Just Plain Wrong

This is SO stupid, not to mention just wrong. If this amateur hour is SO great, try charging for it and see what happens.



The San Francisco Chronicle

June 5, 2008 Thursday
FINAL Edition

YouTube brings stardom down to earth

BYLINE: Jeff Yang

SECTION: Datebook; ASIAN POP; Pg. E1

For a generation of young artists, the existence of a never-before-seen mass audience of Asian Americans on YouTube represents an opportunity of game-changing proportions.

Christine Gambito - known to her hundreds of thousands of online fans by her YouTube handle, Happy Slip - describes her inauspicious foray into stardom like this: "All my life, my family has asked me to do these imitations of them. Whenever we all get together, after we pig out, and everyone's fat and bored, they'd say, 'Christine, get up there, do your imitation of Auntie!' So I realized that I really wanted to tell these little stories about my family, whether there was an audience for them or not. And I started shooting and editing these videos and uploading them to YouTube. Not knowing if anyone was even watching felt kind of liberating, in fact. I realized I could just do whatever I wanted."

But what she did - gently hilarious one-woman skits in which she portrays as many as a half-dozen members of her extended Filipino American family - proved to be wildly popular. So much so that, a year and a half later, her Happy Slip channel is the fifth most subscribed on YouTube.

To date, her videos have been watched more than 36 million times, with Asian Americans making up the bulk of her fan base though she does note that people from every ethnic background write her, "saying 'That's exactly my family, and I'm not even Filipino! It's like 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' - you don't have to be Greek to get it. Or fat.".

Gambito's experience is echoed by 22-year-old fellow YouTube star David Choi, whose popular videos feature him performing a mix of his original songs and captivatingly unlikely acoustic guitar arrangements of pop hits like Britney Spears
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' "Gimme More."

What really sent Choi's visibility through the roof, however, was a goofy one-off ballad he wrote celebrating his love for and obsession with YouTube itself. As it rocketed up the viewership charts, "YouTube A Love Song" got picked by the service as a front-page Featured Video. The video has since been seen nearly 1.9 million times, helping make him YouTube's 16th-most subscribed musician of all time, just ahead of, ahem, Britney.
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The overwhelmingly positive clamor inspired Choi to start work on an album of his own. It helps to know that he has a pre-existing consumer base of more than 40,000 subscribed fans eager to buy the end result, sight unseen.

As for Gambito, her days of late have been filled with going to network meetings and serving the role bestowed upon her by the Philippine government as an ambassador of tourism; meanwhile, Choi was hired by Warner Chappell as a staff songwriter-producer and got the chance to create a track for rising Interscope Records band Flipsyde.

But perhaps the most intriguing top YouTube personality is also one of the youngest: 17-year-old Kevin "KevJumba" Wu, who, over the course of just months, went from obscurity to YouTube's No. 1 most subscribed comedian and third most subscribed YouTuber of all time. Except that he's not, strictly speaking, a "comedian." In fact, most of his videos consist of nothing more than Kevin talking about stuff that Kevin finds interesting, weird or irritating.

And yet, they've received nearly 30 million views because Kevin just talking is, well, pretty hilarious. His deadpan vocal delivery, animated facial expressions and tendency toward unexpected digressions make for surprisingly mesmerizing video. But it's still hard to put a finger on just what makes him so appealing.

Until you realize: It's the confidence, exuding from every pore. Not cockiness - many of his rants, like "I need help with the Females," are drenched in self-deprecating humor - but casual ease. Comfort in his own skin.

In fact, Kevin is a little surprised to even be asked the question. "I don't feel alienated. I talk about being Asian, because it's who I am. And the majority of my subscribers are Asian, because they relate to what I'm talking about, and they back me up."

In short, in the media that his generation cares about most, Asian Americans aren't behind the curve - they're ahead of the game. So much so that Kevin took it in stride when Golden State Warriors point guard Baron Davis reached out to him, suggesting they do some videos together - an encounter that led to Kevin and Davis exchanging a series of challenges, eventually leading up to an epic staring contest that was won not by Kevin or Davis, but by an unexpected third entrant: actress and online video junkie Jessica Alba.

Baron Davis? Jessica Alba? And ... Kevin Wu? Why not? On the Internet, celebrities get exposed as real people Lindsay Lohan picks her nose! and real people get the exposure needed to turn them into celebrities.

And whereas Hollywood was built around epic personalities, larger than life icons, the next generation of content is rooted in authenticity: people just being people.

"You see that young Asian Americans are gravitating to YouTube, and it's clear that they represent an underserved market that's thriving online outside the confines of Hollywood and Madison Avenue," says Richard Frias, co-president of Digital Content Partners, a management firm that recently signed on to represent Gambito and Kevin in whatever future content endeavors they might choose to pursue. "There are no more hurdles. For those who have ever said they were not given a chance or that doors were closed to them for whatever reason - those days are over."

Handful of Memories: Cousin Joey

Moms was prescient enough when I was a kid to take me to New York, and while there we skipped over to Chi-Town to see my Auntie Frances and Uncle Joe who had a brownstone in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago, where they met. From Chi, my auntie, moms and my cousin Joey and I drove to Des Moines to see my Uncle George and Auntie Ann.

Here's one thing I remember about Auntie Frances & Unc Joe's; it was crawling with kids - 8 siblings! But I was lucky enough to share a room with my cousin Joey, a couple of years older than me, but seemingly light years ahead of me in everything. I'd lie there in the bottom bunk for what seemed like endless hours while he schooled me on the intricacies of dog fighting, the fighter plane type. I can remember that he was the first one to tell me who Eddie Rickenbacker was. Later, Uncle Joe, or "Unc" as I liked to call him, took us to see The Blue Max. Joey and I of course cracked up when George Peppard and Ursula Andress got it on.

Over the ensuing years we had a couple of big family shindigs, and I remember a couple of them the Chi-brood stayed at our joint. But for the most part, with so much space in between LA and Chi, we didn't really share much.

What's funny though is how, as I got older, I'd mention my cousins for any number of reasons, more often than not when issues of race would come up. This was more common when talking with other APAs about inter-racial marriages, because the majority of the time it's about Asian and white unions. And when I'd mention I had black relatives, they'd just smile, and say, "Oh, really?" Well, what are they supposed to say...?

Those couple of nights I spent in Joey's room are seared into my memory forever because of this:

A man had a dog named "Balls Itch." One day, Balls Itch got loose, and the man ran down the street yelling, "My Balls Itch, my Balls Itch!" When a policeman stopped him and said, "Hey Mister, my balls itch too, but if I were you I wouldn't run around advertising it!"

Joey had jokes, and I was in heaven, as he had me either in stitches or enthralled talking about the differences between bi-planes and tri-planes.

There's a great picture - somewhere - of Joey and I while on our trip to Des Moines, furiously pumping a water pump out in podunk somewhere.

He joined the army and served in Nam. He told me a few hair-raising stories when I saw him last in New York, where we shared dinner and a really solid conversation about life, politics, race... I remember turning back to look at him as he limped off and thinking that I was pretty damn lucky to be related to a guy like that.

That limp by the way is a whale of a story. I probably have a bunch of the details wrong, but Joey was driving when he saw someone whose car had broken down, so he pulled over to help. As he's standing there between the cars, talking to the driver, a drunk slams into the back of Joey's car and crushes Joey between the two cars. He drags himself to the embankment and angles his legs upward to slow the bleeding.

So of course, Joey went on to become a doctor.

Chi-town of course, like any major urban city, had its rough spots, and I remember Auntie telling me of hearing that one of his sisters was in trouble somewhere and he'd grab a knife and run out of the house.

In fact, one more memory has re-surfaced; when Joey and I were going to go out in the hood one day, I remember he handed me a small canister. I asked what it was, and he said, "just in case." Well, it was pepper spray, so of course, we being two young boys, we beat Jackass to the punch and had to find out what it was about. So we went into an alley and sprayed a bit into the air and then sniffed. Hahahahahahahahaha....

One more funny story: My Auntie Frances is afflicted with the "Yoshida Curse" - she loves to laugh. And of the eight Yoshida siblings, her and my mom are probably at the top of the heap. I remember Auntie telling of how she knew Joey was growing up because she said she picked up something to whup his ass with one day and Joey kept on dodging her and cracking jokes. She said she finally gave up and flopped in a chair because she was laughing too much!

