Pièce de Résistance

An Unformulated Experience

Peanut Peacock: Alinea The Restaurant (Chicago)

Menomena: Rotten Hell

This video for Menomena’s Rotten Hell from the Oregon band’s latest album, Friend and Foe, regains some of the underlying experiential thematic meaning that is attached to the age-old image of the school lunchroom food fight.  In a cleverly droll take on the song’s lyrics about violence and self-righteous moral conviction (”Well it’s high time we stepped outside, Drop the gloves and settle this like a man“), this juicy video clip gathers a group of uniformed schoolchildren and has them flinging sloppy, sloppy spaghetti at one another.  Presented in a manner that creates an affective counterpoint to the actual ongoing violence of the pasta combat, the action is captured in slow motion from the initial incident of provocation to the concluding full-fledged Braveheart-style battle charge, the video’s emotional impact is at the same time elegantly alluring, touching and hilariously eccentric.

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Virginia Tech Killings Report Issued: But Why Do These People Look So Happy?

The Washington Post reports that President Bush received a copy of The Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy, on Wednesday, June 13, 2007, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D. C..  Pictured here from the left are, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, the President, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

But why on earth are these people looking so happy about it?  Gross.

Technorati: Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech murders, Virginia Tech killings, student murders, student killings, Cho Sueng-Hui, Sueng Hui Cho, student shootings, Cho, mental illness, Asperger’s Syndrome, autism, culture, cultural issues, cultural, economic issues, social, social issues, society, politics, political
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My Articles for Monday, June 11, 2007

The Pentagon’s Gay Bomb

 

Quoted: The Pentagon’s Gay Smart Bomb Well, Maybe Not So Smart… And from Andrew Sullivan at Atlantic Magazine: “Yes, the military was seriously considering a project for a bomb that could turn enemy soldiers gay, and thereby presumably make them a less lethal foe. This was in 1994. And we wonder why the top brass couldn’t cope with openly gay servicemembers?”

[tags: blogs]

 

Ring, Ring, Ring: It’s God Calling Paris

Quoted: A newly redeemed Paris Hilton piously whispers, “I’m not the same person I was. I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that.

[tags: blogs]

Teddy Pendergrass: In My Time

“Teddy Pendergrass: In My Time”

This is the story of Teddy Pendergrass, who rose through the ranks of the Philadelphia music scene in the 1960s and eventually became the drummer for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Pendergrass stepped to the front of the Blue Notes as lead singer on hits like If You Don’t Know Me By Now and became a star in his own right with his 1977 solo album, Teddy Pendergrass.

Onstage, he was a dynamic force of sultry sexuality who became famous for his “ladies only” shows where he’d be showered with panties thrown from the audience. That changed on March 18, 1982, when he crashed his Rolls-Royce on Lincoln Drive in Philadelphia.

“The truth of the matter is at the very beginning of your experience, things are very different than what you knew two days ago and it is quite devastating,” said Pendergrass of the accident. “The honest answer is that some people don’t want to deal with it. This is a life altering injury that will change your views, your emotional views, your economical views. It changes everything so when you make a decision to live (with the injury) that means you have to make a decision to say, ‘Well, I’m going to have a road ahead of me but I’m willing to deal with it while I can and make the best of where I am,’ ” he said.

Photographs and music video are included.

[tags: Teddy Pendergrass, In My Time, music, video, music video, disabilities, celebrities]

 

Homelessness as a State of Mind

“Homelessness as a State of Mind”

For years, Johnny Five lived not on the streets but below them, in the dark underworld beneath an abandoned train station in the Bronx. He had to crawl in the dirt at the edge of a concrete platform to get in and out. This is the heart-wrenching story of Johnny’s attempt to emerge from the world of the homeless, which in the end he could not do. Photographs and video are included.

[tags: homeless, cities, city streets, urban streets, poverty, photography, video]

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Ring, Ring, Ring: It’s God Calling Paris

A newly redeemed Paris Hilton piously whispers, “I’m not the same person I was.  I used to act dumb.  It was an act.  I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute.  It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me.  I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that.  I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here.  I have become much more spiritual.  God has given me this new chance.”

She said she would like to help in the fields of breast cancer, her grandmother had breast cancer or multiple sclerosis.  Her father’s mother suffers from that disease.  She thought she might get toy companies to build a kind of Paris Hilton playhouse, where sick children might come (Oh Michael Jackson…Are you listening?) and the toy companies could donate toys.

She has had a person whom she described as a spiritual adviser who said, “My spirit or soul did not like the way I was being seen and that is why I was sent to jail.”

“God,” she said, “has released me.”

She is reading newspapers, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and books like The Secret, The Power of Now and absolutely, absolutely of course…The Bible.  And finally, Paris devoutly assures the world, “I will never again have a drink and drive.”

Right.  Right to all that.  Yep.

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My Articles for Sunday, June 10, 2007

We are the World, We are the Children: Live Aid, 1985

We are the World, We are the Children (1985): Live Aid, 1985

[tags: blogs]

The Village People’s Amazingly Awful “Can’t Stop the Music”

In 1980, The Village People starred in the motion picture musical “Can’t Stop the Music.” One reviewer of the film wrote: “This movie is amazing. Rarely in the history of mankind have we seen a movie so incredibly awful that it becomes a must-see film.” In 1981, the movie won Razzie Awards for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay.

My shameless pride gives you three scenes from this dizzy disco era film. Videos and vintage photographs are included. This is lots of fun!!

[tags: The Village People, movies, gay, gay pride, music, YouTube]

Paris Hilton’s Immaculate Conception: “I’m Learning and Growing from This”

Paris Hilton said Saturday she was “learning and growing” from her time behind bars and will not appeal her 45-day jail sentence for a probation violation in a reckless driving case. Photographs are included with this article.

[tags: Paris Hilton, celebrities, Hollywood, jail, jail sentence, celebrity news, photography]

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Technorati: We are the World, Live Aid, Live Aid 1985, AIDS, children, gay, gay issues, gay pride, celebrities, music, video, music video, photo, photos, photograph, photographs, photography, songs, The Village People, Can’t Stop the Music, movies, motion pictures,