RATM

I don't remember what precisely triggered my most recent plummet back into 90's era music, but now that i've re-found this i have a few things to say about it. First of all, i think the argument can be made that Rage Against the Machine was the greatest rock band of the 90's without me sounding like i haven't got any brains. True, all Rolling Stone will ever talk about until the earth is sucked into a stellar-mass black hole is how great Nirvana was, how important Kurt Cobain's flannel shirt funk was to the writing process of such inspirational hits as "Scentless Apprentice" and whatnot, but really, looking back- Can you dig up a more listenable rock track from 15 years ago than this? Or, more important a question, can you handle how much ass this kicks?


Rage Against The Machine No Shelter Music via Noolmusic.com

If you wanted to break it down scientifically, you could analyze this song's current relevance primarily as a result of its restraint from soon-to-be-dated technology that sounds terrible 15 years after its recording, (see: all 80's music) but mostly i hand it to the bass work of timmy-c and the most confusing, angry-nonetheless-presumably-intelligent rapper ever. I wont even touch on Tom Morello, since i already spent the 90's treating him like the Maharashi. The breakdown at 3:00 minutes is bed-wetting good, and the fact that the song can get any heavier at 3:50 than it was at 3:30 makes me wonder how i ever learned to read.


Just think of the context we're dealing with here, with the 1990's as a decade in general. Rage Against the Machine playing in the same era as The Backstreet Boys is sort of like imagining Tiger Woods playing an 18-hole deathmatch against someone like Jon Lovitz. What i mean is, you know who comes out on top. Subway would find a new spokesman. To my credit, i do actually recall asking my dad if i could go see RATM at their protest concert outside the Democratic National Convention in LA in 2000. Why my father would prevent a 16 year old boy from his certain first hint of enlightenment (and probably arrest) at a massive firetorch rally in downtown Los Angeles is totally beyond me, and a conflict that likely threatens to plague our relationship until an unnecessarily large Christmas present is bestowed upon me.

Tim Curry vs. Tiny Flesh Eating Mutant Apes

Michael Crichton's recent passing saddens the literary and film worlds, but he has a special significance to me, as i just realized his books were the first i ever read and then immediately saw adapted to the big screen. I read Congo sometime around 1994, when i was listening to a lot of Coolio and feeling confused about life in general. I found a paperback copy of Congo in my grandmother's library, though in retrospect it seems unlikely she was responsible for putting it there. I read it cover to cover, and though i can't remember being particularly horrified in the reading process, i was big time into it.

A few months later, i coerced another kid's parents into taking us to see the movie, despite the fact that we were 11. There, i witnessed Tim Curry being eaten alive by miniature ravenous apes, who fell into an erupting volcano of molten lava. This, as i recall, was as traumatizing an experience as the time i saw Stargate with the same exact friend, and he fell asleep about ten minutes in, leaving me with Kurt Russell for a babysitter. This was my first experience of disappointment with film adaptation, and astonishment that a director had the power to interpret a book differently for a film. How dare they?


I immediately moved on to Jurassic Park, which, with one exception, did NOT disappoint in its film adaptation. Jeff Goldblum was the difference. He alone made up for the fact that the old guy/owner of the island escapes clean on the helicopter at the end, to wistfully look out the window and lament something like "god, what have i done?" In the book, that guy is eaten alive by about a hundred tiny, ravenous green dinosaurs. Not until 2008 would i piece together this tradition of Crichton's, having his characters meet a very chewy end, by a pack of overtly small, carnivorous animals. Oh well.

Then, if i remember correctly, i tried to read Sphere. On that one, i got about 40 pages in, and gave up. I think i saw the first half of that movie too, with Samuel L. Jackson and Queen Latifah. Things kind of went downhill around this point for my Crichton fanclub membership. Something about puberty really wrecked that whole author for me.

Al-Obama

While the polls lately have gotten me more excited than the prospect of a 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2' i'd like to cast a congratulatory note to states like Idaho and Alabama for having their priorities straight. While the Mccain/Palin ticket is nosediving into what's affectionately termed a "death spiral" with Joe the Plumber himself failing to show up to rallies for John, these states have their priorities straight. I'm talking about states like Idaho, where Mccain is leading by over 30 percent, and Alabama, a state that hasn't so much as joked about voting blue in over 3 decades (Carter!)

Why, it's almost as if i were trying to segue into the topic, as if i had this clip of Randy Newman i wanted to play the entire time.



