels like we should turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. It’s a very complex issue, and any solution needs to balance a measure of compassion with the rule of law. These are real human being we’re talking about here, folks, with families and real uncertainties, and deal with things that most of us will never have to deal with, nor could we possibly relate to. And therein lies the problem.. acheiving the balance. How do we cut back (I say cut back because we’ll never be able to stop it completely, even with a huge stupid fence) the numbers of illegal immigrants, without completely devastating the lives of the ones already here?

Now, if the GOP can just tie in gay marriage to illegal immigration,

Just a quick blurb on another spaghetti western… one that if you are just getting into the genre, you should avoid: Gianfranco Parolini’s ‘Sabata.’ The film stars Lee Van Cleef, the hawklike-looking dude from Sergio Leone’s ‘For A Few Dollars More’ and ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly’.

Now, think of all the great things in a Leone film… dramatic cinematography, strong character development, great storylines with complex subtexts, etc. Now hold that thought and savor it, because you’ll find none of that in this movie. It plays like a bad early 60′s American western.

The story involves a gunfighter named Sabata, played by Van Cleef, who foils a large bank robbery, secretly set up by the wealthy pillars of the community. He teams up with some hipster dude named Banjo, a guy who has a gun built into the neck of his banjo and looks and talks like he could’ve stepped out of any U.S. tv show from 1967 playing ‘the hippie’, and some mute acrobatic guy, and they take on the baddies. One of the lead villans is a strange androgynous character who overacts at every available opportunity.

Now, I must be honest.. I didn’t even finish watching this movie. I was so terminally bored with it, I only made it about 3/4 of the way through. I picked it up because I think Lee Van Cleef is an amazing screen prescence, and I’ve seen him good in other non-Leone spaghettis, such as ‘Death Rides a Horse’. Even his steely-eyed persona doesn’t save this film, it lacks all of the intensity that he brought to his roles in the two Leone films. I could care less about what happened to any of the characters in the film, or how it even ended.

Searching around on the net, this film doesn’t get much critical acclaim but gets some pretty ok reviews, nonetheless. There were even two sequels to it, which I’m not going to bother with.

Some more Italian western reviews coming up when I get a chance:
My Name is Nobody
Keoma
Mannaja: A Man Called Blade
They Call Me Trinity

And the gifts keep on giving… Harris poll has Bush down to 29% and that’s from before we found out about the telecom giving phone recs to the gov’t, as Bush stumbles and lies… Whispers that Rove might be indicted today… Will the fun ever stop?

The thing that strikes me is how NOTHING has gone right in the past few months for them, it’s almost like they are screwing up on purpose. Every day, reading the news makes me smile. There doesn’t even seem to be an attempt at fixing things, of giving the illusion, at least, of trying to change course. It’s going to be funny if when he gets down to 20% or below and the MSM still tries to pass off impeachment as some radical notion. Hell, let’s impeach the Washington Post, while we’re at it. They’re just as guilty.

Have to get a laugh from this…

Apparently a cardinal from the Vatican is now urging ‘legal action’ against the bestselling book ‘The DaVinci Code’, a novel that purports that Jesus married and had descendants. The movie is coming out shortly. The cardinal, although not describing what exactly legal action should be taken (howzabout ’2000-Year Old Man Sues Author’), but he’s not happy. Words form cardinal Francis Arinze:

“Sometimes it is our duty to do something practical. So it is not I who will tell all Christians what to do but some know legal means which can be taken in order to get the other person to respect the rights of others,” Arinze said.

“This is one of the fundamental human rights: that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected,” he said, without elaborating on what legal means he had in mind.”

So, basically sue someone becuse you’re not respecting their particular irrational belief system.. and people say us liberals are whiners? Sheesh.

Now, the part I find funny, if you dig around on the net, say Google ‘DaVinci Code inconsistencies’, is how many people take offense to this work of fiction because it conflicts with their own revered work of fiction. They point to some of the Gnostic gospels that the novel draws from and other Biblical passages, which according to those in the know, were inaccurate, and therefore not included in the final New Testament. The super-secret Catholic group ‘Opus Dei’, which is not portrayed in the kindest light in the novel, wants a disclaimer of sorts put in front of the movie regarding its fictional and supposedly inaccurate portrayal.

I have to laugh, every time some movie or song (remember Madonna?) comes out that the Catholic Church disapproves of, they piss and moan, as if the Church can be brought down by a pop star or movie. Granted, the days of when the Church controlled every single aspect of life are thankfully far behind us, but gee, they sure are feeling a bit insecure. I can’t really express my bewilderment at the irony and madness here, so I’ll leave it at that.