Johnny
Posted: January 31, 2013 Filed under: America, music 1 Comment
In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burnt several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest in California. When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, “I didn’t do it, my truck did, and it’s dead, so you can’t question it.” The fire destroyed 508 acres (206 ha), burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of the refuge’s 53 endangered condors. Cash was unrepentant: “I don’t care about your damn yellow buzzards.” The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172 ($923127 in 2013 dollars). Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001. He said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.
Cat
Posted: January 28, 2013 Filed under: cats, UNESCO Leave a comment
The other day I got mad at my cat for doing something undesirable. Then later I was like, “what am I doing being mad at a cat? She has no idea what human rules are. She is a less than one year old furry mushball. She is completely alone in the universe, with a brain incapable of processing even the simplest language. How would she possibly know what’s good or bad in a house? To her a flushing toilet is a marvel as wondrous as the Tomb Of Jahangir at Shahdara Bagh.”
Farming
Posted: January 25, 2013 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a commentSometimes I romanticize farming in my mind. Important to remember what a farm is really like.
(SCH)
Countryman
Posted: January 21, 2013 Filed under: Jamaica, music Leave a commentCountryman is an album by Willie Nelson. Ten years in the making, Nelson’s first ever reggae album merges the gospel and spirit found in bothcountry and reggae. It was released on CD format on August 2, 2005 by the Lost Highway label. Nelson made two videos for this album “The Harder They Come” and “I’m a Worried Man” both videos were filmed in Jamaica.
I can’t say this is one of my favorite Willie albums, but I suspect Willie had fun making it.
Countryman is also the title of a 1982 Jamaican film:
Countryman (1982) is an independentaction/adventure film directed by Dickie Jobson. It tells the story of a Jamaican fisherman whose solitude is shattered when he rescues two Americans from the wreckage of a plane crash. The fisherman, called Countryman, is hurled into a political plot by the dangerous Colonel Sinclair. Countryman uses his knowledge of the terrain and his innate combat skills to survive.
The film was shot in Jamaica and featured a reggae soundtrack performed by Bob Marley & the Wailers. It has become a cult classic.
It’s also the name of a newspaper in Perth, Australia that appears to have gone out of business.
Theory
Posted: January 18, 2013 Filed under: photography, the California Condition Leave a comment
If you take a picture of anything in California, then put it in black & white, you can pass it off as being by Ansel Adams.
Surf Beach, California
Posted: January 15, 2013 Filed under: adventures, the California Condition Leave a comment
When I took this picture I was listening to Dave Brubeck’s version of “The Trolley Song.”
Real life super spies
Posted: January 14, 2013 Filed under: adventures, heroes Leave a comment
I love this picture so much. It is from the NY Times obituary of Jeanne Vertefeuille (center), who helped catch CIA mole Aldrich Ames. It is credited to Central Intelligence Agency.
This woman was station chief in Gabon.
Authentic
Posted: January 11, 2013 Filed under: film, history Leave a commentTavis Smiley, in the Daily Beast, talks about Django Unchained:
Tarantino even went on the record saying Roots was inauthentic. First of all, Tarantino is not a historian. When people see his film who don’t have any understanding of history, they take it as history, because Tarantino passes himself off as a historian by declaring Roots inauthentic, and then goes on to make the “authentic” story about slavery. It doesn’t tell the truth about what the black contribution to this country has been. Tarantino has the right to make whatever films he wants to make. What he’s not entitled to is his own set of facts and to lecture black people about the inauthenticity of an iconic, game-changing series like Roots.
I think* Tavis is referring to this quote, also from the Daily Beast. Here’s what QT said, in its context:
“When you look at Roots, nothing about it rings true in the storytelling, and none of the performances ring true for me either,” says Tarantino. “I didn’t see it when it first came on, but when I did I couldn’t get over how oversimplified they made everything about that time. It didn’t move me because it claimed to be something it wasn’t.”
- Worth reading TS’s own description of what the black contribution to this country has been, which gave me something ELSE to think about.
- Boy it would be hard to watch an authentic movie about slavery. Hard enough to watch Django which was a super cool, entertaining adventure story but which also has some scenes that are awful raw to look at.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates weighs in here with about why slave-revenge stories are rare in the historical record. (but is this movie really a revenge story? might it not just be a blown-out version of the dynamic TNC describes? “the preservation and security of their particular black families.” TNC declines to see the movie.)
- QT has more thoughts on Roots here, from 5:07-7:35 or so:
And what about this?:
GROSS: Just one other related question. Did you ever – because I know you really enjoy, have always enjoyed really violent movies. Have you ever been exposed to a movie image – even like when you were a child or as an adult that you wished you hadn’t seen because it was so troubling and scary and you had nightmares about it and hunted you?
TARANTINO: Well, you make that that’s not supposed to happen, like that would be a bad thing.
Or this?:
TARANTINO: Yeah. Well, it was almost like a sitcom, actually the way we lived in the ’70s because she [QT is talking about his mom here] was in her 20s, she was hot, all right, she was a hot white girl. Her best friend was named Jackie. She was a hot black girl. And her other best friend was Lillian and she was a hot Mexican girl. And they lived in this like swinging singles apartment with me.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: What impact did that have on you?
TARANTINO: Yeah, well, it was just yeah, it was just, you know, it was the ’70s so it was, you know, I lived with these three hip ladies all going out on dates all the time and dating football players and basketball players and, you know, my mother…
GROSS: Professionals ones or…
TARANTINO: Yeah. Yeah. My mom dated Wilt Chamberlain. She’s one of the thousand.
GROSS: No.
(LAUGHTER)
Puzzled for a minute over who QT sounds like before realizing: Richard Kind.
