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From todays NYT "In Stress of Recount, Complaints get Bizarre" by Lynette Holloway - Plantation Fla.
......Matthew C. Rhoades, 25 a research analyst for The Republican National Comitee, said that on Friday he saw a Democratic counter in the room eating a chad, the piece of the punch-card ballot that is supposed to fall out when a voter punches in his choice.
"We couldn't find a camera," Mr. Rhoades said,"and we were about to sweep them off the table. But right before that, a Democratic counter put one on his finger, joking around, held it up and then threw it in his mouth."
Her Name is Kathy and she works for Jeb
Katherine Harris no stranger to controversy
By Dara Kim
Nov. 13, 2000
| TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- A Harvard-educated blueblood from one of
Florida's wealthiest families, Secretary of State Katherine Harris is no stranger to
controversy.
She's been investigated for campaign finance violations and criticized for spending
state money jetting around the world, spending up to $500 a night for hotel rooms in
Washington. She's also been one of George W. Bush's most prominent political
supporters, campaigning for him in Florida and elsewhere.
Harris placed herself in the middle of the increasingly partisan
struggle over Florida's 25 electoral votes Monday with her
public announcement that all 67 counties are required by law
to wrap up their recounts by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
She sits as one of six elected members on the Florida
Cabinet, which with Gov. Jeb Bush, decides on issues
ranging from the mundane to the momentous affecting
schools, the environment and other statewide concerns.
As secretary of state, Harris oversees elections, the state's
historical and cultural resources and also keeps the state's
public records. She makes $106,000 a year.
"For what is probably the easiest of the Cabinet positions,
she's made it awful difficult," said state Democratic Party
spokesman Tony Welch.
In her first two years on the job, Harris spent $100,000 in Florida tax dollars on foreign
trade missions to places like Barbados and Brazil as well as the Sydney Olympics. Her
travel expenses were significantly higher than the other five Cabinet members and
three times more than Gov. Jeb Bush.
Harris defended her travel, saying she has brought millions of dollars of international
trade to the state and established cultural ties such as a cooperative ballet between
the state and Mexico.
Sandra Mortham, the incumbent who lost to Harris in a nasty Republican primary in
1998, said every secretary of state emphasizes their own key areas of concern.
"For me, it was elections, and it was to get the elections online and on the Internet,"
Mortham said. "Katherine has decided that she wanted to move the office more into
the area of international relations."
Ben McKay, Harris' chief of staff, said Harris was too busy with Monday's court hearing
to return calls.
In 1994, Harris became implicated in a campaign finance scheme surrounding her first
run for public office. She was forced to reimburse $20,000 after state investigators
discovered that employees of Riscorp, Inc., an insurer, were improperly reimbursed
for their contributions to her 1994 Senate campaign.
She said she had no knowledge that anything was amiss with the contributions.
This year, Harris approved a taxpayer-financed public service announcement featuring
retired Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, a Bush ally, urging Floridians to vote. She
received criticism for spending the public's $30,000 to finance the ads, which aired
during the final month of the presidential campaign.
McKay said Harris' office asked Schwartzkopf, as a prominent Floridian, to make the
ads months ago, after Gloria Estefan and Tiger Woods turned down the request.
Harris, 43, earned a degree in history from the all-female Agnes Scott College in
Georgia, received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard and she
studied art and Spanish in Madrid, and philosophy and religion in Geneva.
Her grandfather, citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin, served as a longtime legislator. He was
also a friend of former state Republican Party chairman, Tom Slade, who hand-picked
Harris for her Senate run. Her cousin, J.D. Alexander, is a state representative.
The Cabinet job, one that has been largely ceremonial, is being abolished after Harris'
current term, which expires in January 2003.
Harris, who is married to businessman Anders Ebbeson, listed her net worth as more
than $6.5 million as of December 1999, according to her latest financial disclosure.
Associated Press
Palm Beach County suspends hand count By Jackie Hallifax
Nov. 14, 2000 | TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) --
With a deadline fast approaching, judges in three Florida cities are deciding the fate of
recounted votes while Republican George W. Bush's legal team weighs whether to
appeal to a higher federal court.
Amid the swirl of legal maneuvers, officials in Palm Beach
County voted 2-1 on Tuesday to delay their manual recount
until they can clarify whether they have the legal authority to
proceed.
The county, a Democratic stronghold, had planned to count,
by hand about 425,000 ballots -- exactly one week after
voters first complained they were confused by their ballots.
Their outcry unleashed a political tide that froze Florida's 25
electoral votes and left Americans waiting to see who their
43rd president will be.
"The opinion we have received is that this manual recount is
not authorized by Florida statutes. It is my understanding that
an advisory opinion is in fact binding on this board," said
Judge Charles Burton.
Burton had opposed the canvassing commission's earlier decision to order a hand
count.
A federal judge who turned away Bush's initial effort to stop the recounting agreed
Monday the stakes couldn't be higher.
"I believe these are serious arguments. The question becomes who should consider
them," said U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who declined Bush's request
for emergency federal intervention and ruled the issue was best left to local courts.
Among the critical issues to be resolved in local courts -- whether counties can
continue recounting votes beyond a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline set by Florida's
Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris.
In Tallahassee, a judge expressed doubts about the deadline as he weighed a
request from Vice President Al Gore and two counties to give more time for
recounting that could stretch into the weekend in Palm Beach County.
Leon County Circuit Judge Terry P. Lewis repeatedly questioned Monday why the
state had set the Tuesday deadline when absentee votes can continue to be counted
through the end of the week. "What's the good of doing a certification ahead of time?"
Lewis asked. He also questioned how a large county could ever get a hand recount
done within seven days since voters have three days before they even have to
request one. Lewis was expected to rule Tuesday.
Republicans argue the manual recounting should be ended because the process is
prone to abuse and political bias. Democrats hope the recounts will help Gore pick up
enough votes to overcome Bush's narrow lead in the state, which an informal
Associated Press tally put at 388 votes.
On other legal fronts:
--In West Palm Beach, a judge is considering the lawsuits of voters seeking a new vote
in their county. The voters argue the punch-card ballots they were given on Election
Day may have confused them enough to mistakenly vote for Reform Party candidate
Pat Buchanan when they intended to vote for Gore.
--The Florida Democratic Party sued the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board on
Monday evening, challenging the board's method of reading the ballots. The party
wants "pregnant chads" -- dimpled fragments not detached from the card -- counted
as votes.
--Democrats prepared to go to court in Broward County to overturn a decision by
officials there not to order a countywide manual recount. The county's canvassing
board decided Monday against the recount, after counting a sample of votes by hand
in three precincts and finding no major discrepancies.
"We intend to file litigation seeking judicial relief from this decision, which we think was
based on an erroneous legal decision sent down by the secretary of state,"
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jenny Backus said.
While Volusia County sought to wrap up its second recount, officials in Miami-Dade
County -- the state's most populous -- were to vote Tuesday on whether to conduct a
recount requested by Gore's campaign.
Bush's legal team is weighing whether to escalate a fight it began in federal court. The
options include appealing Middlebrooks' decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
in Atlanta, or possibly going to the U.S. Supreme Court on an emergency basis,
according to Republican officials familiar with Bush's strategy.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the possibility that
Republicans would seek to expand voter recounts to other Florida counties where
Bush fared well was "perceived as unlikely" at this time because deadlines for
requesting such recounts had expired in many counties.
Bush's lead lawyer sounded his main argument against further recounting on Monday.
"The process, to sum it up, is selective, standardless, subjective, unreliable and
inherently biased," Theodore Olson argued.
Senior Gore adviser Warren Christopher, a former U.S. Secretary of State,
acknowledged that the legal back-and-forth "seems to be getting a little bit
argumentative," but said his side believed the recounts were the only way "to defend
the rights of the voters of Florida to have a fair outcome."
Associated Press
A tree Grows in.....
....this is a send out to Porf. Wilson
By MICHAEL CREWDSON and MARGARET MITTELBACH - 11/11/00 for NYT
When we heard that the New York
City Department of Parks had
published "Great Trees of New
York City," a guide to the city's most
impressive trees, we were intrigued.
Although New York has no hulking
redwoods, we had heard for years about a
monster tree in Queens that was said to be
the biggest in all five boroughs. According
to the tree grapevine, this behemoth is a
tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) growing
in an obscure corner of Alley Pond Park, a
635-acre swath of green in northeast Queens
that stretches from Union Turnpike to Little
Neck Bay.
Yet as we flipped through the pages of the
guide, we saw that the biggest-tree title was
awarded to another tulip tree, one in Staten
Island's Clove Lakes Park. The Queens tree
was not even mentioned. This left us
wondering. Was the Queens giant a myth,
the plant version of Bigfoot? Was it a
largish tree that had been exaggerated out of
all proportion? Or was it a sleeping giant
that had been forgotten?
A series of calls to the Parks Department's
press office revealed there was no recorded
data for any "great tree" in Alley Pond Park.
So we decided to go on a fact-finding
mission. We would track down both the
Queens and Staten Island trees and measure
them, branch to branch, leaf to leaf.,br>
Tree measuring used to be a simple affair,
an exercise for teaching schoolchildren a
little geometry. You simply paced off 100
feet from the base of the tree, determined the
angle at which you stood to the treetop and
performed a little trigonometric calculation.
We immediately noticed two problems with this method. First, it assumed the tree was
growing on flat ground. Second, it assumed you were listening during high school math
class.
We concluded that bringing in experts would be absolutely necessary.
Bob Leverett, a co-founder of the Eastern Native Tree Society, is sometimes called the "guru
of Eastern ancient forests." He's the co-author of "Stalking the Forest Monarchs: A Guide to
Measuring Champion Trees," and describes himself as a "big-tree hunter." If anyone was
going to determine the exact height of these trees, he would be the one.
There was only one problem: Mr. Leverett lives in western Massachusetts, and he is reluctant
to take his car into perilous city traffic. Besides, his tree-measuring abilities are in high
demand. On the weekend we were planning our tree safari, he was already scheduled to
measure big trees in the Adirondacks with Bruce Kershner, a Buffalo-based forest ecologist.
The two men are writing a book together, "The Sierra Club Guide to the Ancient Forests of
the Northeast," due from Random House next spring. But when Mr. Kershner got wind of
what we were up to, he agreed to postpone their Adirondack plans.
Born and reared in New York City, Mr. Kershner had not only heard of the Queens giant but
had also seen it. He had also roughly measured the Staten Island tree five years ago, and he
wanted Mr. Leverett to get a crack at it.
We rendezvoused with them on a Saturday morning in Bayside, a residential neighborhood
in Queens, and caravaned together to 58th Road and East Hampton Boulevard, a quiet street
opposite fenced-in woods. This sylvan site is the reputed home of the Queens giant, a narrow
parcel of parkland amputated from the rest of Alley Pond Park by the crisscrossing of the
Long Island Expressway and the Cross Island Parkway.
When we stepped out onto the street, Mr. Leverett began to brief us on the details of tree
measuring, tossing out terms we hadn't used for a while, like hypotenuse. Oh, yes — the
long arm of a right triangle. Suddenly, Mr. Kershner stopped the math talk and said, "I just
want to point out how bizarre this is, looking for a giant tree on the edge of a busy highway
in Queens."
Both men were prepared for a hard-core trek, with hiking boots, heavy pants and packs.
Normally they do their research in the wilderness of state and national parks, searching for
pockets of ancient forest. We asked Mr. Leverett, who grew up in a small town in the
mountains of Tennessee, what he thought of it all. He considered carefully before answering.
"This is an old city with a lot of history," he said in a soft Southern accent. "There's a lot of
places for a big tree to hide out."
We wended our way down to a sidewalk alongside the Long Island Expressway and,
ignoring a sign that read "Trail Closed," went a few yards farther and found a rough trail
leading into the woodland's interior. The blare of traffic dulled slightly as we were enveloped
by green. Before walking even 10 feet down the trail, Mr. Leverett and Mr. Kershner were
identifying trees and estimating their ages. One big tulip tree, they agreed, was about 200
years old, a red oak was about 150 and a beech had to be at least 80. They knew this,
because the beech had "1920" carved into its smooth bark.
"These are big trees," Mr. Kershner said, with an edge of excitement in his voice. "This
looks like an old-growth forest."
