Festive Left Friday Blogging: Viva Zapata!
Why is Chavecito wearing a big sombrero? Because the daughter of a rather important Mexican hero has just delivered a big honor to him.
Continue reading "Festive Left Friday Blogging: Viva Zapata!" »
April 11, 2008
January 19, 2008
Gore Vidal on The Real News
A set of interviews with Gore Vidal, the shocking, provocative and painfully honest elder statesman of American literature.
January 05, 2008
The face of fucking craziness
I'm sorry to inflict this on y'all, but...
December 27, 2007
More proof that Dubya doesn't read
...and neither does he, nor any of his lackeys, have the slightest concept of a little thing known as reading comprehension.
Think Progress has ferreted out the real source of Dubya's antipathy to embryonic stem cell research--a total misinterpretation of an improbable scenario from Aldous Huxley (read aloud to him, of course, by one of his loyal flunkies, since Dubya can't be bothered to bestir himself):
December 25, 2007
Oh look! I found The Frantics!!!
And now that I've said that, I'll have to put them back again.
(Seriously, folks...you haven't seen Canadian comedy until you've seen these guys.)
("SHUT UP!!!")
December 21, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: I wanna wish you a merry Yuletide...
December 10, 2007
Omar Sharif regrets
In a celebrity culture replete with vapid idiots like Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, et al, it's easy to get cynical about celebs in general. The antics of the young, rich and stupid often make us forget that their elders exist, let alone that among them are ones like Omar Sharif--a great actor whose conscience refuses to be silent:
Omar Sharif still regrets having played Che Guevara in a 1969 film which was "entirely manipulated by the CIA", which he regards today as the biggest mistake of his life."I asked to make a movie that didn't take a fascist tone," he said in an interview in Cairo, where he just finished filming his latest, Al Musafir (The Traveller), with young Egyptian director Ahmed Maher.
In 1969, it was just two years after the guerrilla war had ended in Bolivia, "and Che was still an incredible hero," said Sharif.
The actor, 76, bitterly remembers that his "Che" had a certain dignity because he demanded it in his contract, "but Jack Palance's Fidel Castro, and the movie in general (directed by Richard Fleischer) resulted in a fascist product."
"The CIA was behind it, and wanted to make a film that would please the Miami Cubans. I alone cared about the outcome," he recalled, adding that a movie house on the Champs-Elysees in Paris was burned by audience members incensed by the negative image the film gave of Che and the Cuban Revolution.
Translation mine.
BTW, I could not find this story ANYWHERE in the English-language media. The closest I could get to a recent news story about him was this unflattering item. Which makes him sound a bit like a male Lindsey Lohan.
Don't you love that liberal media memory hole?
November 19, 2007
The Warning
Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) has created a powerful video that rings all the right alarm bells. Crank your speakers.
November 10, 2007
One less thing to lie awake about
What? No suitcase nukes? Damn, there goes my fantasy of blowing up the world by sneaking one through customs.
Members of Congress have warned about the dangers of suitcase nuclear weapons. Hollywood has made television shows and movies about them. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency has alerted Americans to a threat - information the White House includes on its Web site.But government experts and intelligence officials say such a threat gets vastly more attention than it deserves. These officials said a true suitcase nuke would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune.
Counterproliferation authorities do not completely rule out the possibility that these portable devices once existed. But they do not think the threat remains.
"The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies," said Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. "No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices."
October 19, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: Hasta la victoria siempre!
I'm a little late in paying tribute to Che Guevara on this blog, but better late than never. Here's a rap song dedicated to El Comandante Amigo:
October 18, 2007
Quotable: Tori Amos on archetypes
"What do I say to people who don't know how to interpret my songs? You don't read the Bible literally. I thought parables were very clear, yet a lot of people have problems with them when they pop up today. I can't tell people that maybe they need to read some books, brush up on their archetypes. They could probably go on a website and figure it out. But literalizing is very much part of the patriarchy. If you want something made concrete, I'll give you some shoes and pour some cement in them and we'll drop you off in the river."
