David Byrne Journal: 12.18.08: No More News

Interesting post about the dearth of serious journalism by David Byrne. (I love David Byrne.)

We tend to get all holier-than-thou when we look at countries without free press. We think their lives must somehow be more pathetic or sad. Needless to say, this attitude makes us feel better. But people go on. They know, or at least suspect, that they are being denied something, but they maintain hope and optimism. They don’t go around moping. They get on with their lives, and sometimes, at least now and then, feel like maybe the censorship doesn’t matter all that much. There are still reasons to be cheerful. We might like to think of life in an oppressive regime as sheer misery, but from what I can tell, it’s rarely viewed that way. Life goes on and people make do with what they have, and they fall in love and get drunk and sing and dance. It takes a lot — a whole lot — to bring them to the flash point, like what just happened in Greece. Mostly, people adapt to the way things are — and to feel miserable about it is fruitless. And that’s what we will do when there are only two serious newspapers left in the USA.

via David Byrne Journal: 12.18.08: No More News.

Sigh.

Went for a long walk, looking for my friend Gary to find out exactly what happened to Barb. Couldn’t find him. Decided not to walk all the way to Starbucks, got a Diet Dr. Pepper from the 7-11 instead and came back home.

Man, oh man. Barbara and I weren’t incredibly close, but I considered her my friend and I think she considered me the same. I always liked her very much. She was adorable and, conversely, possessed of a wonderfully foul mouth and a wicked sense of humor. She was someone I was always happy to see and hang out with, when I ran into her.

We emailed and spoke a couple of times while she was in New York acting. I hadn’t seen her, I don’t think, since she came back to Vegas, but I’d been hoping I’d run into her somewhere. I got an email invite from her the other day to some professional network like LinkedIn, but I hadn’t responded to it.

I can’t imagine Barbara dead. I can’t imagine Barbara killing herself. (I seem to have an unplaced memory of seeing her crying once, though I can’t remember where or why, but she never struck me as a particularly depressive person.) Worst of all, the last time she’d come up in conversation was when Alex told me, a few weeks ago, that she’d just gotten married in October.

Man, oh, man. That’s the second one of my friends to commit suicide this year. As somebody whose thoughts turn that way sometimes, I’m always surprised when someone actually does it — other people seem so much stronger than I am. But I guess I’m still here, which I guess means I’ve got something keeping me going. I just wish I knew what that was, so I could share it with people like Barb.

I’ll miss you, girl. I’m so sorry.

Jesus hell.

Oh, man. I just found out my old friend Barbara Rollins committed suicide.

I’m off the computer for the night. I’m gonna walk to all night Starbucks and get coffee. Don’t ask me any details; I don’t know anything other than that.

God damnit.

New track – "Redwood City Station"

I’m currently building a mini-site for Red State Soundsystem, as my old band site is on an expired web account (not mine, long story)…but for now, here’s something new: a total reworking of my older song “Redwood City Station”. It sounds to me like a cross between TV On The Radio, M.I.A. and David Sylvian, and features backup vocals by Miss Rosalie Miletich. (She doesn’t actually sing like this normally; I’ve processed the hell out of her vocals). This version is much more bangy and noisy.

Red State Soundsystem, “Redwood City Station”  [mp3]

I’ll be uploading the stems soon, if anybody wants to do a remix.

Sam Cooke @ Daily Mojo

I’ve written an appreciation of Sam Cooke, with some MP3s, over on the Daily Mojo. Please do check it out, as I think it’s a good piece. And if you don’t know Sam Cooke, check it out immediately. You’ll thank me.

If you’ve ever heard Sam Cooke’s voice, in songs like “Cupid”, “Twistin’ The Night Away” and “Bring It On Home To Me”, you’ll know it for the rest of your life; there is literally no other voice like it on Earth, never has been, and probably never will be. His voice was clear, strong, earthier, simpler and less operatic than that of other R&B singers like Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson…but when Sam Cooke sang a song it stayed sung. Even though his songs were, by modern standards, pretty simplistic, he understood what the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca called duende, the melancholy at the heart of all real beauty, and all the best Sam Cooke songs have a grace note of sadness in the middle of what is otherwise joyous rhythm and blues. “So Mister / Mister DJ / Keep those records playin’ / ‘Cause I’m-a havin’ such a good time / Dancin’ with my baby” he sings in “Having A Party”, and it’s the way he sings the word “deejay” that kills you, a minor key change that contains all the ambiguity and hope that must have gone with being a teenage or college kid in the early years of the 1960s.

Bettie Page, Dead Since 1957 < Pop Past | PopMatters

This excellent article pretty much sums up my thoughts on the late Betty Page. It’s a frank examination of her life and her legacy.

Whereas Borges was a writer and Monroe was an actress, Page was a body—as pure an object as the pornographer can manage. Page was never really asked to act (unless cat fights and bondage performance count as ‘acting’ at a level comparable to Monroe’s embodiment of a character). Page was merely asked to ‘be’. But to ‘be’ only as an object, subject to our gaze, subject to the whip, subject to an open handed spanking. Indeed, the binary qualities of bondage and domination are found in the subject-object relationship. Her ‘80s and ‘90s resurrection as a figure of interest was as an image to be drawn, dressed up, or otherwise consumed, which serves to further exemplify the prominence of Page the image as object to be manipulated or to be used as decoration. Her “life” was erased by the image that she had become.

Bettie Page, Dead Since 1957 < Pop Past | PopMatters.

Random Thought Of The Day

What is the smallest possible yield for a nuclear explosive? In other words, what’s the smallest possible mass required to become critical? Could you build a nuclear bomb with the explosive force of a grenade, for example?

I understand generally how a nuclear fission reaction occurs, and I’m guessing that the answer has to do mainly with the fissile material used; it takes a minimum X amount of plutonium to generate fission, etc. etc.

But does anybody know what the actual equation for this would be?