So I get home this evening, and turn on Al Jazeera (my prime source of English language TV news in Madrid other than CNN International) and to my shock, they have the nerve (not to mention terroristic tendencies) *not* to be reporting on the U.S. election, even though the first results are probably a mere eight hours away.
How else am I to understand the minutiae of exit polling methodology, and how unreliable it can be but that the TV networks will use it anyway to predict the outcome of the election, perhaps before polls close in some states? Plus I need the hours and hours of advance "analysis" from "experts" wishing people good luck in supressing their latent racism when they go to vote.
Instead, Al Jazeera, in its unpatriotic, anti-American ignorance of what's important in the world, has a report from Goma, Congo, (where, unlike most U.S. news organizations, they actually have a reporter on the ground) which is surrounded by rebel soldiers, as government soldiers plunder, rape and kill civilians in their retreat from the town. Meanwhile, one quarter of a million people have fled their homes in the region, while the international community wrings its hands.
It's as if Al Jazeera is intentially provoking charges of being a terrorist news organization.
Speaking of, does that make me a terrorist if I watch it while supporting Barack Obama for president? (I've also been known to watch The Daily Show with John Stewart.) If so, my future traveling experience may revert to the several years I was on the terrorist watch list because (I believe) I have the same name as an IRA member who was, incidentally, killed 10 years ago by the British Army in Northern Ireland.
Good to know that the government agencies who compile those up-to-date lists aren't monitoring the internets, becuase I have a plane to catch Friday.
So
yesterday I went to see Radiohead play in Berlin.
Radiohead.
In Berlin, people. It’s OK, you can thank me later. It’s all good.
And of
course I made my newest best friend Berthold come with me six hours before the
show started so we would get right into the mosh pit. Even if he hadn't just met me he
would have done it because he’s German, you know. They might hate you on the
inside but they’re loyal as terriers. And they know how to stand up for
themselves when the going gets tough. (Except, you know, when the Red Army is
approaching. Then it’s best not to have any cyanide capsules casually laying
around.)
Annnywaaay.
A loyal race the Germans, generally speaking.
So Berthold
and I go down to the park at Wuhlheide, where the concert was, and we start drinking
half liters of Warsteiner a tad too quickly, and a couple of hours later we
were really rolling. But there was still three or four hours to go and they
hadn’t even opened the arena yet. And then I said. “Let’s go look for the
band’s tour bus. I just *have* to tell Thom Yorke how much he’s changed my
life.” And Berthold rolled his eyes, but I pleaded and pleaded until finally he
said yes. I think it was because I told him how hot he looked in his Miesbacher.
So we go to
find the tour bus, but of course there’s about 300 crazed fans hanging around
it. Who are these people? Freakin’ groupies. You’re like sheep. Don’t you have
any individualism? And then Berthold said I should keep my voice down a little
because some of the skinheads were starting to look invitingly in my direction.
But at
least the skins were authentic. Most of these people were college-educated, tofu-eating,
art-loving, Mountain Hardware-wearing pretenders. Seriously.
I mean
these people weren’t true Berliners. They didn’t know how it felt, really felt,
to grow up in a divided city. They didn’t live in Kreuzberg in the ‘80s, with
the DDR breathing their cold communist breath around the backs of our necks
while we tried to keep the Turks and the punks from fighting each other all the
time. It was all we could do to lure them to the May Day protests and get them
to focus their anger on the police.
But these fantards
knew nothing of the blood and the sweat and the tears from that world. These
freaking people were just bio-loving, child-bearing yuppies who think that
Radiohead is, like, “a cool band.” These are the same people who’ve helped suck
all the beautiful anguish and torment out of Prenzlauer Berg and turn it into a
playground for rich new moms and gourmet restaurant-goers.
So we just
left. The prospect of actually seeing Thom Yorke in person had cast quite a
beautiful light in my unfocused eyes. But at this point, it all looked
hopeless, and I was feeling a little down again, what with the beer and all the
tranquilizers Autumn-Nikita gave me the other night at the Basbaum opening at
the Eigen+Art gallery. I know. I know. But seriously, I could almost feel the
spirit of Documenta in my freaking liver. I never thought my body could respond
that way to art. But it might have just been the medications.
Berthold
and I kind of cut down this small side road through the park near the main arena. And I see this
car, and I’m thinking cool car, but how did this asshole get through security
with his car?
And then,
and you’re not going to believe this, I totally saw him. Right. Freakin. In.
Front. Of. Me.
Of course
Thom was way too cool to be on the band bus! What were we, stupid?