--Tori Amos, from the introduction to Tori Amos Piece by Piece: A Portrait of the Artist: Her Thoughts. Her Conversations.
September 28, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: If Sharif don't like it...
"Rock the Casbah".
(I figured that in light of all the recent hysteria in favor of bombing Iran, a little levity and perspective were called for.)
September 25, 2007
Kevin Spacey: Another Chavista?
Sure looks that way!
According to Aporrea, the actor was in Venezuela yesterday to meet with President Chavez. Spacey is another strong critic of the Bush regime, and interested in the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela, like Sean Penn, who recently did some journalistic coverage of it. The two-time Oscar winner also expressed his support for Chavecito's mediation between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels. He's in good company--fellow actor Danny Glover and singer/songwriter Harry Belafonte are both also US Chavistas.
Viva el Spacey!
September 23, 2007
And now, a moment of silence...
...for Marcel Marceau, who said so much without uttering a peep.
September 21, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: A tribute to Che
Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko reads two poems in Spanish at the Poetry Festival in Caracas: his passionate ode to Che Guevara, and a humorous selection called "More or Less".
September 07, 2007
Madeleine L'Engle has tessered
A splendid 88-year wrinkle in time has, alas, come to an end.
Author Madeleine L'Engle, whose novel "A Wrinkle in Time" has been enjoyed by generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88. L'Engle died Thursday at a nursing home in Litchfield of natural causes, according to Jennifer Doerr, publicity manager for publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Festive Left Friday Blogging: Viva Pachamama!
A video collage with a cool, catchy tune. Starring all my favorite revolutionaries. From Ecuador!
September 06, 2007
Addio, Luciano...
Today, we have lost a Caruso.
Nessun dorma.
Arrivederci, maestro. Mille grazie.
September 03, 2007
MI5 = clueless gits
Really. It took them HOW long to figure out that George Orwell was not a (gasp) COMMUNIST?
MI5 did not believe George Orwell was a mainstream communist despite monitoring the socialist writer for more than two decades, records have revealed.A Scotland Yard Special Branch report in January 1942 said the author of 1984 had "advanced communist views".
However, an MI5 officer responded that Orwell "does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him."
August 17, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: The art of Chavecito
No, this is not one his own paintings. I just find it interesting how once in while, Chavecito crops up in a work of fine art:
I can't remember where I found this on the Internets, but it's a very cool poster. He seems to have a halo composed of news clippings, and the artist has emphasized the black part of his heritage, right down to the power salute. His features are more Africanized, and his complexion is a bit darker than it is in reality. The message is clear: Chavecito stands with, and for, the oppressed peoples of the world--particularly those of color.
July 25, 2007
Bolivar Bolivariano...
July 07, 2007
FBI: J'accuse!
Puerto Rican reggaeton group, Calle 13, calls out the FBI for the cold-blooded murder of Puerto Rican independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Rios.
There is no more blatant expression of imperialism than when the federal police of the United States show up in full SWAT drag in a foreign country, and kill its most prominent independence fighter on the very anniversary of the day that country rose up against another imperial nation. Some call it a botched arrest attempt, but if that were true, they wouldn't have left him to bleed to death for 12-15 hours from what need not have been a fatal wound. They would have taken him right then and provided him with medical attention. He might still be a prisoner today--but he would be alive.
Did the FBI take up openly what the CIA does covertly? I do believe it did.
July 02, 2007
The EU--who knew?
Would you believe this is a PSA?
Holy. Mother. Of. GOD.
June 04, 2007
Ray Bradbury, right and wrong
From the Stranger Than Fiction Department, this little article on Ray Bradbury in the alternative LA Weekly--in which the author claims his most famous novel is "misinterpreted":
Bradbury still has a lot to say, especially about how people do not understand his most literary work, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. It is widely taught in junior high and high schools and is for many students the first time they learn the names Aristotle, Dickens and Tolstoy.Now, Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.
