"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


partial zoom


detail


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.

Third LA Biennial

Fish and I went to the Third LA Biennial at Bergamot Station last week. At the end of this entry is the LA Weekly cover story that promoted the event. I've edited out the rundown of artists. If you want to read that list summary, click on the link, but I don't know how long they'll keep it live, so do it soon.

Track 16 Gallery hosted the event, but the entire complex opens up, and it's really cool to just gallery hop, watching all the drunks as well as checking out bands and, of course, artists on display.

The thing of it is that the Weekly is just too good of a pr machine; the place was packed.

As for the artists, I hated the lot except for the few below found at galleries outside of Track 16:

Unkown - it was hanging near a staircase, but I forgot which gallery...

The following two are also unknown - same gallery, but in a back room

The night of the biennial, Joey Remmers at the Copro Nason Gallery made an impact:

He reminds me of a combo of Delvaux and Magritte with a splash of cartooning thrown in. While I can admit that there are technically superior painters, I like Remmers' sense of space. For instance, in the last pic he is simultaneously in extreme close up and long shot. But he does texture well too, like the flies...

Then there was the funny Ed Colver, also courtesy of Copro Nason. I swear, I took my daughter to Bergamot yesterday and we busted up at this:

Colver also indulged a bit...

But the best collection hands down belongs to Grey McGear Modern.

Camille Vojnar

David Febland

Jeff Weekley

Leslie Balleweg

David Febland again

In each of the artists there's a streak of Hopper running through them.

While I had fun at the Biennial, it was simply too crowded in Track 16. What's cool about Bergamot is all of the nooks and crannies. For instance, Copro Nason is at one end where a band was playing outside. It's really nice to go on a weekend afternoon, as Renee and I did yesterday. There's even a tiny people park in the parking lot.

=============================================

Some Paintings

The artists in the third L.A. Weekly Annual Biennial

By DOUG HARVEY

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 3:45 pm

Some paintings give me diamonds, some paintings, heart attacks

Some paintings I give all my bread to, I don’t ever want it back

Some paintings give me jewelry, others buy me clothes

Some paintings give me children I never asked them for.

—Jagger/Richards/Harvey

Painting is dead. Painting isn’t dead. Painting is dead! No, it isn’t! Yes, it is! Isn’t! Is! Shut up shut up shut up shut up!!! Okay, now that we have that out of the way... Painting isn’t the denial-plagued zombie elephant in the room — art theory is. It’s one of the lines Leonard Cohen left out: Everybody knows a work of art that doesn’t speak for itself is a failure as a work of art. Fortunately, in spite of the best efforts we critics have mustered to impose Artforum’s Rules of Order on the rabble, art — and particularly the medium non grata of painting — just won’t shut up.

Painters in the contemporary art world, particularly those from L.A., have to maintain a chameleonesque indeterminacy about their artistic intentions — be all things to all people — or face ghettoization. Is this an abstract painting? Or a painting of a painting of an abstract painting, wink wink? It’s the emperor’s new clothes all over. The ultimate irony is that the emperor is actually decked out in an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat — the plausible deniability cultivated by painters for the social sphere creates a temporary autonomous zone in the studio wherein a thousand flowers have blossomed. No one can pin them down, so they can get away with anything. The psycho art-market bubble hasn’t hurt production either.

An exhibition featuring the work of these artists runs Jan. 12–Feb. 16 at Track 16 Gallery in Bergamot Station. Opening reception is Sat., Jan. 12, 7–11 p.m., with refreshments and performances by the Spirit Girls, Wounded Lion, John Kilduff of Let’s Paint TV, and more.

So the question that generated “Some Paintings,” the third L.A. Weekly Annual Biennial exhibition, isn’t whether or not painting is a dysfunctional plastic category, or what makes painting relevant in today’s global-a-go-go art world, or even “How can curating a painting show make me seem clever?” It is, simply, “What would it look like to have a broad-spectrum sampling of contemporary L.A. painting in one space?” We just got tired of waiting for some high-profile museum to put it together. How difficult could that be?