Mr. Leverett has logged tens of thousands of miles measuring trees in the Great Smoky
Mountains, the Adirondacks and New England, and he's seen some monster flora. Yet, as
we walked deeper into this tiny patch of woods, perhaps another 100 feet along the trail, he
abruptly let out a shout. "Whooohooooo!" he yelled. "That is a large vegetable. Ohhh, this is
an old tree." Apparently, the Queens giant was for real.
Our eyes popped when we saw it. If tulips are skyscrapers among trees — the tallest species
that grows in this region — then this was the Empire State Building. It dwarfed the other
trees in the woods, and its massive arrow-straight trunk shot high into the canopy. The girth
of the trunk was so wide you would need a whole team of tree-huggers to embrace it
properly.
The only sign that anyone was aware that this tree was special was that it was enclosed by a
low, broken- down chain-link fence that offered, if nothing else, symbolic protection. We
scrambled over it, and Mr. Leverett began taking measurements. He whipped out a tape
measure, hooked it onto a furrow of the gnarled, reddish bark and slowly circled the tree,
disappearing briefly: "18.6 feet in circumference," he said, noting this down in a black
binder.
Getting the tree's height was slightly trickier. We followed him up the steep slope on which
the tree was growing and noticed that these woods were a bit of a mess. We passed a
discarded shopping cart, rusting truck springs, a smashed air- conditioner and the remains of
a long-abandoned car. And yet, the soil on the forest floor was soft and dark, the color of
coffee grounds. "It's wonderful soil," Mr. Leverett said as he climbed past a little patch of
ferns.
To measure the tree's height using trigonometry — or as Mr. Leverett likes to call it,
"twigonometry" — he had to be able to see the tiptop of the tree. When he found a vantage
point, where he could glimpse the top through the woodland's thick foliage, he stopped and
broke out the latest in high-tech tree-measuring gear.
Taking a $300 Bushnell laser range finder (most commonly used by golfers to gauge the
distance to the green), he aimed it at the highest leaf on the tree, which he called the leader,
and pressed a button. Zap. A digital readout on the range finder told him that the treetop was
126 feet away. He then looked into the eyepiece of another device, a $90 Suunto clinometer,
which established the vertical angle at which he stood to the leader. Using his equipment and
a little basic trigonometry, Mr. Leverett executed the motions of measurement in a brisk ritual
that left us awed and — voilà! — announced that the Queens giant was 133.8 feet high, the
equivalent of a 13-story building. Let's see if Staten Island could top that.
While Mr. Leverett was working on the tree's size, Mr. Kershner was working on its age.
He pointed out a hollow in the tree trunk that was big enough to sit in. Inside were an old
baseball cap and an empty Coke bottle. "Look," he said, "a leprechaun convention center."
He examined bald spots on the bark and said that those were sure signs of an aged tree.
On the ground he found a limb that had fallen from 50 feet up, and he got down in the dirt to
count its rings. "This bough alone is 200 years old," he said when he finally finished
counting. "I would say this tree is 350 to 400 years old." That meant the tree was a sapling
when New Amsterdam was being settled by the Dutch in the 1600's. "We're not just talking
about whether this is the largest tree here," he said. "We're talking about the oldest living
thing in New York City."
Now that we had taken the measure of the king of Queens, we returned to our vehicles and
headed to Staten Island for the showdown. Mr. Kershner, who happened to have grown up
there and had even written a book about it — "Secret Places of Staten Island" (Kendall/Hunt,
1998) — led the way. He let us know he was rooting for the Staten Island tree.
It was not surprising that both contenders were tulip trees. Except for white pines, which do
not grow in the city, tulip trees are the tallest and most voluminous trees in the East. They're
also fairly tough, able to survive in city parks despite air pollution and vandalism.
Historically, Native Americans and pioneers used tulip trees' long, straight trunks to make
canoes, and their fine-textured wood is still commonly used to make furniture, musical
instruments and paper products. They're called tulip trees because the shape of their leaves
and flowers resemble tulip blossoms.
Mr. Leverett is fond of tulip trees. He grew up in the mountains of Tennessee in a town
called Copper Hill. "It was my favorite tree in the Smokies," he said. "Most of those huge
Smoky Mountain tulip trees are 145 to 165 feet tall. The species is capable of living to 600
years."
The scene at Clove Lakes Park was quite different from the neglected, highway-beleaguered
woods in Queens. In northern Staten Island, just off Forest Avenue and Clove Road, this
200-acre park was well- groomed, its paved paths filled with strollers and baby carriages. At
the park's northernmost end, a green tree-studded lawn stretched away from the aptly named
Forest Avenue, and in the middle of it, about 200 feet from the street, we saw a mighty big
tree dwarfing everything around it.
When Mr. Leverett saw it, he let out a whistle. "This is going to be a horse race," he said.
None of the picnickers and other parkgoers seemed to notice that they were in the presence of
greatness. Aside from its humongous size, nothing distinguished this tree as special except
for a severed lightning-rod cable that hung ineffectually down its trunk.
According to the "Great Trees" guide, the Staten Island tree is 146 feet high. If true, it would
easily be the victor over the Queens Giant. But Mr. Leverett is an expert at busting
overblown claims.
"We're trying to bring truth into the big-tree numbers," he said. The big-tree-hunting world,
it turned out, is rife with inaccurate measurements. But no arboreal claimant can hide from
Mr. Leverett's laser range finder. For example, he and his colleagues at the Eastern Native
Tree Society discovered that a red oak in Michigan, which was listed as the state champion,
was overestimated by 90 feet. "Ninety feet, that's a whole tree," he said.
The Staten Island tree, which we dubbed the Clove Lakes colossus, was clearly younger than
its Queens rival, and it had had the benefit of little competition. Whereas the Queens giant
was losing its crown, struggling to get enough sun, the colossus was lord of the lawn,
spreading out in every direction with abandon. The only hassle it appeared to face was
children, running about on its massive buttressed trunk.
Mr. Leverett measured the circumference of the trunk. He hooked the tape to the bark and
vanished for what seemed to be a long time as he made his way around. At 20 feet, the tape
was not long enough this time, and we had to put a finger on the spot so he could measure
the remainder. It was a whopping 21.4 feet around, bigger in circumference than the Queens
tree.
Walking backward across the lawn, trying to get a bead on the tree's leader, Mr. Leverett
commented on how easy it was to measure a tree in an open field. "It's almost like shooting
fish in a barrel," he said.
He lasered the tree with his range finder and worked his mathematical magic with the
clinometer and calculator. "The height," he announced, as we waited anxiously, "is 119
feet." That's 27 feet shorter than the height advertised in the "Great Trees" guide, but, more
importantly, 12.2 feet shorter than the Queens' giant.
However, Mr. Kershner pointed out that the colossus had more limbs and a more massive
trunk. And we had to admit that the trunk was overwhelming. Mr. Leverett, who's no wood
sprite, looked like a finger puppet standing next to it.
But it was all going to come down to calculations he would make later. Height is not the
be-all and end-all when it comes to determining a tree's bigness. With more measurements
(height to the first bough, crown spread), Mr. Leverett planned to use a mathematical model
to estimate the tree's overall volume. "I have to sit down with a pencil and calculator for an
hour or so," he said. "But I can tell you it's going to be a close one."
We headed our separate ways and waited nervously for the results. The next evening we
received word via e- mail. Both trees had an estimated volume of 1,750 cubic feet and
weighed in the neighborhood of 50,000 pounds. The Queens tree was probably a bit more
voluminous, but the Staten Island tree was slightly heavier.
So what Mr. Leverett was saying was that it was a dead heat. Until further review, we had
two trees worthy of being called the New York Giant.
"At this point," wrote Mr. Leverett, "I would call them co-champions. Should you want to
take the contest further, we would need to have both trees climbed with periodic girth
measurements taken for at least the first 75 feet. Until that is done, I'm willing to call it a
draw."
And so, until some hardy spirit clambers to the top of both these behemoths, bragging rights
in this heavyweight-tree contest can be shared by both boroughs. As for the other counties,
Manhattan and the Bronx seem to be out of the running and, while trees may grow in
Brooklyn, they grow taller in Queens and Staten Island.
Finding the Trees
To reach the Queens giant, a tulip tree measuring 133.8 feet tall and 18.6 feet in
circumference, head for a section of Alley Pond Park where the Long Island Expressway and
the Cross Island Parkway intersect. At East Hampton Boulevard and the Horace Harding
Expressway (a service road of the Long Island Expressway) look for a nearby trail into the
woodlands. The tree, which is surrounded by a small fence, is a five-minute walk from the
trailhead.
The Clove Lakes colossus, a tulip tree measuring 119 feet tall and 21.4 feet in circumference,
is situated in the northernmost part of Staten Island's Clove Lakes Park near the intersection
of Forest Avenue and Clove Road.
From Forest Avenue, walk south across the park's lawn for about 200 feet to reach the giant
tree.
"Great Trees of New York City" is a 48-page guide that describes more than 100 city trees of
impressive size, age, species, form and historic association. For detailed instructions on
measuring big trees, visit the Eastern Native Tree Society's Web site
right here.
Now that Phish is on sabbatical.........
From today's New York Post:
Elephant Band a Jumbo Hit
By Bill Hoffman
Meet the biggest thing in music - a pop group featuring five full-grown
elephants. The musical beasts, who live in a conservation center in
Thailand, have been trained to play percussion instruments, including the
xylophones and a harmonica. And they also play pretty mean trumpets.
The group, which has yet to be named, is the brainchild of Sanit Homnan, who
runs the center where the elephants live. Their fist album will be released
in the United States next year and will include their debut single, "Chang,
Chang, Chang," a popular Thai children's song. In English, it means
elephant, elephant, elephant.
Homnan says the elephants work very much as a team and aren't into hogging
the spotlight with solos. Two of the elephants play bamboo percussion
instruments by shaking them with their trunks, while two others bang on
giant xylophones, and another blows a specially designed giant harmonica.
Among their tunes are "Happy Birthday," and they may soon be able to do
numbers by the Beatles and the Spice Girls.
Proceeds from the record will help fund a milk bank for orphaned elephants
and other elephant-conservation programs around the world. The pachyderm
players will do a worldwide concert tour to promote their songs. The same
conservation group has already trained elephants to paint on giant canvases.
Several of those artworks have been sold to raise money for the center.
STYX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
Dennis De Young, co-founder of the "rock" band Styx is suing his
former bandmates over misuse of the band's name and trademark.
DeYoung calls his decision to sue former partners Tommy Shaw, James
Young and Chuck Panozzo "the most painful decision" of his career
aside from that time he was forced to cut 12 minutes from a guitar
solo.
DeYoung was one of the band's founders 35 years ago and wrote and sang
most of the group's hits, including "Lady," "Babe," "Lady-Babe," and
"Bady-Labe."
He says a partnership deal that was renewed in 1990 by him, Shaw,
Young, Panozzo and Panozzo's brother, John, required the agreement of
all five on all matters concerning the band and its trademark.
Tragically, John Panozzo died in 1996 while attempting a falsetto
seven octaves above high C.
DeYoung joined the 1997 Styx reunion tour but asked the others to
delay their 1999 tour because he was suffering side effects resulting
from 29 years of art-rock.
My Daddy was was an ultralight.............
Plentiful Sandhill Cranes Blaze Trail for Rare
Relatives
By ELIZABETH STANTON FOR NYT 10/24/00
Twelve young sandhill cranes and an
equal number of biologists and
wildlife specialists are on their way
to completing the longest human-led bird
migration yet, over 1,250 miles from
Wisconsin to Florida.
The humans are teaching the cranes, born in
captivity, to migrate in hope that they can
use the same route and training process on
their endangered cousins, the whooping
crane, next year.
At least nine other human-led migrations
have been tried with other species,
including trumpeter swans and Canada
geese. Large water birds, like geese and
cranes, need to be led on their first flight
south by their parents so they can memorize
the landmarks. But these birds do not have
parents that have migrated.
So, in the parents' stead is Joe Duff, one of
the project designers and the pilot of a
yellow ultralight plane propelled by an
engine and a propeller, which is covered
with a bird guard.
