Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Let's All Add to the Discourse!
For those of you who don't really have the courage of your convictions, yet still like typing things on the Internet, anonymous comments may now appear on this site.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Newsflash: Incidence Arises From Circumstance
The whole Schiavo circus is so surreal by this point, it's slipped the bounds of parody, satire, whatever. The midnight Capitol jam session, the tapdance on separation of powers, Tom DeLay ranting that Democrats "have so far cost Mrs. Schiavo two meals already today" (actually, since yesterday was Sunday, she really only missed brunch, so he's counting "br-" and "-unch" separately--why won't the media tell the truth?!), the usual journalistic ass-kissery now employed in the service of Bush's defence of "life" (and almost no mention of the Texas law signed by Gov. W. that allows hospitals to pull the plug on poor people), one of these "life" advocates comparing journalists covering the story to Saddam's Minister of Information (on a day when 45 people, including one American, were killed in Iraq), and on and on.
The attempt (apparently unsuccessful) to subpoena Terri Schiavo to get her out of the hospice and onto Capitol Hill to be paraded before a loving nation still represents, for me, some sort of low-water mark in the affair. In its over-the-top tastelessness, it reminded me of something, but I couldn't figure out what. Then it hit me--it's the sort of gross-out scene that often winds up on South Park. Actually, it sort of already did.
I should say right now that I will always watch South Park, even though the show is often bogged down in "anti-PC," "look, we skewer everyone" tediousness and bogus "envelope-pushing," mainly because Cartman's voice is comedy gold. That voice has always been funny and always will be funny. If Cartman told me I had emphysema, I'd probably laugh. But another reason I'll always watch is that the show is responsible for one of the most mind-blowing television segments I've ever seen, one that eerily foreshadowed our Schiavo moment.
It's the episode where Kenny is actually dying (a neat trick in itself, since it takes a while until you figure out that his death this time isn't played for laughs). Cartman learns that stem-cell research can save Kenny's life, and travels to Capitol Hill to appear before Congress and beg them to make such research legal. At a loss for words and on the verge of tears, he decides to make his case "in the words of a timeless song." He begins to sing Asia's "Heat of the Moment." One legislator joins in, and then another, and soon the whole chamber is singing an a capella version of the turgid, keyboard-riff-having high point of a band that merged the wonder-twin powers of the Buggles and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
I won't deny that part of the reason I love this scene can be chalked up to the sort of sense memory that can be triggered by a bad song from one's youth. I mean, I guess Cartman could have sung "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" and it would have had the same effect. But "Heat of the Moment" is a real home-run here because the song is such a grand amalgamation of fake gestures employed in a desperate belly-flop toward sincerity--the purposeful arena-drenched power chords (I'm guessing Trevor Horn produced the song, but the 40 seconds it would take to confirm this on allmusic are 40 seconds I'll never get back), the Spector-ass "Be My Baby" drum pattern (ingeniously evoked by the cartoon Congressman via foot-stamping), "Do you remember when we used to dance / And incidence arose from circumstance?"--so that what first seems like a random choice by stoned 30-something writers starts to look like just what that scene called for.
Too often this show is overwhelmed by its contention that nothing means anything, nothing is worth caring about, get over it, etc. But here's one instance where that impulse works. If we actually have to have an argument about whether or not a stem cell deserves to be protected in our "culture of life," there's a certain dignity in opting out by leading a rousing chorus of some collective-memory doggrel. And as a gesture, singing it is no more fake or empty than dragging Terry Schiavo into Congress and in front of the cameras.
On the subject of Asia (the band, not the continent), in searching for this clip I made a startling discovery:
Way to go, Geoff Downes!
Also:
Steve Howe, are you listening? We need a miracle...
The attempt (apparently unsuccessful) to subpoena Terri Schiavo to get her out of the hospice and onto Capitol Hill to be paraded before a loving nation still represents, for me, some sort of low-water mark in the affair. In its over-the-top tastelessness, it reminded me of something, but I couldn't figure out what. Then it hit me--it's the sort of gross-out scene that often winds up on South Park. Actually, it sort of already did.
I should say right now that I will always watch South Park, even though the show is often bogged down in "anti-PC," "look, we skewer everyone" tediousness and bogus "envelope-pushing," mainly because Cartman's voice is comedy gold. That voice has always been funny and always will be funny. If Cartman told me I had emphysema, I'd probably laugh. But another reason I'll always watch is that the show is responsible for one of the most mind-blowing television segments I've ever seen, one that eerily foreshadowed our Schiavo moment.
