Those Wacky Freemasons

I didn't mention this before, mainly because the only reader I'm sure about was with me at the time, but the other day I went to Borders on a quest to waste some money. It turned out that they were having a deal where if I bought 3 DVDs, they would give me one for free. So, I bought Goodfellas, Casino and JFK and got Scorsese's Dylan documentary, No Direction Home for free.

Anyway, while I was watching Stone's insane, kinetic masterpiece for the second time in as manyd ays, I was slinking around Amazon and I looked at the page for the book "On The Trail of the Assassins", written by Jim Garrison- Kevin Costner's character, and one of two books that got "based on" credits for the screenplay. And this "review" of the book is too magnificent to pass up. The author is one Richard A. Salzer (Amazon assures me it's his "REAL NAME")

"The most important line in the book is the one
about how the FBI used the Masonic Lodge to
meet in 1960...laying the groundwork for JFK's
eventual removal by the 'Shadow Government...
Ask yourselves, Mr. and Mrs. America, is it
just a coinsidence that LBJ, Hoover, Major of
Dallas Cabell, the former Gen. Cabell, et, al
were Masons? I think not. Then they brought in
the Zionists, et, al and finished the job! "

I've heard the conspiracy theory that this was a Freemason job, but I was unaware of the insidisous Zionist conenction to murder. Or should I say COUP? (No, I shouldn't) I wouldn't be surpirsed if the shooters were supplied directly from the Mossad...

And who actually writes "Ask yourselves, Mr. and Mrs. America"? I mean, unless you are writing advertisements for 30s radio dramas....

(I love ending sentences with... leading you to connect the sinister dots yourself...)

I just don't know what to think

So, the Braves get hammered by the Sox in the first game today- real ugly, Matsuzaka handled the team easily and Boston wins 13-4. So I'm pretty bummed. Then, in the second game, Smoltz pitches a gem, and the Braves score 14 runs while the Red Sox don't score at all. Talk about good news, bad news, yeah?


Anyway. I finished Thomas Pyncon's V. a few minutes ago. And I'm still confused. The book, as I've mentioned, is really good, and maybe one day it will all click, but I'm afraid I would have to re-read it to really begin to approach the book's mysteries, and I'm not sure when I'll get around to doing that. It's not the easiest read, and it's not the shortest book. Right now I'm torn between Nabokov's Pnin and Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth. It's pretty much a coin flip in my mind between the two, at the moment. When I have made my final decision, I will let all of you noble bastards in the infernal book club know.

And I went ahead and made a reservation for three nights in a hotel in New York City. I can still wriggle out of it, but it's begining to look a lot like Manhattan for your humble narrator. And my plans for the city are begining to take shape more clearly in my head. I think I'll probably try and see Spamalot the night I arrive, and a Yankees game my second night there. One day I'll probably devote to Central Park. And I'll definitely try and find a good cd store that sells some of the bootlegs I'm dying to own copies of (most importantly, a complete Basement Tapes compilation).

Stop the Planet of the Apes I Want to Get Off

Oh. My. Gods. I was just flipping through the chanels, and on MSNBC I was subjected to something called a "News Pop", a little infographic on the bottom of the screen, above the crawl, informing me that "Al Gore won the 2000 popular vote but lost the election. That's it. I give up. My discomfort with the news/entertainment matrix has just slid into outright disdain. I hate everything. And everything keeps begging for me to do so. You all deserve whatever is coming.

So, tonight the Braves, fresh from being embarrased by the Nationals, of all teams, have to go into Fenway park to play the sickeningly good Red Sox. I'm not particularily optimistic. However, I do have to admit that I'm intrigued if Saturday's matchup is Dice-K against John Smolz (assuming Smoltz is healthy after that tagging injury.) Granted, the Sox' huge lead in the AL East owes something to how godawful the division has suddenly become, but the Sox are probably the best team in the game right now, whatever division you might put them in. Unless they get hit with a real plague of injuries, it's hard to see them not playing in the Series (and winning, in all likelihood). Unless they remember that they are the Sox.

So I've pretty much decided to visit the Big Apple in June. Yankees v. Diamondbacks- I really hope that the Unit pitches, cause I'd love to see his return to the Bronx. Anyone reading this who wants to join me is welcome. (Yeah, like anyone is reading this...Or wants to spend that much uninterrupted time with me).