I'm jealous of Joey's brothers and sisters, because he was so smart, so funny, and just a really solid, good guy. He was a good raconteur... I wish I could have known him better, but am truly grateful for the fond memories.

An Unspeakable Betrayal

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NY Times

Surrealism For Sale, Straight From The Source; André Breton's Collection Is Readied for Auction

By ALAN RIDING
Published: December 17, 2002

In photographs André Breton is rarely seen smiling. As the founder and undisputed leader of the Surrealist movement, he evidently took himself seriously. Between the 1920's and 1950's he alone defined the rules of Surrealism and tolerated no challenge to his authority. He encouraged rebellion against prevailing artistic and social norms, but artists and poets who fell out of his favor were summarily expelled from the movement.

On the other hand, he must have had loads of charisma.

Over the years, in addition to the artworks he bought, notably primitive sculptures from Oceania, hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs and books were given to him by friends, followers and little-known artists seeking his blessing. When Breton died at 70 on Sept. 28, 1966, his small apartment at 42 Rue Fontaine in the Pigalle district of Paris was a veritable treasure trove. He had lived there since 1922. His heirs -- his widow, Elisa, and his daughter from an earlier relationship, Aube -- decided to touch nothing. ''My stepmother lived there, and it was her family environment,'' Aube Breton Elléouët, 67, explained. ''For 35 years we looked for an answer to what could be done with this collection. My father had never expressed himself on the subject.''

Now, two years after Elisa Breton's death, with the French government unwilling to buy the collection, the largest single record of the Surrealist movement is to be sold next spring at the Hôtel Drouot-Richelieu, where Paris auctions are held. One measure of the size of the sale is that the auction house, CalmelsCohen, plans at least six catalogs to cover the 5,300 lots. The auction, from April 1 to 18, is expected to raise $30 million to $40 million.

Books, which account for 3,500 of the lots, include some dedicated to Breton by Freud, Trotsky and Apollinaire as well as art catalogs and journals. Among the 500 lots of manuscripts are originals of some of Breton's writings as well as records of Surrealist ''games'' and experiments. Modern art is represented by 450 paintings, drawings and sculptures and 500 lots of photographs. And there are 200 examples of popular art and 150 works of primitive art, mainly from Oceania. (A description of the collection is online at breton.calmelscohen.com.)

To compensate for the inevitable dispersal of the collection, the entire contents of 42 Rue Fontaine have been recorded digitally and will be made available through a CD-ROM. ''Everything,'' explains a news release by Jean-Michel Ollé and Jean-Pierre Sakoun, who prepared the database. ''Paintings, objects, photos, manuscripts, books. Everything from the least important to the most, the historic and the everyday, the private and the public.''

The principal item not included in the auction is what is known as Breton's Wall, literally the cluttered wall behind his desk that was featured in many photographs and came to be considered a work of art -- the art of collecting -- in its own right. The wall was given by Mrs. Breton Elléouët to the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Center in lieu of death duties owed to the government by the Breton estate.

The wall's shelves are crowded with dozens of Oceanic sculptures as well as Inuit objects and pre-Hispanic figures from Mexico. On the wall itself are paintings, engravings and drawings by the likes of Francis Picabia, Alfred Jarry, Roberto Matta, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, Joan Miró and Wassily Kandinsky. And tucked among them is the odd personal item, like a photograph of Elisa Breton.

Yet the collection to be sold in the spring reveals more about Breton's approach to art, since it includes not only major works, but also lesser works by long forgotten artists and even objects that Breton bought at auctions and flea markets or simply found while out strolling.

''My father had as much passion for a piece found on the bank of a river as for an important painting in his collection,'' Mrs. Breton Elléouët said.

Still, the auction will not lack important works, notably ''Danseuse Espagnole'' or ''Spanish Dancer,'' by Miró, Matta's ''Poster for Arcane 17,'' Magritte's ''Woman Hidden in a Forest,'' an untitled work by Arshile Gorky and ''Danger, Dancer,'' a painting on a photograph on glass by Man Ray. It also includes scores of less valuable works by equally famous artists, among them Picasso, Picabia, Arp, Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wilfredo Lam, Victor Brauner and André Masson. More than 100 original prints by Man Ray dominate the photography collection.

Notably absent is any work by Giorgio de Chirico, the Italian Metaphysical painter, with whom Breton fell out. And a postcard-size collage and gouache is the only work in the sale by Salvador Dali, easily the most famous Surrealist painter, who was expelled from the movement by Breton. The auction also includes no book by the poet Louis Aragon, another friend turned foe. The evidence is clear: Surrealist rebels were expurgated from Breton's life.

Breton himself, while he dabbled with collages and wrote poetry of considerable merit, was most famous simply for being Breton. He was above all immensely curious, his early poetry and interest in psychoanalysis serving as a springboard for Surrealism's constant exploration of the connections between poetry and life, chance, love and sexuality. To describe Surrealism as a sect is to ignore its enormous influence, but Breton himself was very much its guru.

''I believe it is into my thought that I put all my daring, all the strength and hope of which I am capable,'' he wrote in a letter to the art collector Jacques Doucet in December 1924, shortly after publication of the Surrealist Manifesto. ''It possesses me entirely, jealously and makes a mockery of worldly goods.''

Certainly while Surrealism today is best remembered through the works of Dali, Magritte, Miró and Ernst, visual art was not central to Breton's vision of the movement. Yet he undoubtedly had an eye for innovative art: it was at his insistence that in 1924 Doucet bought one of the landmark works of 20th-century art, Picasso's ''Desmoiselles d'Avignon,'' now a jewel in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As an inspiration for Surrealism, though, Breton was drawn principally to Oceanic art, which he described as ''one of the great lock-keepers of our heart.'' While African art was the rage in Paris at the time, he felt it was too linked to human rituals and animals. He preferred Oceanic art ''for its immemorial effort to express the interpenetration of the physical and the mental, to triumph over the dualism of perception and representation.'' Put more simply, he considered it more mystical.

''Oceanic objects were Breton's companions all his life,'' said Pierre Amrouche, an expert on primitive art who is an adviser to the Breton auction. ''It was his family, a tribe of which he was the chief. The very first object he acquired was an Easter Island piece bought when he was 15 with money he was given for good school results.'' (The most valuable Oceanic work in the auction is ''Uli,'' a four-foot-high wooden ancestor statue from the South Pacific island New Ireland, with a sale price estimated at $600,000 to $800,000.)

When Breton traveled to Mexico in 1938 to visit the exiled Trotsky, he discovered pre-Hispanic art. And when he was himself exiled in the United States during World War II, he further developed his interest in American Indian and Inuit art, which also joined his collection. From 1941 to 1945, with Ernst, Dali, Matta and other Surrealists also in exile, New York became the temporary capital of Surrealism, although Breton never felt at home there: he never bothered to learn English.

His own political views were always on the left, but he was a true militant only of Surrealism. He joined the French Communist Party in 1927 and, unaccustomed to taking orders, was soon horrified by its dogmatism. He finally resigned from the party in 1935 (this was the main cause of his rift with Aragon, who stayed in the party), but after the war he was a vocal critic of France's involvement in wars in Indochina and Algeria and an outspoken foe of Stalinism.

Although Surrealism survived the war, with Breton himself returning to Paris to preside over it, by the 1950's and 1960's it had been overtaken by new art movements. Yet when Breton died, while Surrealist paintings hung on the walls of museums around the world, it was at 42 Rue Fontaine that the soul of the movement resided. Works were frequently loaned for exhibitions, but repeated efforts by his widow and daughter to win government backing for creation of a Breton or a Surrealist foundation came to nothing.

After Elisa Breton's death in early 2000 and the transfer of Breton's Wall to the Pompidou, Mrs. Breton Elléouët decided to make an inventory of the collection. ''That's when we became involved,'' Laurence Calmels, a partner in CalmelsCohen, recalled. ''We arrived at 42 Rue Fontaine, where nothing had changed except 'the Wall.' Breton's desk was as he left it, his pipe, the bag of tobacco, the books. There were paintings on walls, but we found many covered in dust in a mezzanine. There were cartons of documents. He kept everything. It took three months to do the inventory.''

It was only then, convinced that she had no alternative, that Mrs. Breton Elléouët reluctantly chose to sell the collection. ''A few works have been sold to the Pompidou and the new Primitive Arts Museum,'' she said. ''As for the rest of the collection, during 35 years of representations we received not a single proposal or offer of help.''

