WAR NOT GOING SO WELL

"A majority of Americans say the United States made a mistake getting involved in the war in Iraq, and the increased numbers of troops in recent months has either made things worse or had no impact at all, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll."
-NY Times, Sept., 9, 2007

Let's face it. The war is a disaster. The only people benefiting are politicians and private contractors. But you know that.

It's an old story. War profiteers cashing in on death didn't start with Haliburton. Read a history book, America. Do your homework.

This Iraq War was a con job from the start, since the initial "lying" period of WMDs, yellow-cake uranium, and the Afghanistan bait-and-switch. The "plan" isn't working. The "surge" hasn't helped. Troops have been stuck over there three, four, five tours, unable to come home. Even the president isn't smirking so much anymore, and he sure hasn't put on that photo-op flight suit again. No "Mission Accomplished" banners this time. The rats are leaving the sinking ship, or being thrown off. Goodbye Rumsfeld, Rove, "Scooter," Alberto. It took the people long enough, but they aren't buying it anymore. History has shown that eventually people catch on to a con job...at least until the next war.

ART HISTORY QUESTION

Compare and contrast. In spite of obvious similarities, which one of these statues stands in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, Italy, and which stands in the Houston airport?

The eight foot tall statue of George W. Bush (on the right) stands in the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. It was sculpted by David Adickes, the Houston artist who has sculpted numerous statues of presidents for public parks. The pigeons love his work. Unfortunately, this one is indoors.

The one on the left is by some Italian guy.

The similarity was pointed out by David, at the Ironic Sans blog.

http://www.ironicsans.com/2006/02/

THE WILD BUNCH

Westerns have their own logic, a formula as tightly controlled as Greek tragedy, and a truly great Western manages to breathe within those cast-iron confines. The worst are simple horse operas, morality tales wrapped in shoot 'em up conventions, enjoyable as a feedbag of popcorn but just as nourishing, but the best westerns are grim and dark and wrestle with fate. They are fearless, illuminating, mythic. Aristotle, who defined tragedy for the ages, would have loved "The Wild Bunch."

The Onion gives us a list of some truly grim Westerns:
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/dark_side_of_the_west_17_truly

I'm looking forward to seeing the remake of "3:10 to Yuma." How about you?

MYSTERY MAN

This is an extremely rare photograph of a man CNN called "an enigma shrouded in a mystery veiled in anonymity."

Who is he?

Clue: He once worked as a technical writer for a huge airplane company in Seattle, Washington, and lived a few blocks from the UW campus.

PSYCHEDELIC GARAGE KING RETURNS

The high point of Bumbershoot (the music festival in Seattle) was seeing Roky Erickson! Roky was the driving force behind the infamous psychedelic garage band, the 13th Floor Elevators. They scored a hit with "You're Gonna Miss Me" back in 1966. Texas being Texas back then, Roky was busted for possession of one joint and sent to a mental institution where he underwent electro-shock therapy. Between the "treatment," and a struggle with mental illness, Roky was knocked out of commission for quite some time. Rent the movie about his ordeal, "You're Gonna Miss Me." It looked like he was out for good. So it was great to see him back, performing his songs, the big hit, as well as "Creature with the Atom Brain," "I Walked with a Zombie," and -- after I screamed out the title, "Starry Eyes." Go, Roky!

LABOR DAY RUN!

Labor Day Weekend, and these clean-cut kids are having a ball on the beach! For us, the beach was always Rockaway, Lincoln City, or Seaside. Lincoln City had the Pixie Kitchen, but Seaside had a big cheesy arcade with bumper cars and go karts and pinball machines and lots of kids. Thousands of kids! Oh, and the ocean.

They even had a Loop-o-Plane, an amusement park ride run by an old tattooed carny that swung you upside down like a hammer and emptied your pockets of change. You walked around this carefully because there was always some kid throwing up corn dogs and salt water taffy like Spin Art.

Ski Ball was fun and cheap, and if you scored a billion points you could win a tiny green army man or a Bit-O-Honey. I won a couple in my day.

There were always big biker runs on Labor Day Weekend, when outlaw bikers descended on Seaside and terrorized the citizenry, but we only heard about it and never actually witnessed such an event. Like other terrors we only heard about -- piranhas and such, quicksand, the killer with the hook -- this was grist for our imaginations. Scenarios played out in daydreams. I'd see them someday, a band of Hell's Angel's roaring up the Turnaround, and I'd act accordingly. I'd probably rescue a girl in a bikini. Sadly, like my childhood plan to grow up and become a secret agent or photographer for Playboy, it never happened.

Check out this cool time machine produced by oldbluewebdesigns -- turn on your sound and dig this.
http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

SUMMER'S ALMOST GONE

Summer's almost gone, and thankfully so is the anniversary of the "Summer of Love." Enough with the candy-coated reminiscences of people who weren't even there (the cub reporters normally sent to cover birthdays at the zoo), the uncritical misty-eyed memories of boomers now deep in the corporate rat race, even those rare respectful nods from officialdom (only two more weeks to catch the "Summer of Love" show at the Whitney!). Like the great Jimmy Durante would say, "Everybody wants to get into the act!"

Talk about False Memory Syndrome! I'm sick of all this revisionism, the sanitizing Austin Powers time machine that strips all the grit from the equation and turns history into just another Disneyland theme park, all Dayglo daisies, cutesy flower power, peace-and-love. All style and no content.

They got it all wrong. From the 1966 riots on Sunset Strip to the Kesey acid tests, from Vietnam to Watts to the moon landing to Hendrix burning his Fender Stratocaster at Monterey, a cultural hurricane ripping through the land. It tore through dinner tables and classrooms and draft boards. The music, the hair, the dope -- the attitude -- wasn't created in a vacuum. It wasn't even the best part. There may have been strawberry incense and cannabis on the winds of change, but it came with the unmistakable stench of teargas. Worldwide. Students and auto workers threw paving stones in Paris 1968, and hundreds of students were gunned down in Mexico City, where the Olympics were being held. The Tlatelolco Massacre didn't make the Wide World of Sports broadcast, but you might remember those Olympics for one stunning image; that of two African-American Olympic athletes, medal-winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raising black gloved fists in a Black Power salute. People were shocked, and the International Olympic Committee promptly banned them from the Olympic Games for life!

Summer of Love? Buy the T-shirt. Better yet, love your neighbor, expand your mind, stand up for peace. But don't trust your memory, it's been tampered with.

Here's a great article from the SF Gate.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/21/DDG0MPU2OS1.DTL