I'm into the closing stretch of Pynchon's V. I still am not entirely sure what it means, but it's an amazing achievement, particularily for a first novel. If you have the free time and an agile mind, you should probably read it soon. I'm not positive what I'll read next. I have put the Billy Martin biography on the back burner, and I'll probably get back into that, but I'm not sure what novel is next. Maybe Nabokov's Pnin.

I feel bad for the NBA. First, it fucks up the only interesting series going on due to David Stern's raging narcissism and lack of imagination, and what do we have to look forward to? Spurs/Jazz in the Western finals and Pistons/Cavs, probably, in the East. Wake me up when it's over. The best outcome in the West would have been Warriors/Suns, and the East is so bad that I doubt a really intriguing matchup was possible.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars- Literary Front

So, I'm killing time and half-watching the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School", and there's a scene where Dangerfield is in his first English class, and the teacher starts class by reading the last part of Joyce's Ulysses, the "Yes I said yes I will yes" bit. And I wondered. I wondered if the movie was being made today- and this is ostensibly a relatively low-brow production, Vonnegut cameo aside- would the filmmakers and studio be that willing to trust that a decent portion of the audience would get the jokes here? The teacher says "I think Joyce is pretty hot too", and later, Dangerfield says of Joyce, "she's one of my favorite writers". You have to know that the novel she's reading was written by a man named James Joyce, or at least that there was a novelist named James Joyce, to get the joke, and I'm not sure if a-Hollywood trusts the audience enough at this point to make the joke, or B-that Hollywood is essentially right, that a lot of people wouldn't really get the joke. And I don't know if this pessimism is my basic pessimism, or if its justified, or if it's snobbery on my part. Probably all of the above. I know that even most college students don't read what we might call "the canon" for fun, only when they're assigned. And even then a lot don't. I don't know.

I'm half convinced that text messaging will eventually mark the end of modern English, and that in a hundred years people trying to read Dickens or Shakespeare will be like students today trying to read Sir Gawain or Chaucer. Hell, if someone hasn't already written an epistolary novel in text messages, I'm sure it's going to be published any day now.

I'm not concerned that reading itself is dying out, but that the books that people read are going to collapse into ever increasing banality. I know that this is the intellectual snob's eternal refrain. When the third book was written, the academics were bitching that it was nowhere near as good as the first, and that the form was dying. But when I was at Barnes and Nobel yesterday, they didn't have any poetry by Wallace Stevens, but a bunch of books of "poetry" called "Heart songs" written by some kid with some sad story behind him. I remember the Onion satire along those lines, but I swear to God I had no idea that it was based on something real, and that apparently become more important than WALLACE STEVENS. You just KNOW Oprah is somehow involved in this.

Okay, I know I'm something of a snob, especially about books and music, but I do read things like Stephen King and Harry Potter that sell millions of copies, I'm not as far gone as Harold Bloom in this respect. I don't know. Whatever. Nevermind.

Let's Go Steal Some Gasoline

The picture is the Israeli artwork for the Stones' Tumbling Dice single. All of you can be my partners in crime.

As part of my wholly undeserved but entirely appreciated assortment of graduation gifts, I was given a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble, which is about as great as it gets. And I rocked that thing too, the card was good for $100.00 and I managed to work it so that the final total, after taxes and the 10% discount, was a nickle. Because all of you are interested in everything that I do, my final selections were as follows:


The Road- Cormac McCarthy. I found a paperback copy without Oprah's "monstrous seal" upon it. Which was definitely a prerequisite for buying it.

Three Novels- Samuel Beckett. The three novels are Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. One of the great accomplishments of the twentieth century that I, embarrasingly, haven't read.

God is Not Great- Christopher Hitchens. I'm about halfway through it, and the writing is as good as one expects from the great contrarian, even if some of his targets are little more than fish in barrels.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets- J.K. Rowling. My least favorite Harry Potter book, but the one I was missing in hardback.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II- Alan Moore. I really needed a copy. Hopefully there's no chance of another terrible movie being made from this franchise.