Pretty difficult, as it turns out. The hardest part has been the narrowing down. With an initial list of more than 300, and a dream of whittling the list down to a 60-something précis (which ended up closer to “90 under 90”), the shuffling and reshuffling of possible permutations — looking for correspondences and polarities, designating redundancies, and trying to orchestrate a multiplicity of often-dissonant artistic voices into some vague coherence — was just the prelude to the grim task of making the necessary cuts.

I don’t even know how many painters are in this show anymore, but it amused me that at the point I began to write these capsule profiles, there were 78 — the same number as there are cards in a tarot deck, a pictorial system that condenses all the possibilities of life into one set of archetypes. Past, present, future — all will be revealed! Perhaps there’s room for interpretation after all. Just cross my palm with silver.

Both Sides Now

I remember the first time I saw Chrissie Hynde as the waitress in the Brass in Pocket video - I was, like, Who the hell is this broad? I mean, she's not exactly a beauty, but she's super compelling to watch. And she's damn sexy as hey-ell.

Great song, really compact, great riff, chorus... it is weird to think that this was when MTV really was Music Video Television. Almost thirty years ago! It's also weird seeing James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon...

Now, I was never a big Pretenders fan, but a few of their songs are really good rock songs (like "The Wait") and pop music gems, and I say that reverently, because I came up on pop inclusive of R&B. And although I have deep love for my jazz/blues roots, there's an unprecedented element that was ushered in post-war with rock n' roll: the show. From the stepping of James Brown and his subsequent "exhaustion" toward the end of his show and the draping of his cape to his miraculous revival (!), to Tina Turner and the Ikettes shimmy shamming in their mini skirts (and giving all the white boys boners while making white girls look on in horror/jealousy at true talent unleashed, among other things) to the pyrotechnics of Jimi at the Monterey Pop Fest, Rock and pop music entertained in a completely different manner. One of the great things was that it blasphemed the establishment in ways that made kids go crazy.

And the volume was an integral part of it (although not as much of an element with R & B): Cerwin Vega had a great slogan on stickers that I plastered on my amp: "Loud is Beautiful, if it's clean." But perhaps the more apt one was, "If it's too loud, you're too old."

The Devil's music, indeed, but what a show.

These days I rarely see live music, having clubbed and arena'd myself a lifetime in my youth. Which is sad, because although I'm old, I still love a good show, as evidenced by my enthusiasm for the Eagle Rock Music Fest. There's nothing like seeing a live show.

That's where I think the kids of today are missing something special. In the 80's, there were so many great shows around, from big arenas to dives and everything in-between. Many of those places - The Masque and The Starwood come to mind - are legendary in the LA scene but are now gone.

Perhaps the best thing about the punk scene was its chill factor. I was once at an informal jam in a house in North Hollywood where D. Boon was playing; he was so loaded he couldn't keep his guitar on right and resorted to wrapping the strap around his neck because it'd come off the back button (near the guitar neck). My buddy Thrust and I were cracking up. I got to talk to Boon a bit and he wrote his name and number on a matchbook which I still have. Years later I saw fIREHOSE and reminisced to Watt about Boon. I showed him the matchbook and he just held it and got all wistful. I kinda regret showing it to him, but he's moved on, now gigging with The Stooges. Good for him.

Today, in the post-MTV era, kids are bombarded in ways we weren't. As a consequence, they have little to no knowledge of underground/indie bands, let alone the presence of mind or wherewithal to withstand the relentless spam of the mega corps.

So in a stylistically jarring roundabout, we're back to The Pretenders. The first time I heard "Kid" I loved its composition and great arrangement. I didn't really identify with the lyrics because I thought it just a "story song" - I don't think Hynde was a parent at that point. Now of course it reminds me of my daughter. So, here's to you, Renee. I know you're going through some teen stuff right now, but guess what? Odds are good you'll come out of it okay. I have pretty good instincts, and when I think of you that's what I feel. Bottom line, your old man loves you, more than you know.