Before our
very eyes, Thom gets out of this black ’67 BMW cabriolet that he’s just parked
right in the friggin’ middle of the road. How cool is that? And at first he
doesn’t see us because it looked like either he was going to lie on the grass
to drink in the oneness of the summer sky or take a piss behind a tree. I don’t
know.
“Thom!” I
shouted. I couldn’t freakin’ believe it. I was meeting Thom Yorke.
Thom raised
an eyebrow as if to look uninteresting as I rushed up to him. As if.
“First
I want to say I’m sorry for my friends always saying you have such a whiny,
nasally, British voice that’s like listening to fingernails scratching on a
blackboard,” I blurted.
And Thom
says, “Yeah. I get that sometimes. No worries, mate. Plus you can’t control
what other people think.”
“Yeah,
totally. And I always told them, you know, Thom’s voice is like an instrument from the angels, dude. It’s
not like he just opens his mouth and, like, sings.
His vocal chords emanate love and light and
pain and suffering and shit. Think Nigel Kennedy’s violin when he’s playing
Brahms’ violin concerto. It clouds the soul and lifts the mind. Or maybe it’s
the other way round. Or something.”
And Thom’s
eyes softened a little, and he said, “Thank you man. But now I have to go do
the show.”
Then, just
as he turned away I totally lost it and started to follow him. “Thom, you’ve
helped me see through the dark when I didn’t have enough energy to create my
own life and focus on what was important--me,” I gushed. “You were there when I
had to get through the pain of my cat’s death alone because everyone else was
wrapped up in their own selfish lives. I can’t thank you enough. You matter to
me.”
And at that
point I think I sort of grabbed his shoulder because next thing I know, he’s
just whirled around and punched me right in the face. “Why don’t you fuck off
and get your own fuckin’ life,” he says. And then Berthold is pulling me away,
apologizing, saying in his most polite German accent, “I’m sorry, he’s not
usually like this. It must be the mushrooms. The whole day he’s either been
gushing about how amazing Radiohead is or running to the bathroom complaining
of stomach cramps.”
“Those were fucking bio ’shrooms,” I spluttered as my lip started to bleed. “Bio. Because this is freakin’ Berlin, man. And this man here is a god.”
And Thom
just walks away, swearing.
And at that
point I think I sort of just collapsed on the ground from the awe and
inspiration of it all. Next thing I remember the concert was over and I
couldn’t speak any more—the warm, shiny glow of my aura was just too overwhelming.
I heard the show rocked, the energy in the crowd was amazing and that Thom was totally fired up (Berthold took pictures). And it was gratifying to know that I had a just little something to do with that.
I know
you’re all saying, “No way this happened.” But it did. It totally did.
With an average life expectancy of only 42 years for a person sleeping rough in Ireland, sure they wouldn't be bothering you for long in your New York loft.
Now, Leslie Feist may not know that she's my girlfriend. But that's never stopped our relationship blossoming these last few years.
I think it's finally time to just tell her once and for all. (I'm thinking a less direct approach than Borat's wedding sack, however; perhaps something a little more, well, windswept and interesting. But certainly no more having my geeky friends "anonymously" hand-deliver love poems I've written. I'm proud to say I stopped that since I turned 29.)
In any case, the new album "The Reminder," her third studio effort, is heartfelt, compelling, sometimes beautiful, and growing on me. Plus Feist knows how to hold an audience in the palm of her hand; which is why you'll find me and a few friends at the Fillmore on June 26. It's already sold out, I'm afraid, but the word is a second show will be added. So get on it if you're in the Bay Area.
I saw one of the most brilliant pieces of culture-jamming art I've ever experienced at The Andy Warhol Musuem in Pittsburgh today. In fact, every time I think of it, I can't stop laughing.
The Yes Men's Halliburton parody is in many ways so simple, yet so cleverly executed. And it has quite a delicious sense of the absurd.
At an insurance industry conference last year about disaster preparedness, in a presentation entitled "What Noah Knew," the Yes Men, posing as Halliburton executives, introduced the Halliburton SurvivaBall™, an invention for business executives designed to "save a human being, no matter what mother nature throws at him."
It's a large inflatable suit to weather any environmental disaster that might befall us. A gated community for one, if you will. The exhibit at the Warhol included several inflated SurvivaBalls™, video from the conference, video simulations of people in SurvivaBalls™ withstanding arduous weather conditions, and many fabulous illustrations of its myriad uses and capabilities, including this usage and safety card.
I love to see culture-jamming. Because it's fun. And creative. And because making people laugh is much more memorable than telling them what they're supposed to oppose, or who they should vote for.
I'll let Amy Goodman tell the story below, and you can check out more photos from the "Catastophic Loss" conference here.
Those terrorists at Guantanamo are just never happy, no matter how much we do for them.
