Coming clean about the Godfather of Soul

Forgive me. I respect James Brown. I have all his most famous songs committed to memory simply by pervasive osmosis.

I have respect James Brown as a prolific singer, songwriter, bandleader, and record producer. I recognise him as a pivotal force in the evolution of gospel and R&B into soul and funk. I agree he left his mark on numerous other musical genres, too like rock, jazz, disco, dance, reggae and most certainly rap & hip-hop. I played drums on "I Feel Good" at a junior high recital. Man, I'm even down with "Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto". But when James Brown comes on the radio, nine times out of ten I'll tune out; I'll see whats happening on another station.

Now, I admit James Brown is not one of my favourite singers; I sort of have an indifferent respect for the man. I feel he's beyond compare; beyond critique. However, if I were to make a list of my personal top 50, he wouldn't be on the list, yet I know all his stuff. It's quite a phenom actually. For someone to become so universally ubiquitous; such an ingrained part of the collective conscience of the world. I mean think about it... it's amazing.

When it comes to funk and soul, I just prefer other stuff... Like Sly & The Family Stone, Sam Cooke, Kool & The Gang, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Edwin Starr, Joe Tex, Gil Scott-Heron, The Isley Brothers, Curtis Mayfield, The Commodores, Al Green, Chairmen of the Board, Ben E. King, The Four Tops, Percy Sledge, Sam and Dave and so on and so on.

The Doors were my first favourite band. Naturally then I also have all their songs committed to memory but if they come on the radio, I'll listen. Same goes for Elvis or The Beatles or The Stones and most all the 'essential' bands.

But for some odd reason, James Brown comes on, and I just don't wanna hear it; I know the tune, I know how it goes, I know what comes next and... I almost become angry. I just don't need to hear it and I don't know why this is. I simply have no patience for the Godfather of Soul...

and I'm finally coming clean about it.

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A Kiss To Build A Dream On...

OK, too much death & taxes today; it's time for some makin' out.

It's In His Kiss...

The Department of Exhaustive Research of the Obvious at the University at Albany shows that information conveyed by a kiss can have profound consequences for romantic relationships, and can even be a major factor in ending one.

In a recently published article a few evolutionary psychologists reveal that many college students have found themselves attracted to someone, only to discover after they kissed them for the first time that they were no longer interested. In other words, while many forces lead two people to connect romantically, the kiss, particularly the first kiss, can be a deal breaker.

The University at Albany study also found sex differences in the importance and type of kissing. Males tended to kiss as a means to an end -- to gain sexual favours or to reconcile. In contrast, females kiss to establish and monitor the status of their relationship, and to assess and periodically update the level of commitment on the part of a partner. I'm always down for a status check by the way.

According to the ground breaking study, kissing between sexual or romantic partners occurs in more than 90% of human cultures. Some non-human animals, such as common chimpanzees and bonobos (dwarf chimpanzees), appear to engage in kissing-like behaviours as well. Although kissing is a widespread practice among humans, few scientists have attempted to assess the adaptive significance of kissing behaviour.



Kissing is part of an evolved courtship ritual," said evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup (no relation to Simon). "When two people kiss there is a rich and complicated exchange of information involving chemical, tactile, and postural cues. This may activate evolved mechanisms that function to discourage reproduction among individuals who are genetically incompatible." Yeah, what he said.

According to the researchers, not only do females place more emphasis on kissing, but most would never engage in sex sans kissing. Females were more likely than males to insist on kissing before a sexual encounter, and more likely to emphasize the importance of kissing during and after sexual encounters as well. By comparison, males said they would be happy to have sex without kissing (ha!), and far more males than females expressed a willingness to have sex with someone who was not a good kisser.


tigers exhibit "kissing-like behaviours" - i love that term

Males, however, were more likely than females to initiate open mouth kissing and kissing with tongue contact. The researchers speculate that the exchange of saliva during kissing may have biological consequences in its own right. Male saliva contains measurable amounts of the sex hormone testosterone which can affect libido.

The authors conclude that the study provides evidence that romantic kissing evolved as an adaptive courtship strategy that functions as a mate-assessment technique, a means of initiating sexual arousal and receptivity, and a way of maintaining a bonded relationship.

So how does one gesture come to signify affection, celebration, grief, comfort and respect, all over the world? No one knows for sure, but anthropologists think kissing might have originated with human mothers feeding their babies much the way birds do. After the babies learned to eat solid food, their mothers may have kissed them to comfort them or to show affection.