KID WHAT CHANGED YOUR MOOD
YOU'VE GONE ALL SAD SO I FEEL SAD TOO
I THINK I KNOW SOME THINGS WE NEVER OUTGROW
YOU THINK IT'S WRONG
I CAN TELL YOU DO
HOW CAN I EXPLAIN
WHEN YOU DON'T WANT ME TO

KID MY ONLY KID
YOU LOOK SO SMALL YOU'VE GONE SO QUIET
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT I'M ABOUT
I WON'T DENY IT
BUT YOU FORGIVE THOUGH YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND
YOU'VE TURNED YOUR HEAD
YOU'VE DROPPED BY HAND

ALL MY SORROW, ALL MY BLUES
ALL MY SORROW

SHUT THE LIGHT, GO AWAY
FULL OF GRACE, YOU COVER YOUR FACE

KID GRACIOUS KID
YOUR EYES ARE BLUE BUT YOU WON'T CRY
I KNOW ANGRY TEARS ARE TOO DEAR
YOU WON'T LET THEM GO

Sisters in Law

Watched PBS's excellent doc series, "Independent Lens," who showed Sisters in Law, a play on the strong sistas meting out justice for females in Cameroon.

Here's IL's description:

In a small courthouse in Cameroon, two women are working to change a village—and making progress that could change the world. SISTERS IN LAW follows tough-minded state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba as they help women in their Muslim village find the courage to fight difficult cases of abuse, despite pressures from family and their community to remain silent. With fierce compassion, they dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure, handing down stiff sentences to those convicted.

Inspiring and uplifting, Sisters in Law presents a strong and positive view of African women—and captures the emerging spirit of courage, hope and the possibility of change.

Just see it, if you can.

Sour Shoes

It's about time I wrote about Mikey DelCampo, aka, Sour Shoes, a Stern misfit. Unlike the Wack Pack, SS is talented and has a sense of pop history. I listened to his recent holiday show and broke out laughing so many times and had a smile on my mug I'm glad I was working alone. He's been a contributor to the Stern Show for a long time, but was only given his Sirius show fairly recently.

I don't suffer entertainers easily - I walk out on movies all the time. Folks, I listened to his show four times!!!

It's weird to describe what SS does - basically he can play classic rock/pop at the drop of a hat, some impressions, and some wacky voices. For me it's a combination of his deep play list, chops, cultural references, and manic delivery. He edits on the fly - one sec he's riffing on Alan Parsons, and all of a sudden Marv Albert is calling play by play, then without missing a beat Parsons is back. And he does it all impromptu, because callers make their requests and he just goes. In fact, the holiday show he produced had a girl call in who somehow had knowledge of an old 70's kids show, "New Zoo Revue." And he riffed on it!

The guy's also kind of a maniac; he's 30+, lives with his parents and is practically a virgin. No wonder he's got so many skills. But what's super funny is he'll call the Stern Show which airs at 7am EST and be wailing away, and Howard, Artie or Fred will just crack up and say, "Can you imagine what his parents must be thinking, listening to this ruckus this early in the morning?"

Seriously, the dude has issues; Stern said that SS used to follow him around NYC while he was doing his business, until one day he had to read him the riot act. Thankfully, SS continued to call in, evidently, constantly.

His Scotty Ferrall is indistinguishable from the real Ferrall. The guy is so entertaining, and kudos to Stern for giving him his show. Personally, I think he should just have Sour Shoes in the studio, kind of like what talk shows do with a band.

Not My Idea, but I'll Take the Check, Thank You.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
-T.S. Eliot

I've just watched Naomi Klein on her Charlie Rose book flacking tour, and I must say, while there's no doubting her good intentions, (here I go again), it amazes me how what passes for insight and incisiveness is "just another white liberal's discovery of (fill in the blank)."

Her take on "disaster capitalism" (I can see her editor chiding her, "You need a buzz phrase! You know, like, "The L word," to make it stick), which basically boils down to a catastrophe (natural or human-made), posits that when a population is in calamitous shock that it is a prime time for monetization, baby. So, bomb the fuck out of the Japs and then bomb them with credit cards.