Michael Kang's The Motel

I haven't attended VC's Asian Pacific Film Fest for two years straight now. It's not that I have an aversion to APA films, but more of a general apathy. I just never see anything remotely exciting or worthwhile or even entertaining.

In fairness, this extends to black and Latino (American) filmmaking as well as national Asian cinema as well. For instance the so-called Tokyo and Korean new-waves are no-waves. Two exceptions: I liked Park's Oldboy, but didn't care for the other two in his "Revenge" trilogy. Then there's my friend Danny's documentary on Pancho Gonzalez, Warrior of the Court, which was better than I thought it would be.

In the end, movies are a real commitment - you decide to block out 3-4 hours of time inclusive of commuting. If it's a fest, even more. So, for me, it was just a matter of diminishing return, plain and simple.

So finally, my daughter picks out Michael Kang's The Motel, and not only was I pleasantly surprised, but really impressed. Perfect? No. Would I have done some things differently? Of course, but what was interesting was listening to Kang's - and Jeffrey Chyau's & Sung Kang's - commentary. How in certain scenes where I would have told the actors to do it differently, the way Kang justified it. That line between maudlin/just right... and the way people see it so differently...

But that's minor shit talkin'. For what I'm assuming is his first feature, he delivered. And while I'd heard of The Motel since it'd done so well at Sundance, my paranoia kept me away. So, thanks to DVD and a lack of good stuff, The Motel finally caught up with me.

Kang not only has good instincts/taste, but really knows what he's doing. He exudes the same confidence that Dayton/Faris did on Little Miss Sunshine. It's doubly satisfying; not only is it a solid flick, but I can at last point to an APA filmmaker and not feel embarrassed, but in fact, pretty proud. I hate to keep making this about me - hey, it IS my dumb blog after all - but as I was saying, for me, that's a breakthrough.

Believe Me, I know

Renee-

There's so much swelling in my chest that it's hard to get it all straightened out.

Parents and teens are in an awkward position, for it's the first time when kids begin to really see themselves, the world, and yes, their parents, in a different light. But with care and thought, a warrior, as Don Juan would say, traverses life with her cup overflowing. She has what she needs and then some.

Luis wrote about the challenge of dealing with his son Ramiro during his teen years, relating it to his own experience. And he says it much more eloquently than I ever could. His words mirror my thoughts and express the profound love and affection I feel for you. I hope they make sense.

With all my heart,

-dad


Twenty years ago, at 18 years old, I felt like a war veteran, with a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I wanted the pain to end, the self-consuming hate to wither in the sunlight. With the help of those who saw potential in me, I got out.

And what of my son? Recently, Ramiro went up to the stage at a Chicago poetry event and read a moving piece about being physically abused by a step-father when he was a child. It stopped everyone cold. He later read the poem to some 2,000 people at Chicago's Poetry Festival. Its title: "Running Away."

There's a small but intense fire burning in Ramiro. He turned 17 in 1992; he's made it so far, but every day is a challenge. Now I tell him: You have worth outside of a job, outside the "jacket" imposed on you since birth. Draw on your expressive powers.

Stop running.

Luis Rodriguez
Always Running
La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.

Inside Looking Out

The sad thing about consumerism at the top, ie: American consumerism - is that it carries the weight of veracity. That is, we luxuriate under the grand illusion that afflicted the bio-racists, such as Binet, of colonialism's heyday: That rationalism, hard science, logic, and economics were proof of western (subtext/subliminally, white) culture being superior.

On the obvious level, well... there's just too many examples of how gross we are as a consumer society. I remember I saw an aerial shot of an industrial sized cattle and hog farm, which had huge swaths of brown running out of them.

Yes folks, they were rivers of crap. Shit rivers.

For those of you who aren't aware of the implications of this kind of food production, take my word for it: it's bad news on several fronts and all of them having to do with the environment, your health and animal cruelty.

Yes, we Amerikkans are the fattest, grossest, most wasteful and consuming-est... and as was true in "The Mysterious Orient" a fat kid was a sign of posterity.

Which serves as a weird prolegomena to this chain of events:

1. An article which appeared in Jezebel;

2. A solicited response of a Woman of Color by an editor at Racialicious; and,

3. My response below.

While I think the original Jezebel article speaks to all of the naive aspects of Amerikkkan culture/peeps, the thing that leaps out to me is Sarah's admitted ignorance; "I was not into interna'tl politics at ALL..." [sic] But there's a catch; she takes the usual colonialist's way out and places the onus on the Other: "I started wondering about Islam and why people hated the U.S. so much." Typical.

It reminds me of the time when a white gal asked Malcolm if there was anything she as a white person could do, and he hurt her by saying "No." While Malcolm wishes later he hadn't told her that, he then makes a very valid point: white peeps, instead of attempting to understand the Other, should FIRST understand themselves.

As the cliche' goes, there's two sides to every story, and as Rashomon points out, sometimes more. This means understanding history outside of the usual pablum we are fed via the US conglomerated news media. A good place to understanding why any Other peeps hate us is to look at ourselves, our foreign policies of invasion, installation, and yes, terror. Think about Korea, Japan, Vietnam, El Salvador, guns for hostages trading with Iran, the Janus-faced creation of Saddam and then his lynching... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, uncle scam LOVES to fuck with Others and then open his eyes wide and ask with upturned palms, "WHY do 'they' hate us?"

This is the main problem I have with Aaminah. Additionally, unless one is being entertaining or funny, I've grown a thick skin toward peeps who have to qualify their responses with a level of physicality. So she pukes because of Jezebel's transgression. Ok, you are sickened, literally, by such ignorance and flaunting of power. But unless you get white people in power to turn the mirror of reflection on themselves and away from the microscope of examining the Other, you can't possibly expect white people in power to "get it."

Empathy and self-reflection; two huge things missing in Amerikkkan consciousness. And yes, it all comes full circle folks. Remember our reality, those comfy two-car garages, our lattes and Sunday strolls on Malibu Beach or the barrio/ghetto where even mainstream news media is ignored, but yet the blaring spam of corporate consumerism is heard loud and clear? That's our psychological blanky, and we're like big babies, being fed pablum while told, "THIS is the life."

It isn't. It's OUR life. Rife with all of the Stepford Wives and their manicured lawns that reach their fingers into our brains and massage it - CONSTANTLY. And with that comfort comes the assurance that what we are doing must be right, otherwise things wouldn't be so good. What's dumbya's big tagline; "They hate our freedom."

Freedom to do what? Buy a $10 sweatshirt at Wal-Mart (China's largest consumer and therefore instigator of mass pollution. Take a look at Beijing's air sometime - it's disgusting) and feel like you got a deal while being blisffuly unaware that some Chinese person worked like a machine cranking those out in a sweat shop for a dime?

Wasn't it dumbya who said in 9/11's aftermath, "Go out shopping?"

This is why I say, Marx got it wrong. Religion isn't the opiate of the masses, it's that rectangular piece of plastic with "Mastercard" on it.

Aaminah concludes by saying that rags like Jezebel can't be expected to incorporate Other views. Well, news bulletin: YEAH. But by not calling them or even Sarah (whom she kinda lets off the hook) out to turn that reflection back on themselves, she misses the opportunity to get white peeps to do the most important thing in life: look at yourself. Clarification: pointing out their prejudice is fine, but relating it to the overall terrain of mass media and how they are no different from, say, the major broadcast networks in that regard.

The thing is not being surprised, or shocked, or even sickened. Ok, you can get sick, but to make that the lead in to your piece instead of calling out whites for their lack of self-understanding misses the boat. In so doing, you've made your revulsion the theme. It's like balling out a kid for leaving his computer on while his room's a mess. So ignorant white peeps, like little kids, don't wanna hear it, and keep on "leaving their rooms a mess."

So keep telling them their room's a mess.

That's your job, to point out their pathology, and not to stop until they get it, not to make it about you, and your revulsion, your shock. Is it tiring/wearying/a pain in the ass? Of course. But, seriously, who gives a flying fuck about your shock (or mine for that matter?) when powerful old white men are running amuck and giving Others plenty of reasons to hate us ... ? I mean, c'mon, check out Exxon-Mobil's profits over the past two years - records for any corporations in our entire history. (Save for Walmart who rose to number one this year, but Exxon-Mobil was right behind them) Think there's some connections to be made here?