Black-tailed Prairie Dogs get it on, bang a gong!

In this scenario, kissing is a learned behaviour, passed from generation to generation. We do it because we learned how to from our parents and from the society around us. There's a problem with this theory, though: women in a few modern indigenous cultures feed their babies by passing chewed food mouth-to-mouth. But in some of these cultures, no one kissed until Westerners introduced the practice. Hmmmmmm. Read more Sheldrake.

Other researchers believe instead that kissing is instinctive. They use bonobo apes, which are closely related to humans, to support this idea. Bonobos kiss one another frequently. Regardless of sex or status within their social groups, bonobos kiss to reduce tension after disputes, to reassure one another, to develop social bonds and sometimes for no clear reason at all. Some researchers believe that kissing primates prove that the desire to kiss is instinctive.

Several other animal species have behaviours that resemble kissing: Many mammals lick one another's faces, birds touch one another's bills and snails caress one another's antennae. In some cases, the animals are grooming one another rather than kissing. In others, they're smelling scent glands that are located on faces or in mouths... pheromones!

Regardless, when animals touch each other in this way, they're often showing signs of trust and affection or developing social bonds. Scientists don't entirely agree on whether kissing is learned or instinctive. There's support for both arguments, just as there's support for the different theories of why people started doing it in the first place.

People in some cultures rub one another's noses or cheeks rather than, or in addition to, kissing. Anthropologists theorize that this "Eskimo kiss" grew from people smelling one another's faces much the way animals do.

While researchers aren't exactly sure how or why people started kissing, they do know that romantic kissing affects most people profoundly. The Kinsey Institute describes a person's response to kissing as a combination of three factors:



The Effects of Kissing

Your psychological response depends on your mental and emotional state as well as how you feel about the person who is kissing you. Psychologically, kissing someone you want to kiss will generally encourage feelings of attachment and affection. If you're kissing someone you don't like, or you're kissed against your will, your psychological response will be completely different.

Your body physically reacts to being kissed. Most people like to be touched, and that's part of your body's response to kissing. But kissing also affects everything from your blood to your brain. We'll look at your body's biological reactions to kissing in detail in a later section.

The culture in which you grew up plays a big part in how you feel about kissing. In most Western societies, people are conditioned to, look forward to and enjoy kissing. The behaviour of the people around you, depictions in the media and other social factors can dramatically affect how you respond to being kissed.

These factors play a part in all kisses, not just those that are romantic in nature. In other words, when a mother kisses her child's bruise to make it feel better, psychological, physical and social factors play a part in both people's reactions. The same is true when friends kiss as a greeting, worshippers kiss religious symbols or siblings kiss and make up after an argument. Even though some kisses are platonic and others are romantic, they generally have one thing in common - they are inspired by and tend to inspire feelings we think of as positive.

Regardless of exactly how people got the idea to kiss or what they mean when they do it, anthropologists are pretty sure that people started kissing thousands of years ago a/k/a back in the day.

Historians really don't know much about the early history of kissing. Four Vedic Sanskrit texts, written in India around 1500 B.C., appear to describe people kissing. This doesn't mean that nobody kissed before then, and it doesn't mean that Indians were the first to kiss. Artists and writers may have just considered kissing too private to depict in art or literature.


"Kiss," by Francesco Hayez in the 19th century. Before the 19th century, kisses did not appear frequently in Western artwork.

After its first mention in writing, kissing didn't appear much in art or literature for a few hundred years. The Indian epic poem "Mahabharata" describes kissing on the lips as a sign of affection. The "Mahabharata" was passed down orally for several hundred years before being written down and standardized around 350 A.D. The Indian religious text "Vatsyayana Kamasutram," or the "Kama Sutra," HEY NOW! also describes a variety of kisses. It was written in the 6th century A.D. Anthropologists who believe that kissing is a learned behaviour theorize that the Greeks learned about it when Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 B.C.

There aren't many records of kissing in the Western world until the days of the Roman Empire. Romans used kisses to greet friends and family members. Citizens kissed their rulers' hands. And, naturally, people kissed their romantic partners. The Romans even came up with three different categories for kissing: Osculum was a kiss on the cheek, Basium was a kiss on the lips and Savolium was a deep kiss.