What dope can't see that? What dope hasn't seen that, a loooooong time ago?

It gets better, folks. In 2005 she was evidently on some big fat list of "world's leading intellectuals" or some such poll taken on the net. Whoopee friggin' doo, now brainiacs have an Oscar show cum People's Choice Awards. And although Chomsky came out on top, Camille Paglia, I see, is still around, although she did come in behind Wolfowtiz. Gotdam, I don't think I could live with myself if the world said Wolfie was smarter than me. Oy.

Given her lineage, Klein's prominence is just the natural growth spurt of a pre-ordained chain of events. In fact, one would have been surprised if she had not been successful, what with her blue blood.

Her forte, evidently, is globalization, and I thought it amusing in the least when she was going on about the WTO protests in Seattle a few back. She said, and I paraphrase, that "the irony of it all was that protests were happening worldwide, facilitated by globalized networks... that the protests were really about the march of corporations..." And other such horseshit.

I suppose this marks the latest litcrit fad as a conflation of the mundane and the obvious. My, how out of touch I am.

It also points out how certain people have opportunity before them, and how most people these days really have nothing to say, then plagarize, steal and co-opt. Gladwell's "Tipping Point" is a perfect example; what marketer worth their salt isn't familiar with what he talks about? Even more pernicious is the way in which recycling takes an evil bent, as with Herrnstein & Murray's "The Bell Curve." (Which couched 17th century "scientific" eugenics in a modern-day take and aims its scope at "inferior" mud peeps. Stephen Jay Gould, god love him, blasted Murray [Herrnstein died shortly after publication from intellectual dishonesty] to smithereens. Ah, Gould, where are those who have sipped from your golden cup?)

To her credit, Klein talked about the way Bechtel was monetizing water (I believe in Bolivia) and the way water prices rose 300% and the evil way it was claiming unfair competition when citizens were capturing rain water! What she failed to deconstruct are the ways in which, when corporations install themselves, they are aptly positioned to lobby and institute the system of payoffs in order to leverage their monetary interests into political reality and then subsequent leverages. Talk about unfair competition.

But even more egregious, she passes this "discovery" of hers off as if she were Columbus. The truth is, Alan Snitow produced and directed an excellent doc, Thirst, in 2004. While Klein told Rose that she had been laboring for four years on her book, anyone who's produced a movie -- especially one as auspicious as Thirst which spans several countries -- knows pre-production not to mention research and then raising money (unless one is rich) begins way before production, much less release, the latter sometimes occurring years after production.

I don't fault Klein for putting the topic out on the table for discussion and in fact appreciate it; I do fault her not citing Snitow's work. Surely a non-fiction writer as acclaimed as her ("No Logo") must do hardcore research. How could she not mention Snitow's film? It's not like it was relegated to the doc ghetto, after all, in perfect poetic/ironic symmetry, it aired on PBS's POV, Rose's own network!!!

$ = $ = $ = $ = $ = $ = $ = $

Now the conversation on my part will shift gears, although it relates to Klein's theme, because I want to talk about recent history; the rise of global capital and, specifically, the way it was enacted via its audience. Is it wrong for Klein to say that corporations go forth and run roughshod over the world in the pursuit of capital expansion and profit? Of course not, but one of the "problems" of her kind of analysis is that she falls into the trap of examining symptoms, or re-labeling symptoms as causes, while positing the wrong things as causal agents. Yes, corporations are "bad" and "do bad things", but they are only the expression of what enabled them to do so - an American capitalist system.

For the individual, dis-empowered as they may be, I think it can be persuasively argued that macro arguments such as these obfuscate and further the illusion that there's simply nothing to do. Thus, the, "What can I do, I'm just one person?" syndrome remains unchallenged.

Now drill further; by what means have these corporations extracted their booty from the laity? For my money, that's the trillion dollar question.

First, we have to understand an axiom; that as a basic principle, and insofar as it concerns global capital, nothing is reified in this world without an audience. Global capital as mass consumption defined in absolute, demands large common denominators.

Second, what are the means of capturing said audience?