It's the episode where Kenny is actually dying (a neat trick in itself, since it takes a while until you figure out that his death this time isn't played for laughs). Cartman learns that stem-cell research can save Kenny's life, and travels to Capitol Hill to appear before Congress and beg them to make such research legal. At a loss for words and on the verge of tears, he decides to make his case "in the words of a timeless song." He begins to sing Asia's "Heat of the Moment." One legislator joins in, and then another, and soon the whole chamber is singing an a capella version of the turgid, keyboard-riff-having high point of a band that merged the wonder-twin powers of the Buggles and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
I won't deny that part of the reason I love this scene can be chalked up to the sort of sense memory that can be triggered by a bad song from one's youth. I mean, I guess Cartman could have sung "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" and it would have had the same effect. But "Heat of the Moment" is a real home-run here because the song is such a grand amalgamation of fake gestures employed in a desperate belly-flop toward sincerity--the purposeful arena-drenched power chords (I'm guessing Trevor Horn produced the song, but the 40 seconds it would take to confirm this on allmusic are 40 seconds I'll never get back), the Spector-ass "Be My Baby" drum pattern (ingeniously evoked by the cartoon Congressman via foot-stamping), "Do you remember when we used to dance / And incidence arose from circumstance?"--so that what first seems like a random choice by stoned 30-something writers starts to look like just what that scene called for.
Too often this show is overwhelmed by its contention that nothing means anything, nothing is worth caring about, get over it, etc. But here's one instance where that impulse works. If we actually have to have an argument about whether or not a stem cell deserves to be protected in our "culture of life," there's a certain dignity in opting out by leading a rousing chorus of some collective-memory doggrel. And as a gesture, singing it is no more fake or empty than dragging Terry Schiavo into Congress and in front of the cameras.
On the subject of Asia (the band, not the continent), in searching for this clip I made a startling discovery:
January 30, 2005
PRESS RELEASE
What do James Bond and Eric Cartman have in common? Read on...
You may recall Cartman singing "Heat of the Moment" on Capitol Hill in Kenny's final episode of South Park, where Kenny actually died and went to heaven.
All those Senators joining in the chorus, a tribute to democracy and the power of satire.
Now we can confirm that "Heat of the Moment" has been chosen as a lead song in Pierce Brosnan's new film, The Matador.
Distributed by Miramax, this black comedy/thriller stars Brosnan as a hired killer who meets Greg Kinnear in Mexico City, setting off an odd and stirring chain of events. The film recently made its worldwide debut to critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Matador also stars Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hall, Dylan Baker, Roberto Sosa and Adam Scott, and is directed by Richard Shepard.
More information to follow.
Way to go, Geoff Downes!
Also:
February 08, 2005
We can now confirm that Carl Palmer will be guesting on "Heat of the Moment" and "Only Time Will Tell" with Asia on all of their Italian dates except at the Magic Bus in Venezia on February 24. This is the first time for Carl to play live with the band in 14 years!
Steve Howe, are you listening? We need a miracle...
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Five Years
I moved to New York about 11 years ago, at a time when the conventional wisdom was that the city was in the grips of a full-on malaise. In the few years before I got here, there had been a series of big crises that got a lot of media attention, and seemed to be very local in their character: Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, Crown Heights, and the Tompkins Square Park riots. I didn't know where those places were, but they were stitched together in my mind to form a sort of overall geography of conflict, and that's what I felt New York was.
I can remember when Rudy Giuliani was elected, because the "new sheriff in town" vibe started immediately. The crackdown on so-called "quality of life" crimes (are there any other kind?) started soon after. The scourge of squeegee men was eliminated, he got tough on sidewalk vending scofflaws, etc. There were bigger crime-fighting initiatives, too. Especially drugs--lots and lots of talk of fighting a local version of the drug war. Suddenly NYU professors and David Lee Roth were being arrested for buying pot in Washington Square Park. But I don't think many of us really understood how far Giuliani was taking this fight. Its true scope became abundantly clear exactly five years ago.
Late at night on March 15th, 2000 (actually early in the morning on the 16th), Patrick Dorismond and his friend Kevin Kaiser left a Times Square bar and decided to get a cab back to Brooklyn. (The first of many ironies regarding that evening is that both men worked as uniformed security guards for the 34th Street Partnership, an organization that performs various functions on behalf of local businesses.) Before they could hail a cab, a voice from the shadows beckoned Dorismond and asked if he had any pot to sell. Dorismond told him to beat it, but the guy wouldn't leave him alone. Kaiser urged his friend to ignore the man, but the guy wouldn't let up. He said something to Dorismond that made no sense: "What are you going to do, rob me?"