Naturally, the Romans also started several kissing traditions that have lasted to the present day. In ancient Rome, couples became betrothed by kissing passionately in front of a group of people. This is probably one reason why modern couples kiss at the end of wedding ceremonies. Additionally, although most people today think of love letters as "sealed with a kiss," kisses were used to seal legal and business agreements. Ancient Romans also used kissing as part of political campaigns. However, several "kisses for votes" scandals in 18th century England led - in theory - to candidates kissing only the very young and very old.

Kissing played a role in the early christian church. Christians often greeted one another with an osculum pacis, or holy kiss. According to this tradition, the holy kiss caused a transfer of spirit between the two people kissing. Most researchers believe the purpose of this kiss was to establish familial bonds between the members of the church and to strengthen the community.

Until 1528, the holy kiss was part of catholic mass. In the 13th century, the catholic church substituted a pax (peace) board, which the congregation kissed instead of kissing one another. The Protestant Reformation in the 1500's removed the kiss from Protestant services entirely. The holy kiss doesn't typically play a role in modern christian religious services, although some christians do kiss religious symbols, including the Pope's ring.

Although few religions currently incorporate the holy kiss, kissing remains prevalent throughout Western culture. Nowadays, people kiss in many contexts and for many reasons.

But not all kisses have been happy events. Works of literature like "Romeo and Juliet" have portrayed kisses as dangerous or deadly when shared between the wrong people. Some folklorists and literary critics view vampirism as symbolic of the physical and emotional dangers that can come from kissing the wrong person.

Most cultures around the world kiss today, but many have different views about when and where kissing is appropriate. In the 1990's, several news articles reported a trend of young people kissing in public in Japan, where kissing had traditionally been viewed as a private activity.

One of the Western world's most famous kisses is the kiss Judas Iscariot used to betray Jesus shortly before his crucifixion. This kiss had an influence on Christian spiritual practices. Early church sects omitted the holy kiss - or abstained from kissing entirely - on Maundy Thursday. Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter and the day used to commemorate the Last Supper, after which Judas betrayed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.


The timeless love betwixt Sir Lancelot of the Lake and Queen Guinevere, the wife and queen of King Arthur, became the most popular and famous tale of the "Arthurian legend". The Matter of Britain or the Arthurian legend is a name given collectively to the legends that concern the Celtic and legendary history of the British Isles, especially those focused on King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table

Take a look at the anatomy and physiology behind kissing: The Anatomy of a Kiss by Tracy V. Wilson.

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More death at Hotel Carter

A woman was found dead yesterday afternoon at the decrepit Hotel Carter in Times Square.

She was found with her head and legs covered with plastic bags, underneath a bed in a room on the 6th floor.

Police arrived at the seedy hotel on 43rd Street around 2:30 p.m. yesterday. Emergency services personnel pronounced the woman dead. She was believed to be a 22-year-old tourist from the Washington, D.C. area. Her name was withheld until her family can be notified.

The cause of death will be determined by the city medical examiner.

Police say they were called by the hotel manager after a chambermaid found the body in a plastic bag, and when she touched the bag she felt a foot. The maid ran out of the room... but only because the carpets smell so bad, you can hear mold growing in the showers and there are mice all over the hotel smoking cigars.

The Post reports that other guests in the hotel were asking for refunds as word of the suspicious death spread. Ham and eggers always looking for a bargain.

Almost 20 years to the day in '87 a naked woman with her hands tied behind her back was apparently pushed to her death from a window in the hotel. Police investigating the case had not been able to locate any witnesses, but several guests reported hearing loud arguments in room 1604, which was later found to be in disarray.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire of 1911

I was perusing Hong Kong's Prestige magazine where actress Heather Graham discusses her labour of love for the past ten years that she's finally securing financing for... a movie about the 1911 New York City fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that killed 146 women... (I guess its a remake because they already did a movie about it in 1979, "The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal") The disaster also inspired the musical, Rags

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry.

The company employed approximately 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women from Italy and Eastern Europe. Some of the women were as young as 12 or 13 and worked 14-hour shifts during a 60-hour to 72-hour workweek, sewing clothes for a wage of $1.50 per week!

Rollergirl will direct and also star as one of the factory workers. The factory occupied the top three floors of the ten-story Asch Building at the intersection of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square.

Rollergirl says she learned about the fire watching Ric Burns' History of NYC documentary. "He did 45 minutes on the Triangle fire and by the end I was bawling my eyes out."