It's like what Don Piri Thomas said his dad told him when he was a boy; that before attempting to smell other peep's caca (bullshit) that he should first start with himself and realize that he had plenty of his own.

The Triumphant Sun

That unmistakable major tone that distinguishes greater from lesser poets. -Andre Breton on Aime Cesaire Those who've helped me find my way out of the various fogs in my life are owed a debt that can never be repaid. All I can do is pay homage and be thankful for having found them. So it is with Aime Cesaire, a titan of a being if ever there was one. His passing not only removes a true voice against oppression, but marks the end of an era for me. The last of the classic Surrealists, it was through Breton that I first discovered Cesaire, first, in his poetry, then in his diatribe Discourse on Colonialism, which pre-dated Fanon's later, more well-known works. But what I appreciated so much about Cesaire was his insightfulness, the way he'd analyze the colonial dynamic down to the interpersonal level, down to the way one spoke. In the French colonized Carribean, that meant an ongoing war between Patois and French, which I talked about in an earlier post that cites Euzhan Palcy's, Sugarcane Alley. By the way, Palcy made a doc on Cesaire which I was lucky to see at the Pan-African Film Fest several years ago. It's good, and quite a thrill to see the man himself.

As the story goes, Breton was on a layover in Martinique and in a haberdashery when he picked up a copy of Tropiques, edited by Cesaire, and began to read one of his poems. Immediately struck by the Surrealist techniques, Breton hunted Cesaire down. Cesaire would confirm his allegiance to Surrealism, not only in technique in art, but the morality of the "movement." It's easy to take pot shots at Breton these days, and in certain snobbified circles, it's of a fashion. I myself have plenty of problems with the man, and the many "ex-communications" throughout Surrealism's stormy existence (Ernst, Desnos, Aragon...) attest to this fact. And as problematic as it is for a privileged, white Frenchman to bestow the seal of approval upon a black colonial, he also staunchly praised him to the skies and brought Cesaire to the attention of those who could take his voice to the ends of the earth. Cesaire's intransigent spirit was like a giant pillar that runs to the core of the earth. When like so many other leftists, he joined the French CP, he soon became disillussioned with their ability to answer the colonial question, but specifically, the black question. Negritude. Like Ellison's nameless Invisible Man, the CP would fall short and prompt a great riposte, his ascerbic, Letter to Maurice Thorez, the then CP head. I try and communicate to Renee that you have to get your head and heart right. That means having an intellect that's armed to the teeth, but the spirit to fire rockets. To not be a pussy doesn't mean acting hard, it means being hard. The kids in the barrio have it all wrong; it's not their fault, because what do you expect from a situation like that? Which is why Dr. Huey P. Newton's observation that the best Panthers were always the brothers off the corner, the hustlers, gangstas, fucking degenerates, because once politicized, they became fierce enemies of oppression. Were there problems in that scenario as well, like sexism and homophobia? Of course. That's a fact. But that doesn't invalidate the revolution that overcomes a person in shedding that "old skin." After all, don't those things also exist in boardrooms and any other echelon of power? Or worse, amongst priests who pray on young people? And so Cesaire spoke to and for "those who don't even speak proper French." This my favorite poem that I cited last year. Aime Cesaire is dead. Long live Aime Cesaire. 

JUDGMENT OF THE LIGHT

Transfixing muscles and blood devouring all eyes this intense bright mass of foliage crowning with truth our usual lights a ray a spray from the triumphant sun by means of which justice will be done and every arrogance washed away Household vessels and human flesh slip away into the thick neck of the waves silences by way of contrast have begun to exert the most substantial pressures

Around the circumference of the circle among public activities along the riverbanks the flame stands solitary and splendid in its upright judgment

Step Up

Today, Fish and I went to a spoken word event by the Step Up Women's Network. Normally, I don't go in for these things, but I've been looking for a program that Renee can plug into, and since Step Up works with girls of color, from "under-served communities," all the better.

As expected, their pieces were melodramatic - I don't consider that mean, but truthful. They were unpolished, at best. That may be due to any number of factors, but it's evident that they need a director to step in, or money, or...

That said, I really enjoyed myself. It was good to see these brown girls had found a resource, that they'd been validated in some way. And what their performances lacked in polish, they more than made up for in their charm, and in fact, their stumbling, forgetting of lines, stage fright... all added to the effect. They were, dare I say, all very cute.

But it never fails - amongst all of the voices, one stood out: Cristina Zamora. Afterword, the girls had a meet and greet, and we connected. Cristina, courtesy of South Central, came from the typical South Central scenario, but the eagerness in her eyes, and most of all, the open-mindedness with which she would listen when I spoke, were only confirmation that programs such as these, no matter how embattled they may be, are ultimately worth it if they can pull a young person out of La Vida Loca.

Cristina read "Always Running" by my homeboy, Luis. Hopefully there will be a connection there as well.

She dreams of being an architect, and I told her that if that's the dream, she's in a world class city for architecture. She loves to draw, and it made me think about myself as a boy, how, deep in the hood, art was always there, saving me a million times over.

The Degenerate's Diary: And the Devil said, "Let there be Vegas, Baby..."

In Vegas, they’ll bet on anything. One casino was ready to let me bet on whether I’d win or lose there.
-Anonymous

As I've chronicled here, I'm a degenerate in the same way reformed alcoholics say they are still alkies. I'm sure I would have been skinned alive under Stalin for any number of things, but if it's one thing that chaps my ass about this country is its rampant hypocrisy.

Take gambling.

I've been mulling over the thesis for a long rant about "gambling and life." It goes from the concrete to the theoretical and back fairly easily, for example:

1. All investing is gambling - no exceptions. Whether you're buying a house, government bonds or 100 shares of Sirius, don't fool yourself - it's GAMBLING.

2. The reality is that every one gambles, every day. For example, if you drive, you're gambling that someone in oncoming traffic doesn't have a death wish and, a'la Chris Walken in Annie Hall, just plow head on into you.

Then I get discouraged and think, "nah," cuz in the end it just comes off as more of my curmudgeonly ranting, which of course, it is.

But goddamn me, I love gambling. It's just so much fucking fun. The patron saint of degenerates, Artie (Lange) once put it so on point: "If you're bored, just put a couple bills down on whatever game's on. It's instant fun."

Now, part of the blame must be shared with pops, for I'm the son of a degenerate. Hunter S. Thompson said: "For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth." And Vegas was mean to pops.

One of the bennies of LA is not only that it's one of poker's capitols, but it's a hop-skip to sin city. In fact, LA's Vegas' #1 cash cow. There was talk at least a decade ago about putting a bullet train between us and them, but the nimby-ists ("not in my back yard") won out. In some ways, I'm glad...

Anyway, one of my earliest memories was of driving there with my parents before the strip was the happening place. I'll never forget driving onto Fremont and seeing the big neon cowboy with his arm cocked, saying, "Howdy, partner". The place had an instant fascination for me mixed with foreboding, and that's a psychically volatile concoction.

Pops pulls over to the curb (can't do that now) and leans on the door: "Wait here." He disappears into the Golden Nugget. About an hour later he comes back, climbs in and doesn't say a word, but I know something's wrong.

Pops was not only a degenerate, but he suffered from one of the most lethal forms of dilettantism: gambling. Although I never talked to him about it when I got older, I'd wager he never even understood the raw basics of gambling.

