Music of the weekend: Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse. Bought this album on Friday after downloading it a month ago (downloading is truly my radio now). I think it's a terrific continuation of what they established on their last album, Murray Street, where the noise aspects of what they do are woven into a more melodic context, with nice patient explorations that are given time to develop and build. To me they've reached a state you could almost call elegance, having achieved some kind of focus after all the edgy experimenting, and now sounding as though they're reaching for something higher and simultaneously are humbled. Not many bands from the 80s and 90s have grown beyond their roots; there are many defining statements from that era but I can't think of many who've continued to refine and expand their voices over time. Along with Sonic Youth, Robyn Hitchcock and The Church come to mind, and however inconsistent they've all been in their post-80s years, they've all made breathtaking work that has more than justified their continued artistic existence.

As for the Church, I now feel like their most powerful and expressive work missed their latest album altogether; tracks like "Cantilever" and "Moodertronic" from the Forget Yourself bonus disc, and "Crashride" and "Nervous" from their iTunes-only EP
are to me the real defining statements of their current phase. But I digress...

Fox News pushes the envelope...of absurdity. Good lord, just when I thought Fox News was already as idiotic as it could be, yesterday it was my misfortune to catch one of the most surrealistically wrong pieces of propaganda I've seen there yet. It was some sort of bizarre marketing piece on behalf of our illegal prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (the base commonly called "Gitmo"). This took the corrupt concept of "embedded" journalists to a whole new level of, well, corruption. Ostensibly a "Fox exclusive", it basically spent all its time describing how mild and friendly the place is, and how cushy the prisoners (Fox was careful to always say "detainees", lest a slip of the word "prisoners" imply that they are in fact prisoners of war, and as such actually have human rights) have it there. Why, they have full 8'x6'x8' cells! (Small cages with only about 3' wide floor space.) And the walls are open, metal grilles, allowing them to communicate with one another! (Oh, and giving them no privacy whatsoever.) Why, those who cooperate with interrogation are even allowed outside to play volleyball or soccer in a small enclosed dirt field! We even paint arrows on the floors of their containment areas to show them which direction Mecca is in--this is positive luxury!

And watching this, I felt it was positively un-American and disgusting. I could see this exact thing being done for the Asian-Americans "detained" during WWII, and whatever outlandish justification might have been made for that in its time has no bearing here. These people in Cuba (and does anyone else see the irony in our country maintaining an illegal prison camp, in which our own law and international law is thrown out the window, in the country our government rails against so much for being an unlawful dictatorship?) may be terrorists, and may not be. The point is that what we're doing there is illegal, it's immoral, and it goes against everything that supposedly makes us different from the rest of the world (emphasis on supposedly). We've deprived these men of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for over two years now, with no access to counsel, no oversight from the outside world, no chance to state their case to anyone but their interrogators, and no status other than the 'we can do anything we want to them' "enemy combatants". This is a concentration camp, folks--a torture camp, a place to make people disappear. Our administration has taken advantage of the world's sympathy after 9/11/01 to create an ambiguous state of quasi-war, where the actual term "war" is used constantly in a theatrical sense but only in a legal sense when it broadens the power of the President and Pentagon to do what they want without any checks.

So, to the bastards at Fox I say this: Gitmo is not an example of our country's noble, humane nature. No matter how you spin bread & water into luxury amenities, it's still holding someone prisoner with no trial and no rights. Would you find a prayer mat, shower cap, blanket and salt packet (all things listed as "comfort items" by the military) a sufficient comfort for being taken away from your family for two years without being charged with any crime or given any indication when, if, or how you'd ever be free again? Of course not. This is simply Kafkaesque. I had to give a rueful laugh at the soundbite excuse a soldier gave for the prisoners' presence: "they did fight us". Of course they fought you, moron--you invaded their country. The final straw that made me turn off the TV was the bubbly blonde reporter's breathless tease that we should "tune in tomorrow to see an interrogation we were allowed to witness". War and war crimes as entertainment--thank you, Fox News, aka Ministry of Homeland Information.