The Asch Building was landmarked in 2003 - though now called the Brown Building and owned by NYU along with the rest of the Village.



awful

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company always kept its doors locked to ensure that the young immigrant women stayed stooped over their machines and didn’t steal anything.

When a fire broke out on Saturday, March 25, 1911, on the 8th floor of the New York City factory, the locks sealed the workers’ fate.

In just 30 minutes, 146 were killed. Witnesses thought the owners were tossing their best fabric out the windows to save it, then realised workers were jumping, sometimes after sharing a kiss - an eerie precursor to the World Trade Center events of September, 11, 2001.


identifying the dead in the Triangle Factory fire

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Adrienne Shelly... We love you... Get up!

Of Russian Jewish descent, Shelly was born Adrienne Levine in Queens. She was an actress, a director, and a screenwriter. She went to Boston University, majoring in film production, but dropped out after her junior year and moved to Manhattan.

Reading the stories about the murder of actress Adrienne Shelly in New York City, I kept thinking of a Frank O’Hara poem that begins, “Lana Turner has collapsed!”

After that he spends about half of the poem’s 17 lines talking about the weather (snow, rain, possibly hail, “but hailing hits you hard on the head/ hard so it was really snowing and/ raining and I was in such a hurry …”) and the New York City traffic. Then, “suddenly I see a headline/ LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!”

And then, in one of the most amasing verbal downshifts I’ve ever seen, O’Hara slows his poem down from a pell-mell rush to a molasses crawl, writing “there is no snow in Hollywood/ there is no rain in California/ I have been to lots of parties/ and acted perfectly disgraceful/ but I never actually collapsed/ oh Lana Turner we love you get up.”

O’Hara’s poem is maybe the best try I’ve ever seen to capture the difference between life as we all know it and life in the tabloids, where celebrities seem to do all kinds of things, like collapsing, that most of us just never get the chance to try. Not that you’d want to—all those exclamation points following your every deed.

Adrienne Shelly, 40, of course, suffered a terrible fate in no way commensurate with an actress’s collapse. Shelly was murdered by a 19-year-old construction worker with whom she argued about building noise in the apartment under her office on Abingdon Square in the West Village.

But I couldn’t help but immediately thinking of the O’Hara poem when I saw her face splashed across the front pages of two New York papers. SUICIDE ACTRESS—IT WAS MURDER read the Post headline, referring to the fact that the police revised their earlier verdict of suicide when the facts didn’t add up.

At about 5:45 p.m on November 1, 2006, Shelly's husband found her hanging by a bedsheet from a shower rod in the bathtub, in what at first appeared to be a suicide.



Shelly, who lived in Tribeca used the Abingdon Square apartment as an office. Ostroy had dropped her off at 9:30 a.m. that day, and as the building's doorman told journalists, "He hadn't heard from her and he said it was odd not to hear from her, so he was nervous. And he asked me to go up to the apartment with him, so we went to the front door, and it was unlocked".

An autopsy was performed the following day. The NYPD were suspicious of sneaker prints in the bathtub that did not match Shelly's shoes, who was found wearing only socks.

Shelly's husband also indicated that there was money missing from Shelly's wallet. He vigorously denied allegations that she could have committed suicide.

Press reports on November 6, 2006 stated that police had arrested construction worker Diego Pillco, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant who confessed to killing Shelly after she complained about the noise he was making in the apartment below hers.

Pillco said that he "was having a bad day."



Police said Pillco had made videos implicating himself in the murder, and as of November 7 was being held without bail for her murder.

The more people I talked to, the more I realised that most people didn’t have a clue as to who Adrienne Shelly was, much less how good she was. In a city where it seems like every other person is an “actor” or an “actress,” this actress’s death was written off by most people as just another cheesy tabloid tale. And the more I ran into this attitude, the more I thought about Frank O’Hara and his poem.

Adrienne Shelly’s death did not make news because she was talented or especially good at what she did. She got there because she was a show-business person with just enough glamour to make page one for a day.

And that’s a tragedy, too, because she was so good at what she did. There was something captivating about her that just made you want to watch her any time she was on screen.

Both the movies I’m thinking of were made by Hal Hartley, whose indie films are as idiosyncratically recognisable as a set of fingerprints. “The Unbelievable Truth” (1989) and “Trust” (1990) are both set on Long Island—the unposh part—and both are characterised by Hartley’s trademark staccato dialogue where characters speak in complete sentences and always say exactly what they mean and still get misunderstood.