It's that basic lack of understanding that has made guys like Steve Wynn billionaires. It's rather nauseating, when you think about it: Vegas is founded upon the principle of extracting money from the uninformed. Those who catch on are excluded, like card counters in blackjack. (Poker's an exception because you're not playing against the house, which makes its money on the rake)

I've never been to Amsterdam, but it is of course legendary to Libertines. But I have a hard time imagining how Amsterdam, or any place for that matter, could top Vegas. It ain't called sin city for nothin'.
===================================

A weekend in Vegas without gambling and drinking is just like being a born-again Christian.
-Artie Lange

There is always a sneer in Las Vegas. The mountains around it sneer. The desert sneers. And arrogant in the middle of its wide valley, dominating those diligent sprawling suburbs, the downtown city sneers like anything.
-Jan Morris

Someone asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
-Gloria Steinem

A man's gotta make at least one bet a day, else he could be walking around lucky and never know it.
-Jim Jones

The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil.
-Heywood Broun

I've been on such a losing streak that if I had been around I would have taken General Custer and given points.
-Joe. E. Lewis

It's a corny old gag about Las Vegas, the temporal city if there ever was one, trying to camouflage the hours and retard the dawn, when everybody knows that if you're feeling lucky you're really feeling time in its rawest form, and if you're not feeling lucky, they've got a clock at the bus station.
-Michael Herr

Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.
-Pope John XXIII

Man, I really like Vegas.
-Elvis Presley

Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it.
-Tom Stoppard

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up. If it doesn't go up, don't buy it.
-Will Rogers

Vegas means comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness all at the same time.
-Artie Lange

Timeless

As a wishful musician in my mis-spent youth, I was lucky to come up in an era radically different than what Renee is currently in. The 70's was a breeding ground for so many groundbreaking movements, where even jazz was undergoing a major overhaul what with the "children of Miles" - the fusionists - cranking their amps to 11.

So it was that in 1975 I stumbled across an artifact now known as an album that called my name: "The Tony Bennett and Bill Evans Album."

I've always been a fan of stripped down music, exemplified in rock by the traditional guitar, bass and drums configuration. It's simple and yet, because of technology, can fill an arena. But this album is different and almost wholly unique in that it showcases two supreme artists performing standards - voice and piano.

I was aware of Tony Bennett but til then never a fan; Evans, one of Miles' kids, I knew of through musician friends and Miles, the most obvious being "Kind of Blue." (The album I had playing when Renee was born. Cliche', I know, but it was interesting when one day I was playing "Freddie Freeloader" when she was only about 6 and she stopped in her tracks and said, "Hey Daddy, I know this song.")

From the very first notes of "Young and Foolish" I was hooked. This album brings it, folks, and goes to that realm where there is no "classic" or "modern" category. It transcends.

Another of Miles' kids, the late great Tony Williams, was one of the greatest artists I was lucky enough to see perform - several times! I can remember reading an interview with him at that time, and they asked him what was grabbing his attention, and he mentioned the Bennett and Evans album. I can remember him saying something like, "It's extremely musical."

I was lucky enough to see Bennett last year, and like with Etta James, his voice has lost it's range, he's very old now. But the richness, the timbre are still there. It's still a great instrument, the one ole' Blue Eyes himself said was the best in the business.

Bennett's at the height of his powers here, rich, powerful, perfect phrasing, total control... he lays it all out. When you think about all these jerkoffs on "American Idol" that amounts to nothing more than karaoke with marketing, it's really hilarious. If you know nothing about technique, try this sometime; listen to those kids, whether they're singing or spittin'rap, and listen to their intake, when they inhale. I pointed it out to Renee once by saying that he (I think it was one of the generic so-called gangsta rappers) sounded like a wounded seal.

By contrast, you can barely hear Bennett inhale and most of the time it's silent.

This is the perfect album to have a romantic meal by. (Well, the truth is there are some melancholy songs like "Some Other Time" and "We'll be Together Again," but just put it on low enough so that s/he can't clearly discern the lyrics.)

If you want music unadorned by flash bulbs and red carpets but infused with that certain something that lets you know that indeed, there is beauty in life, then look no further. It's sublime.



ps: Carmen McRae has an extremely rare album of just her singing accompanying herself on piano that's bad too.

My Sista Maloy

With the dearth of good Asian/APA writers, it's about time I wrote about a bad Asian sista; you can click through to her old blog above, but her new blog is subscription only.

Besides being smart, what I appreciate about Maloy is that she brings an Asian national perspective that is rarely within the realm of Asian Pacific American (APA) consciousness. It was evident when I first began reading her posts on colonialism. And as someone who has historically had to fetch deconstruction on colonialism/post-colonialism from outside of the Asian/APA circle, more often than not from black intellectuals (like Cesaire, CLR James and Fanon, and others such as Don Bustany, Said, Zinn, and the Surrealists), she was a breath of fresh air.

And as I've said before that Michael Moore's work, despite it's polemical nature, is insightful. But it's a rare feat when someone can take serious subjects and make them funny and entertaining. Comedians such as Bruce, Carlin and Rock do this, and Moore really hit the bull's eye with Sicko. Maloy's entertainment factor isn't always on because sometimes she's just being straight serious, but generally her blog's smart, and she's really entertaining.

Did I (just) mention entertaining? Mix parts of Amy Winehouse train wreck, good writer, up to snuff colonial deconstruction and fashionista. Oh, and goldsmith.

Now, watching Renee grow up has been fascinating. She's acutely aware of how lame APAs are, how they worship at the feet of all things that only sink one deeper into "the system" and fog the mirror of self-reflection. There's a real price paid in that worship, and one of them is the utter lack of strong role models available to her as an Asian woman. They simply don't exist.

And here's something many of you might not know; for a good part of her life, Renee has spent significant amounts of it in Hawaii, which is dominated by Asian/Pacific Islander culture. Well, "dominated" in spite of being overrun by white culture, if that makes any sense. Also, my father was born there, and I've relatives who call it home.

So I turned her on to Maloy a while back, and she was an instant fan, as I suspected she would be. It's funny, but Renee and I can be out eating and catching up, and we often bring up Maloy's latest take, and we're off to the races, using it as a touchstone for analogical and analytical discussions about everything from music to colonialism to the sorry state of APAs.

It's weird how I live in a city rife with Asian nationals and Americans, but I feel outside of the circle. There's a fundamental rift between us and it's always been there. Perhaps it has something to do with me having been raised in a Chicano culture, I don't know, but I've always been at odds with "them." I mention that rift because while Maloy and I have never met in person, I feel much more at home with her ideas than the sterile nothingness of APA politics and art. (In fairness, there are some very talented APA comedians who I wish would get a shot. Honestly, there are some funny suckas out there)

A while back I wrote to Maloy and we've corresponded a few times, and despite her sometimes curmudgeonly blog demeanor, she comes across as really sweet on an interpersonal level. She even helped Renee once with a life situation, and for that I'm thankful. Hey you remember being 16, right?

But I guess among the things I really appreciate is her honesty and forthrightness. She pulls no punches. And as someone who endures a goodly amount of passive-aggressive behavior in his life, she's a welcome change.

So here's a raised glass to you, Sista Maloy, on the other side of the world.

Stay up!

"False: The main guy was Chinese," said Ben Mezrich.

Oh? Not American of Chinese descent?

Saw a screening of 21, and while I don't play blackjack for money, as most degenerates, I like gambling. In fact, when rushing, it's better than drugs, and my damaged chromosomes will attest to me having done my share. Plus, as Norm MacDonald pointed out, while like a lot of addictions it can easily be abused and turn into a nightmare, it's a bad habit where you can make a lot of money.

I was already familiar with Mezrich's story because Andy Bloch was on his team of nerds and he's all over poker now. He's a really solid player, having reached heads up a year or so ago versus the legendary Chip Reese for the most prestigious title, the WSOP H.O.R.S.E. Championship (a $50K buy-in and comprised of 5 poker games; Hold-em, Omaha Eight or Better, Razz, 7 Stud, and Eight or Better 7 Stud, thus the acronym) where they played a record-setting marathon match of 12 straight hours or something crazy. Reese won, thus cementing his fame and affirming the general consensus even before his win as the best overall poker player.

Anyway, as it turns out, for 21, the filmmakers changed the main character who was Asian in real life into a white guy.

Not really surprising, and you'd think I'd be used to it by now. And let's face it, if they had done this to black Americans, there would be a chat room or two ablaze right now and the NAACP would be preparing talking points for CNN. Even black leaders who are nuts have sizeable followings because they at least utter some truths that hit the bull's eye about being black in America-ca.

But Asian Americans?

As I've said ad nauseum; Asian Americans truly are the model minority because they'll eat shit and not complain. In return, they get to live in burbs, drive middle of the road used-bar-of-soap-shaped cars and foster the great ability to turn off empathy and even more, critical thought and introspection.

And while there's plenty of dissent within black discourse, they have the great "ability" to move forward with the effect of total mass.

But whatever small blips of dissent emanate from within Asian American circles is squashed. Our leaders - what a joke - are buffoons or marginalized into the twilight zone, and even when they see a sliver of light, the door slams shut. You know, the door marked, "We Don't Take You Seriously - AT ALL."