What happened next was widely reported, but the best reporting was done by former Times writer and Pulitzer winner Jim Dwyer in "Casualty In the War On Drugs," which appeared in Playboy in October 2000, and was reprinted in Busted , an excellent collection of articles and essays on drug policy and the drug war. (It looks like someone also transcribed the article here.) Immediately after the man asked his odd question, a few others emerged from behind him. Kaiser yelled that one of them had a gun; he and Dorismond obviously thought they were being mugged. At the same moment, a black SUV tore around the corner and deposited several men in police windbreakers. They yelled at Dorismond and Kaiser to drop to the ground, but at that moment Dorismond and one of the men he thought was mugging him were scuffling. One shot was fired at Dorismond, hitting him in the chest. He and Kaiser were thrown on the ground and cuffed. Dorismond, who was bleeding from the mouth, couldn't speak, but Kaiser, who thought the police had mistaken them for the muggers, tried to tell them they had the wrong guys. He was taken into custody and interrogated for several hours. Dorismond, who was 26, died soon after he was shot.
It turned out that everyone involved in this fracas, except for Dorismond and Kaiser, were members of Operation CONDOR, an elite police anti-drug task force spearheaded by Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir. "What are you going to do, rob me?" was a coded message that told the windbreaker-ed crew, listening on the wire, to swoop in and make the arrest. (CONDOR stood for Citywide Organized Narcotics Drug Operational Response, but "Operation Condor" was also the name of a Latin American death squad. When a City Council member pointed this out to Safir, the chief replied, "In case you didn't know, a condor is a bird.") CONDOR members were under pressure to make multiple arrests each time they went out. At the time of Dorismond's death, CONDOR had existed for two months and was averaging 350 arrests a day. Obviously, given this large number, many of these were low-level, barely misdemeanor arrests, but the emphasis was on quantity, which might explain why the group that accosted Dorismond felt so emboldened to force an arrest on someone who wasn't even giving the impression of committing a crime.
Giuliani, who was in the throes of his Senate campaign, went into full blowhard mode following the shooting. Less than a day had gone by before he and Safir unsealed and made public Dorismond's 13-year-old juvenile crime record. "I would not want a picture presented of an altar boy, when, in fact, maybe it isn't an altar boy," Giuliani said. Except that--whoops--it turned out Dorismond had been an altar boy--at the same Catholic high school Giuliani attended. But Giuliani didn't back down. The cop who shot Dorismond apologized to Dorismond's family (the shooting was ruled justified), but it was months before Giuliani did the same, after Dorismond's family sued the city (they lost).
The shooting of Amadou Diallo has become the symbol of that era's police excesses (his shooting also involved an elite crime-fighting unit), but I think the shooting of Patrick Dorismond, another unarmed black man (he was the son of Haitian immigrants), was even more egregious. As ludicrous as it was to fire 40-odd shots at a guy reaching for a cell phone, the Diallo event can at least be placed in a recognizable moral universe of cause and effect. There's an "Odessa Steps" quality to the whole thing, a series of miscommunications unfolding tragically over a few seconds. Dorismond, on the other hand, was just killed, by killers who completely manufactured the context of his killing. "Entrapment" doesn't even really cover what happened, since the word suggests a situation where someone had at least a vague notion to commit a crime.
Five years ago, Patrick Dorismond was murdered. As Giuliani continues to bask in the rapidly fading glow of 9/11, let's not forget how his policies laid the groundwork for this crime, and how he reacted in its aftermath. A man who had neither the ability nor the inclination to sell drugs was killed by people empowered to assume that he did. That's the ultimate irony of that night: "All Patrick Dorismond had to do that evening was surrender a joint, if he had one," Dwyer writes, "and he would have had a night in jail instead of the morgue."
I can remember when Rudy Giuliani was elected, because the "new sheriff in town" vibe started immediately. The crackdown on so-called "quality of life" crimes (are there any other kind?) started soon after. The scourge of squeegee men was eliminated, he got tough on sidewalk vending scofflaws, etc. There were bigger crime-fighting initiatives, too. Especially drugs--lots and lots of talk of fighting a local version of the drug war. Suddenly NYU professors and David Lee Roth were being arrested for buying pot in Washington Square Park. But I don't think many of us really understood how far Giuliani was taking this fight. Its true scope became abundantly clear exactly five years ago.
Late at night on March 15th, 2000 (actually early in the morning on the 16th), Patrick Dorismond and his friend Kevin Kaiser left a Times Square bar and decided to get a cab back to Brooklyn. (The first of many ironies regarding that evening is that both men worked as uniformed security guards for the 34th Street Partnership, an organization that performs various functions on behalf of local businesses.) Before they could hail a cab, a voice from the shadows beckoned Dorismond and asked if he had any pot to sell. Dorismond told him to beat it, but the guy wouldn't leave him alone. Kaiser urged his friend to ignore the man, but the guy wouldn't let up. He said something to Dorismond that made no sense: "What are you going to do, rob me?"