The birds regard this single-seater as their
leader. Kept aloft by its large wings that
resemble those of a hang glider, the
ultralight craft can fly up to 35 miles an
hour. Flying about two hours a day, the
birds can cover 50 to 75 miles, but travel
time and distance depends on the cranes'
energy and the weather.
To signal flight time, Mr. Duff, dressed in a
baggy gray drawstring flight suit to
disguise his human features, starts the
engine and plays a tape of adult crane calls
off the tail of the plane.
When all goes well, and it generally has,
the cranes follow his lead and soar behind
him in a V-formation off the large white
wings until they reach the next stop.
"We just have to get up every morning and
see," Mr. Duff said. "Some days are
beautiful and others we have the fog and
winds to battle. But once we are up there,
the sights are incredible and it is just a
matter of a slow climb to get there."
The entourage left Necedah National
Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin on
Oct. 3 and the caravan of biologists,
wildlife experts and veterinarians expect to
arrive in early November at
Chassohowitzka National Wildlife Refuge,
along the Gulf of Mexico, in Florida.
The human support group, traveling by
land and by air, will make about 24 stops.
Joan Guilfoyle, a spokeswoman for the
Fish and Wildlife Service, said the sandhill
cranes were selected for the experimental
migration because of their large numbers,
with an estimated population in the United
States of 650,000. That was not always the
case: in the 1930's there were as few as 25
breeding pairs, but the population
rebounded in the 1970's and has
flourished.
The whooping crane has not done as well.
In 1865, its numbers were estimated at 700
to 1,400, but in the 1930's the birds began
to disappear, and hit a low of 16 migrating
birds in 1941. Since then, the population
has gradually increased, to about 400
today, but only about 188 of these are wild,
migrating from Canada to Texas for the
winter.
The goal of the experimental migration is to
train birds born in captivity to survive in the
wild and to make the annual migration,
adding another flock of migrating birds.
"The depletion of our nation's wetlands and
the early hunting of these birds has resulted
in their endangered status," Ms. Guilfoyle
said, "and now we have a chance to bring
experts together to determine how to create
a second migratory group."
Raised to test the route for their crane cousins, the sandhills began training in late May. Dr.
Daniel Sprague, a biologist, played ultralight motor sounds and the parental brood call to the
chicks 24 hours before they were hatched. For the next few weeks, Dr. Sprague continued to
acclimate the cranes to engine noises and the ultralight by playing recordings of adult cranes
and feeding them from an outstretched crane puppet as he circled their pen, eventually getting
them to follow the plane.
The project, expected to cost about $850,000 this year, is financed by the Whooping Crane
Eastern Partnership, a consortium of public and private agencies.
Operation Migration is one of the private groups working with the partnership. Bill Lishman
and Mr. Duff founded the nonprofit group in 1994 after pioneering the human-led migration
technique with Canada geese. Plans are on track for next year's effort with the whooping
cranes.
"If this happens, it will be amazing because these birds don't have a negative side," Mr.
Lishman said. "They have never been a hugely populated species so they won't inundate an
area or overpopulate it and we will be on the road to reintroducing an element of nature that
we forced out."
On Smoking Stuff
"At Baylor summer camp in Waco Tx, we used to smoke dryed out mustang grape vine stems. We called it smokin' grapevine. ...and we turned out ok. Ha!"
-bill
Naked Came the Really Strange Interiors
By JOHN LELAND for NYT 10/19/00
JUSTIN JORGENSEN was visiting the
office of a friend who works in the
online pornography business last year,
and he was appalled by what he saw. Mr.
Jorgensen, 25, is not easily shocked, but
there was something profoundly unsettling
in the amateur photographs.
Those drapes! That wall clock! The laundry
on the bed!
The naked guy in the foreground was one
thing, but the stuffed marlin on the wall was
scandalous.
Because the transgressions were so
shocking, and because he had a lot of time
on his hands, Mr. Jorgensen, an interior
designer, decided to do something about it.
He created Obscene Interiors, a Web page
that set its sights on what to him was the
truly offensive side of the pornography
world. Which is to say, the décor.
Culling pictures from gay pornography
sites, he electronically blotted over the
naked bodies to remove all taint of sexuality
and called viewers' attention to the nasty
bits: the clashing light switch plate, the
stereo speaker used as a shelf, the pile of
magazines splayed on the floor.
The doctored photos may be in wildly bad
taste, but they are not smutty, nor does the
site provide links to any real pornography.
In the one instance in which the silhouette
was suggestive, Mr. Jorgensen altered the
image digitally to remove the suggestion.
Mr. Jorgensen and another interior
designer, who uses the name Kyle B. to
avoid trouble at work, added snippy
comments in the margins. Last December,
Mr. Jorgensen put the results on his
design-themed site on the Internet,
Justinspace.com. The pictures get about
1,400 hits a day, he said.
By its authors' lights, the site provides a critique whose time has come. To paraphrase
Justice Potter Stewart's famous remark about obscenity, Mr. Jorgensen may not be able to
define it, but he knows an obscene interior when he sees it.
"If someone's going to go out to a nightclub or a party, they get all dolled up," said Mr.
Jorgensen, who works as a designer for theme parks. "Yet, here people are taking pictures of
themselves in the nude and they don't bother even cleaning up a little or vacuuming."
Kyle B, who saw only the altered images, likened the results to photos from a "crime scene,
with a chalk outline" where the body should be.
The crimes are manifold. Mr. Jorgensen began compiling a list of recurring offenses. "My
biggest pet peeve is people putting lamps on top of speakers," he said. "I don't know why
this is happening all the time. It really concerns me."
The worst crimes, predictably, are those of ego. Just as amateur pornography subjects flaunt
their bodies, flaws and all, they appear equally unself-conscious about their homes. "It's like
some sort of weird self- delusion that people are only going to look at them, and not pay
attention to the trash on the floor behind them," Mr. Jorgensen said.
Mr. Jorgensen himself lives and works in a boxy, kitsch-filled apartment in Burbank, Calif.,
amid Ikea furnishings and housewares from Target's Michael Graves collection. In his work
area, he has a stack of magazines on the floor and a pile of CD's on the speaker of his stereo.
He is, in other words, but one digital alteration away from making it onto his own Web site.
"I know, I know," he said with a laugh. "I think there's elements of all these interiors in
almost everyone's home."
In her book "Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses" Prof. Marjorie Garber of Harvard
contends that housing has become "a form of yuppie pornography," the new object of erotic
desire. Obscene Interiors is a reminder that those basic desires, once exposed, can be nothing
short of indecent.
The anual Jersey City Artists "Open Studio" Tour is this weekend. I have a small storefront space half way down the block from my home. I split the space with artist Tom Moody. It runs all day Saturday and Sunday October 21st and 22nd. I have installed two "construction" photo series pieces consisting of about 50 photo images and Tom has installed a 25 image series of a "hot babe" (rated pg) he down loaded from the net.
Directions : Take the Path train to Grove Street. Walk 4 blocks south on Grove St to the corner of York st and its right there, 234 York.
I will also have on hand those three Farm initiation Photos.
Hope every one can come by !
This Just in ?
NO THIS IS NOT INDEX MAGAZINE!
Harmony Korine on David Letterman
October 17, 1997
LETTERMAN: Our next guest garnered both shock and praise as the screenwriter
of the controversial motion picture "Kids." Now he is making his directorial
debut with the film "Gummo" which opened today. Here's Harmony Korine.
Harmony, come on out.
(Harmony Korine enters, is greeted by Dave and sits down.)
LETTERMAN: Welcome back to the show. We haven't seen you in a couple of
years. I guess you were here when "Kids" came out, weren't ya?
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: Yeah. Did you have a nice time that night?
KORINE: Yeah, it was real -- it was good. Yeah, I had fun.
LETTERMAN: But it's been a long time since you came back
.
KORINE: Yeah. It was like two years.
LETTERMAN: Yeah, but did you want to come back in the meantime? Did you ever
find yourself saying, "Gee, I'd like to go back and see Dave?"
KORINE: Oh, yeah, yeah.
LETTERMAN: Well, what happened?
KORINE: Well, this one night I really was thinking about that.
LETTERMAN: Really? Well, that's good.
KORINE: It was neat.
LETTERMAN: You know, I saw your film "Gummo."
KORINE: Oh, yeah.
LETTERMAN: My, that's an interesting piece of work that "Gummo."
KORINE: thanks.
LETTERMAN: What does "Gummo" mean as the title?
KORINE: Well, "Gummo" was the fifth Marks Brother.
LETTERMAN: Can you name all the Marks Brothers?
KORINE: Yeah, but well...
LETTERMAN: Well, let's go.
KORINE: All right. Well, you have Zeppo, Harpo.
LETTERMAN: Zeppo, Harpo, Chico.
KORINE: Obviously Groucho. It's really pronounced "Chico," because he liked
to chase chicks. He also liked to gamble, and when he would play golf he
would gamble.
LETTERMAN: So are you a big fan of the Marks Brothers?
KORINE: Yeah, but "Gummo" quit because he liked to wear women's clothes.
LETTERMAN: Is that right? He quit the group, "Gummo" did?
KORINE: Yeah, because he wanted to sell cardboard boxes, but the movie is
not about him or nothing.
LETTERMAN: The movie has nothing to do with "Gummo." It's just somebody that
you liked, you admired, and you named the film "Gummo"?
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: All right. Why don't you tell people what the movie is about. Is
it autobiographical in any sense?
KORINE: Not really. It's just more like about specific scenes.
LETTERMAN: Specific scenes from your childhood, from your upbringing?
KORINE: Well, some of them, but not really. It's just more like...
LETTERMAN: All right. Well, now, let me interrupt you right there, because
I've seen the film. If you can, give us an example of a scene that represents
your upbringing and an example of a scene that has nothing to do with your
upbringing. I'd just like to know what kind of a guy I'm dealing with here.
KORINE: Okay.
LETTERMAN: Fair enough?
KORINE: Yeah, that's fair. I guess I used to eat spaghetti in my bath while
I would take baths.
LETTERMAN: All right, yeah, that's a scene now. You're in the bath tub and
you've got one of those things across the tub.
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: And you're eating spaghetti; you're eating dinner.
KORINE: Also, if you notice in that scene there's a piece of bacon taped on
the wall (laughter).
LETTERMAN: No, I didn't. I'll have to load that back up.
KORINE: That's my favorite part.
LETTERMAN: I'll have to freeze it and look for the bacon.
LETTERMAN: Now, when you were a kid did you tape bacon on the wall while you
had your spaghetti dinner in the bath?
KORINE: I personally like it. Well, bacon is my aesthetic, essentially.
LETTERMAN: I'm sorry. Bacon is your what?
KORINE: Well, as far as it being humorous, taped bacon, It's just something
I really get excited about it.
LETTERMAN: I'll tell ya something. This is exactly why we don't need Arnold
Schwarznegger. We don't need him. We don't want him.
KORINE: Yeah. Once I met Arnold Schwarznegger.
LETTERMAN: Yeah. Nice man.
(Korine shrugs his shoulders.)
KORINE: I'm gonna, I'm gonna...
LETTERMAN: Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're not done. I want to
follow up on this. Now, that's an example of something that did happen in
your life. Now, give us an example of something in your film that is in no
way connected to reality as you know it (laughter).
KORINE: Okay. For instance, the movie starts with a dog that's impaled on a
satellite on someone's house.
LETTERMAN: A satellite dish antenna?
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: But that's after like a tornado?
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: Well, that could have happened. That happens all the time, you
know, like cows flying through the air and stuff.
KORINE: Yeah, but...
LETTERMAN: It might have happened.
KORINE: Well, see what happened was, I ride unicycles.
LETTERMAN: No, you don't.
KORINE: I swear. Well...
LETTERMAN: No, you don't.
KORINE: Okay, so the first time in my life I was riding one down a dirt
road, and I saw the dog when we put in the satellite dish, I saw it.
LETTERMAN: All right. We'll come back to that later. You know, when you go
to the Gap, they'll put cuffs right on those pants. They won't charge you
like a nickel extra.
(Camera focuses on ten-inch pant cuffs and shoes with no socks and audience
cracks up.)
KORINE: I'm not -- I don't like that company.
LETTERMAN: No, you're fine, you're fine. Just take it easy.
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: Tell me about the cast in the film. It's an interesting
collection of thespians you have selected.