* pretty sure. did due diligence googling, unless he’s referring to some unprinted comment or something on a TV or radio show. I listened to all of QT on Howard Stern, Charlie Rose, and Terry Gross.
“There’s no winning. Nobody ever wins.”
Posted: January 9, 2013 Filed under: comedy, heroes Leave a commentI used to keep a VHS of Norm MacDonald on Conan from ’95. Such excellence. For the busy executive the first two minutes will suffice. Or the last two minutes. (HT Andrew Sullivan)
Memphis
Posted: January 8, 2013 Filed under: America, Vivien Kent, writing 1 Comment
Memphis is where hillbillies meet black folk. They are stunned to find how much they have in common with each other. Dangerous and exciting ideas explode from them then.
– Vivien Kent, The Fatback Of America (1948)
(photo by SCH)
Denmark
Posted: January 7, 2013 Filed under: politics Leave a comment
This N+1 article about a Danish TV show:
Borgen is more than a sensation; it is a kind of parallel government. Borgen stories are reported in Copenhagen’s free newspapers as if they were actually happening; an educational program that introduces the main fields of Danish politics—welfare spending, environmental policy, the status of Greenland—does so under the rubric “Borgen in reality.”
And:
In a recent interview with Le Monde, the actor [excellently named Babette Knudsen] said she learned about how politicians atrophy by watching Tony Blair.
Says N+1:
But in Britain, where Borgen airs in the original Danish, the program was the undisputed hit of 2012
(undisputed??)
I thought this idea was interesting and troubling:
As the sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has argued, the shift we are seeing in Europe is one from “government” to “governance”—or, if you prefer, from democracy to administration, from a system in which political leaders enact the will of the people to one in which they act merely as “debt-collecting agencies on behalf of a global oligarchy of investors.”
Photo of Denmark’s actual prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, from wikipedia:
She married Stephen Kinnock in 1996, so becoming the daughter-in-law of Neil Kinnock, Baron Kinnock, former leader of the British Labour Party and European Commissioner, and Glenys Kinnock, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, former British Minister for Europe.
Neil Kinnock, remember, was the British politician from whom Biden plagarized whole chunks of life story during the 1988 presidential primaries.
Django
Posted: January 5, 2013 Filed under: film, heroes, the California Condition Leave a commentThere’s been much talk about the exchange at 13:56 in this video. But for me the compelling part is at 12:05-13:03. What coolness.
George Saunders
Posted: January 4, 2013 Filed under: heroes, writing Leave a comment
In NY Times:
“I admired him so much,” he said about [DF] Wallace. “His on-the-spot capabilities were just incredible. And I thought, Yeah, we’re a lot alike. We’re similar, nervous guys. And then when he died, I thought [of myself], Wait a minute, you’re not like that. You don’t have chronic, killing depression. I’m sad sometimes, but I’m not depressed. And I also have a mawkish, natural enthusiasm for things. I like being alive in a way that’s a little bit cheerleaderish, and I always felt that around Dave. When he died, I saw how unnegotiable it was, that kind of depression. And it led to my being a little more honest about one’s natural disposition. If you have a negative tendency and you deny it, then you’ve doubled it. If you have a negative tendency and you look at it” — which is, in part, what the process of writing allows — “then the possibility exists that you can convert it.”
Possible negative tendencies a person could have:
- reading about famous greats while aggressively hunting for holes and hypocrisies in wicked hope famous great isn’t really much kinder and more thoughtful and generally better, and thus you yourself can’t be expected to improve or be better
- cynical assumption that you should be very very skeptical about anyone described as a “saint” in a newspaper.
- suspicion that people promoting “saints” have inevitable tangled agenda of self-promotion or goal of manipulating saints into espousing ideas from which they themselves [the saint-promoters] intend to make some gain.
Brief personal experience:
Met Saunders once (courtesy of Chennai Office). Walked and talked with him for about ten minutes.
During that walk he completely (by accident, just in casual conversation) altered my perception of college.
That afternoon Saunders gave a reading almost nobody came to. A person literally rollerbladed in, midway through.
Then watched him meet a bunch of young strangers. Many of whom weren’t exactly sure who he was or why he was there, and >50% of them were pretty drunk.
Saunders offered each of these people (and several were legendary messes) some genuine complimentary observation, or more likely, a complimentary question.
Afterwards, had the sense I’d just been given a free demonstration in how to be: considerate. In the deepest, “put yourself in the other guy’s shoes” way. NY Times:
The last time we met, Saunders waited in the cold with me until the bus for New York came along. We were talking about the idea of abiding, of the way that you can help people flourish just by withholding judgment, if you open yourself up to their possibilities…
(photo from the wikipedia page for Nyingma Buddhism)
Philosophical question
Posted: January 2, 2013 Filed under: America Leave a comment
The late Norman Schwarzopf, quoted in The Daily Beast:
“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”
Is that true? I don’t know. Is wondering whether it’s true just a way to evade of “doing it”?
from wikipedia, Vietnam 1970:
As the wounded man flailed in agony, the soldiers around him feared that he would set off another mine. Schwarzkopf, also wounded by the explosion, crawled across the minefield to the wounded man and held him down (using a “pinning” technique from his wrestling days at West Point) so another could splint his shattered leg. One soldier stepped away to break a branch from a nearby tree to make the splint. In doing so, he too hit a mine, which killed him and the two men closest to him, and blew an arm and a leg off Schwarzkopf’s artillery liaison officer. Eventually, Schwarzkopf led his surviving men to safety, by ordering the division engineers to mark the locations of the mines with shaving cream.
(photo by Bob Daugherty for AP)
Helytimes 