"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...
There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919
that, dear sirs, about sums it up...
watching all the bru-ha-ha over the last week just leaves us in stitches. what the fuck is going on? there are kids in l.a., skippin' school, protesting so their "undocumented" mom and pop don't get run outta the u.s.a. and carrying mexican flags(?)... like that is gonna win the hearts and minds of middle amerika. there are many americans that could do the work, but who is gonna pay? we like the stuff they pick, the rooms they clean and all that stuff that i could never do (coz i'm an american, but have done, at the same rate i might add ... and would do again if needed, but pablo's got that job).
they all need to go back home, stand in line and do it like my great-great grandparents did. sure, it is nice to be gettin' all this cheap shit, but this is what is killin' us. we're fat, lazy and stupid and we get someone else who will do the dirty work for us. we got what we deserve. it is all about consumerism and the dirty work. this is a sure sign of the fall if we give in to them, this is not the united states of mexico. yet the wal-marts of the u.s.a. think that is how to things get done here. and i guess it is so. they'll win. it'll be a divided country, no real english, more spanglish. we are gonna have to conform to a world that nafta created. canameximerica ... there ya go! wonder how the cannucks feel about learning spanish to get by too.
... back in early 1969 sir paul wrote a tune, didn't know where it was going, and threw it to the rest of the beatles. it was about the immigrant problem in britain at the time. of course the prob they had was more self induced, but it was a still a growing prob.
anyways, 'commonwealth' became one of the biggest selling singles for the band, 'get back'. and here in its evolving state is the tune... it just feels right, right now (substitute your own nationality in the words), right now.
here is a new video, from the tattered remnants of the reno wreckroom ...
... we've been real busy gettin' the house ready for sale, and it's looking as tho that won't be too hard. lately my world has been sucky, big time. the girls were sick last month and now i've had it for a week. and to top it off lil' payton's got it too. all my energy has been spent working on the video and packing til i drop. the w'room is depleted of everything but the computer and a few books, cds and movies. i'm quite uncomfortable with all that shit sitting in boxes and untouchable. i am left to my own devises and the files on 'HAL' so anything i do for the blog is gonna be pretty much on the fly ... at least til metry. since the weather is starting to warm up, (it's raining now, no snow!), i should be feeling more flexible and creative, or maybe just creatively flexible. anyways, let's hope i do more writing than i have during the last month. well, that is the plan, for now.
"dead men are heavier than broken hearts." from 'the big sleep'
philip marlowe was the coolest detective ever. he didn't take no shit, from no one, and he always gave a wisecrack back. he had principles that always got him in more trouble than he asked for. but he stuck to 'em. his clients came the highest strata of society. usually they were just as scummy as the scum on the street that he dealt with every day. he treated them all the same, using a quick wit and the gritty slang of the times . he rarely needed or carried a gun, but they were thrown at him like beads at mardi gras. a lone wolf, to say the least, marlowe was forever dealing with some beautiful dame involved up to her pretty neck in blackmail and murder. like a chivalrous knight, he always felt compelled to rescue them. to him, it was just a job ... and all for just 25 bucks a day and expenses.
raymond chandler introduced the hard-boiled, hard-drinking, soft-hearted private eye to the world in his first novel, 'the big sleep'. pulp fiction, and the world, was never the same after. he didn't invent the genre, but he defined it. he took what was already there and made it into an art. using the template of dashiell hammett's style of detective stories, chandler created the world of noir that marlowe inhabits. written concisely and brutally, his words dance from the pages. the stories are visually stunning in detail. stories about scary and sparklingly bizarre characters and set in the art-deco slummed los angeles of the mid-20th century. like ian flemings' super spy 'james bond', chandler's philip marlowe is probably the most imitated private eye ever put to pulp or celluloid. detectives dekard in 'blade runner' and hartigan from 'sin city' are like marlowe's bastard sons. as is robert b. parker's 'spenser' and to some degree even t.v.'s 'rockford files'. there's a reason for this. chandler's books were just so damn good.
i am blazing through all the novels again, from 'the big sleep' to 'playback' and the collection of all his short stories. this'll be at least the third time for each, more for the good ones. 'the long goodbye' is probably the best of the lot. it is chandler in his prime and marlowe at his toughest. the plot line is very tight, a problem that chandler had with a few novels and screenplays. it flows like a dream, woven with shaky men and shakier women, the rich, the crooked and the down-right evil, the story is a real page-turner of a ride. and it's over much too soon, as is the feeling of each of his books. and even though some may seem flat a mundane marlowe novel is better than anything else of the kind. haven't read his unfinished novel 'poodle springs', that was finished by robert b parker in the late 80s. but i guess it'll be on the list next, after reading all chandler's stuff again.
the guy did just about everything before he turned to writing pulp fiction, as is shown in his bio ... Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 - 1959) was the master practitioner of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Although he was born in Chicago, Chandler spent most of his boyhood and youth in England where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, Chandler served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R. A. F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler’s detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe (introduced in 1939 in his first novel, The Big Sleep) and were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Never a prolific writer, Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of Chandler’s novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies which helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California on March 26, 1959.
we're glad we don't have a deadline for this blog because it would really be crimping our style lately. we've been a bit too busy deconstructing the wreckroom to put any meaningful posts up, or any posts at all for that matter. the snows is coming every other day and s.a. is on a hell-bent mission from god to get us up and outta reno as soon as possible (she's a lil' go-gettin' woman when she puts her mind to something, and that something is seeing reno in the rearview mirror about 8 weeks from now as we drive to home new orleans).
my mission, since i chose to accept it, has been salvaging the wrecked 'folklore' project from whatever hole that beast done slipped into ... ripping odd songs to digital as the tapes get stashed and trying to put it all together again in acid. it's like a nagging little splinter in the trigger-finger that just needs to come out, no matter how painful, and that is about all i have been listening to. almost done tho and one day, when i feel really brave i guess i'll post it, maybe. so this week has been nothing but pack, mix, patch, dub and paint. finally this place is lookin a lil bare, yeah!
a few months ago i stumbled across an old bootleg of a live little feat show that was taped at ultrasonic studios in hempstead new york on september 19th, 1974 (you can find alot more of little feat and a great deal many other live recordings at the live music archive). this was when little feat was the best rock and roll band in the land. and probably the hardest to define. led by a certain lowell george, the feats played a bluesy, skewed country-tinged rock-n-roll. they didn't sound like a band from the sunny climes of southern california; they sounded more like a band from southern georgia.
this is the band at the top of their game, about the time of the release of their 4th, and best album, 'feats don't fail me now', before lowell got all strung out and gave up caring about the band. they were tight beyond belief in this live-in-the-studio recording. everything here works, the sound is superb, the band rocks and it still feels fresh as anything around.
... back in early 1969 sir paul wrote a tune, didn't know where it was going, and threw it to the rest of the beatles. it was about the immigrant problem in britain at the time. of course the prob they had was more self induced, but it was a still a growing prob.