KORINE: Yes. Well, my big influence is once I saw -- when I was in high
school I saw this play. I don't really know if I should talk about that kind
of thing.
LETTERMAN: What about it do you find objectionable?
KORINE: Well, okay. Well, you know James Joyce, Ulysses? I was just kind of
inspired, because I used to know Snoop Dog a long time ago, and it was a play
that he was starring in. He was starring in the theatrical version of that
story. So that's where I basically got the idea from.
LETTERMAN: Yeah, but now if we can go back to the question (audience
applauds.). Just a second. It's a very rich colorful group of cast members
you have, and I am curious as to how you found these people, where you found
them and why you selected them to put them in the film "Gummo."
KORINE: Okay. The main actor's name is Tumler, and I saw him on an episode
of Sally Jesse Rafael. It was called, "My Child Died From Sniffing Paint."
(Audience cracks up.)
LETTERMAN: You think this is easy, don't you? You're just sitting there in
your house eating Cheetos. You think this is easy, don't you? (Audience
cracks up.)
KORINE: But he reminded me of Buster Keaton, and he was a paint-sniffing
survivor. (Audience cracks up.) Well, I don't know if like the way I'm
telling you this if it makes it sound like you'd want to see my movie.
LETTERMAN: Oh, you are selling tickets tonight, buddy.
KORINE: Yeah, yeah. It's "Gump," "Gummo"
LETTERMAN: I'll say this for the film. It's nothing I have ever seen before.
KORINE: Yeah, yeah, because --
LETTERMAN: Where did you shoot the movie?
KORINE: I grew up in Nashville in Tennessee, and I wanted to make a
different film. I wanted to make a different kind of movie, because I don't
see cinema in the same -- on the same kind of terms or the same way that
narrative movies have been made for the past hundred years. I mean, we
started with Griffith and we ended up with -- I don't know what the hell is
going on now but -- (Audience applauds.)
LETTERMAN: This thing will set 'em straight.
KORINE: But basically nothing has changed, so I wanted to see moving images
coming from all directions.
LETTERMAN: Well, that's what you have. You have assembled a series of very
striking vivid disturbing impressions.
KORINE: Yeah, well, that's basically my style (laughter).
LETTERMAN: Yeah. May I ask how much the movie cost to make?
KORINE: 80 mil. (Letterman totally cracks up.)
LETTERMAN: 80 million dollars, and every penny is up there on the screen,
ladies and gentlemen.
KORINE: Yeah. I stole some of it. Every penny.
LETTERMAN: 1.5 million. Is that about right? That's about right, isn't it?
KORINE: I don't talk finances.
LETTERMAN: Yeah, but no, that's about right, and you know something? I
applaud that. I think that to me it's insane that movies, most of them do
cost 80 million bucks. You know what I mean? You can't even bust open the
popcorn for less than 80 million.
KORINE: No, I agree.
LETTERMAN: And all we are doing really is telling a story, so why would it
cost 80 million dollars to tell a story?
KORINE: I know. I don't understand that. That's why I made "Gummo" because
it's...
LETTERMAN: And what story are you telling with "Gummo"?
KORINE: Okay. Well, it's not really one story, because that's the whole
thing. I don't care about plots.
LETTERMAN: That's right, in the linear sense. It's more slices of life.
KORINE: Well, like I think every movie there needs to be a beginning, middle
and end, but just not in that order (laughter), and like when I watch movies,
the only thing I really remember are characters and specific scenes. So I
wanted to make a film-making system entirely of that, really random.
LETTERMAN: Right. You would like the phone book better if it were not
alphabetized, right?
KORINE: Yes, I like the phone book. It's good (laughter).
LETTERMAN: Oh, you do, do ya?
KORINE: Yeah. I like Eddie Cantor. I like Al Jolson. I want to do a minstrel
with Tom Cruise, and I want him to play it on his knees.
LETTERMAN: Really? Like Eddie Guddell.
KORINE: I want to make a movie about Eddie Guddell. He was a midget
baseball player, but they didn't have -- you know it's in the Guinness Book
of World Records, because the strike zone is really small.
LETTERMAN: He walked him on four straight pitches or something.
LETTERMAN: Are you working on a project right now? Do you have something
else in the works?
KORINE: I have a novel coming out called, "A Crackup at the Race Riots."
It's about a race war, and it happens in Florida, and the Jewish people sit
in trees, and the black people -- the blacks are run by M.C. Hammer and the
whites are run by Vanilla Ice. It takes place in Florida.
LETTERMAN: Go ahead. Try to adjust your sets. It won't make a damn bit of
difference. Go in there and screw with everything you got. Turn it up. Turn
it down. Get it going like that, get it going like that. We'll still be here
when you're done.
KORINE: I wanted to write the great American choose-your-own-adventure novel.
LETTERMAN: Now, you seem like a very prolific young man.
KORINE: Yeah. I had my first art show.
LETTERMAN: Oh, really? You can paint? Is that what it is? You can paint?
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: Now, Harmony, will you come back now?
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: Because when you were here the last time we all said, "Gee, it
would be nice if Harmony would come back and see us," and then you put an
Arnold Schwarznegger on us, and we haven't seen you in two years. So you're
using us.
KORINE: Yes.
LETTERMAN: You only come back when you have something to promote. Is that
safe as to say?
KORINE: Yeah. Well, I mean --
LETTERMAN: What about just coming because you kind of enjoyed the experience?
KORINE: Well, all right, okay.
LETTERMAN: Will you come back?
KORINE: I'll come back sometime and hang out with you.
LETTERMAN: No, I didn't say hang out.
LETTERMAN: Now wait a minute. Listen to me.
KORINE: Sorry. I have such a short attention span. I'm serious.
LETTERMAN: Come back sometime before the end of the year. Will you do that?
KORINE: Okay.
LETTERMAN: So that gives you a couple of months. That will be all right.
KORINE: Yeah, because by then I will have done something else.
LETTERMAN: Yeah. That will be good. We don't want you to promote anything.
You just come back.
KORINE: I know, I know. I will have learned to swim (Audience applauds.)
LETTERMAN: The movie is called "Gummo". It opened today, and this is the
genius behind the film.
KORINE: Yeah.
LETTERMAN: Harmony Korine.
KORINE: It's a new kind of movie. I just want people to know that things
need to change. We can make films differently.
LETTERMAN: You represent the avant-garde.
KORINE: I am a commercial film maker. I am a patriot. I hide in trees. All
right. All right.
(Dave and Harmony shake hands and audience applauds.)
Here is the latest WFMU subscription only news letter. There is info at the bottom on how to subscribe. I wont post this again 'cause of the size so If you want it regular subscribe now.
*******************************************
* * WFMU'S BLAST O' HOT AIR: OCTOBER, 2000 * *
edited by DJ Monica (monica@wfmu.org)
*******************************************
The monthly e-mail newsletter of freeform WFMU, the radio station that
puts the "tobe" back into Roctober!
*******************************************
Subscribe and unsubscribe information is at the end of this message.
CONTENTS:
* WFMU'S New Fall Schedule Takes Effect Monday, October 9
* WFMU Fall Record Fair Coming November 3rd, 4th and 5th
* WFMU Seeks Record Fair Volunteers
* Webcasting Update
* Dunedin Sound Broadcast on WFMU in November
* Off Mike: WFMU DJs Making News
* WFMU T-shirt design contest
* Jersey Shore Interference Update
* WFMU Live Broadcasts and Special Guests for the Month of October
* Recent Faves from the WFMU New Bin
* The WFMU Top 30
* And on the 8th Day God Invented the Internet
* Subscribe to Blast 'O Hot Air
* The Small Print
WFMU'S NEW FALL SCHEDULE TAKES EFFECT MONDAY, OCTOBER 9th
WFMU's brand new fall schedule takes effect on October 9 to guide you
through your winter hibernation. Some DJs are taking breaks (Maryann, Ravel,
Trouble), some are returning (Clay, Tom Scharpling, Kenny G) and some can be
found in new time slots. The complete schedule listings are available
on WFMU's website: http://www.wfmu.org
Here are the switches and additions:
Monday - ANDY WALTZER moves to 8-11pm (from Thursdays, 3-6pm).
Tuesday - BRONWYN moves to Tuesdays and condenses to an hour, now
hosting "The Thunk Tank" from 8-9pm. TOM SCHARPLING returns to host
"The Best Show on WFMU," 9-11pm. The Cosmic Cowboy debuts with "God's
Little Rodeo" on late nights, 2-6am.
Wednesday - CLAY returns with electronic sounds on "The Pounding
System," 11pm-2am.
Thursday - KENNY G's "Unpopular Music" prevents the proper digestion
of food from noon-3pm.
TERRE T. scoots over to the 3-6pm slot (from Fridays noon-3pm).
Friday - JOE BELOCK takes "Three Chord Monte" to Friday afternoons,
noon-3pm (from Tuesdays noon-3pm).
Saturday - BILL ZEBUB raises hell on the "Vortex of Chaos," descending
one more circle in hell to Saturday nights, midnight-3am (from
Fridays, 2am-6am).
Sunday - YANCY YOHANNAN's "Stereo Oddysey" moves to
6-9am. DJ ORANGE JULIUS moves "All Fructose, No Whey" to late night,
3-6am.
WFMU FALL RECORD FAIR COMING NOVEMBER 3RD, 4TH AND 5TH
Mark your calendars! November 3rd, 4th, and 5th means three full days of
wild wax and shimmering CDs at WFMU's Fall Record Fair at the Metropolitan
Pavilion. More than 100 dealers and thousands of collectors will assemble
in the name of sonic delirium to peruse an amazing assortment of hard to
find LPs, CDs, posters, videos and other related oddities. Once again, the
record fair will coincide with the Cavestomp Festival, so stay tuned for
news of an ON-AIR appearance from some of the legendary lords of
garage rock. Also, WFMU will be broadcasting live from the record fair
all three days.
Be sure to stop by the WFMU tables for loads of merch, including items from
our infamous Catalog of Curiosities. Once again, there'll be beer as well
as delicious catering by Two Boots Pizza. The Metropolitan Pavilion is
located at 125 West 18th St., between 6th and 7th Avenues in Manhattan.
Admission is $5 on Friday from 7-10pm and on Saturday and Sunday from
10am-7pm. Special early admission is available for $20 on Friday 4-7pm
which also earns you a free pass for the rest of the weekend! For more
information, e-mail recfair@wfmu.org, or go to
http://www.wfmu.org/recfair/
WFMU SEEKS RECORD FAIR VOLUNTEERS
The success of the WFMU Record Fair hinges on the dedicated efforts
of WFMU's volunteer army. We need folks for a variety of tasks, from
selling records to setting up tables and more. Most shifts are 3-4
hours long. Record fair volunteers get free regular admission the
whole fair. If interested, please contact Volunteer Director Jason
Das at 201-521-1416 x229 or e-mail him at volunteer@wfmu.org.
WFMU WEBCASTING UPDATE
Six more shows are now being archived on a weekly basis. JOHN ALLEN,
PSEU, TAMAR, FABIO, ANDY WALTZER and TERRE T. can now be listened to
in Realaudio any old time, not just when they do their shows live. See
our archive page for more info at http://wfmu.org/archive.html
When the new schedule takes effect, we will start archiving a few more
shows, including KENNY G, TONY COULTER, TOM SCHARPLING and THE THUNK
TANK with BRONWYN.
Also, when the new schedule starts on October 9th, we will begin
removing most of the the older archives from prior to July 1st, 2000.
If you want to download the shows before they disappear forever,
e-mail ken for downloading instructions at ken@wfmu.org .
Our stereo broadband stream is still in the test stage, so it's not
up consistently every single day yet. Check our home page and our
audio page for more info on that:
http://wfmu.org/audiostream.shtml
Our first ever LIVE internet only show happens on Friday, October
20th, when Chris T., Bronwyn and girfriend Gretchen host AERIAL BLUE,
an MP3-only webcast on the history of swearing. Brush up on your
invectives, get that MP3 feed streaming and tune and call in. This
program will be broadcast live on our MP3 streams. It will not be
heard on 91.1, 90.1 or our Realaudio and Windows Media streams.
