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| blogging since Oct '01
This is Gordon Osse's blog.
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"He who does not at some time, with definite determination consent to the terribleness of life, or even exalt in it, never takes possession of the inexpressible fullness of the power of our existence."
-- Rilke
Love,
the powering,
the Widening,
light
unraveling
all faces followers of
All colors, beams of
woven thread,
the Skin
alight that
warms itself
with life.
-- Akhenaton, "Hymn to the Sun"
Opt your children out of Pentagon harassment
Donations appreciated:
WHO I WORK FOR: Mount Hope Wholesale
Wholesale nuts, grains, fruits and spices (and more) shipped from Cottonwood AZ
(Tell them you heard about them on Gordon's blog!)
WHAT I'VE SEEN LATELY:
MOVIES
(r) = re-viewing
God Told Me To (1976, Cohen)
Whispering City (1947, Otsep)
Times and Winds (2006, Erdem)
Dirty Money (Un flic) (1972, Melville)
10th District Court (2004, Depardon)
RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy (2007, O'Sullivan)
The Furies (1950, Mann)
In a Lonely Place (1950, Ray)(r)
The Adjuster (1991, Egoyan)(r)
TV
Mad Men The Buddha of Suburbia Intelligence (2006, Haddock) Family Guy
SUGGESTED VIEWING: The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004, Curtis) [available for streaming/download here]
carrie brownstein (sleater-kinney) reviews the new video game (oh dear) Rock Band [also pop candy]
I had some friends over to play Rock Band a few nights later. We didn't cluster into formal bands but instead took turns on the various instruments. The allure of Rock Band seems to break down not by people's interest in music or their skills at playing it, but by people's love of either karaoke or video games. One friend stayed on the vocals for a number of songs, scoring 100 percent on a Queens of the Stone Age tune, and, at one point, calling out for someone to grab him a beer. Feeling like obsequious roadies, we obliged. The roles do go to one's head after a while. But after a few hours, most people's enthusiasm for the game diminished. When I looked carefully, I realized I was having a party where people were sitting around playing video games. And, really, if you are going to play the game with a group of friends for more than a night, shouldn't you just form a real band? There is something sad about the thought of four teenagers getting Rock Band for Christmas and spending all of their after-school time pretending to know how to play.
A project reminiscent of Ski Dubai - the world's largest snow park, in a country where daytime temperatures average 113 degrees - is taking shape in the Arizona desert. Water, not snow, is the theme for this one.
Developers plan to build a massive new water park that would offer surf-sized waves, snorkeling, scuba diving and kayaking - all in a bone-dry region that gets just 8 inches of rain a year.
"It's about delivering a sport that's not typically available in an urban environment," said Richard Mladick, a real estate developer who persuaded business leaders in suburban Mesa to support the proposal, called the Waveyard.
Artists' drawings of the park show surfers gliding through waves that crash onto a sandy beach, and kayakers navigating the whitecaps of a wide, roiling river. Families watch the action from beneath picnic umbrellas. If constructed, the park would use as much as 100 million gallons of groundwater a year.
That water use may raise future questions in a state that has been in a drought for a decade.
if you didn't notice (i didn't til now), TCM has a guest programmer every night this month
it's a motley crew, well-chosen for variety. beyond that, this week james ellroy is the guest on tuesday, and he's picked 4 noirs that i haven't seen and all look worthy for the fan (click on his image).
ellroy's thumbnail on the intro screen shows him smiling for the first time i can remember.
a review of the new anthology of old WFMU program guides, published by the Princeton Architectural Press!
Predating the reissue craze, the LCD collection features articles on garage punk, Erik Satie, Bubblegum pop, flexi-discs, and Rodd Keith (by his son Ellery Eskelin). Many of these are available on WFMU’s website, so you might not learn anything new. Also, if you don’t dig reading about crazy DJs and the era of wavy gravy, then most of the other articles may not interest you. What is unique, however, is that LCD featured work by some of the best cartoonists of our era. Over half of The Best of LCD is devoted to short comics, illustrations, magazine covers, and one-panels by Kaz, Gary Panter, Peter Bagge, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Ivan Brunetti, Jim Woodring, Drew Friedman, and Joe Sacco (illustrating a Harvey Pekar story on Joe Maneri). Why would struggling underground cartoonists work pro bono? My only guess is that they are even more disgruntled than freeform DJs and therefore feel a strange affinity to WFMU.
i used to listen to FMU back in jersey long before netradio, and it's truly radio for people who hate radio and music as most people know it. the blog is listed at left as well, and features many unique music and video files.
Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.
--Chris Marker