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth- Grant Morrison. My five (or six, depending on how you count the two sequential Loeb arcs) favorite Batman stories:
1. The Dark Knight Returns- Frank Miller
2. Year One- Frank Miller
3. The Killing Joke- Alan Moore
4. The Long Halloween and Dark Victory- Jeph Loeb
5. Arkham Asylum- Grant Morrison


I include links to Amazon so all of you can join my infernal book club. Don't worry, it's all part of the masterplan.
All in all, a good haul. I also hit Borders, looking for the last two volumes of Transmetropolitan, which have been surprisingly difficult to find lately. I found book 10, but I'm still missing 9. I also bought the collection of Alan Moore's uncollected DC stories, which includes his amazing Superman stories, For The Man Who Has Everything and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, as well as the Killing Joke (which I already had). More or less essential.

House was pretty good last night, although I'm having a harder time caring about whether or not Forman leaves than I probably should. My sister wasn't surprised that I was taken with a story about a young punk who plays chess... I will say that back when I played chess competively (and managed to just keep my head above water by taking out the kids who didn't belong there and pulling off rare upsets of kids much, much better at the game than I will ever be) that smashing another kid's head in with a clock was a temptation that I only barely managed to resist.

The post's title is from a song by A3 called "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlife" (A Dylan reference I couldn't pass up, and a pretty decent song). A3 is mainly known for "Woke Up This Morning", the theme to the Sopranos.

The Anatomy of Boredom

I already miss Christopher Moltisanti.

I'm half-watching 24, which I'm begining to believe might not actually be a very good show. I amused myself by reading the iTunes review of the audiobook for the new Christopher Hitchens book, God Is Not Great. I love the negative reviews that consist of nothing but poorly worded attempts to refute Hitchens' atheism. I actually still haven't read the book, but I intend to very soon. I love Hitchens, I love evangelical atheism, it's win-win, baby.

Words cannot express my loathing for this Diet Pepsi commerical that tries to be ironic/retro/cool by referencing Beverly Hills 90210. Irony -or rather, shallow irony or faux irony-is usually a poor subsitute for humor, and in this case this faux-hipsterism is unbelievably irrititating. Argh. I just want to hurt someone on Madison Avenue very badly.

I'm toying with the idea of using the money that people were far too nice in giving me for graduating only three years behind schedule and going to New York for three or four days in June. But I'm worried that the idea is appealing largely as a result of my incredible boredom. I've got to start looking for a proper job, just to save my bloody mind.

Sorry this post was so self-indulgent, but that's how boring tonight's 24 is. And this is supposed to be part of the climax for the entire season.

Update: Argh! The Braves lost again while the Mets won. This drops us into a close second place, if I'm not mistaken. Who knew that Washington had a pitcher who could take a no-hit bid this deep? And is it just me, or has there been an unsual number of near no-hitters this season? After that long stretch without one that lasted from Johnson's perfect game (5/18/04, against the Braves, which I had the misfortune of watching on television) until Anibal Sanchez's no-no last year (9/6/06), it seems like there has been a deluge of nearly no-hit games so far (along with Mark Buehrle's actual no hitter). And Smoltz had to leave the game early after hurting his hand tagging out a runner. If we lose Smoltz for a stretch of time, we're in a little trouble, especially with how well the damned Mets are playing.

Top 5 Things I would do in New York:
1. Go see a Yankees game before they build a new Yankee Stadium
2. See Spamalot on Broadway, despite the extravagant ticket cost
3. See the Brill Building
4. Pilgrimage to former site of CBGB's.
5. Central Park- the Obelisk and the reservoir and the zoo.

You Better Act Like You Know- KRS-One at the Cat's Cradle

Saturday afternoon I finally graduated from NC State University after seven long years. What better place to celebrate on Saturday night than taking in the wisdom of the Teacher?

For the show, I wore my new "NC State Graduate 2007" t-shirt that my sister gave me for graduation. I wore it mostly out of irony (although I don't really know what's ironic about it) and partly because I like wearing the red NCSU colors into the Chapel Hill area. And the people there were into the shirt, I'm happy to report. One girl even took my picture (which has me worried about how much of my soul she stole with the device).