DUNEDIN SOUND BROADCAST ON WFMU IN NOVEMBER
WFMU is extremely excited about an upcoming event that will surely thrill
fans of New Zealand music (especially the music of the Flying Nun and
Xpressway labels). Working with freeform brethren KFJC in California, we'll
be presenting re-broadcasts of live music from the Otago Arts Festival in
the fair city of Dunedin, New Zealand, which is taking place from October
7-15th. Participating artists include the Clean, the Dead C, Snapper, Plagal
Grind, David Mitchell(of the 3Ds, Goblin Mix), Alastair Galbraith and more.
Our re-broadcasts will take place on various WFMU programs with time and
dates TBA. Look for more details in the next issue of Blast O' Hot Air or
check our Special Programs page for updates as they become available:
http://www.wfmu.org/upcoming.html. We're extremely grateful to the folks at
the Otago Festival and KFJC for including us in on this wonderful event.
OFF MIKE: WFMU DJs MAKING NEWS
Trash, Twang and Thunder's MEREDITH OCHS is now contributing to National
Public Radio's "All Things Considered" as a music critic. Her first piece
aired September 12 on Smithsonian Folkways' "Best of Broadside" box.
Incorrect Music maven IRWIN CHUSID extends his "Songs in the Key of Z"
tentacles to this year's CMJ Music Marathon. Chusid will moderate a panel
entitled "Discovering the Lost Chord: Celebrating Outsider Music" on
Saturday, October 21. The following night(10/22) at Tonic, he'll host "A
Curious Evening of Outsider Music," featuring Daniel Johnston, B.J. Snowden,
Peter Grudzien, and Bingo Gazingo. More info on Chusid's book and CD:
http://www.keyofz.com
The Cherry Blossom Clinic's own TERRE T debuts her brand spankin' new web
page designed by Evan Davies. Lots of playlists and archives are available
now and there's much more to come! Check it out at:
http://www.wfmu.org/tt
In addition to crooning for the Sea Monkeys, DAVE THE SPAZZ also fronts the
garage/soul/punk stylings of The Shemps. Just back from a tour of Tokyo
where they performed with Guitar Wolf and the 5678's, The Shemps will dish
it out live at the Lakeside Lounge (162 Avenue B) on Sunday, October 8th at
9pm.
The Thunk Tank's BRONWYN C. has started writing animated shorts, and her
first script has been produced and is now on the web! Check out "Gloop and
Gleep Group," an issues-oriented discussion show featuring characters from
the old "Herculoids" cartoons. Go to the Cartoon Network web site at
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com click on "Web Premiere Toons." Then click on
"Shorts," then click "Gloop and Gleep Group." More Bronwyn C. cartoons will
follow soon, but "Gloop and Gleep Group" is her first and she's all giddy
with delight about it.
Downtown Soulville's MR. FINEWINE can now be found spinning his delish mix
of obscure soul, funk, boogaloo and sixties European go-go on Wednesdays at
Botanica (47 East Houston, between Mulberry and Mott), on Tuesdays at Eau
(upstairs at 913 Broadway, between 20th & 21st) and the third Friday of
every month at the "Vampyros Lesbos" bash at Silk City in Philadelphia (5th
and Spring Garden). He's also put together a groovy and totally legit
compilation called "Vital Organs" (Groovy Sounds Ltd.) that features ten
hard-to-find late sixties and early seventies organ instrumentals remastered
off 45s from his own stellar collection. Available at
http://www.dustygroove.com and at http://wwww.ubiquityrecords.com.
The Radio Thrift Shop's LAURA CANTRELL has finally secured domestic
distribution for her fine new album "Not The Tremblin' Kind." The official
U.S. release date is October 10 on Diesel Only Records
(http://DieselOnly.com). Check for it in stores or online. On October
10th, Laura will be performing at her own record release party at Tonic (107
Norfolk Street, between Delancey and Rivington). This event is open to the
public and also features Amy Allison and WFMU's own Michael Shelley.
On October 20, Laura is scheduled to participate in two CMJ events:
moderating the country music panel and performing in a showcase at
Rodeo Bar.
WFMU T-SHIRT DESIGN CONTEST!
Got an idea for a WFMU T-shirt, bumper sticker or other tchotchke?
This Fall, we'll be holding a listener design contest to hopefully
find the giveaway items for next year's marathon. There are three
categories: 1) T-shirt, 2) Bumper Sticker and 3> Your Choice!
The deadline for submissions is November 1st. The winner in each
category will not only hear their name repeated ad infinitum during
the next marathon, they will also get $100 worth of merchandise which
they can choose from our Catalog of Curiosities warehouse.
Artwork should be submitted on paper or as a Mac-formatted computer
file, with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Please do not e-mail
computer files!. For more information, please e-mail ken@wfmu.org
The address for submissions is:
WFMU T-Shirt Contest
PO Box 5101
Hoboken, NJ 07030
JERSEY SHORE INTERFERENCE UPDATE
We're still waiting for the other shoe to drop down at the Jersey
Shore, where a low power FM repeater station is slated to go on the
air at 91.3 fm. When this station starts broadcasting, it could
severely affect WFMU's 91.1 signal in Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean
counties. Our engineers predict that interference from the new station
could even extend beyond those areas. The FCC has warned the owner of
the new station that if they do interfere with any WFMU listeners,
they need to eliminate that interference or go off the air.
WFMU has an e-mail list about this issue. To be added to the
list, please e-mail Station Manager Ken at ken@wfmu.org . After the
new stations goes on the air, we'll be mobilizing our
efforts and collecting letters and reception reports from listeners in
an effort to encourage the FCC and the new station's owners to
eliminate any newly created interference.
WFMU LIVE BROADCASTS AND SPECIAL GUESTS FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER
All times Eastern Standard Time.
Monday, October 2, 3-6pm
TIMOTHY HILL
Singer/songwriter presents his laid back, jazz influenced music in a
guitar trio setting. On Irene Trudel's show.
Monday, October 2, 7-8pm
JEAN BRICMONT
University of Louvain, Belgium, physicist, and coauthor (with Alan Sokal) of
"Fashionable Nonsense" talks about assaults on science by the
postmodernists. On The Green Room with Dorian.
Tuesday, October 3, 1pm
NEIL HALSTEAD
The man behind Mojave 3 strums his stuff. On Three Chord Monte with Joe
Belock.
Thursday, October 5, 9am-noon
OVAL
Markus Popp dissects, shreds and reconfigures sound from thousands of
sources into a blistering, glitchy mass. He came to the WFMU studios and
played some new, roaring material featuring string and horn sounds. On
Rhubarb Cake with Douglas.
http://www.disquiet.com/popp-script.html
Thursday, October 5, 11pm-2am
THE CASUALTIES
Lots of big spiky hair and '77 punk stylings. On Pat Duncan's show.
Friday, October 6, 3-6pm
PEACHES
Reviving that grand old tradition of strippers becoming rock stars. On
Scott Williams' show.
Friday, October 6, 6-7pm
NOAM CHOMSKY
Join incisive professional rabble-rouser Noam Chomsky for a free-wheeling
discussion about the "New Economy", the WTO, NAFTA, GATT, the presidential
elections and other disasters of our times. Find out exactly how you're
getting screwed. On Aerial View with Chris T.
Sunday, October 8, 7-9pm
VIRGIL MOOREFIELD ENSEMBLE
A rescheduled performance of "Final Approach," a work in five movements.
With Virgil Moorefield on electronics, Tom Chiu on violin and David First on
guitar. On Live at the Stork Club with Stork.
Monday, October 9, 6-9am
GLEN JONES RADIO PROGRAMME featuring X. RAY BURNS
Celebrate Yom Kippur with the IBJ as The Glen Jones Radio Programme
featuring X. Ray Burns presents a rare drive time edition. Set your alarm
clocks for freeform radio the way it ought to be.
Monday, October 9, 7-8pm
GERARD t'HOOFT
Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics discusses his work in elmentary
particle physics. On The Green Room with Dorian.
Thursday, October 12, 9am-noon
CIRCLE
A mighty Finnish prog-rock instrumental quintet (well, they left the other
five members at home) who dropped by in the middle of their first-ever U.S.
tour. On Rhubarb Cake with Douglas.
http://www.sci.fi/~phinnweb/circle/
Thursday, October 12, 11pm-2am
MEZZANINE C14
383 STROKER
Punk, punk and more punk, punk! On Pat Duncan's show.
Sunday, October 15, 6-9am
JOHN PEEL
An interview with legendary BBC DJ, John Peel. Now 60 years young, Peel's
been producing weekly freeform programs for the BBC for over 30 years. He
talks about his debut in Texas in the early 60's, his recent return to the
states this summer and everything in between. On Stereo Odyssey with Yancy
Yohannan.
Monday, October 16, 7-8pm
ADRIAN IVINSON
A wide-ranging talk with the publisher of Nature Journal. On The Green Room
with Dorian.
Wednesday, October 18, 1:30pm
STEW
Singer/songwriter and frontman of THE NEGRO PROBLEM unveils his sensitive,
weepy, mutant-Nick Drake side performing acoustic selections from his new CD
"Guest Host." He'll be accompanied by TNP bassist Heidi Rodewald. On Irwin
Chusid's show.
Thursday, October 19, 9am-noon
KID 606
Underage laptop terrorist drops everybody else's beats into a blender and
hits the "pulverize" button. On Rhubarb Cake with Douglas.
http://brainwashed.com/kid606/
Thursday, October 19, 11pm-2am
THE DEGENERICS
THE INDEPENDENTS
Hardcore and horror-ska, respectively. On Pat Duncan's show.
Friday, October 20, 6-7pm
AERIAL BLUE (WFMU & Aerial View's first live internet-only broadcast!
XXX Adults Only!)
Join Chris and special guests Bronwyn & Girlfriend Gretchen for a
semi-serious discussion on the history of swearing. The cuss words will fly
and you can join in! Talk dirty to Chris at 201-200-9368. AERIAL BLUE will
not be broadcast over the air on 91.1 or 90.1 and it will not be on
our Realaudio and Windows streams. It will be available only on our
two MP3 streams. Listen on the internet at http://www.wfmu.org and be
sure to keep the kiddies away from the computer!
Monday, October 23, 3-6pm
DAMON and NAOMI
Formerly of Galaxie 500, they'll be performing with Kurihara, a guitarist
from the Japanese psych band Ghost. On Irene Trudel's show.
Monday, October 23, 7-8pm
ILYA PRIGOGINE
Nobel Prize-winning chemist talks about his controversial work in physics.
On The Green Room with Dorian.
Wednesday, October 25th, 9am-noon
ANNUAL HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
Satan and his minions fill in for Ken as they present their annual
Halloween / Horror music sonic spectacular. Not for the squeamish. Run
a tape and you've got the perfect soundtrack to scare away those pesky
trick and treaters!
Thursday, October 26, 9am-noon
PLURAMON
Somewhere in the border zone between pure electronic music and rock, Marcus
Schmickler's guitar/drums/computer trio is amazingly malleable and ductile.
On Rhubarb Cake with Douglas.
http://www.getmusic.com/artists/amg/Artist/117/279117.html
Thursday, October 26, 3-6pm
MOMETERS
Loopy, lovable full rock band with strange synthesizer sounds and a solid
sense of songwriting. Pronounced "mom eaters" and featuring WFMU's own
Scott Williams. On Cherry Blossom Clinic with Terre T.
Friday, October 27, 3-6pm
BETTIE SERVEERT
Early 90s Dutch indie heroes are back on the scene. On Scott Williams'
show.
Friday, October 27, 11pm-2am
THE MOST DISCO-EST DISCO SHOW EVER!
Writer/scholar/archivist BRIAN CHIN presents authentic, rare and offbeat
selections from his extensive disco collection. Including the greatest
moments in disco monologues, fastest and slowest disco records, best
pre-disco tracks, east coast/west coast disco battles, "off" voices and
accents, Tom Moulton moments and much more. On Monica's show.
Saturday, October 28, 10am-3pm
GREASY KID STUFF
RADIO THRIFT SHOP
Once again, the Museum of Television and Radio (25 W. 52nd Street) will
feature live broadcasts of Greasy Kid Stuff and Radio Thrift Shop as part of
their annual Radio Festival. Laura Cantrell's special guests on Radio
Thrift Shop will be DAVE ALVIN and ROSINE (featuring members of FLAT OLD
WORLD). Check it out in person or listen on WFMU.