This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury's authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
June 03, 2007
It was the Third of June...
Bobbie Gentry gives a wonderfully understated performance of "Ode to Billy Joe" on the Smothers Brothers show. (Thanks to King Daevid for the video link.)
April 25, 2007
Milton Nascimento: Song of America
The students of Virginia Tech have resumed classes. It seems to be the only thinkable thing to do after last week; there are educations to complete and lives to get on with. The mourning, however, doesn't end with the memorial ceremonies which are being sadly conducted in public and private, one by one.
Since I can think of no better way to honor the lives lost, I'll post this sweet, sad song by Brazil's inimitable Milton Nascimento:
April 22, 2007
The PEACE on Terra
In honor of Earth Day, a singer by the name of Terra Naomi crafts a video with help from people who sent in images of themselves "answering the question 'what would you do/want if anything were possible?' in three words or less."
Happy Earth Day to you!
April 15, 2007
Quotable: Joan Baez (and Bob Dylan) on holy wars
April 13, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: A musical ode to popular victory
First, one from Lloviznando Cantos:
"Y Bajaron", which celebrates the people who rescued democracy five years ago today in Venezuela. It means "And they came down"--referring to the poor barrio dwellers who came down from the hills around Caracas to protest the fascist coup and demand the return of Hugo Chavez. Tens of thousands surrounded Miraflores Palace and chanted so loudly that the fascists were spooked and ran. Then the soldiers of the palace guard moved in, took some prisoners, and flashed the victory sign from the roof (you can see it in the video.) People power at its finest!
Then, one from Sontizón: "A cada 11 le llega su 13"--"To every 11th comes its 13th".
April 12, 2007
God Bless You, Mr. Funnyguts
From the wires, a sad but not unexpected item about one of my favorite all-time writers:
American literary idol Kurt Vonnegut, best known for such classic novels as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died on Tuesday night in Manhattan at age 84, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
April 08, 2007
Quotable: Ursula K. Le Guin on extremes
"Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic."
--Ursula K. Le Guin, from the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness
March 31, 2007
Why not a chocolate Jesus?
Because some people's religious sensibilities are waaaaay too easily offended.
A New York art gallery has decided to cancel an exhibit of a chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ after protests by a US Catholic group.The six-foot (1.8m) sculpture, entitled "My Sweet Lord", depicts a naked Jesus Christ with his arms outspread.
The sculpture, by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, was to have been displayed from Monday at Manhattan's Lab Gallery.
March 24, 2007
Repent, George Lucas!
Or I shall torment thee with the stylings of...
...Weird Al Yankovic making well-deserved hash of your prequels.
March 22, 2007
One of our submarines
March 19, 2007
Gabo snubs the IAPA
From Aporrea.org, a startling little announcement about Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
We were truly concerned about the broadcast homage that the IAPA was going to give to the celebrated Colombian writer. But in a masterful move, at the last moment he excused himself, saying he was "too tired".
March 10, 2007
I closed my eyes and I slipped away...
March 06, 2007
Happy birthday, Gabo!
Just 20 more years of solitude to go!
March 04, 2007
Beatniks find Sputnik!
Story at the Beat Museum; judge for yourself whether they're onto something.
February 27, 2007
El Caracazo: Today in 1989
February 24, 2007
Dubya gets what he's got coming, again
Poor Dubya, he's been having such a rough week. First he gets spanked in Germany by Ms. Liberty, and now this:
Millions of people the world over will now realize a cherished dream: to give a big, fat kick in the ass to King George Bush. In New York, an English artist offers this cathartic service. See the brilliant photo.British artist Mark McGowan went out this Thursday in the streets of New York dressed as US president George W. Bush, inviting people to kick him in the backside to "ease some of their frustrations".
February 23, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: Representing at Carnival!