I went back while I was writing this and watched some of “Trust” again. In an interview, Hartley once explained that he made the movie on the spur of the moment because he wanted to work with Shelly again immediately after making “The Unbelievable Truth,” so he had very little money and very little time. The movie was shot in 11 days. The reason he could do that, he said, was because so much of the direction was implied in the dialogue. The dialogue pretty much told the actors what to do. That’s true. It’s a talky movie, like all Hartley movies. But what’s interesting about Shelly’s performance are the moments where she’s not talking, where she’s just listening to another character, or thinking by herself. Emotion travels over her face like time-lapse cinematography where days turn to night and fast cars are just traces of light.
The whole movie seems like it takes place on her face.

The miracle is that while you’re watching this happen, you never once stop to think, what an actress. It’s just a girl in trouble on Long Island. When she was acting, Adrienne Shelly could make you forget all about Adrienne Shelly.

Shelly died before she would have learned a film she had directed, "Waitress", had been accepted into the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

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Suicide at Burning Man

"Just when I thought I was out... "

A Burning Man participant was found dead this morning, hanging from the inside of a two-story high tent.

The apparent suicide would be the festival's first in its 21 year history. Well now its a party!

Pershing County coroners are investigating the scene and preparing to remove the body.

Apparently the man was hanging for two hours before anyone in the large tent thought to bring him down. His friends thought he was doing an art piece.

Wow. Talk about the boy who cried wolf...



A makeshift morgue is being set up at the law enforcement command center on the outskirts of Black Rock City. Authorities can not release information on the dead man's name until next of kin is notified.

The incident has gone unnoticed by most of the 36,000 revelers who have already arrived. The city's population is on pace to hit 46,000, a 14% percent increase from last year. Thanks to my blog.

More about Burning Man...

Burning Man is Wall Street's Woodstock

Bum out at Burning Man

"America’s biggest counterculture jamboree is also a $10 million business. Now it’s trying to leverage its brand — and save the planet by — by (gasp!) inviting corporate participants."

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Happy Birthday, Van Morrison

"Van Morrison" was born George Ivan Morrison on August 31, 1945, and grew up at 125 Hyndford Street in Bloomfield, Belfast, Northern Ireland as the pampered, only child of George, a longshoreman and Violet, a singer.

Morrison was exposed to music from an early age, as his father, having spent time working in Detroit collected American jazz, country and western, and blues albums.

His father's taste in music was passed on to him and he grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly and Solomon Burke. HOLLA!

In a 2005 Rolling Stone article Van Morrison said, "Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now."

George Ivan Morrison is 62 today. Go on Amazon and buy some Them CD's to celebrate!

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"Bernanke & Bush, please hold"

In what may prove to be a watershed, Ben Bernanke faces his first and perhaps his most crucial test of his ability to handle an economy threatening to spin into recession at 10 AM today.

In a speech the rookie Federal Reserve chairman has titled "Housing, Housing Finance and Monetary Policy," (sounds exciting!) Bernanke will outline to other U.S. central-bank governors gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, his view of the world's largest economy and the now extremely difficult challenges it faces.

There may be pressure on Bernanke to tighten the reins on mortgage lending practices -- such as those used in the all but dormant subprime market that gave money to people who could ill-afford the payments -- but the only question we want answered is whether the Fed chairman, now nearly 18 months into the job, is ready to cut interest rates.

The wild card here is the Fed, with the market basically begging for a rate cut, and the Fed still on hold.

Other traders fear things will only get worse if Mr. Bernanke does not at least signal the Fed is prepared to cut its key interest rate from 5.25% to stimulate the economy.


"I once got a bonus, this big"

In other news, sharing the spotlight later today Bush is due to announce a plan that could help stem a wave of mortgage defaults.

Under the plan, the Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance program will be changed to allow more people to refinance with FHA insurance if they fall behind on adjustable-rate mortgages.

People who have missed mortgage payments are now ineligible for FHA insurance.

The president's plan would allow them to be eligible for FHA insurance if the amount they are required to pay each month increases, as has happened on many adjustable loans with so-called "teaser" introductory rates.

Officials expect that 2 million mortgages made to risky, or subprime, borrowers will adjust upward in the next 2 years, with a total value of more than $500 billion.

The change would allow 80,000 more homeowners in 2008 to receive federally insured mortgages on top of the 160,000 projected to use the insurance.