Internally, Asian Americans practice the great art of eating your own to unparalleled levels. How is that, you ask? Well, you NEVER hear Asians in mainstream media talking shit do you?

Proof's in the pudding. Don't get it twisted folks. Two apropos cliches: Talk is cheap, and, actions speak louder than words. Despite high-minded brain farts on Asian American forums, chat rooms, etc., the Asian American perspective is dead and well. In fact, it's not even dead, because you had to have had life first in order to die.

It's like a C horror flick: ASIAN AMERICANS ARE...THE UNBORN!!!

This is why as I turn into a crusty old fart, it's getting increasingly annoying living in America. Materially we can't complain - well, I use that advisedly, meaning: those who still have their heads above water. But forget the "drinking the kool aid" cliche', Asian Americans're mainlining like crazy. While I suspect white people will always be afflicted with their superiority complex, it's Asian Americans who make me wanna jump out a window.

Or throw them out.

Amerikkkan Socialism: Comparing "Welfare Moms" and Wall Street Shitheads

Shocking New Evidence for the Existence of God!
Jailing of S&L chief heartens theologians



With all of the stuff being pumped out about the continuing disaster that is the American economy under dumbya and now, the Bear Stearns disaster, I think the key point to the working stiffs is: You know, the Fed is bailing them out.

Here are two other bailout instances:

(1) Back in the 80's when that icon of American business, Lee Iacoca, along with his shithead MBAs destroyed Chrysler, the Fed bailed them out.

(2) When the S&L fiasco - remember that jerkoff Charles Keating? (photo above) - played itself out, ultimately the Fed bailed them out.

It's called "insurance," or "Federally Insured" or, worse, "protecting the economy," but is in reality corporate welfare. I say this because of the corporate shitheads and their pr shills that are always railing about the evils of "socialism" and yet, meanwhile, all of the above examples are billions of dollars in social welfare, taxpayer money, doled out to these jerkoffs.

Btw, one of Bush's brothers was involved in Lincoln Savings and Loan. Big surprise, eh?

Now, if a gambler comes up to you and says, "I'll give you 2 to 1 on a coin flip," you'd take it. That's for every time it comes heads he gives you $2, but every time it comes up tails you give him $1. Now, what if the stakes were for millions and you knew he had nothing to lose, in other words, he had Fed money backing him up. It'd still be a good bet for you, but the bet is risk-free to the proposer.

And as we all know, for every winner, there's a loser(s). That's built in to this money bilking system's dna.

That's exactly what we have. It's risk-free gambling for big money corporate interests. Well, the risk is diverted to us taxpayers. Rich folks don't worry about that because that's what shelters, off-shore accounts and loopholes exploited by their well-paid economic hitmen take care of. You know, those mba jerkoffs whose soul-less work is to serve their masters while justifying it by driving Range Rovers and living "the good life" in suburbia.

There are few more curmudgeonly peeps in the world than Bill Maher, but I happen to agree with him when an interviewer once asked him point blank for the one single thing he'd do to change the political system here. Maher: "You gotta take the money out of the system."

Realistic? No. But right? Yes.

And because "the system" infects everything, it's why mega-corporate money can get their comments inserted into mainstream mass media so that it becomes mantra and stigmatizes the poor. But since "welfare moms" aren't rich, organized and connected (ie: conglomerated like the corporate interests) they are easily demonized.

Unfair fight between the senior bully and the freshman nerd? You bet.

And here's the rub: that demonization serves a valuable interest. It's an old and very fundamental magician's trick, really. It's called misdirection. this is very simple and obvious stuff that all of you know. And yet, it worked well in any number of historical examples and continues able and well.

That basic principle informs the legal system and law enforcement practice to the bone. Policemen, let alone detectives and surely DA's, aren't concerned with catching corrupt corporations and politicians that bleed the laity dry and keep them dis-empowered. They say the real threat to our Amerikkkan way of life are "young, gang-related brown kids."

Or peeps wearing turbans.

The ONE exception is if there is too much sunshine, as with the junk bond, S&L and Enron cases. Then they literally have no choice.

Shift the spotlight on to education. How much research is done on "the attendant ills of the hood" versus "the political assumptions and economic practices of large corporations"?

Before mis-education and believing the party line, there must be a compound question: What are the facts and are there other arguments? Peeps look where they are TOLD to look. Goebbels understood this all too well.

Rather than blather on as I am wont to do, try this on for size. From the upcoming April issue of "The Nation." Read on...

The Gentlemen's Bailout

[from the April 7, 2008 issue]

The Federal Reserve's announcement of an open-ended bail-out for Wall Street's endangered financial firms and banks opens an ominous new chapter in what might be called "market socialism with American characteristics." If Washington tries to do something for "losers" who are ordinary citizens, financial titans complain about violating free-market principles. When the titans themselves are going down, they rush to their patrons at the central bank and demand extraordinary relief. Government must save the big money, we are told, for the overall good of the economy. Thus, the financial system's reckless losses--approaching $1 trillion but probably far more--are being "socialized," dumped on the public, the very people victimized by its snares and falsified valuations.

Put aside the obvious hypocrisy and greed. This nation is on the brink of a historic catastrophe. It requires emergency responses from the federal government on a scale not seen since the Great Depression and the New Deal, the subject of this special issue. Yet the rescue party is composed of the same people who co-wrote this disaster. They are, first, the financiers who indulged their own appetites for extreme wealth and enlarged a financial system of esoteric fakery that inflated prices and profits. Second, the close collaborators were the Federal Reserve and other authorities who blessed this dangerous concoction and declined to enforce prudential standards.

Now the hoax is falling apart. Many millions of innocents, here and around the world, will suffer painful consequences. The authorities, meanwhile, are trying to "save the system" by propping up failure. We do not suggest that the government should not intervene. On the contrary, it must intervene far more forcefully--using the unique emergency powers of the Federal Reserve and Congress to cauterize the wound and take over private firms if necessary. To impose stern new rules of conduct on financial firms as the price of rescue. To ensure a reliable flow of capital and credit to the real economy--industry, commerce and consumers--which has been bullied for many years by Wall Street's distorted values.

In a nutshell, here's what the Fed did after tortured negotiations with Wall Street players: it first bailed out Bear Stearns with a loan that failed to reverse the collapse of the firm's stock price and assets. Then it gave JPMorgan Chase a loan guarantee of $30 billion to protect it against losses as it took over Bear Stearns. Most significant, the Fed promised open-ended loans on easy terms to some twenty other major investment houses to protect them against the same threat. Nobody can put a price tag on all of the central bank's rescue promises--many hundreds of billions if the deterioration continues--but the main point is, the Fed has agreed to take the rotten financial paper, such as home mortgage securities, off the hands of these troubled firms.

What did the Fed demand in return? Not much, it seems, but nobody knows. These private deals were made among gentlemen of high finance; no need to bother the public with complicated details. If that sounds harsh, check out the websites of the Federal Reserve Board and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Their brief, utterly opaque announcements were addressed to bankers, without a word of explanation for citizens. In this crisis, the Federal Reserve is an untrustworthy agent for the public interest. Its institutional bias is to defend the club members and cover up its own errors.

To understand the gravity of our larger situation, think of this crisis in three layers. The first layer is the panic--the visible worldwide flight of investors and other banking interests from the poisoned assets in the US system. The second layer is the deflation of Wall Street's long-running hyperinflation of financial assets, the value of stocks, bonds, short-term loan paper and other instruments. For two decades, the Fed tilted monetary policy to favor capital over the real economy of production, creating dangerously lopsided conditions. Now Wall Street is going through its own contraction, and many more high-flying firms, including hedge funds, will fail or be taken over at bargain prices or both. In the long run this should be good for the US economy, restoring balance that the Fed's one-sided monetary policy destroyed. But in the short run it could be perilous--starving the productive economy of credit.

The third layer of crisis is the massive loss of US capital. That means more debt will be piled on the nation's already massive indebtedness to foreign creditors. One way or another, the country cannot restore itself unless it replenishes lost capital--not simply for banking and finance but for the overall economy. To put it bluntly, this means a bailout from abroad--the Asian and Arab nations with vast surpluses of capital. Those nations (one hopes) will buy larger shares of US companies, including Wall Street, or lend directly to the US government or both.