A couple of weeks ago, I featured Caetano Veloso, performing his great "Tropicalia". This week, it's his old friend (and sometime brother-in-law)'s turn:
Gilberto Gil, Brazilian rocker turned minister of culture, rockin' out here in the garb of the "Sons of Gandhi", his longtime favorite samba school in his hometown of Salvador, the capital of Bahia.
Continue reading "Festive Left Friday Blogging: Representing at Carnival!" »
February 19, 2007
Quotable: Lee Stringer on writing and recognition
"This is not a science. We're not making porcelain. We're not out cutting two-by-fours. It's kind of crazy stuff just to sit in a room and click away at a--in my case, if you'll forgive me, a Mac--for eight or nine hours. It is a very unnatural thing to do. And there's no one there to tell you whether what you're doing is right or wrong. It's a very scary thing, to spend a year or so doing that. And the real fear is that you'll look back and say, 'Gee I've wasted a year doing nothing.' So in the midst of that loneliness to have another writer say 'You know, you did all right,' is a great thing."
--Lee Stringer (with Kurt Vonnegut), Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing
February 12, 2007
Neil Young sticks it to BushCo
All the reasons why Bush, Cheney and the entire vile bunch MUST be impeached.
February 02, 2007
Festive Left Friday Blogging: Viva a banda-da-da!
The original Festive Leftist, Brazil's Caetano Veloso, still kicks ass. This is "Tropicalia", a surreal collage of images that dates back to 1968 and sounds every bit as relevant today.
January 25, 2007
Talking to Americans, Australian edition?
Rick Mercer, watch out. Here's a comedian claiming to be Prime Minister John Howard--and NO ONE catches on. But they sure do say the darndest things.
December 06, 2006
Harry Potter Harry Potter Harry Potter!!!
I'm not sure I like Harry's extra-short haircut here (I preferred him with a floppy forelock, which he needed to conceal the scar Voldemort inflicted on him as a baby, anyway.) But I do love that they have Helena Bonham Carter for the sexy-spooky villainess, Bellatrix LeStrange. And Professor Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) promises to be even more sweetly sickening than she was in the novel. Yuck, and YUM!
November 27, 2006
Remember Reagan?
Gil Scott-Heron does:
He remembers him as a B-movie actor who co-starred with a chimp.
"The monkey was all right. The monkey was cool."
And now, the monkey is president and some of us, who never thought we'd see the day, wish it were Reagan.
November 26, 2006
They call THIS blasphemy?
Via the Revealer, I found out that the American Family Fascist Association is up in arms over a concert video showing Madonna, wearing a crown of thorns, first rising up on and then slowly stepping down off a glittery, mirror-tiled cross. The reason? IT'S BLASPHEMY! O, the HORROR!
November 19, 2006
"Sir! No, Sir!" A must-see preview!
12 minutes of radical brilliance. Can't wait for THIS to come out on DVD.
November 18, 2006
How clueless are the pop tarts?
Even if no one asks, they'll still tell.
November 08, 2006
"If I wasn't Muslim..."
Best takeoff on "If I were a rich man" (from Fiddler on the Roof) I've ever seen:
Trenchant social commentary on bigotry, xenophobia, ignorance and fear from a European Muslim viewpoint. This one's from Bosnia, where ethnic cleansing has long been a source of unrest.
Someone, please send this to Mark Steyn, that fearmongering fascist purveyor of the "Eurabia" meme. And tell Maclean's to dump the terror-baiting fraud, whose racist rants and inane excuses therefor (no excuses, bitch!) should have no place in Canada, let alone its leading news magazine.
October 21, 2006
Death of a President: a review the Right doesn't want you to read
Warning: This entire post is one big, fat spoiler--and I'm not just talking plot. If you really don't want to know what Death of a President is like, stop reading now.
Just saw Death of a President on Google video. It's been available there since October 15. And before anyone screams "piracy", let me tell you that it isn't--if anything, it will promote sales of the film, which got rave reviews at the Toronto Film Festival last month. Why? Because Death is simply brilliant and well worth the money to see in theatres (assuming it gets the broad distribution it deserves), or, better still, buy on DVD. This is a dense, nuanced movie you will want to watch many, many times.
