Time

Goodbye KISS, Goodbye Everything

A(nother) sad week for this once great city.

Gone is KISS-FM.

And 24 more public schools, and 3,000 more public school teachers.

As the oligarchical beast devours everything, where are The Occupiers?

Guernica II

An early (1950) masterpiece from Alain Resnais.

Guernica

75 years ago. A painting to make Obama's droning mouth water.

Now. And in the future.

Levon

Rest in peace. Heaven's gained a beautiful voice & soul.

The Rest of Us

Smiley & West on where we are now -- and what is to be done. (According to them, not much besides voting, occupying, boycotting. How 'bout a boycott on all things Gandhian?)



Much better.

"Empire of Cowards"

Chris Floyd is burning:

"History affords few if any examples of a free people -- in such a powerful country, under no existential threat, undergoing no invasion, no armed insurrection, no natural disaster or epidemic or societal collapse -- giving up their own freedoms so meekly, so mutely. Most Americans like to boast of their love of freedom, their rock-ribbed independence and their fiercely-held moral principles: yet they are happy to see the government claim -- and use -- the power to murder innocent people whenever it pleases while imposing an ever-spreading police state regimen on their lives and liberties. Sheep doped with Rohypnol would put up a stronger fight than these doughty patriots."

Happy Birthday to Me :-)

And Happy 75th to Jack! Go Lakers!

100

I'd say 100 would be about right for the number of times an average person has said to himself: "I never ever again want to hear or read anything about The Titanic (1997), Jon Landau, stuffy Kate Winslet, and especially hi-techie hack James Cameron." (If you must, please check out here and here by the great David Walsh.)

So let us turn to One Step Beyond. No liberal social psychology. No story warnings, however metaphored, about the evils of Worldwide Communism. No Corporation Network slickness. Just lots of mystification, with a genuine and creepy grayness about things and people (and Harry Lubin's always strong background score), an opaqueness, a kind of retardation which tries to brake the ordinary rhythm of TV viewing, often intensifying a sense of a world where nothing is fixed or certain, and the people glide slowly through a vague whitish mist like drowned men.

Thanks to our guide to the world beyond, Mr. John Newman. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio (!), Newman seems straight out of the halls of Eton. As television director, his strongly auteurist output of the late-50s and early-60s includes segments of Bachelor Father, Route 66, Naked City, The Defenders and all 96 episodes of OSB. The connection among many of these Newman shows is a rejection of the cultural  takeover by corporate military science, emanations wandering through his floating halls, as technology was driving insanity out of the wind and out of the attic, out of all the lost primitive places.

The second episode of the series from 1/27/59, "Night of April 14th."

Viva Ozzie

Florida Marlins baseball manager Ozzie Guillen:

I love Fidel Castro. I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? Many people have tried to kill Castro in the last 60 years, yet that SOB is still there.

29 words certain to lose the man his job within 72 hours, here in the Land of the Bree and the Home of the Frave.

Invisible Man

"Blessed are they who suffer, in the flesh, the suffering of the world in their time. For they have the possibility of knowing in its truth, contemplating in its reality, the sorrow of the world.

But condemned are they who having this function, do not fulfill it."

-- Simone Weil

Sugar Water

Adventures

She's done it again, in her intrepid wanderings through the tunnels of CartoonNetwork. Saya has unearthed Adventure Time. (Lately -- it begins its fourth season later this month.)

Set in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, the show takes place "after the bombs have fallen and magic has come back into the world" (in the words of creator Pendleton Ward). It is both beautiful and subversive. Which is why it's buried at CN.

In an episode from year two, someone has stolen Princess Bubblegum's tarts!