There's a great future in....

--I just want to say three words to you. Just three words. 

--Yes, sir. 

--Are you listening? 

--Yes, I am.

--"Active skin electronics."

--Exactly how do you mean?

From n+1, projected to arrive at a Travelodge conveniently distant from where you live.

The Set-Up

I was in New York recently for the Robert Ryan film festival at the Film Forum. I enjoyed it immensely. Especially The Set-Up, an almost real time movie that is better than any other boxing film out there, and better than many gangster films as well.

Here's a scene:


The obvious musical accompaniment would be Who Killed Davy Moore. But I think Crucifixion would be more appropriate.

Paraît qu’y a pas d’sot métier...

.. y a toujours des p’tits trous. I'll put this as a labor post as well.

To those who cut the cane...

... Burn! with Marlon Brando and Evaristo Márquez, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. An amazing opening sequence:

Robert Ryan...

...is in the Times and on the screen.

Salt of the Earth

1954. The Union against the Bosses. The Mexicans against the Anglos. The Women against the Men. Excellent film, embedding three struggles for equality in the broader context of class conflict, with the labor movement being the necessary vehicle for the realization of racial, sexual, and class equality. But equality is not just some abstraction. The demand for equality is a means of achieving something with a bit more spleen to it: dignity. It is dignity that is the object of struggle.

Dignity is central to the film, and is perhaps best materialized in the radio Esperanza had urged Ramon to purchase ("installment plans, the curse of the working man"). 

The film was written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico, all of whom had been blacklisted for alleged communist politics. The film was bankrolled by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which had been kicked out the CIO in 1950 because it would not purge the communists from the leadership [1].


Two of the professional actors, Will Geer and Rosaura Revueltas, would be blacklisted by the studios for working on the film. Most of the actors were non-professionals from the community and the Mine, Mill local that had been at the center of the actual strike against Empire Zinc. From Wikipedia

The film was denounced by the United States House of Representatives for its communist sympathies, and the FBI investigated the film's financing. The American Legion called for a nation-wide boycott of the film. Film-processing labs were told not to work on Salt of the Earth and unionized projectionists were instructed not to show it.

After its opening night in New York City, the film languished for 10 years because all but 12 theaters in the country refused to screen it. By one journalist's account: "During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film's leading lady [Rosaura Revueltas] was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead....The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles."....  The Hollywood Reporter charged at the time that it was made "under direct orders of the Kremlin." Pauline Kael, who reviewed the film for Sight and Sound in 1954, said it was "as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years."

Watch the film and assess where, exactly, you see the communist propaganda. Here it is:

[1] It was, alongside Harry Bridges' International Longshore and Warehouse Union, one of the most racially progressive unions in the United States. So, of course, the CIO would try to break Mine, Mill by encouraging its white locals in the south to defect. Mine, Mill would eventually fold into the Steelworkers' union. 

These precious days...

...I'll spend with you.

And here we are.

They will be praised...

....it has come to this.

The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York’s civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances. 
The program, the most ambitious policy push of Mr. Bloomberg’s third term, would overhaul how the government interacts with a population of about 315,000 New Yorkers who are disproportionately undereducated, incarcerated and unemployed.
To pay for the endeavor in a time of fiscal austerity, the city is relying on an unusual source: Mr. Bloomberg himself, who intends to use his personal fortune to cover about a quarter of the cost, city officials said. A $30 million contribution from Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation would be matched by that of a fellow billionaire, George Soros, a hedge fund manager, with the remainder being paid for by the city.

It was once believed that the provision of assistance services was, rightfully, a charity, an opportunity for those who provided rather than a right for those who received [1].

I blame Jesus.

" 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They will also answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick in prison and did not help you?'. He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me' "
Matthew 25:41-45

There are those who consider the need and misery of others as opportunities to be righteous. Charity serves this impulse. Social welfare rights do not care one lick about the opportunity for the taxpayer, or the gratitude of the receiver. As rights, they insist upon the dignity of the recipient, not the redemption of the provider. It is probably unfair to blame Jesus: the passage is pretty clear that the hungry, naked, imprisoned, stranger is not to be treated as a means but as an end. But Christianity is like Fichtian metaphysics. When what matters is your soul, everything comes to be about you.

So, when Bloomberg and Soros are being praised, let us remember who is not [2].

[1] Also, it was once considered the responsibility of the noble and the well-heeled gentle to step up their spending in times of hardship, to compensate for the loss of business and markets experienced during a downturn. Noblesse oblige and all that. Glad to see that that's back as well.
[2] To be clear.