Continue reading "Death of a President: a review the Right doesn't want you to read" »
September 29, 2006
Read a book! Don't be afraid!
Sometimes, Google Alerts turn up some real gems in one's e-mail box. Take, for example, this lovely letter to the editors of the Arizona Republic:
August 11, 2006
A sad but unsurprising revelation
A great German author, outspokenly anti-Nazi, has something he's long wanted to get off his chest. Let's hear him out:
Nobel Prize-winning German writer Guenther Grass, author of the great anti-Nazi novel The Tin Drum, has admitted serving in the Waffen-SS.He told a German newspaper he had been recruited at the age of 17 into an SS tank division and served in Dresden.
Previously it was only known he had served as a soldier and was wounded and taken prisoner by US forces.
Speaking before the publication of his war memoirs, he said his silence over the years had "weighed" upon him.
August 04, 2006
Boy bands suck in any language
June 27, 2006
A most literary funeral
It's the stuff of a Gothic romance writer's dreams: A loving and famous couple, parted by death and grief, are reunited in the grave more than a century later.
No, it's not fiction. Read on:
The remains of the wife of 19th Century US writer Nathaniel Hawthorne have been reburied next to those of the author, after more than a century apart.Sophia Peabody Hawthorne left the US with her children after her husband's death in 1864. She went to England, where she died six years later.
Her remains and those of daughter Una were exhumed from a London cemetery, after their plot fell into disrepair.
June 26, 2006
Macondo remains fictitious
And meanwhile, Aracataca remains real.
The Colombian town of Aracataca, birthplace of Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, will not be renamed to honour its most famous son.The town's mayor proposed renaming Aracataca after Macondo, the fictional setting for the writer's most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
June 24, 2006
What's in a face?
What's in a name?--Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The less clear we are about "who wrote Shakespeare", the more "Shakespeare" can be idealized and indeed idolized. ... Just as "man bites dog" is a more eye-catching headline than "dog bites man", so "Oxford is Shakespeare" makes a better story than "Shakespeare is Shakespeare"--at least in some quarters. The brouhaha about any portrait is beside the point if the subject of the portrait didn't write the plays.
--Marjorie Garber, "Looking the Part" (in Shakespeare's Face, 2002)
It all began in the spring of 2001. Stephanie Nolen, a young reporter for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail, was chatting on the phone with her mother. Seems the parents' up-the-street neighbor in a suburb of Ottawa, Lloyd Sullivan, was the proud heir to the only oil portrait of William Shakespeare painted in the Bard's lifetime. The modest-sized likeness, dated 1603, was rendered on oak board by one John Sanders, Lloyd Sullivan's distant ancestor. Sullivan had gone to a lot of trouble to trace the painting (which had spent many years under his invalid grandmother's bed in Montreal!) to its source. He had spent ten years and thousands of dollars to have it authenticated by the best experts in the field, and now he was finally ready to make it public. Nolen, captivated from the first moment she laid eyes on "Willy Shake", as Sullivan had dubbed the picture, was more than happy to break the news to the world. And everyone who heard the story was agog.
Why such a fuss over a little old oil painting?
June 08, 2006
Okay, listen up...
...today, we're gonna talk about FEAR!
But don't blink, or you'll miss Geddy Lee's faaaaaabulous cameo.
May 22, 2006
So much for the superiority of the private media...
The Beeb...living evidence that commercial radio just plain sucks, according to the UK Guardian:
The BBC's radio services have "badly bruised" its commercial rivals and Radio 1 and 2 should be sold for £500m, according to an influential report.The UK radio market is suffering from "stunted growth" owing to the commercial sector's inability to compete against the BBC's budget and cross-promotional abilities, according to the report from the European Media Forum, an arm of independent research institute the European Policy Forum.