A brief historical look back is first in order. (I've actually mentioned this before in this blog) It's a favorite question of mine to ask friends, "Only 3 or 4 decades ago, the baby boomers protested against and helped stop a war, ousted an evil president, fought for civil rights, and women's rights. But in the 80's all of that began to radically change with the rise of the Yuppies, Wall Street and the `greed is good' zinger, paving the way toward the present day march of globalization. How did that happen in such a short span of time?"

[By the way, I'm no Marxist and think Marx ultimately got it wrong. And while I think some of his critiques of capitalism are spot on, there's no way Marx - or anyone then - could have foreseen the current manifestation of global capital and the rise of the mega-corps.]

Think about this before you read on for my take, because it is one of the most serious things to consider in our lifetime. It encompasses everything; colonialism, the rise of multi-nationals, foreign policy, co-opted mass media, group-think, mind control (seriously)....

Over the years I've heard many different answers, but the one thing I noticed amongst them all was that they never boiled down to specifics; how this system was funded. (Let's leave the system of state-funded corporate welfare and theft via taxes alone for now. For a roiling critique of that, see: David Cay Johnston's "Perfectly Legal" - highly recommended, although a tough read.)

Here's my take, and it's simplicity itself; I remember being in school in the 80's and walking down Bruin Walk at UCLA. Then, Visa and Mastercard and probably AMEX had tables with freshly scrubbed people handing out applications for credit cards. And they were easy to get.

Fast forward to today, and we can now see the residue of that insidious scheme; record numbers for credit card debt, and a system of slavery so far-reaching that it touches virtually every facet of modern life.

Eighty percent of American households have at least one credit card.
-Source: www.cardweb.com

Total credit card debt in the United States has reached about $665 billion on bank credit cards and about $105 billion on store or gas credit cards. According to the Fed's G19 release, the total is roughly $800 billion.
-Sources: www.cardweb.com and the Federal Reserve

I remember one spring, just before summer break, talking to a friend and asking what her plans were for the summer. "Oh, travel. Europe or Asia." I asked how she, a student, was going to fund such a trip. Her answer pre-figured this entry; "Oh, I'll charge it. You know, us college students, we're the privileged poor..."

And there you have it - too simple, you say?

On the face of it, yes, but when you think about the insidious way credit hooks each and every one of us consumers into the mix, I don't think it's a leap to see how the consumer conditioning finds fertile ground in this scenario.

What I really mean is, Marx got this completely wrong as well; religion isn't the opiate of the masses, it's the ability to get something, and get it now, "painlessly" ... that's the ultimate drug.

This is why it's much easier to punish the laity these days. Commit all kinds of horrendous shit and be the worst administration in history, but as long as the people have cable, McDonald's and their SUVs, they may groan and bitch, but they will not revolt. They will medicate by ... SHOPPING!!! Wasn't it dumbya himself who, after 9/11, urged Americans to go out and shop fer god's sakes? Read: suck on that crack pipe, and even though things are horrible, at least you'll feel better. The Boomers hadn't drunk the Kool Aid - yet - which helps explain why in the halcyon 60's/70's they got up off their asses and did shit, not just talked about it.

That addiction to a "vastly improved" consumer lifestyle provided the impetus for mass marketing on an unprecedented scale. Take Nike, for example. Their timing couldn't have been more perfect, pioneering out-sourcing in the 70's (cheap imports were already an American staple, marked by the, "Oh, `Made in Japan?' That's cheap," signifier), first in Japan, then all throughout Asia, because once the standard of living rose, labor became too expensive in Japan. Which raises another interesting question: What happens when labor has become too expensive everywhere? It's not like there are an unlimited number of undeveloped countries - we may not and probably won't see the end of this string in our lifetimes, but it has built in obsolescence.