Hurry up and wait. It now seems that my last month of running was a bit too good--I'm now suddenly sidelined with what I'm hoping is shin splints, and hoping is not a stress fracture. I've done a lot of research in the last couple days and have learned a lot I wish I'd known before upping my distance from 4.5 miles to 6; in retrospect a 33% increase all at once may not have been so good. I was too busy testing my will and my lungs to do my homework on my legs, and it seems to have caught up to me. So I'll be backing off for a little while to recover, and taking a slower approach when I start again. I'm paying the price for being an overenthusiastic novice, but I'm still proud and happy of the point I reached--I pushed right through the limits I thought I had. I know that I'll get back there again later in the summer, with a more sensible approach this time, and will appreciate it that much more.

Reagan. On a human level, I'm relieved that his long suffering is over; nobody deserves to go through the nightmarish illness he's struggled with these last 10 years or so. And I'm saddened for his wife and family. But I won't mourn him as a president. His terms were rife with imperialism, corruption, economic discrimination, and deficit-ballooning militarism. And contrary to the popular myth, he didn't win the Cold War--he merely allowed it to end, acting opportunistically, and grudgingly, in response to the actions of Gorbachev. We should give him due credit for doing this; he might well have seen Soviet weakness as an opportunity to crush them once and for all, rather than opening the West to them. But we should give it, along with what other praise he might deserve, without the delusional, defensive idealization that's plagued the media this week. He was a man--nothing more--riddled with faults and bad choices. He as a person gave the U.S. hope in a difficult time, but at a terrible price we're still paying today. Let's remember his successes in the proper context.

Labels: Culture, Politics

Music of the Day: Tyrannosaurus Rex - Unicorn, Miroslav Vitous & Jan Garbarek - Atmos, Cheap Trick - "Southern Girls".

Gooool! I discovered this weekend that the Telemundo network is showing international fútbol matches, and I was able to catch a bit of a couple. Today I saw Bolivia get their asses handed to them by Ecuador for 70 minutes before waking up with a too-late rally. This reminds me how much I love watching World Cup soccer. Hopefully I'll be able to snag some of this throughout the summer.

One thing that was interesting to watch on this Spanish-language network was the commercials. Specifically, how they're exactly like ours! Then it dawned on me that it's less a case of the commercials reflecting American culture than it is a case of them reflecting corporate culture. People see these styles as uniquely American, but we're really just as much victims of these corporate image-manipulators as the rest of the world. It's sad, and indicative of aspects of corporate power that I've been thinking about and will write about later.

While thinking aloud, I'll go ahead and state three big themes I hope to address here in the next few months: the dangers of corporate power, the nature of power and how it affects people, and what I see as the last and next-to-last great civil rights struggles of our age. (Hint: an important court decision was just made in this state about what I see as the next-to-last great civil rights issue.)

Wild about Harry. I'm not afraid to admit it--I'm a big Harry Potter fan. Those stories capture the best aspects of the fantasy tales of my youth and take me away from everything. So I was happy to see today that the latest movie is fantastic--the most enjoyable film I've seen since the first Lord of the Rings movie a few years back. A great number of book details were left out of the swirling, fast-paced filmed version, but Alfonso Cuaron captured and updated the spirit of the stories in a really magical way. I only have one quibble with the adaptation and I'm willing to believe there's a long-term reason for it, so we'll see. And in the meantime, I'll go see it again! Only one thing could have made seeing the movie better--something important from the first two that I didn't have this time.

Faces from the past. Saw some old faces this weekend; at Art in the Park I ran into two old elementary school pals, an unlikely and unexpected bit of time-traveling. Both were hale and hearty and somehow simultaneously very different from and very similar to the guys I knew back in the early years. I wonder if they saw me the same way? In any case it did my heart good to see them in good health and good spirits. And on the trail today (in the midst of another 6-mile run--5 weekends straight!), I saw a face that took me back to the slightly more recent past. Rachel, the second girl I ever fell in love with. God, her smile could light up the world. I hope she's well.

Virtual Phishing. Trying something interesting out next week--going to a "virtual" Phish concert. This being their farewell tour, I thought it'd be neat to connect to it somehow, but the shows are few and in high demand. So I'm going to check out the June 17 show which will be broadcast live to 47 movie theaters around the country. It's not the same thing as being there, but the concept is intriguing--I'm already looking forward to the cognitive dissonance! Driving a couple hours to sit in a movie theater for a few more may not be too glamorous, but it's one of those rare events I just have to check out. They're a hell of a band--it'll be worth it.

Speaking of checking out, that's all the catching up I can do for one night--the bed is calling.

Labels: Life, Sport