Continue reading "So much for the superiority of the private media..." »
May 20, 2006
Oh, my virgin eyes!!!
I swear...I'll never look at Dr. David Suzuki the same way again:
April 09, 2006
One of the few celebrities actually worth celebrating
Susan Sarandon is one; Tim Robbins is another; Sean Penn is a third. Why? Because they dare to take a stand for what's right, whether or not it's popular at the time. Now, Charlize Theron makes four:
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation presented its Vanguard Award to Theron at the 17th annual GLAAD Media Awards for increasing "visibility and understanding in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community."
Continue reading "One of the few celebrities actually worth celebrating" »
March 28, 2006
Stanislaw Lem, R.I.P.
From the Beeb:
Polish author Stanislaw Lem, most famous for science fiction works including Solaris, has died aged 84, after suffering from heart disease.He sold more than 27 million copies of his works, translated into about 40 languages, and a number were filmed.
His 1961 novel Solaris was made into a movie by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971 and again by American Steven Soderbergh in 2002.
March 19, 2006
Spencer Tunick goes Bolivarian!
Mass nudity for art's sake--in Caracas? Por que no?
More than 1,500 Venezuelans shed their clothes on a main city avenue Sunday to pose for American photographer Spencer Tunick, forming a human mosaic in front of a national symbol: a statue of independence hero Simon Bolivar.
March 16, 2006
Wish I'd been there too
Yes, I realize this probably gives away more about my age than I'd care to admit.
So what?
March 06, 2006
For those in need of a Monday smile...
Oh, this is so Brokeback.
I mean, what could be better than six hot cowboys?
Shaking their booties?
To Elvis?
On SKATES?
Well...the ending of this clip sure could be. Heh, heh, heh.
(And they say women aren't visual? HA!)
March 05, 2006
Soy loco por ti, Simon Bolivar?
At last, my suspicions can be laid to rest--the provenance of the tune for Vila Isabel's winning samba (in the Rio carnival) is revealed:
According to percussionist and composer, Jose Carlos Capinan, the chorus, title and even the samba beat was composed by himself and current Brazilian Culture Minister Gilberto Gil in 1967.Capinan says he has sent a letter, complaining of copyright infringement to the Samba school and the Venezuelan government.
February 17, 2006
Festive Left Friday Blogging, Too: Tropicalia comes to "London, London"--again
Anyone know where I can get really, REALLY cheap airfare from Toronto to London so I can catch this?
Wacky TV variety-show host Chacrinha (José Abelardo Barbosa de Medeiros, 1916-1988), an inspiration to the Festive Left artistic movement, adorns a poster from the "Tropicalia" exhibit, coming to the Barbican in London, UK. The exhibit runs from February 13 to May 22, 2006.
(This'll teach me to jump the gun when it comes to FLFB! --Your Humble(d) Author.)
Festive Left Friday Blogging: The art of Marti
Raul Martinez's painting "Marti y la Estrella" during the first day open to public of the "Art of Cuba" exhibition in São Paulo, Brazil. (Photo credit: AFP/Mauricio Lima)
February 10, 2006
Festive Left Friday Blogging: Where's Hugo?
In good company, of course. Marching through downtown Caracas, February 4. (Photo credit: Luigino Bracci)
Continue reading "Festive Left Friday Blogging: Where's Hugo?" »
January 29, 2006
A shot of Victory Gin (and tonic)
Here's a little free advice for y'all: Don't EVER watch "1984" all in one sitting. It will depress the shit out of you.
In fact, even in two sittings, it's damn near unbearable.
That's what I've been up to in my spare time, these past couple of days. Getting the shit depressed out of me. By a goddamned movie.
December 15, 2005
A rare film review
There aren't many movies out there that I'd want to watch twice, but Donnie Darko is the happy exception. It's not only worthwhile; it's also necessary if you really want to get it. I'd recommend two viewings as a bare minimum. In fact, I'd even recommend buying the director's cut...