Bush will offer relief for some on home loans {Herald Tribune}

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Senator Larry Craig was arrested in June for soliciting sex in an airport bathroom, as reported Monday. According to the police, Craig had "tapped his right foot … as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct." Another signal?!

I loved Michael Savage the other night saying "what if I have a tune in my head and I'm tapping my feet to the rhythm while I'm on the bowl. Will I be arrested, too?"

Anyway, so after pleading guilty to a charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct, Larry Craig paid $575 in fines and fees and was sentenced to a year of probation.

But since then, he has said he regrets his guilty plea and that his actions were "misconstrued"—he merely has a "wide stance" when using the toilet.


Is tapping your foot really code for public sex?


Just how sexy can you get when there's a divider in the way?

Can Senator Larry Craig still maintain his innocence after pleading guilty?

Is it wise to use a "wide stance" when you go to the bathroom?

All this and more is answered on the Bathroom Sex FAQ from Slate

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one of my favourite bands...

VHS or Beta - Tonight - FREE
@ Studio B {259 Banker St, Greenpoint} - 9PM... YA HEARD?

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Heres another clip of Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan. Check it.

Bret Easton Ellis' The Informers is coming to the big screen, with Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger among others.

Andrew W.K. is opening a club @ 100 Lafayette in Manhattan

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Perversion of Hindsight

"It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after if has happened." - Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845)

Two stories in the news today piqued my interest only because they are founded on the immaculate vision of hindsight.

In one story we revisit the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech back in April. Again we're talking about security issues with campus police and what went wrong there; did the guidance counselors at VT offer enough, well, guidance to the nut that went wild and shot 30 people. So-and-so has found that signs of Cho's mental illness had not been properly handled by campus officials and so on. Basically, a game of who's to blame?

Everyone wants to blame someone. There is a need for blame. No one can accept the unknown. There is a universal need for a scapegoat. You can apply this theory to just about anything.

In another story, I guess last night there was a town hall meeting to discuss the Deutsche Bank fire. Naturally, everyone there is pointing fingers at everyone else. The Mayor blames the three senior fire officials, said to somehow be responsible for lapses at the former Deutsche Bank tower, who were reassigned. So now the reassigned fire officials are blaming the construction workers. The construction workers (from the John Galt Corporation) are blaming the Fire Department. They've got the contractor there, Bovis Lend Lease, the second largest construction management company in the business. Now they're bringing up some problems it has had at other work sites, from the Bloomberg HQ to the Ulster County jail and so on...

And at the town hall meeting, you had all these residents of Lower Manhattan yelling and screaming that they, of course, knew the tower was in danger and it was a death trap, and they just knew something like this would happen and now they are, of course, outraged; a familiar song and dance.

I guess it's hard not to sound callous when there is death involved; firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino at Deutsche Bank and the 30 students and staff killed in the VT massacre... obviously people want answers and I suppose its easy for me to say... so, then why not say it anyway?

Most humans have a tendency to be unable to just accept things; although its a selective tendency.

The President sucks, the world is in complete upheaval but I'll still get up and go to work tomorrow morning and think nothing of it. That's when I am ignoring "it" and just accepting "it."
But once I have that powerful hindsight in my hand, that's when I get outraged.

Once it's all passed us by and the details are there for us to scour, suddenly we're appalled and we just knew it was gonna happen and we coulda told you something like this would happen, etc.

Why are we able to Why do we simply accept some things but others we refuse?

When the dust settles, 99.9% of us are creatures of habit and convenience. We accept what we don't understand until there's enough information to go back and take it apart; suddenly then we are an authority on the subject.

People at Virginia Tech knew Seung-Hui Cho was gonna wake up one day and shoot 30 people? When campus police came upon the bodies of two students shot to death in the dorm, they knew this wasn't an isolated incident? They knew a massive shooting was about to go down? People in or around Lower Manhattan knew that Deutsche Bank building was destined for tragedy? The same building that's been sitting there, in that same state of purgtaory, since September 12th, 2001?

No. You did not. In fact, you had no fucking idea. You are abusing hindsight, now, AFTER THE FACT to jump onto the famous dogpile of outrage.

With the power of hindsight we know everything.

The only lapse in my theory I've found is when we speak of the dead or the condemned. Just once I'd like to hear a neighbour talking about the guy down the street who was just caught building atom bombs in his garage say "Yeah, you know, that guy was a fucking freak" instead of the traditional party line "I had no idea. He was very nice and quiet and kept to himself. He even gave the kids candy on Halloween".