The first opening act was a South Carolina MC named Dan Johns. You have to imagine that opening for an act as legendary as KRS-One is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it offers up more exposure than you are likely to get otherwise, and being on the same bill as an icon offers up a sort of affirmation of your work in and of itself. On the other hand, you're perfectly aware that the crowd is only vaguely interested you at best, and would probably rather use the time you're on stage to drink, smoke on the back patio, and wait for the act they are actually there to see. Dan Johns rose to the occasion. His songs were fine, (he's the first MC I know of to name-check Antwaan Randle El) but his freestyling was the real attraction. It was the first time in the admitedly limited number of live hip hop shows I've been to that I had witnessed the time-tested technique of having the crowd hold up items to freestyle about, and it worked. My favorite rhyme was "hearse" with "Why are you holding up a purse?" but that might be just me.

The second act, local icons The Away Team, was less successful in negotiating the thin line of opening for someone like KRS. The Away Team is part of the local stable of rappers the Hall of Justus/Justus League, which also features Little Brother and Cesar Comanche. Unfortunately, the crowd simply wasn't into the Away Team, and their set was surpsingly short. (Full disclosure: after Dan John's set, I snuck out back to smoke a cigarette, and missed the very begining of their set. Who schedules acts that closely together? Part of it might have been how late the show actually began- nearly an hour after the scheduled onset. Also, during their set I had a chance to briefly speak to Dan John and buy his album, so I might not be the best source on their show, but Keith agreed that it was disappointing.)

The third performer was unnanounced before the show, the poet Amir Sulaiman. Sulaiman is a spoken word/slam style poet, reminiscent of Saul Williams, the Watts Prophets and the Last Poets. He recited three or four poems, which were damn good, if not groundbreaking. His new album, Like A Thief In The Night, comes out tomorrow. I will say that in addition to being a fine poet, Sulaiman is also a canny businessman. At the merch table after the show, I went to buy his new album and he somehow talked me into buying one of his older albums at the same time. I mentioned to him that I wrote poetry as well, and next thing I knew, he was giving me a copy of his Dead Man Walking album instead of change. Not that I mind, I just think it's kind of funny.

Then came the main attraction. One of the single most influential MCs to ever rock a mic, the Blastmaster himself, the Teacher. KRS-One. I don't think I've ever seen a crowd so into a performer, and KRS-One worked the crowd as hard as he could. His set was based around the classic BDP and KRS-One solo tracks the crowd was there to see and hear- The Bridge Is Over, Black Cop, Sound of Da Police, a version of You Must Learn rapped over a classical music track. This is fine- when you see the Stones, you want to hear the tracks that made them the biggest rock band in the world, and when you see KRS-One, you want to hear why he's routinely mentioned in the same breath as Rakim as the greatest to ever rhyme over a beat.

KRS was also pushing his new album, Hip Hop Lives, a collaboration withe Marley Marl, as hard as he could. His crew blanketed the crowd with posters for the new album, which drops May 22, and played up the history he had with Marley Marl and the Juice Crew, the role they played in the rise of Boogie Down Productions. The highlight of the evening, besides the sheer visceral pleasure in being part of a crowd so enthusiastic that it verged on becoming a mosh pit near the stage, came when KRS pulled out a sharpie. He signed a copy of his book, Ruminations, he signed posters, and he signed the front of my notebook. As he left the stage early Sunday morning, he made a pointedly reminded the crowd that it was now Mother's day, and spoke out forcefully on the neccessity for respect for women, particularily within the hip hop community. He labeled himself a feminist, and I couldn't help but wonder just how many MCs would have done the same thing.

KRS-One is an icon, one of the greatest ever, and among the three or four most influential ever. He certainly has the perogative to go out and give a lackluster show, to play only the recent tracks, to give the crowd what he wants more than what it wants. But he knows better than that. He knows that he got where he is now by rocking the crowds, and that to continue to accomplish the things he still wants done, he should continue. I doubt his new album, (the tracks he played off of it sounded pretty good) will be as revolutionary as Criminal Minded, or as landmark as By Any Means Neccessary, but I'll still buy it, and not just out of nostalgia for a past I wasn't actually part of.

The Word of Chipper

I've never trusted interleague play in Major League Baseball. It simply ain't natural. But now, I know it's wrong. Because our favorite prophet/messiah/MVP Third Baseman Chipper Jones has pointed out how wrong it is that the Braves have to play our "rival" BoSox while the Phillies get the Blue Jays and the Mets get the Yankees.

Loyal Chipperians, you have heard the words of your prophet. We must now take up arms against the abomination.

Amen.

Props to Signal to Noise for providing a platform to the one true prophet.