Monday, October 30, 3-6pm
THE THRENODY ENSEMBLE
Featuring members of A MINOR FOREST in an acoustic guitar-laden chamber
mode. On Irene Trudel's show.
Monday, October 30, 7-8pm
T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
Novelist whose latest book, "A Friend of the Earth", deals with the
environmental sciences and movement. On The Green Room with Dorian.
ALSO COMING IN OCTOBER
Go to the Special Programs page on WFMU's website for updates dates on these
and other soon to be scheduled guests: http://www.wfmu.org/upcoming.html
ASS
Cranking, rocking, distorto and destructo. On Cherry Blossom Clinic with
Terre T.
MIKE COOPER
Performing a mystical and original amalgam of blues, folk, jazz and rock.
He'll also discuss his 30 plus years at the forefront of UK avant-garde. On
John Allen's show.
RECENT FAVES FROM THE WFMU NEW BIN
Reviewed by Music/Program Director Brian Turner.
V/VM / Sick Love (V/VM)
The demented pups in Stock-Hausen & Walkman affiliates V/VM have swung as of
late into deconstructing schlock (with recent import 7" singles taking on
Falco of "Rock Me Amadeus" vein and more recently Chris deBurgh's "Lady In
Red", included on this CD) with an approach that more or less shovels on
piles of dirt to the originals rather than doing any kind of Plunder-phonic
type action. Here, they continue to basically crack open the shells that
case these songs, scooping out the goo and smearing it all over the place.
Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" gets slowed down to like 15 rpm, and an
unnatural fixation with beef works its way into titles more often than not
(apparently they dragged various livestock onstage at a recent UK slot
opening for Sonic Youth). A great example of art via the skewer. V/VM
purists may not like this as much as the other releases, but some nice radio
moments.
SENSATIONAL/ Heavyweighter (Wordsound)
Speaking of 15 rpm, possibly one of the most bizzare MCs returns to
slobbering, lo-fi form. Brooklyn's Sensational's rhymes (which more often
than not DON'T) flop through a gauze of wet beats, a heavy hand on the
reverb fader, and a vibe that one could imagine the cast of KIDS lying
comotose on the floor zoning out to among empty 40s and an all-night drug
party. The sounds are futuristic and beats are totally happening. He was
supposed to sit in with Small Change but was a no-show, jeez, they
definitely woulda needed an interpreter between those two (just kidding
$C).
MAURICE McINTYRE / Humility in the Light of the Creator (Delmark)
Awesome reissue from AACM member (his first disc as a leader), 1969. Like
Sam Rivers, McIntyre transcended bop and strove to unearth the ultimate
potential of non-chord-based sound, and like many of his AACM peers revealed
a strong vision in his music that was heavily keyed into the
free-thinking and spiritual mode that was dominating the era.
DEAD C / Language Recordings 1 & 2 (Language)
Four years in the making, the New Zealand trio of Robbie Yeats, Bruce
Russell and Michael Morley still turn on the juice in their practice room
and make some of the most alien rock music imaginable. Twin guitars see-saw
between Morley's Venusian blues & drone and Russell's sputtering old amp and
ring modulator, while Yeats drums with the arrhythmic thunk of someone
playing those Whack-a-Mole booths at the fair. Yet, with all the chaos, the
Dead C coalesce into a major SOUND, when they lock in on the 33 minute
"Speeder Bot" it wipes down all the post-rock stuff the WIRE yaps about (in
fact, even the glitching laptop generation is in total awe of what the Dead
C is doing with the guitar/bass/drum setup). A 2CD set worthy of your cash.
STINA NORDENSTAM / People Are Strange (East West Germany)
Jeez, this is on every time you turn on the radio this month, but it's quite
amazing. This gets a lot of comparisons to Cat Power's "Covers Record", but
Scandinavian beauty Stina's approach makes this quite different indeed.
Fully realized studio arrangements and highbrow production meshes quite
oddly with a lo-fi, often 'luded-sounding vocal backdrop (foredrop) but in a
great way. Several songs are quite identifiable (Rod Stewart's "Sailing",
Prince's "Purple Rain") from first
listen, but a few are extremely loose interpretations.
IN/HUMANITY / Violent Resignation/Great American Teenage Suicide Rebellion
(Prank)
CATTLE DECAPITATION / Homovore (Three.One.G)
HATEWAVE / Hatewave (Tumult)
A trio of East Coast vs. West Coast vs. Midwest pure hatefests record to
coincide with the re-release of the Exorcist. In/Humanity (from South
Carolina) split up in 98, but left behind a totally brutal legacy of
ultra-hardcore, suicide-encouraging, satan-embracing spew that was pure
and nutzoid. 42 tracks including a cover of the legendary Screamers. Cattle
Decap are a San Diego Locust-related outfit who thrash with an extremely bad
attitude with a very unhealthy fixation on meat, discharge, and vividly
describing medical functions; while Hatewave is a new reissue of a 97 LP
featuring Flying Luttenbacher/To Live and Shave in LA-er Weasel Walter on
drums, an amazing trio in total overdrive grind-gobblydygook mode with some
jawdropping lyrics. Three to clear the parties...
VARIOUS / Calypso Awakening (Smithsonian)
Lord Melody and Mighty Sparrow dominate this collection (that also includes
others) of amazing Trinidadian recordings made by audio engineer Emory Cook
between 1956 and 1962. Calypso was in its post-war infancy, and Cook, who
had made giant strides in recording technology (both in
recording techniques and vinyl pressing) did true field recordings, lugging
gear out into remote locales to hear musical interaction in their true
element. Great sounding steel bands, vocal workouts and more.
VARIOUS / Killed By Absurdity Volume 1 (Failed Pilot)
Well, of course anything citing inspiration from Dion McGregor's
sleeptalking record, Celebrities at Their Worst, and the bizarro 1977 LP
"You Think You Really Know Me" by Gary Wilson, is going to get WFMU
attention. But methinks this collection of "found" absurd songs was recorded
on purpose somewhere by hepsters who know better. Regardless, the
casio-samba reciting Mexican food names, the a capella choir doing Toto's
"Africa" and the nails-on-chalk audio loveletter by some dweeb is sure to
entice the staff to challenge the listeners' "How Much Can You Take" meters.
MUSTAFIO / Mustafio (Mustafio)
An hour of a man inexplicably speaking like Bela Lagosi. No more information
available or sent along.
PRAM / Museum of Imaginary Animals (Merge)
What an amazing record, as fascinating as watching a gigantic aquarium
bubbling away. Like me, Pram love all things underwater and aquatic, and I
could imagine no better cassette to have strapped into my waterproof walkman
on a diving expedition. Singer Rosie's swooping, gorgeous voice swims along
the lovely off-kilter melodies Pram offers, sometimes sounding like Martin
Denny conducting an aquatic toy orchestra, other times like a woozier
version of Laika. If "Bewitched" was a single it would be the tops of the
year hands down.
THE WFMU TOP 30
Compiled by Music/Program Director Brian Turner based on recent arrivals
played by WFMU DJs.
BOOM BIP & DOSEONE / Boom Bip & Doseone / (Mush)
VASHTI BUNYAN / Just Another Diamond Day / (Spinney)
THE FROGS / Racially Yours / (4Alarm)
PASCAL COMELADE / September Song / (Les Disques du Soleil)
VARIOUS / Bollywood Funk / (Outcaste)
CHRIS KNOX / Beat / (Thirsty Ear)
VARIOUS / In a Cole Mind: Tribute to Fred Cole & Dead Moon / (Last Chance)
VARIOUS / Super Funk / (Ace)
SHALABI EFFECT / Shalabi Effect / (Alien 8)
DER PLAN / Die Letzte Rache / (Atatak)
BARBARA MANNING / Under One Roof / (Innerstate)
MANGANZOIDES - SIR DANCE A LOT / Split LP / (Repent)
THE LOCUST / Well I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle / (GSL)
SUE P. FOX / Light Matches Spark Lives / (Kill Rock Stars)
MAURICE McINTYRE / Humility in the Light of the Creator / (Delmark)
ARTHUR DOYLE & SUNNY MURRAY / Dawn of a New Vibration / (Fractal)
STACKWADDY / Stackwaddy-Bugger Off! / (Dandelion)
SIGHTINGS / I Just Realized Too Many Songs End in S / (Sightings)
VON ZIPPERS / Blitzhacker / (Estrus)
SAINT LOW / Saint Low / (Thirsty Ear)
EYVIND KANG / The Story of Iceland / (Tzadik)
CLIENT/SERVER / Client/Server / (Three Lonely Kaiju)
CERBERUS SHOAL / Crash MY Moon Yacht / (Pandemonium)
BEACH BOYS / Sunflower/Surf's Up / (Capitol)
VARIOUS / Beautiful Noise (the Apocalypse) / (Noise Factory)
SPOOZYS / Astral Astronauts / (Jetset)
SUN CITY GIRLS / Cameo Demons and Their Manifestations / (Abduction)
DJ CAM / Loa Project / (Six Degrees)
SOLEDAD BROTHERS / Soledad Brothers / (Estrus)
KAHIL EL'ZABAR'S RITUAL TRIO / Africa N'da Blues / (Delmark)
AND ON THE 8th DAY GOD INVENTED THE INTERNET:
Is that a Machlett Type ML-343A Water Cooled Tube in your pocket or are you
just happy to see me?
http://hawkins.pair.com/radio.shtml
The Jim Hawkins' Radio and Broadcast Technology Page is devoted to the
geek-engineer side of radio. Includes the riveting essay, "Electromagnetic
Radiation Explained," tours of broadcast transmitter sites and photos of
ancient triodes.
But then the principal gave us detention for playing "666" by Aphrodite's
Child.
http://www.wfmu.org/~irene/wjsv.html
WFMU DJ Irene's Trudel's homage to her high school radio station, WJSV 90.5
FM, Morristown, NJ.
There oughta be a law.
http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks
The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks. A cavalcade of punctuative war
crimes against humanity.
A numerical totem pole of visual oddities.
http://www.priss.org/index1.shtml
Like one of those strange, collagey WFMU freeform sets that makes no sense
at all until, of course, it makes perfect sense.
Feel my enormous voltage surge with every little valence electron you
whisper, dear.
http://britneyspears.ac/basics.htm
Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics. Where materials are
categorised into conductors, semiconductors or insulators based on their
ability to conduct electricity. Take that and shove it up your ionic
bounding, Christina!
Learn to play the spoons from A. Claude Ferguson.
http://www.kiva.net/~ferguson/spoonplayer.html
"Through the years I have taught many others what I know about spoon playing
to carry out one of the many charges given to me by my grandmother, Missouri
Anne Harris."
Your guide to groovy soundtracks from the 60's, 70' and beyond!
http://www.scorelogue.com/scorebaby/index.html
"Score, Baby!" focuses on original vinyl and reissued albums from the 60's
and 70's, plus fake soundtracks like "Logan's Sanctuary" and "The Revenge of
Mr. Mopoji." Lots of cool cover pix. Good coverage of Italian soundtracks,
too.
Thanks to the following folks for providing this month's links: Rix, Irene
Trudel, Evan Davies, Irwin Chusid, Listener Michael Martin and Station
Manager Ken Freedman.
THE SMALL PRINT
Guaranteed to make your eyes glaze over!
WFMU broadcasts at 91.1 FM in the New York Metro area, at 90.1 FM in the
Hudson Valley, Western Jersey and Northeast Pennsylvania, and on the
Internet at http://www.wfmu.org.
Send your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be freeform to:
WFMU
PO Box 2011
Jersey City, NJ 07303-2011
Office / Pledge Phone: (201) 521-1416
DJ Phone: (201) 200-9368
General E-mail: wfmu@wfmu.org
Donations to: pledge@wfmu.org
For general information about WFMU, please visit: http://www.wfmu.org
Alternate site for Realaudio and Windows audio streams:
http://www.broadcast.com/radio/Public/WFMU/
Alternate site for MP3 audio stream:
http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?genre=search&searchdesc=wfmu
WFMU archived programming is at:
http://www.wfmu.org/archive.html
The content presented in this issue of Blast 'O Hot Air is guaranteed by DJ
Monica to have been cribbed from staff announcements and DJ e-mails. With
record reviews by Brian Turner.