An activist government would respond aggressively on many fronts, but unfortunately we don't have one. Congress, including most Democrats, has been utterly deferential to the Fed and the financial titans. The President is clueless, though he may still veto any positive legislation. But this crisis won't wait for the next election. Here are some steps that Congress ought to try now:

§ Force the Federal Reserve to come clean about the secret terms of any deals it made with the bankers. What operating rules did the Fed impose on the firms it assisted? What is the real public exposure to loss? These bailouts should strip failing firms and shareholders of their entire assets, including contracts that allow CEOs to ruin their firms and then walk away with $100 million in severance pay.

§ The central bank needs a public agenda for bailing out Wall Street--a set of new requirements on future behavior in investment and banking that begins to reform the financial system. If a troubled bank refuses to accept these terms, let it fail. If necessary, put the firm in receivership and take it over.

§ Create a US recovery fund to invest in restoring the real economy, not the shrinking financial system. It would borrow capital to support an aggressive agenda of public investments. This fund could take over the ruined securities now held by the Fed and manage them for some years until they can be gradually put back into the marketplace without slaughtering homeowners or depressing real estate prices. Any firm bailed out by government must be prohibited from ever buying back these assets on the cheap, profiting on its own failure as Wall Street firms did in the savings-and-loan crisis.

§ Americans need to increase their savings safely. Congress can create a federal savings fund that pays modest interest rates and protects savings against inflation and the shenanigans of private funds. This savings pool, guaranteed by government, can lend capital to the recovery efforts and even become a first step toward repairing the broken pension system.

In other words, it is time again to think big, the way New Dealers did. But even reform-minded legislators are intimidated by the power of Wall Street money and ideas. The crisis might change that, as politicians begin to realize that Wall Street is yesterday.

Greenheads

Renee and I love graf, and it's been in my life since before the hip hoppers took it and made it widely known as well as evolved it to wild stylin'.

We don't see much that's worth mentioning here in LA, but one set I've been meaning to document is the "Greenheads" on the corner of 3rd and Main downtown.

So without further ado...

Shithead of the Month: edgar barfman

I've just watched this big whoop-dee-doo CNBC piece on the burning Rome that is the music industry, and I have to get this out.

[cue riotous laughter track]

Why they are choosing this topic now is beyond me, because the signs and the models in place for its destruction were there years ago. But the producer(s) chose to highlight, of all the music industry oligarch shitheads, edgar barfman, the same shithead who ran Vivendi-Universal as well as Dumbya did the oil companies he was given.

To hear this jerkoff talk with authority on the ills of the industry is at once laughable and sad, because it's painfully obvious he is a dinosaur. And the times have just completely left this piece of shit behind. It was painfully evident when asked if indies can compete with the oligarchs, and he said that getting a presence on to every cell phone, billboard, yadda yadda yadda, would be very difficult.

Yep, he's without a doubt the shithead of the month.

The piece cuts to a meeting room of slime-warner music "MBA's" - oh, yeah, I forgot, MBAs are the ones who can figure out anything. And one young thing after another is commenting on how they have TI's ringtones ready, and his myspace page ready, and a select video on Youtube ready...

What a bunch of fuckin' GENIUSES!!!!!!!

[cue riotous laughter track]

I commented on all of the chickens coming home to roost over four years ago when talking about the industry to indie filmmakers. Indie filmmakers need to take a good hard look at the musicians who have and are doing it without the barfman's of the world jacking up everything.

But the trick is that there are a lot of parts (the music industry business model of distribution-as-monetized-model, most of all), so it takes an effort to put them all together and figure out why they relate, but when you do, it's like opening the door of a dark room onto a sunny day.

On a side but related note, there is a real need for a legit org to come along and truly help indie artists with the myriad things to manage in their work as well as their lives. Think about something like health care; for indie artists to conglomerate and leverage their numbers to obtain bargain rates would be a huge step. That conglomeration can also be leveraged toward any number of things - after all, that's exactly what corporations do.

Where is the intelligence and entrepreneurship that will step up?

Total Mass & The Green Divide

What is the endless fascination we have with giving over our own personal power to others? Why do we choose not to hook up with others in ways beyond commercial and manufactured interests? And what is the price for this collective choice?

Some think that the recent activity around global warming is the wake up call we've been waiting for, that as the cause of causes, we are now mobilizing to action. But if it's true that power concedes nothing without a fight, then this will be the super bowl of fights. How can it not, when Exxon-Mobil posted record profits for any corporation in history?

So if it's the "green movement" being led by celebrities, politicians and pundits, that's one thing. But all of the hoopla around the tech revolution hasn't filtered down to the vast majority of mud peeps in the world, creating the digital divide.

And so to the green divide.

I'm pretty dialed in to the so-called "green movement," and none of the celebrities, politicians, academicians, and least of all, the so-called "experts" address the green divide in any way. At most we have pockets of movement (1), and one notable exception.(2)

It's not a critical mass issue, and there are no shades of grey here. Here's a major point; none of this green activity means anything without total mass.

Don't believe me? Think of it this way; what good does it do if there's critical mass but the Exxon Valdez's of the world are running amok? (Yes, over ten years later, Prince William Sound is still jacked up)

60,000 plastic bags, by Chris Jordan


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1. Frisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is a good guy. The city recently banned plastic bags. If you think that's too tree huggerish, run the numbers: 60k bags are deployed every five seconds in America; about 2% (or less) of those bags are recycled.

Then there's Majora Carter, a bad sista who returned to the South Bronx to create Sustainable South Bronx. With great common sense she's linking the green struggle to poverty and addressing both in the process. With Van Jones they've further created Green for All which takes the themes of inequality and jobs by advocating for green collar jobs. Talk about good vision meeting great strategy.

2. Australia mandated all light bulbs be CFLs by, I believe, 2010, sparing the expulsion of millions of tons of C02, helping wean off of the insanity of oil and/or coal while easing pressure on their grid. Not to mention saving money.

One More Tourney Win

A small table today cuz I didn't have the energy to sit through 2+ hours of grinding.

Given that, the head's up with "penske5" was unlike any other I'd personally been involved in. The lead changed at least half a dozen times, and there were several river suckouts by both of us. In the end, your boy won, but honestly I was glad to finish.

But I guess Sunday's my day. Catholics have their high mass, I guess my low mass is as an ultra low stakes gambling fool.

Tourney Win Today

I've been getting back into it, chump change little sit 'n gos, but it's still good to know I can make my way through a field. Anyway, soon as I can devote more time, I'll definitely increase the stakes.

Ossesione: Henri Langlois and the Cinematheque Francaise

Noel Burch, the greatest of film theoreticians, says that the way a filmmaker approaches filmmaking is influenced by his language. Thus, the term "editing" in English has a distinctly different meaning - and practice - from the French term, "decoupage." It helps explain (particularly in the early work of Godard and Bresson) the wide gulf in filmmaking strategies between French and American filmmakers.

I say this because all of this would be mere conjecture were it not for the monumental effort of Henri Langlois and his - and Georges Franju's - staggering creation, Le Cinematheque Francaise. Beyond Hollywood, it is the cathedral of movies.

To say Langlois was a mere archivist is to trivialize his story; and what a story it is. And his love for movies, if "love" is an adequate term, is not provincial. The dude was a maniac, saving anything, particularly his love of loves, nitrate. He helped create the great Pacific Film Archive, up the street from me, in Berkeley.

...but for his titanic efforts, the history of the cinema would have remained what it was for Bardeche and Brasillach [writers of the first French film history, Histoire du Cinema, in 1935, later translated into English by Iris Barry]--souvenir postcards brought back by a pair of amiable but not very serious students from the land of darkened auditoriums.
--Godard

One fascinating part of the story I'll mention is during the Vichy period:

Co-Founder, Georges Franju:
When the Germans came, there were about three hundred films; when they left, there were three thousand. Voila!

Where did those 2,700 additional films come from? Without taking any credit from Langlois (or Franju), the truth is that they were able to save so many prints thanks to a German. And not only a German, but Frank Hensel--army officer, Nazi, president of FIAF. [Federation Internationale des Archives du Film]

For this and so much more, get Richard Roud's excellent, A Passion for Films: Henri Langlois and the Cinematheque Francaise.

A Long Overdue Toast: Glen Ford & BAR

This is too long overdue, but brotha Glen Ford and his Black Agenda Report hold it down on the real.

If you don't know then don't ask somebody, just check it out.