Just once I'd like to hear to someone be honest and say "Yeah, you know, that John had it coming. He was a real asshole his whole life so it serves him right he got hit by a bus."

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OMG

Brad caught on the streets of NY buying one of his kids a pretzel.
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODDDDDDDD

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"America’s biggest counterculture jamboree is also a $10 million business. Now it’s trying to leverage its brand — and save the planet by — by (gasp!) inviting corporate participants."

I'm not quite obsessed with or intrigued by Burning Man but it is interesting and rather strange.

Can something really be considered "counterculture" when its a $10M business? What do they think this is, punk rock?!



The current issue of Business 2.0 (July 2007) features about Burning Man as a business enterprise: “Burning Man Grows Up”

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Ingrid Bergman, the immensely popular and charismatic international film star, was born on this day in 1915. She passed away on the same date in 1982. I always thought that was tragic but cool and makes for a nice, simple tombstone.


Ingrid age 14


in Berlin


with Hitchcock on the set of "Notorious", 1946.



På väg från g:a Bokhandeln


with Bing Crosby. Holding her Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in "Gaslight."



with Humphrey Bogart in some movie


I Galärbacken

Ingrid Bergman Fun Facts:

• She became a smoker after needing to smoke for her role in Arch of Triumph.
  
  
• There is a hybrid tea rose named after her.
  
  
• She could speak Swedish (her native language), German (her second language), English (learned when brought over to United States), Italian (learned while exiled in Italy through osmosis) and French (learned formally from language teachers) fluently. She acted in each of these languages at various times.
  
  
• She was the topic of a Woody Guthrie song entitled, uh, "Ingrid Bergman," which was composed in the year 1950. At the request of Woody's daughter Nora, Billy Bragg and Wilco set the lyrics to music and placed the song on their 1998 album "Mermaid Avenue"
  
  
• Bergman didn't think much of Casablanca, and was somewhat irritated when asked about the film. "I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart."
  
  
• About Bogart, she said "I never really knew him. I kissed him, but I didn't know him."
  
  
  
• Although they worked together, Bergman is not related to fellow Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. The fact that Ingmar Bergman married Ingrid von Rosen who subsequently took the name Ingrid Bergman sometimes further contributes to confusion about their relation.

Ingrid Bergman died on her 67th birthday in London, England, following a long battle with breast cancer. Her body was cremated in Sweden. Most of her ashes were scattered in the sea with the remainder being interred in the Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm next to her parents.

A single violin played the song "As Time Goes By", the theme from Casablanca, recalling her most famous role, that of Ilsa Lund.

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GREENPEACE co-founder slams DiCaprio's scare tactics in new movie

"Despite the anti-forestry scare tactics of celebrity movies, trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth." - Dr. Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies in Fuck Vancouver)

"It seems like there's a new doomsday documentary every month. But seldom does one receive the coverage that Hollywood activist Leonardo DiCaprio's latest climate-change rant, The 11th Hour (a.k.a. An Inconvenient Truth: Part Two), is getting.

When we're bombarded anew with theatrical images of our earth's ecosystems when the film opens across B.C. this Friday, I'm concerned that we're losing sight of some indisputable facts.


"Uhhhh Leila... Where's the chase scene?"

Here's a key piece of information DiCaprio, collaborator and long-time activist Tzeporah Berman and the leadership of my old organization Greenpeace are ignoring when it comes to forests and carbon: For British Columbians, living among the largest area of temperate rainforest in the world, managing our forests will be a key to reducing greenhouse gases.

As a lifelong environmentalist, I say trees can solve many of the world's sustainability challenges. Forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood.

Trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth. Through photosynthesis, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, which is nearly 50 per cent carbon by weight. Trees contain about 250 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre.


Di Caprio poses with Paul Simon's band

North Americans are the world's largest per-capita wood consumers and yet our forests cover approximately the same area of land as they did 100 years ago. According to the United Nations, our forests have expanded nearly 100 million acres over the past decade.

The relationship between trees and greenhouse gases is simple enough on the surface. Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, through photosynthesis, converting it into sugars. The sugars are then used as energy and materials to build cellulose and lignin, the main constituents of wood.


"One day I... One day I will care about something"

There is a misconception that cutting down an old tree will result in a net release of carbon. Yet wooden furniture made in the Elizabethan era still holds the carbon fixed hundreds of years ago.
Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration.