SUBSCRIBE TO BLAST O' HOT AIR
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"Me and Pedro" These are the guys that got Puck kicked off the Real World S.F.
This looks good !
Uh-err I've been lost awhile but now I'm found. You have to get hit in the head twice to get back to where you once belonged. So I think the second shoe just dropped on my head r sumpin. Are there still two media trees ? I thin I've been up the wrong one lately.
Went to see Ted Nugent last Sunday @ Irving plaza and immediately noticed diminished hearing in both ears on the path ride home . All day Monday both ears were still ringing. Much better today with slight diminished hearing and ringing in right ear only. That constitutes a trend so I'm hoping for full recovery someday.
Mr. Nugent (clean and sober for all 52 years) has been opening for KISS lately so the Motor City Madman has co-opted the kiss army as his latest Detroit sound deciples. It was nice to be on a list considering the $30 entry fee. Missed the first act, but copped two fists of rolling rock and filtered w/ roomie Brian to a nice spot about 1/4 distance from the stage.
Brian made some notes afterwards and I'll let them surfice. I uncleaned them up a little :
Pretty rockin' show with an entire stage of Peavey stacks, the Nuge in Indian
headdress and some classic moments:
Ted as master of doublespeak:
-came ripping out on stage following a taped intro from "Blazing Saddles":
"I'd like to extend a laurel and hardy handshake to the new n*gger..", then
later gave a speech on how Rosa Parks was "his hero"
-announced how much he loved NYC repeatedly, then kept making references to
those who ate "pastrami and matza shit" instead of the healthy meat of
choice, venison. Also claimed that New York people were often "ugly
motherfuckers" because they contaminated their bodies with pastrami instead
of venison.
Also gem moments:
-lectured to an 8 year old kid in the audience, first asking the parents
"Do you mind me addressing your child frankly?" then proclaimed he had the cure to aides and proceeding to seriously
tell him not to "buttfuck other people or share used needles"
-gave a stirring elegy to Jimi Hendrix, who died 30 years ago today: "Jimi
got high, now Jimi is dead, I started hunting, and I'm still Ted."
-dedicated "Kiss My Ass" to those "pieces of shit", Al Sharpton, Jesse
Jackson, Al Gore, Janet Reno and "all the motherfuckers who want to take my
guns away"
-performed a 10 minute pseudo-psychedelic oddysey about shooting bear
-drummer, a seemingly 60 year old shirtless guy with a giant afro, did a 10
minute drum solo, then tossed his sticks and did another 10 minutes with just
his hands
-announced before "Cat Scratch Fever": "this is a Motown classic that will
maken even the biggest faggots out there eat pussy tonight"
-mocked all the local New York musician-types in the audience with their
"faggot earrings" and challenged them to come up and try to top the way he
did the intro lick to "Stranglehold", offering to suck their dick if they did.
Nobody challenged.
The jams were indeed heavy, though- pure raw rock trio sensibilities and
amazing "Baby Please Don't Go/Train Kept a Rollin" medley and total nods to
the roots, boogie etc. Nuge-ized of course..."Wang Dang" definitely has ASS ri
ffery potential I realized too....
Along these same Detroit centric lines we offer :
By Ira Robbins
salon.com
April 10, 2000 | Among cultural historians, it has long been an article of
faith that the '60s dream died in an ugly bar fight at Altamont Speedway in
December 1969. Given the evidence, it's not a bad guess. After all, the
Rolling Stones' well-intentioned fiasco proved that rock 'n' roll wasn't
about good vibes and peace (man) and made it clear that the Woodstock nation
was far better equipped to destroy itself than to take on any nebulous
"establishment." Within a year, superstars would start overdosing like
flies, the Beatles would sue one another and Don McLean would write
"American Pie." How much more habeas corpus do you need?
As Freddy Krueger later observed, you can't kill something that's already
dead. By the winter of '69, rock was already flat-lining. If the bad news
had yet to reach the front lines -- and some might argue that it never has
-- the monument to virile youth the Stones helped erect only a few years
earlier was an edifice about to be wrecked.
And, ironically enough, not by its sworn enemies or its craftiest
exploiters. Not by MTV, hip-hop, the Internet or even Celine Dion. No, rock
'n' roll was done in by three well-intentioned nobodies who, to their
credit, worked hard and believed in themselves. That their values ran
counter to the counterculture might have left them on the outside looking in
a year earlier, but the '60s were ready for last call. That party had gone
out of bounds with hard drugs and the discovery of death as a lifestyle and
was facing a grim and uncertain morning after. The new-left politics rock
had inadvertently fueled had diverged into feel-good Moratorium marchers and
self-obsessed bombers. Stardom had corrupted musical idealists and left them
easy prey for commercial interests. With Newtonian certainty, the great leap
forward was ready for its about-face.
The world didn't need any more fixing, at least not of the sort that had
turned to mud at Woodstock. There was nothing to be nostalgic about, since
youth culture needed to see its reflection, and the Elvis '50s didn't look
familiar at all. The future was too hard to comprehend and far harder still
to imagine shaping. No, what the world needed, in the eyes of those unaware
of its possibilities, was the kind of fun that didn't mean anything. As the
social pendulum began its great swing back, Grand Funk Railroad rolled up to
embody that know-nothing reactionary spirit and make it the soundtrack of
the '70s.
Grand Funk arose from Michigan's working-class industrial fug around the
same time as the Stooges, but their garage-bred ineptitude was a completely
different American breed. The Stooges were bad seeds, pollution-fueled
aliens who had abandoned life's assembly line to make music of enormously
negative appeal as they accelerated blindly toward a personal hell. Ugly and
depraved, unsophisticated but knowledgeably honoring some worthy
predecessors, these vicious bohemians fit into the cultural fabric like
cigarette holes in a couch. Their clothes and demeanor, if at all conscious,
were not meant to help them fit in but to stand out, to inflict whatever
offense was still possible in a time of great moral decay.
Grand Funk were Nixon's silent majority, living proof that long hair and
loud music signified nothing more than the Prez muttering "Sock it to me" on
"Laugh-In." Arriving on the scene too late to grasp rock's pivotal role in
shaping the '60s, they observed a landscape of no-account hippies, foreign
influence and dissipating idealism and didn't like what they saw. (The
braless chicks, drugs and ready cash were another story.) Unlike the sissies
and bookworms who had found rock 'n' roll their court of last resort, Mark,
Don and Mel were hard, simple and strong -- macho moral descendants of John
Wayne and Billy Jack -- and they knew their country needed them. Owing
nothing to history, unashamed of their shortcomings and undaunted by their
obstacles, they suited up and got to work. Though hardly in the same league,
they shrewdly fashioned themselves a power trio after Cream, who
conveniently dissolved just in time.
Others could lock themselves away, spending unconscionable amounts of time
in the studio making grandiose art-rock of increasing intricacy and
technical reach; Grand Funk displayed the rugged efficiency of line workers.
These get-it-done types released two albums in each of their first four
years, paving the way for cynics like the equally unselfconscious Kiss, who
also knew to keep striking while the iron was on fire.
In addition to a career-launching appearance at the Atlanta Pop Festival a
month before Woodstock, Grand Funk released two albums in 1969 and began
their inexorable plod to superstardom. Released only weeks after Altamont,
their second long-player, "Grand Funk Railroad," is a textbook classic of
sweat-rock, a lumbering collection of clichés played with the conviction of
Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea and the mindless determination of Rocky
Balboa leaking blood on the canvas. Whereas the Stooges presumably noticed
the vast chasm between their work and the sound of young America -- and
thought themselves the better for it -- Grand Funk comically gave it their
best shot with quavering vocals, grunting bass and high-school guitar licks.
And they were richly rewarded.
With three additional decades of rock history to consider, their ineptitude
can be forgiven. After all, punk couldn't have happened if instrumental
ability were a prerequisite. But lack of skill has to be mortgaged against
some brilliant idea or at least a clever novelty. The members of Grand Funk,
God love 'em, didn't have an original bone in their body. They went from
being puppets of an autocratic manager to willing servants of strong
producers like Todd Rundgren without ever demonstrating a shred of
individual creativity. Their best work, save for the dumb-luck power of
"We're an American Band," came via covers of classics like "The Loco-Motion"
or "Some Kind of Wonderful," and uncredited borrowings like the Ten Years
After chorus ("Love Like a Man") in Grand Funk's subsequent "Walk Like a
Man." The significance of their merciless decimation of "Gimme Shelter," the
Stones song for which the Maysles named their documentary film of the dismal
doings at Altamont, however, is too dense to contemplate. No, GFR were
hopelessly bad singers and players, but success calls its own tune, and
their unmitigated shittiness became an acceptable '70s benchmark.
With the green-eyed gods of commerce on their side, Grand Funk sold an
unheard-of 10 million albums within two years. And that was that. Critics
could carp all they wanted, but it was a new decade and a new generation had
spoken. The '60s suddenly felt like a pitifully naive oasis, preschool for
the big boys. In the wake of Grand Funk's jolly thuggery, the era they had
wiped away felt like it might have been a mass hallucination, and rock was
revealed to be just another cynical American industry, free of social
consequence and solidly status quo. Flag burners be damned -- the
irony-impaired Grand Funk posed nude in a barnyard full of flags and made it
look respectful.
The success of Grand Funk dragged rock back to earth from its wildest
imaginings, as if the space program had been taken over by McDonald's and
NASA's rocketry breakthroughs converted to broil burgers. In their
clumsiness, Grand Funk inadvertently knocked down the wall that had divided
rock self-expression from market-driven factory pop. Shorn of its
pretensions and dreams, its politics and its effeminacy, rock entered Have a
Nice Day hell, the vapid wasteland of the early '70s in which musical styles
became random buttons on the Top 40 jukebox. While Britain's teens embraced
the future in platform heels and eye shadow, Americans would go years before
rediscovering music's artistic and cultural ambitions.
But, in their own minds, Grand Funk were ready to save America. Weighing in
late on the Vietnam saga (14 months before the signing of the Paris peace
accords, as it happens), they declared, "People, Let's Stop the War" on
1971's "E Pluribus Funk," reducing years of protest against the
military-industrial complex to three incoherent lines: "If we had a
president that did just what he said/The country would be just alright and
no one would be dead/From fighting in a war that causes big men to get
rich." On the same album, which is the most outspoken for
singer-guitarist-songwriter Mark Farner, "Save the Land" warns, "Look out
for the land rush ... /All we've got is just the land/Take a stand, save the
land." More typical of the group's spiritual concerns is the unbridled
passion of "Heartbreaker," a minor hit released in early 1970:
"Heartbreaker/Can't take her/Heartbreaker/Bringin' me down."
Critics raked them over the coals, but Grand Funk had the last laugh.
Victory was theirs, no matter how many pussies with pens proclaimed that
they sucked. Their sales as much as their sensibilities cleared a path to
football stadiums, where rock, sports and other testosterone-fueled mass
gatherings could finally meld into one universal crud culture. That would
lead to even worse things. (Maybe you don't care that rock songs have become
"jock classics" or that hawkers vend hot dogs in the stands at Pink Floyd
shows, but I do.) Farner went on to become a survivalist and born-again
Christian. In the liner notes to the band's "Thirty Years of Funk" box set,
he writes, "Just for the record, I despise the men and women who under the
influence of darkness have compromised the sovereignty of the People of the
United States." Can you spell W-A-C-O?
There have been far worse bands than Grand Funk Railroad, but try to imagine
what might have happened if it had been, say, Melanie who had been able to
outsell the Beatles at Shea Stadium. That would have fixed rock's male
paradigm, wouldn't it? What Grand Funk did was establish banality as a
mass-market ideal, inverting the idealism that had once driven artists to
strive for creative progress, testing and shedding styles like babies
learning to walk. For a brief, exciting time, rock could not bear to stand
still, and its greats were those who constantly sought new challenges.