What happened next was widely reported, but the best reporting was done by former Times writer and Pulitzer winner Jim Dwyer in "Casualty In the War On Drugs," which appeared in Playboy in October 2000, and was reprinted in Busted , an excellent collection of articles and essays on drug policy and the drug war. (It looks like someone also transcribed the article here.) Immediately after the man asked his odd question, a few others emerged from behind him. Kaiser yelled that one of them had a gun; he and Dorismond obviously thought they were being mugged. At the same moment, a black SUV tore around the corner and deposited several men in police windbreakers. They yelled at Dorismond and Kaiser to drop to the ground, but at that moment Dorismond and one of the men he thought was mugging him were scuffling. One shot was fired at Dorismond, hitting him in the chest. He and Kaiser were thrown on the ground and cuffed. Dorismond, who was bleeding from the mouth, couldn't speak, but Kaiser, who thought the police had mistaken them for the muggers, tried to tell them they had the wrong guys. He was taken into custody and interrogated for several hours. Dorismond, who was 26, died soon after he was shot.
It turned out that everyone involved in this fracas, except for Dorismond and Kaiser, were members of Operation CONDOR, an elite police anti-drug task force spearheaded by Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir. "What are you going to do, rob me?" was a coded message that told the windbreaker-ed crew, listening on the wire, to swoop in and make the arrest. (CONDOR stood for Citywide Organized Narcotics Drug Operational Response, but "Operation Condor" was also the name of a Latin American death squad. When a City Council member pointed this out to Safir, the chief replied, "In case you didn't know, a condor is a bird.") CONDOR members were under pressure to make multiple arrests each time they went out. At the time of Dorismond's death, CONDOR had existed for two months and was averaging 350 arrests a day. Obviously, given this large number, many of these were low-level, barely misdemeanor arrests, but the emphasis was on quantity, which might explain why the group that accosted Dorismond felt so emboldened to force an arrest on someone who wasn't even giving the impression of committing a crime.
Giuliani, who was in the throes of his Senate campaign, went into full blowhard mode following the shooting. Less than a day had gone by before he and Safir unsealed and made public Dorismond's 13-year-old juvenile crime record. "I would not want a picture presented of an altar boy, when, in fact, maybe it isn't an altar boy," Giuliani said. Except that--whoops--it turned out Dorismond had been an altar boy--at the same Catholic high school Giuliani attended. But Giuliani didn't back down. The cop who shot Dorismond apologized to Dorismond's family (the shooting was ruled justified), but it was months before Giuliani did the same, after Dorismond's family sued the city (they lost).
The shooting of Amadou Diallo has become the symbol of that era's police excesses (his shooting also involved an elite crime-fighting unit), but I think the shooting of Patrick Dorismond, another unarmed black man (he was the son of Haitian immigrants), was even more egregious. As ludicrous as it was to fire 40-odd shots at a guy reaching for a cell phone, the Diallo event can at least be placed in a recognizable moral universe of cause and effect. There's an "Odessa Steps" quality to the whole thing, a series of miscommunications unfolding tragically over a few seconds. Dorismond, on the other hand, was just killed, by killers who completely manufactured the context of his killing. "Entrapment" doesn't even really cover what happened, since the word suggests a situation where someone had at least a vague notion to commit a crime.
Five years ago, Patrick Dorismond was murdered. As Giuliani continues to bask in the rapidly fading glow of 9/11, let's not forget how his policies laid the groundwork for this crime, and how he reacted in its aftermath. A man who had neither the ability nor the inclination to sell drugs was killed by people empowered to assume that he did. That's the ultimate irony of that night: "All Patrick Dorismond had to do that evening was surrender a joint, if he had one," Dwyer writes, "and he would have had a night in jail instead of the morgue."
Monday, March 14, 2005
Pseudo vs. Righteous
This is in a very embryonic state, the layout is a mess, etc. But to kick things off, I'd like to sample critic Charles Payne Rogers, sounding a heroic note in a 1946 issue of "Jazz Times":
Nobody writes like this anymore...
"Sham, in music, finds scant refuge in the libraries of discerning record collectors. In their hobby they're practiced individuals, hep children when it comes to the decision of pseudo and righteous. That's what makes them discerning; the word is earned. From constantly auditioning discs and sifting the 'materia musica' therein, they develop a thermostatic sensitivity comparable to that of the latest radar. They spot the sham article instantly, almost, and by so doing, are able to devote that much more time to their quest for the real and unpretentiously significant."
Nobody writes like this anymore...