Although old trees contain huge amounts of carbon, their rate of sequestration has slowed to a near halt. A young tree, although it contains little fixed carbon, pulls CO2 from the atmosphere at a much faster rate.

When a tree rots or burns, the carbon contained in the wood is released back to the atmosphere. Since combustion releases carbon, active forest management -- such as removing dead trees and clearing debris from the forest floor -- will be imperative in reducing the number and intensity of fires.

The role of forests in the global carbon cycle can be boiled down to these key points:

1. Deforestation, primarily in tropical forests, is responsible for about 20 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This is occurring where forests are permanently cleared and converted to agriculture and urban settlement.
   
   
2. In many countries with temperate forests, there has been an increase in carbon stored in trees in recent years. This includes the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden.
   
   
3. The most important factors influencing the carbon cycle are deforestation on the negative side, and the use of wood, from sustainably managed forests, as a substitute for non-renewable materials and fuels, on the positive side.
   
   
4. To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete, steel and plastic -- heavy carbon emitters through their production. Trees are the only abundant, biodegradable and renewable global resource.
   

DiCaprio's movie, The 11th Hour, is another example of anti-forestry scare tactics, this time said to be "brilliant and terrifying" by James Christopher of the London Times.

Maybe so, but instead of surrendering to the terror, keep in mind that there are solutions to the challenges of climate, and our forests are among them.

This film should be a good, clear reminder for us to put the science before the Hollywood hype. "

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh SNAP! Leo got FUCKED up!

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New breed of service dog

OK. You've got dogs that hunt for bombs, dogs that hunt for contraband, dogs that help blind people cross the street, dogs that help disabled people dial a phone, dogs that search for bodies buried under rubble, dogs that search for exotic fruit and vegetables... and now dogs that hunt for bootleg DVD's!



The dogs were trained to search for the scent of polycarbonate, and were so effective in a Malaysian undercover operation, that a $100,000 bounty was put on their little dog heads.

Those Malaysians take their bootleg DVD's seriously! It's their #1 export.

The two black labs, Lucky and Flo, are now sniffing out bootleg DVD's in Queens.

Uh, oh. Better go hide your Canal Street specials!



Lucky and Flo went to work on a suspected piracy operation in Jamaica.

"We raided three locations in Jamaica where we seized thousands of counterfeit DVDs," said District Attorney Richard Brown. The DVD's were being sold at different locations at the Jamaica Mall. HOLLA!

Although the dogs can't tell if the movie is a counterfeit they can smell the DVD's hidden in luggage, crates and secret compartments. Then investigators can check the DVD to see if it's counterfeit.

"They sniffed out three boxes and one suitcase that were filled with pirated DVD's," said John Malcolm, Vice President of the Motion Picture Association of America.T



Three people were arrested and charged with trademark counterfeiting. Over 5,000 bootleg DVD's were confiscated.

I wanna train my dog to tell me when Papyrus is having a sale.

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1619 Pine Street, Boulder, Colorado 80302

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CNBC divas in cat fight

If anybody touches my girl there's gonna be a problem.

According to Page Six, people are getting very jealous, especially the other CNBC femmes.

CNBC is said to be lavishing Maria Bartiromo and bootleg "Street Sweetie" Erin Burnett with rich perks and attention that aren't also flowing to the other ladies.

If rumours of all of this infighting are true, we smell defections that couldn't be more timely. We hear Rupert Murdoch is hiring....


A source says reporters including Melissa Francis (above), who covers energy, have complained to CNBC suits that while they get zip, Bartiromo and Burnett are treated like princesses - with massive promotion, regular gigs on the "Today" show and "NBC Nightly News," perks such as limos and gushing quotes from network brass in newspaper articles.

"The catfight that started with Maria being jealous of Erin's rise has spread down the line. Now all of the other female reporters are getting pissed off," our insider said.

"They're going to management and telling them they want equal treatment - better public relations, better placement on the air. They are all being divas now. It's gotten ridiculous."

CNBC brass have only themselves to blame for the in-house bitching, according to our source, who said, "It began when Maria was first caught in the Todd Thomson ethics scandal. They should have disciplined her then, but they went out of their way to defend her because she was the big star." Bartiromo raised eyebrows by accepting private international flights with Citibank honcho Thomson on the bank's corporate jet....

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