And while i'm on this frivolous tirade, i might also bring attention to the fact that this is the first time in history BOTH non-contiguous states have had anything remotely significant to do with the American election. Being a native of the great Aloha State the majority of my life, i know of the unspoken rivalry between Alaska and Hawaii. While you might think it's enough to live in tropical paradise and break coconuts over giant lizards heads all day (when the surf isn't up) without making fun of Alaska, it really isn't. To Hawaiians, Alaska is generally regarded a distant province of Siberia, where they may or may not speak english, shoot wolves from helicopters, and watch Chevy Chase movies. This election will finally decide the importance/dominance of the non-contiguous states, and no matter what, we'll still have one more electoral vote. And this guy.

American Waters

Lest this blog become a vapid cesspool of late night television commercial mockery (actually that doesn't sound too bad) and not a forum for all things American and occasionally artsy, i thought i'd feature Alex Kirkbride's project "American Waters." Kirkbride took 3 years to travel over 100,000 miles in an Airstream trailer to photograph underwater images from all 50 states, from Elvis Presley's Graceland swimming pool to a cow's water tank in Kansas. He even got a guy with the last name Cousteau to write the introduction, something i had no idea was still currently possible.






from the introduction:

The results demonstrated how extraordinarily diverse underwater images could be. There was an impressionistic image of a cottonwood tree from New Mexico, an antique dentist's chair from Indiana, and an ore cart from a flooded mine in Missouri. I began to think about what else I might find on a lengthy trip around the country and how it might make a unique collection of images - a portrait of America from a fish's point of view, or a crocodile's, or a turtle's eye in a desert spring. It would be an enormous challenge to capture images expressive of American waters from coast to coast - a feat no one had ever attempted before...

Any body of water was fair game, so the quest for images led to diving and snorkelling in the most bizarre places, especially when it came to fresh water. Rivers, creeks, streams, lakes, springs, marshlands, caves, swamps, and wetlands were all explored. The expedition went to the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, and I even lay in a puddle in New York City. In Massachusetts at harvest time, I jumped into a flooded cranberry bog - cranberries being one of the few truly native fruits in the USA - to the great bewilderment of the farmers. For Kansas, when the time came to photograph cattle in some aquatic situation, I spoke to my friend Rob, the only person I knew from the Heartland State, the geographical centre of the contiguous United States. Rob's father put me in contact with a rancher, whose foreman didn't think my notion too far-fetched - until I asked to jump into the cows' water tank.

Having A Coke With You

Frank O'Hara, 1966

Whether You Like It or Not

This is probably only funny to me because i live in San Francisco, where leather-clad rollerbladers wave their ding dongs at chinese 3rd graders on a regular basis, but i'm going to put them up anyway. You can literally streak down Powell street frothing with a mouthful of pcp without reeeeaaaally offending anyone, simply for the fact that you're the only one there not asking anybody for money. But here, get a load of this nightmare that could potentially be coming to bite you in the republican-mom ass if we continue to let girls marry girls.



And, if you think little girls wondering if it might be okay to marry princesses someday are scary, just look at how scary mayor Gavin Newsom is. Why, from that clip they play over and over again, it seems as though he might be out of his crazy-cheat-on-his-girlfriend-all-the-time mind! And he must be, obsessing over these gays trying to have "civil rights" or whatever.



This ad makes it sound as though gay marriage is going to be mandatory for everyone soon. You're going to have to divorce your wives, send the kids off to gay camp, and accept the fact that somebody resembling Rip Taylor is going to have their way with you every day, whether you like it or not.

Loud 'N Clear

While i've been unsuccessful in baiting responses from different morons for two potentially great blog posts-to-be last week, i guess i'll have to settle for something like this, which i actually saw on television around 3 in the morning a few nights ago. Now, i can handle the nature of programming to slide into the depths of pathetic pandering toward the elderly, obese, and gullible dropouts looking for online degrees once it gets to that time of night. I know i shouldn't ever have the thing on during those hours, and it reflects poorly on me. But still. Can't i still fall out of my chair, no matter what time it is, when something like this comes on?



I don't know where to start, but i think the thing that stands the test of time is the woman yelling BinGOH! with that strange farm animal noise she makes at the very end. You might think the guy trying to score with the ladies at the sweet party they're all at is the best one. Did anyone under 65 ever actually buy it for that? Impossible, i say. Then i like the hunter, who obviously isn't even holding a gun, and looks a lot more terrified in his acting than someone might be who was trying to sneak up on a full grown canadian moose wearing a 14 dollar hearing aid. They've seemed to actually embrace the concept of Loud N Clear altering your reality altogether, as shown by the shrunken child voices and the woman in the pink top clearly experiencing an acid trip in the woods. But no, your favorite is grandma, just trying to sing at church, and a glimpse of her happy life around the retirement home. Making friends. Playing games. Its like summer camp, only you can't leave until, you know. At least someone is selling them these.