Album art

London Calling, The Clash

Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley

I tried, to no avail, to find the National Geographic photo that would be incorporated into the excellent Hissing of Summer Lawns. The snake on the outside gatefold provides a nice symmetry with the floating Mitchell on the inner gatefold.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell

Hissing, inside gatefold.

I also tried and failed to find a copy of Blur's (? I think. Could be wrong. Would it be called Blured?) album cover tribute to Slade's amazing Slayed?

Slayed?, Slade

Everything about this is wonderful. The dude with no shirt, flexing the guns. The dude whose bandages cover up the 'L' and the 'A'. The dude on the left who can barely hold back a smirk. The fact that the dude on the right has stolen France Gall's haircut and added a bowl cut to the bangs. And above all, imagining the conversation that led to the rejection of the conventions of the self-titled album. At what point did they add the question mark?

And to bring this needless excursion to a close, here is what some have called one of the greatest album covers of all time, and what others have called the worst hip hop album cover of all time. You'll notice that under the album title are plates of salmon.

Doin Thangs, Big Bear

The wonders of plexiglass

Ghost Car

Whitman and Eliot

I will not descend among  professors and capitalists,
--I will turn the ends of my
trowsers up around my boots,
and my cuffs back from
my wrists and go with
drivers and boatmen and men that
catch fish or work in the field,
I know they are sublime --Walt Whitman, unpublished manuscript

Published for the first time, I believe, in 1984, in Walt Whitman: Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, edited by Edward Grier.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. --T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

C.K Williams remarks "Eliot surely could not have been familiar this when he wrote in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' ' I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.' How odd"[1]. But that is Williams' style, clumsy irony, un-pursued hints (there is no need to hint; we are not idiots).

I find the divergence more interesting than the convergence. Whitman's lines were composed during the burst of confidence and creativity of Leaves of Grass; they are the lines of a beginning, of a brash awareness of talent[2]. Eliot's are distinctly not. The works converge in theme, but each looks another way.



[1] C.K Williams. 2010. On Whitman. Princeton University Press, p.37.
[2] Williams' provides an extended quotation from the accompanying letter for a submission to Harper's:

"'Is there any other poem of the sort extant--or indeed hitherto attempted?
You may start at the style. Yes, it is a new style, of course, but that is necessitated by new theories, new themes--or say the new treatment of themes, forced upon us for American purposes. Every really new person, (poet or other,) makes his style--sometimes a little way removed from the previous models--sometimes very far removed.
Furthermore, I have surely attained headway enough with the American public, especially with the literary classes, to make it worth your while to give them a sight of me with all my neologisms. The price is $40. Cash down on acceptance...
Should my name be printed in the programme of contributors at any time it must not be lower down than third in the list. If the piece is declined, please keep the MS. for me to be called for. Will send, or call, last of next week.
--Walt Whitman'

Harper's rejected the poem." (2010, p.47)

Edward Steichen

Woods Twilight (1899). The Met's Night Vision Exhibition.

Give me back the Berlin Wall

They may not have beat the West in economic development, technological innovation, or individual freedom and democratic governance, but they certainly dominated the rink in Space Propaganda.

Parts one and two.

You are what you eat...

....by Mark Menjivar.

I've attached the artist's statement; the photos are plain, and at first uninteresting. The effect is in the accumulation, the repetition of a shared form within which occurs substantial variety. Worth reading the captions.

You Are What You Eat is a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.
For three years I traveled around the country exploring food issues.  The more time I spent speaking and listening to individual stories, the more I began to think about the foods we consume and the effects they have on us as individuals and communities.
An intense curiosity and questions about stewardship led me to begin to make these unconventional portraits. A refrigerator is both a private and a shared space.  One person likened the question, “May I photograph the interior of your fridge?” to asking someone to pose nude for the camera.
Each fridge is photographed “as is”.  Nothing added, nothing taken away.
These are portraits of the rich and the poor.  Vegetarians, Republicans, members of the NRA, those left out, the under appreciated, former soldiers in Hitler’s SS, dreamers, and so much more.  We never know the full story of one’s life.
My hope is that we will think deeply about how we care.
How we care for our bodies. How we care for others. And how we care for the land.
You Are What You Eat has traveled to many cities and has been used by universities and community organizations as a catalyst for dialogue about food issues.  For more information about bringing the exhibit to your community, please contact me directly.
Exhibition details:  Twenty 32″ x 40″ and sixteen 24″ x 30″ archival inkjet prints in white frames. Can be shown in full or part and is shipped securely in custom-made travel crates.

Edmonton International Speedway...

...and "one badass police car." This could also be a time to link to the posting on Edmontonians' flushing from a few years back. For more on Edmonton, cause who wouldn't want more, check out ignoreedmonton and maybeedmonton.