The naysaying absolutist Friedman/Rand free-marketers point to raising standards of living for developing countries, completely ignoring business metrics such as total cost of doing business, a highly subjective but, necessary analysis when talking about something as impactful as out-sourcing. In an elementary equation, they'd say having a car(bon)-based transportation system, such as LA, is worth it because it raises standards of living. The immediacy of being able to get somewhere, pick up loads of stuff, then cart it back is, a high luxury. Despite terrible air. It's like saying you can have an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but every day someone is going to show up and piss in it. BUT, you've got an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

The problem is now exacerbated by longevity and intransigence; simply, the familiar. Go into the hood to any Walmart (China's largest customer, the world's largest corporation and with all of the heirs in the top ten richest people in the world) and you'll see the drug-addicted going crazy. Why? Because they can buy a sweatshirt for ten bucks.

And while everyone's implicated, you can't fault the working poor for wanting to pay less, but you can point fingers at mega-corps like Walmart for extracting capital out of local communities and concentrating it in a tiny fraction of the population.

The implications spread out further; schools and an educational system that's simply incompetent insofar as educating kids into the real world with even a basic understanding of real-world economics, mass media (who suck on Walmart's crack pipe) and politicians who are intellectually dishonest about the way globalization wreaks havoc, both here and abroad.

I've gone on too long here, but if you're still with me, the only way to fight back is to consider your dollars as votes, or even, as JT said the other day, as a representation of your energy. Where you place that energy is something to consider.

Beyond a ten buck sweatshirt, and beyond the Klein-esque macro view of globalization, and in an ironic twist, it really does boil down to agency.

Much to Ayn Rand's chagrin.

Zero Degrees of Separation

Beware of those in whom the urge to punish is powerful.
-Goethe

Zero Degrees of Separation looks at the Middle East conflict and the Palestinian Occupation, through the eyes of mixed Palestinian and Israeli gay and lesbian couples. Ezra is against the Occupation, yet he’s an Israeli. His partner, Selim, is a Palestinian whose protests against the Occupation landed him in jail at age 15. Ezra is a simple plumber whose courage and cheek take on prophet–like proportions as he travels across the country risking his life to protest the walls, fences and military checkpoints that divide them. Interwoven with their stories is footage of Elle Flanders' grandparents, who were intimately involved in the founding of the state of Israel. Through these home movies, Flanders artfully retraces her grandparents’ travels as they tour a fledgling nation brimming with pioneering joyous youth, immigrants, refugees and endless open vistas of the Holy Land, contrasting the ideals at the birth of the “holy land” with the reality of today’s Israel, a country mired in the rubble of Occupation.

Just saw this on Sundance and if you can, see it. Beyond the usual rhetoric of Zionist/anti-Zionist dialog, it was really interesting to see the way just regular folks were dealing with the madness of the situation.

It may not be earth-shattering to hear their stories, but anything outside of the mainstream bullshit here in Amerika is a breath of fresh air. The fact that they are gay/lesbian adds another layer.

I recall the first time I heard (either through my friend, Don Bustany, or Ha'aretz) about the faction of Israeli soldiers who are protesting the occupation by refusing to serve. They have of course been suppressed by being thrown in prison. That only furthered my thought that I'd bet the average Israeli and Palestinian just wants all the insanity to stop.

I've been witness to beatings, and they surely don't rival the madness of the Israeli occupation, but I remember the way it made me feel watching it. This is where Fanon's (psychiatric) take on colonialism is incisive in the way it critiques the colonizer's psyche, how it becomes "bestialized." But what happens to those who witness?

If it's a Newtonian given that "For every action..." then one has to ask what indeed happens when someone brutalizes. I mean outside of the given emotion - feeling sadistic, being pissed off, seeking vengeance, feeling bad, etc. Is there another dimension to this situation? What happens to witnesses? (again, outside of feeling?)

I'm reminded of the scientific discovery of the act of observation; that scientists discovered, when observing sub-atomic particles -- the very essence of matter, that the very act of observation changed their behavior. Therefore, Newtonian symmetry mandates that something happens to the observer.

The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There is no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.
-Arundhati Roy

While I love Roy's quote, the fascinating thing to consider here is that something biologically concrete takes place beyond the socio-political construction - within (Without? Both?) the observer.

Ignorance may indeed be bliss, but in this proposition, is it the only refuge?