In case you missed it, the NYT reported yesterday that more than a dozen prisoners at the U.S. detention center there "are subjecting themselvesto daily
force-feeding to protest their treatment."
You know, kind of like the way you subject yourself to your co-workers breaking wind. It was your choice to go to work, after all.
It reminded me of the indoctrinated news coverage of the prisoners who committed suicide at the prison last summer, whose deaths were (I'm not kidding) generally covered in the mainstream news media as a calculated assault on the United States. As I wrote at the time:
At first I wasn’t exactly sure what was behind the
Guantanamo Bay suicides. But after reading the news
reports carefully, I finally got it: we Americans are under attack from
a bunch of guys rotting in their jail cells.
You
see, the terrorists are trying to make us look like the bad guys by
killing themselves while they’re supposed to be under 24/7 supervision.
As Adm. Harry B. Harris explained to reporters, the men who committed
suicide at Gitmo “have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own.”
Harris believes the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an
act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
That’s
right, these guys who choked themselves to death with their own bedding
are a perfect example of how the United States is suffering more than
anyone in this latest front in the war on terror.
First,
media reports reveal that the three detainees had the audacity to avoid
discovery by prison guards while they quietly offed themselves. Not
happy to play by the rules, they apparently dispensed with the usual
suicidal cry of, “Come quickly, I’m killing myself!”
To
those of you who whine they were imprisoned for nearly four years
without being charged with a crime, I say: Get used to the new reality,
constitution geeks.
Next,
they fashioned a noose out of their bed sheets. Allowing prisoners such
“comfort items” as bed sheets and toiletries will now have to be
reassessed, according to Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, head of the U.S.
Southern Command. We’ve treated these people so well and this is how
they repay us? Instead, the army says it will replace the standard
issue Bed, Bath & Beyond “Egyptian” cotton sheets with recycled
copies of Martha Stewart Living. Hey, it’s good enough for the
homeless—plus you can learn how to etch your own suicide notes into
ocean-worthy seashells.
Finally,
the terrorists capped their carefully-staged prison revolt by
unhurriedly hanging themselves until they asphyxiated. The army later
said they would reconsider providing other luxury items at the prison
such as three-speed brushed nickel ceiling fans, to which prisoners
could potentially fasten a noose when they’re not cooling off after a
long day of tropical confinement. I know the blinkered ACLU-loving
beatniks will complain as usual—but everyone knows the wire cages at
the lavish Cuban prison camp already boast A/C to temper the oppressive
110-degree heat.
You know we’re in trouble when it seems like the terrorists are winning the P.R. war against us.
The
White House assured Americans that the deceased men were “committed
terrorists,” according to the New York Times. Who amongst us actually
needs to see evidence produced in court in order to believe the men who
work for the president?
Just
because the U.N. Committee Against Torture says detaining prisoners at
Gitmo violates international law doesn’t mean that we can’t operate it
according to basic business ground rules. So, tired of thwarting
prisoners intent on hunger strikes by strapping them to restraining
chairs and force feeding them through plastic tubes, President Bush
announced additional measures the United States will undertake to
prevent further suicides:
All
Guantanamo detainees will undergo “sensitivity training” to show them
how much it hurts our feelings—and kinda makes us look bad—when they
kill themselves in despair at being locked away indefinitely with no
legal recourse;
All
newly-admitted detainees must complete a “prison application,” which
requires prisoners to disclose all previous instances in which they
have been imprisoned indefinitely without charge, and whether they
tried to commit suicide there or not;
To
improve prisoners’ treatment by guards, “360-degree review” will be
instituted, in which prisoners are encouraged to openly and honestly
assess the job performances of the prison guards who terrorize them
with dogs and occasionally urinate on their Korans;
Some
prisoners previously transferred from Abu Ghraib will be allowed to
leave, on condition that they sign “confidentiality agreements,” in
which on-the-job skills such as balancing, hooded, on a wooden box
while attached to electrodes and remaining calm in their restraints
while being sodomized by a broomstick* couldn’t be disclosed to future
jailors, in order to avert leaking any “trade secrets.”
It’s
understandable if we occasionally feel just a little bit bad for these
evildoers, especially if some of them are merely shepherds from rural
Afghanistan who were attracted by our shiny yellow food ration packs—or
was that a cluster bomb?
And so what if 25 other Gitmo prisoners previously attempted to commit suicide there? It’s still the Caribbean.
But
we can’t forget who the real victim is in this latest terrorist
plot—the United States of America. Remember, our enemies only engage in
shallow propaganda stunts such as committing suicide while indefinitely
imprisoned without trial because they hate our freedoms, our generosity
and our love for the rule of law.
*Actually happened, according to a U.S. Army report.
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