Coming up in East Los, we were subject to the usual stigma of intellectual thought as anathema. You were either a thug, an athlete, a dopehead, whatever. But an intellectual? No way. Chris Rock talks about the anti-intellectual stance in the ghetto in his famous "books are Kryptonite to Niggas" riff.

I was lucky. Moms had a big library and I could pick and choose. Whenever I wanted to go to the bookstore, she'd drop every thing and we'd go, usually to the Alhambra Bookstore. Like me, she'd be content to just browse for hours.

My survival in the jungle is marked by what I can only conclude was a decent ability at athletics, I had a mouth on me, and wasn't a complete jerkoff.

This is what makes the four great stories of the American urban landscape - Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets, Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, Malcolm's Autobiography..., and Luis Rodriguez's Always Running - so fascinating; each were street urchins, and each found the keys to their freedom when they discovered the wonders of intellectual thought through reading, and just as importantly if not more, writing. I still remember Malcolm saying, so poetically: "Never was I so free as in prison [while reading]." (To these I would also add Dr. Huey P. Newton, Jimmy Santiago Baca, David Hilliard, Elaine Brown, and much underrated and little known, Anne Moody, her story not strictly urban and in fact rural in the early stages. But what a story, what a great writer.)

Their stories are more than an escape from poverty, crime, etc. They are great stories of human triumph against tremendous odds, of spirits meeting their time. Transcendence.

And as such they are truly inspiring, in the best sense of that word.

My world has been tremendously influenced by them all, and I owe them a debt of gratitude.

Glen Ford (and BAR) are carrying the torch today, but in a different mode than autobiography. His gig is journalism, and this brotha is fiercely independent. This is the kind of journalism that is sorely needed, and how I long for an Asian-American counterpart.

BAR brings the fire, people. As the late great Tony Williams said back in the day; "Believe it."

Upset City: Superbowl 42, Glendale, Arizona: Giants 17, Patriots 14

What a game. Renee and I were yelling and rooting for the Giants big time.

I normally don't diary my blog [sic], because it's fucking boring to read about the minutiae of peoples' lives; "Oh, today I had to go car shopping..." Fuck that. But this game was just incredible to watch.

My thoughts.

1. The Giants defense was the MVP (Not Eli, who got the award and the Caddy). Five sacks on Brady, plus untold hurried passes. This on a QB that had been sacked only 21 times in the season. Even more incredibly, the Giants D held the Pats to 82 - eighty two - TOTAL yards for the first half. This offense, praised to the skies, running like a finely tuned machine and record setting.

So here's to the TRUE MVPs: The NY Giants defensive front four: Michael Strahan, Jay Alford, Justin Tuck, and Osi Umenyiora.

2. David Tyree's catch was one of the most clutch plays I've ever seen in sports; it literally was pinned to his helmet. This is perhaps "The Catch 2."

3. Perhaps even more, Eli got away from seeming doom, somehow escaping the clutches of Pats who had his jersey stretched, to make the miracle throw to Tyree. And although theirs was not for a game winning TD like "The Catch," this was a do-or-die play on the last drive of the game, trailing by 4, they had to have a first down.

4. On 3rd and 11 during the Giants' last drive, I think after "The Catch 2," Manning connects with Steve Smith (a Trojan) on an 11 yard gain for a first down. Context: It's the last drive, THIRD down and I think only 1 time out. But here's where the subtlety of sports kicks in. When Smith caught the ball, he was off the first down marker by at least a couple of yards. He quickly spun and caught the marker and did two critical things: (A) He advanced the ball beyond the marker, and (B) he went out of bounds, stopping the clock. THAT's a pro. And it's those kinds of "little things" that champions do.

And further, it was Smith earlier in the game who missed a crucial catch he bobbled and should have caught, and was intercepted.

5. The Pats' Wes Welker was unstoppable; 11 catches for 100+ yards, sustaining drives and keeping momentum. The dude's only 5'9", and a buck eighty five. He is really great to watch, kinda reminds me of Utah's Dick Stockton. In fairness, it helps to have a stud all-star like Randy Moss deflecting defensive attention. But watch Welker on iso, there's no denying he knows what he's doing, and he's good.

6. Here's something no one mentioned, or I think even noticed; when New England got the ball with I think under a minute left, Tom Brady got rocked on first or second down by Jay Alford for a loss. Flat on his back, his hands immediately went up and signaled a "T." Like him or not, that truly is a consummate pro, to get hammered for a crushing loss when you have to get something going, but you have the presence of mind to do the right thing.

7. The line: O/U = 55. I said under, so did Renee. The Pats were giving 11.5 or 12, depending on the site – I took the Giants.

Terry Bradshaw, he of four rings and the HoF, himself said in the post-game show that this was the greatest Super Bowl he'd ever seen. I'd have to agree; Renee and I felt like we'd been through the ringer. Artie's head must have exploded in excitement; I can't wait to hear what he says on the Stern Show tomorrow.

Man, what an upset. But was it really? Earlier in the season when they met, the Pats won, but that game could have gone either way. Very easily.

Whatever the case, Super Bowl 42 was definitely one for the ages, not only for the upset, but just as entertainment. It was really fun to watch.

As a kid, I remember the first time I saw that classic pic of Giants legend Y.A. Tittle, (who played only two years for them but throwing a then record 36 TDs in his second to last season.), I was riveted. He's sitting on the field, helmet off, head slightly bowed, blood trickling down his balding head.

Well, somewhere in Mudville, now they can add ole Y.A. smiling at the G-Men.

Tourney Win Yesterday

I GARONTEE !!!!!!!

I slam my country so much for being shitheads, that it's about time I said something positive about America. And one of them is indeed its multi-racial/cultural heritage.

But not in that populist, jingoistic way.

Moms came from a big family; they were farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, home to the famous Lindsay olives. My mom's generation, the Nisei (second gen Japanese Americans), were generally not that well off; many were hard laborers, gardners and, like in the case of my family, farmers. To the rest of the world, California is the land of Hollywood and liberal kooks, but little do they know that you don't have to go far here to get to the country. That's Lindsay. Think "Hooterville" and "Green Acres" and "Bugtussle" and "Hee Haw." Well, maybe it's not that hardcore, but you get the picture.

Moms was the second to the youngest of nine, my Auntie F was number 6 I believe. I mention Auntie F here because she happened to marry a black man and she herself, in taking after her mother, raise 8 kids. They're all terrificly talented, educated and just plain good peeps. My cousin Joey, who's close to me in age, is one of the funniest muthaphukas.

So the story goes like this; The W's - Auntie F's family - were in town from Chi, where she and Uncle J met at the University of Chicago. Some years earlier, their good neighbors from Chi moved out to LA, so, we had a huge pow wow at the Jones' house. They too were black.

This all leads to "Papa Joe", my uncle's father, who also was in attendance. I only met him a handful of times, but I remember him being very slender, tall, and sort of regal, not in a haughty way, but down-home, if that makes any sense. And, as I recall, he made the gumbo for our pow wow.

The picture of the bowl in front of me is one of very dark soup, like a gun-metal grey, with a lot of stuff in it. I taste it - endorphin rush!!! I asked Papa Joe what is this? And he tells me it's gumbo.

And then the line that sticks in my memory; "That's dirty water gumbo." I look back at the bowl; yup, it looks like dirty water. Perfect. Man, that shit tasted gooooood. Like Little Richard says: "It makes ma big toe shoot up in ma boot!"

But being in LA, there's no Louisiana style cooking here, and specifically Cajun. I've been lucky enough to have been in "Nawlins," and tasted some good stuff.

Which brings the trip to gumbo as a multi-cultural signifier, being from Cajun, French, Native American, and black/African (the name itself is African derived) influences, and Justin Wilson. He had a show on PBS many moons ago, and although I am a city-slicker, I loved watching but more, listening to him. The play in language is something else, and his accent is the freeze. There's plenty of his stuff on Google Video, although the quality's uneven at best, and although he's gone, he has a site. Anyway, ole' JW, that dude made some down home shit and was really entertaining.

Gumbo is one of the great things about America and although it's simplistic to say, really is a melting pot. Fish's family every other year makes gumbo, and man we pig out like crazy - like this past holiday. While I prefer crab in mine, fire up the J-Dub video below and listen to him brew up some chicken gumbo. But not before a story treat, of course.

I think Renee and I are getting fired up to make some.

And that's what ahm gonna did. That's for true.