ADVICE

Kurt Vonnegut offers some sage advice--ostensibly about writing, but really about life--in a lecture entitled, "How to Get a Job Like Mine." Vonnegut was a tricky writer, a conjurer of worlds and a secret sharer. He was a lifelong pessimist who somehow offered hope. And he knew about semicolons. Don't use them.



And so it goes.

For the rest of this great speech, look here.

OUTLAWS

Here are two old geezers time has ravaged but not defeated. Something about Keith Richards and Willie Nelson playing together, two outlaws from different worlds, that ignites a feeling of hope. With any luck Willie will live forever, and Keith--he's harder to kill than Rasputin. If drugs, booze and falling out of a coconut tree and landing on his head couldn't do it, I doubt something as mundane as old age will kill this Stone. Anyway, these old-timers can sure play a sad song. They had it all, all right. I just hope they left a little for the rest of us. Now pass me that jug.

Keith and Willie

These guys obviously have a lot of fun--maybe too much fun--but the fun continues, and for the grand finale they're joined by a couple youngsters carrying on the tradition, rocker Ryan Adams (doing his best Keith impersonation) and Hank Williams' grandkid. Together, as the "lost highwaymen" (a nod to grandpa Hank), they sing an old Stones' song, Dead Flowers. Ragged company, indeed. Can you imagine the wrap party?

SMALL TOWN SURPRISE FOR HATERS

A showdown between bible thumpers and drag queens? You'd think we were talking about San Francisco, but we're talking about sleepy little Silverton, Oregon. Here's the story about the ruckus surrounding Stu Rasmussen, the small-town, cross-dressing, transgender TV repairman who became mayor of this conservative rural town. How did that happen? And what happened when hatemongers from the Westboro Baptist Church showed up to hassle "sinner" Stu? You might be surprised. This story goes beyond simple red state/blue state dichotomies.

Here's an excellent radio story about the Silverton clash from WNYC's Radio Lab:



The Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for intolerance. The church, run by Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas, first gained national attention for showing up at funerals of US servicemen with "God Hates Fags" signs, proclaiming to the grieving family--and to the media--that this soldier's death was God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality. So is 9-11 and AIDs, they said. Yup, they're crazier than shithouse rats. Still, this cult--and that's what it is--represents a dangerous strain of homegrown American fascism that feeds on ignorance and hatred. They are a strange breed, both fearful and enraged, the shock troops you might see at teabag rallies and anti-immigration marches--or in old newsreels of Nazi Germany. Christians? Hardly. I have a feeling if Christ showed up teaching peace and love they would be among the ones that would crucify him all over again.

Here's some local television coverage of Silverton, before the hatemongers showed up:

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

Howard Zinn, Historian (1922-2010)

On July 30, the FBI released the 423-page file they had kept over the years on left-wing historian Howard Zinn. Zinn died in January, and as a final example of their dickishness, the Bureau--still clinging to the ideological apron-strings of cross-dressing Hoover--waited until Howard was dead and gone before letting the file out. Nice. In a free society--truly free, not just free for platitudes--a national police force might not have the power to harass and intimidate dissidents and keep dissenters under surveillance.

Zinn in the forties

Yes, sometimes surveillance may protect the public good, but all too often it is used as an arm of the status quo to protect state power. From the Gestapo to the KGB, from Stasi to SAVAK, from Dina in Chile to the death squads of El Salvador, secret police forces (and not so secret ones) have been used to silence, harass and "dissapear" dissenters and critics of the state--all in the name of security. Abu Ghraib ring a bell? CIA black sites? Operation Phoenix in Vietnam? How about Cointelpro? Look into the Chilean coup in 1973, the Guatemalan coup in 1954, the assassination of Diem, and so on. We don't just export Coca Cola and Hollywood movies, but also thumbscrews and misinformation, torture technicians and spies and military "advisors." But you know that.


Back in 2008, Howard was asked how he'd like to be remembered.

Shocking as it may sound, America has its own secret police, its own dungeons, its own gulags. Maybe that's inevitable in a super power. Why would we think others are capable of such things, and not us? Are we that pure? Of course not. There are "black ops" we never hear about, secrets kept from the people on a daily basis. It would be naive to think otherwise. As usual, might is used to protect the rich and powerful, and massive military-industrial interests trump the common good so frequently it's not even newsworthy. It's a case of dog bites man.

Zinn in the sixties

Howard Zinn wasn't a bomb-throwing anarchist or a devious spy, but a white-haired teacher, a former bombardier in World War II, who was struck by his conscience and who wasn't afraid to speak up. He was smart, and very politely, quietly, he noted that the emperor had no clothes. His book, "A People's History of the United States," awakened many Americans to the real history, the secret history of our country. Only in a society quaking in its boots would that be a radical act, but it was. Too bad he's dead--I bet he'd have liked to see what the feds wrote about him.

Why do the feds fear thinkers like Howard Zinn? Chris Hedges, war correspondent and author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," asks that very question in his column in TruthDig.

"We are amassing unprecedented volumes of secret files," Hedges says, "and carrying out extensive surveillance and harassment, as stupid and useless as those that were directed against Zinn. And a few decades from now maybe we will be able to examine the work of the latest generation of dimwitted investigators who have been unleashed upon us in secret by the tens of thousands. Did any of the agents who followed Zinn ever realize how they wasted their time?"

Read the rest of Hedges' column here.

SUMMER BIKER FLICKS

Summer fun: "The Wild Angels" (1966) existed somewhere between "The Wild One" (1953) and "Easy Rider"(1969) and not only by the year of it's release. The first had a brooding Brando, a tough outlaw biker with a heart of gold, and the latter was a hippie horse opera with choppers instead of horses--a western, basically--with two drifters looking for America.

Well, Roger Corman's "Angels" wasn't as good as either of them. It was a cheesy "bikesploitation" flick mostly suitable for the summer drive-in, but it featured some cool bikes and a great "Blues Theme" by Davie Allen and the Arrows (which is featured in this opening sequence). Present day Harley owners--mostly middle-aged accountants wearing weekend headbands and expensive leather--take note. It's about freedom, man.



Johnny (Marlon Brando) and Chino (Lee Marvin), two rival motorcycle gangleaders, face off in "The Wild One." Chino has just stolen Johnny's trophy (which Johnny stole from someone else earlier in the film). A great scene from a classic. (Trivia fact: Chino's striped shirt was later worn in real life by Sonny Barger, leader of the Oakland Hell's Angels.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SATCHMO

Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971)

TINY ARTIST QUITS DAY JOB TO PAINT

Will success spoil Kieron Williamson? Kieron is only seven years old. He didn't start painting until he was five. Now he's a huge success.



According to the Huffington-Post, "All 33 works in the Norfolk, U.K. native's most recent collection of oil and watercolor paintings sold for $236,850 to customers as far away as South Africa in a record-breaking 33 minutes."

Yes, the art world is a fickle mistress. Weep, weep, underachievers.