Between 1966 and 1969, it was swept by waves of psychedelia, sitar, folk,
blues, country and more. The arrival of Grand Funk stopped progress dead in
its tracks. Ill-suited to do more than sweat, stomp and sell, they were
neither capable of, nor inclined to, advance. By the time they got out of
the way, ushered into the past tense by two albums that tanked, the latter
having been produced by Frank Zappa (bless his bearded little head), the
'70s were more than half over. As if on cue, the Ramones were counting it
down on the Bowery, and it was time to begin again.
salon.com | April 10, 2000
GO THERE
Marianne Nowottney has a song on this compilation :
Ace 010 Various Artists - Keep Left
full length CD to benefit David Barsamian and Alternative Radio
Release Date
August 14th, 2000. A benefit CD for David Barsamiand and Alternative Radio
featuring: Kronos Quartet, Lorren Mazzacane Connors,
Negativland, Olivia Tremor Control,
Physics, Treiops Treyfid, Built To Spill,Friends Of Dean Martinez, Elliott
Sharp,South, Flowchart, Marianne Nowottny,
Windy and Carl, Pere Ubu with liner notes written by Howard Zinn. Ace Fu
Records will be donating all profits from this benefit CD to help
Alternative Radio meet the financial obligations necessary for them to
continue their important social service.
ALSO NEW WIRE ISSUE OUT w/ profile on MARIANNE!
The Wire MG (September 2000)
The September issue of The Wire includes a cover story
on Royal Trux and feature stories on Burnt Friedman,
Francisco Lopez, and a history of dub. Also included:
Lois V. Vierk, Joseph Suchy, Marianne Nowottny, and an
Invisible Jukebox by Sunny Murray.
Catskill Culture (good reading list with some chapters published)
I noticed on the front page (lower half) of NYT today that :
"For the first time, computer scientists have created a robot that designs and builds other robots, almost entirely without human help."
So, wasn't that one of those events you have to remeber where you were and what you were doing when it happened ?
also in the news (news letter that is) :
SHELL
"Shell Is Swell" (Abaton/Import abaton@crystal.palace.net)
Vor 2 Jahren erschien ein Tape, das hiess "Shell vs. Neu!" und machte
einen Radio-DJ in NYC ziemlich nervös. Denn die beiden Mädels, die darauf
lustig vor sich hin homerecordeten, waren gerade mal 15. Und kannten Neu!
Die kenne ich auch, Shell aber war bisher nur ein Ölkonzern. Das ist nun
anders, denn diese CD ist unglaublich: man möchte "Fürsorge!" und
"Jugendschutz!" rufen, wenn Marianne Nowottny (die mit ihren zarten 17
schon mal solo in der Knitting Factory spielt!) und Donna Bailey ihre
schrägen Spässe treiben. Zwar nur ganz vage, aber doch spürbare Parallelen
zur jungen Lydia Lunch, bubblegum singalongs - als Ulk viel zu gut. Das
Info sagt dazu Gothteen-Girlpop, ich nenne es Trash-Audio-Art und
gemastert hat das Ganze Elliot Sharp. Karsten Zimalla
This is the Shell review, translated courtesy of alta vista. It reads kinda
like a puzzle......
Before 2 years a Tape appeared, was called " Shell vs. new! " and made
rather nervous a radio DJ in NYC. Because the two girls, who homerecordeten
on it merrily before itself, were even times 15. And new knew! Those I know
also, Shell however was so far only an oil company. That is now different,
because this CD is unbelievable: one would like " welfare service! " and "
protection of children and young people! " call, if Marianne Nowottny (with
their tender 17 already times solo in the Knitting Factory plays!) and Donna
Bailey their diagonal fun float. Only quite vaguely, but nevertheless
noticeable parallels to the young Lydia Lunch, bubblegum singalongs - than
joke much too well. The info. says to it Gothteen Girlpop, I calls it Trash
audio type and gemastert the whole Elliot Sharp. Karsten Zimalla
-- alli
Alas, it seems that German culture is still on summer holiday. Asphyxiated boy where are you?
Abaton
Asphyxiated boy where are you?
I'm here, I've been trying to translate it... but it's in SUCH strong
colloquial language that it's proven quite difficult for me... I'm sorry!
*sob*
But then, I'd challenge any educated German to try to successfully navigate
some hip-hop magazine... I doubt they'd get too far.
More email to come!
xoxo - John
[an interesting compliment about
our valiant narrator that perhaps
you may find agreeable/true]
"you're the aston-martin of robots"
- xovoxovoxo
here a quick, dirty translation of the article on "Westzeit" (as a
contribution by an early Shell fan):
"Two years ago a tape called "Shell vs. Neu!" was released and made a NY
radio DJ rather nervous. And this because the two girlies that had fun
recording at home were just 15. And they knew Neu! I know them too, but
Shell has been only a oil company untill now. This has changed, as this
CD is unbelievable: one feels like calling "children care!", "protection
to the minors!" when Marianne Nowottny (who in her sweet 17 already
plays solo in the Knitting Factory!)and Donna Bailey go for their wierd
fun. Even if there are some vague but sensible parallels to Lydia Lunch,
bubblegum singalongs, they are too good to be a joke. The info calls it
Gothteen-Girlpop, I call it Trash-Audio-Art and Elliot Sharp has
mastered the whole thing." Karsten Zimalla
--------------------------------------------------
If you gotta know everything there is about MN you can sign up here :
http://www.listbot.com/cgi-bin/subscriber
I put a small bid on this group of three pics. Man do these guys know how to party !
"What in Creation ?"
As per NYT 8/25 : Experiment Backs Novel Theory on Origin of Life, By NICHOLAS WADE
maverick theory about the origin of life has
received striking support from an experiment
that mimicked the violent interactions of deep
seated rock and common gases in the Hadean epoch,
the days when the earth had just formed as a planet.
Researchers found to their surprise that even in such
hellish conditions they had created a chemical that is
crucial for the metabolism of living cells.
The result is evocative because the chemical, known as
pyruvate, is a crucial component of living cells, being the fuel for a universal energy
producing process known as the citric acid cycle.
The new finding, reported in today's issue of Science by Dr. George D. Cody and his
colleagues at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory, does not
explain how or where life began but it supports a theory that proposes a new way of looking
at this long intractable problem.
The theory, proposed by a German patent attorney, Dr. Günther Wächtershäuser of Munich,
holds that the origin of life should be sought by looking for a metabolism, some repeated
cycle of chemical change, that could have taken place on the early earth and that could then
have built itself up into more complex molecules and organisms. This contrasts with the
conventional approach, which is to take familiar parts of today's cells, like nucleic acids, and
try to figure out the conditions in which they might have formed spontaneously.
Dr. Wächtershäuser dismisses the latter approach as the broth theory because even when a
researcher has found conditions under which the individual chemical ingredients of life might
have been formed, it is hard to explain why they should then assemble themselves into living
cells.
He calls his own proposal "the iron sulfur world theory" because he believes that metallic
surfaces, particularly that of the common mineral iron sulfide, would have been promising
facilitators, or catalysts, of the chemical reactions that created the precursor chemicals of
living cells.
It is unusual for amateurs, even a qualified chemist like Dr. Wächters häuser, to contribute to
the specialized worlds of modern science. And his ideas, being only theoretical, did not
arouse much enthusiasm until 1997 when he showed that an iron- sulphur surface could
promote the conversion of carbon monoxide to a two-carbon chemical important in
biochemistry of living cells.
To biochemists, his finding had particular resonance because at the center of many enzymes
are iron and sulfur atoms that transfer electrons in ways vital to the cell's energy
requirements.
The idea that living cells are elaborate codifications of some primitive chemical cycle that got
going on an iron-sulfur surface is to them not so alien.
Dr. Cody and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution decided to use a special high-pressure
apparatus they possessed to explore how Dr. Wächtershäuser's proposed system might work
at sites like the volcanic vents in the deep ocean. This kind of chemistry is a dangerous
pursuit, since at high pressures water becomes a violent acid and carbon monoxide eats
through steel.
"We set out to explore the ability of minerals to catalyse reactions that would be important in
a primitive metabolic sense," Dr. Cody said. Putting iron sulfur, a source of carbon
monoxide into their reaction tube, "We came across an unanticipated result," he said. That
was the formation of large amounts of pyruvate.
The tube also contained a hydrogen sulphide-like chemical to mimic the hydrogen sulfide
produced by volcanoes.
Pyruvate consists of three carbon atoms linked together and is an obvious building block
from which sugars and the other carbon-based molecules of life can be constructed.
Dr. Wächtershäuser believes the origin of life lies in autocatalysis, the emergence of some
natural chemical process, like the pyruvate-producing one, in which the products help the
reaction go faster.
"Evolution is better and better autocatalysis," he said in a phone interview yesterday.
If one of these autocatalytic processes started to generate the class of fatty chemicals known
as lipids, these might form a bubble round the system and the first cell would be generated.
The cell would have left the surface on which it was generated and later developed the
elaborate information-storage system embodied in today's DNA molecules.
Dr. Michael W.W. Adams, a biochemist who studies early life at the University of Georgia,
said Dr. Wächtershäuser had developed a very reasonable and testable hypothesis for the
origin of organic material relevant to life. "It makes so much sense to have metal catalysts
involved at the dawn of life," Dr. Adams said, "especially metal sulfides, because these are
essential to most energy conserving processes. I very much think he is on the right track."
In a written commentary on Dr. Cody's report, Dr. Wächtershäuser said that, with the
creation of pyruvate, all of the eight sequential steps needed to make peptides from carbon
monoxide had now been shown to be chemically possible. Peptides are short chains of
amino acids, the components of the protein molecules that are the workhorses of the living
cell.
The new results "greatly strengthen the hope that it may one day be possible to understand
and reconstruct the beginnings of life on earth," he wrote.
"Good to see The Republic of Texas guys back in the news", as per 8/25 NYT An Armed Texas Family Resists the Courts
By ROSS E. MILLOY
RINIDAD, Tex., Aug. 24 -- With a
revolver and a bowie knife strapped to
his hip and a semiautomatic rifle resting
next to him on a barbed wire fence, Jonathon
Gray pondered the question: Just what would
happen if law enforcement officers tried to
enter his father's 47-acre homestead?
"I can tell you one thing," he said. "They ain't
coming in."
The 28-year-old Mr. Gray stood guard today
with two of his brothers, who were also
armed, at the locked gate of their family's
property on the Trinity River just north of here,
some 60 miles southeast of Dallas. Seeking
shade from a grove of hickory trees in
blistering summer heat, they wondered just
which day the authorities would come to arrest
their father.
For more than 15 months, Mr. Gray and his
father, mother and five adult siblings have
defied a court order to turn over the 2- and
4-year-old sons of his sister Lisa, who lost
custody of them to her former husband by
default when she failed to appear at a hearing in
divorce court. Mr. Gray's father, John Joe
Gray, 51, is also wanted by local officials for
failing to show up in court to face charges that he assaulted a police officer in nearby
Anderson County last December.
The family, believed to be heavily armed, has resolved not to participate in court proceedings
or any other government activities, because, Mr. Gray said, its religious and political beliefs
do not permit doing so.
"The secular courts don't have any authority over us," he said. "We go by the Bible and the
Constitution, and I don't see anything in either one about child custody cases. We don't want
anyone to get hurt, but we're not giving up them kids."
The local authorities are proceeding with caution.
Ronnie Brownlow, chief deputy for the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, said:
"We're in no hurry to make a move. The last thing we want is for someone to get hurt."
Mr. Brownlow said that because of John Joe Gray's past associations with right-wing
groups, including the secessionist Republic of Texas, which engaged in a standoff with
law-enforcement officers three years ago, the authorities here had informed the Federal
Bureau of Investigation about the case.
Jonathon Gray said the family belonged to the Sabbatarian sect, a derivative of the
Seventh-day Adventists that strictly interprets the Bible.
The family patriarch refused to talk with reporters today, but last weekend he told The San
Antonio Express-News that he did not intend to surrender the children "as long as God
allows us to survive."
"I am more afraid of God than of them," he said of the authorities.
The elder Mr. Gray, who has lived on his spread for 16 years, is known to his neighbors as
a quiet man with a disquieting hobby: for years, he tried to recruit townspeople to become
members of a militia group.
"He used to come in here all dressed up in those military outfits and camouflage gear, trying
to get people to join up with him," said Susan Stansfield, a secretary at the city hall in
Trinidad.
The Gray family homestead is nestled in thickly forested hills, more than a mile from the
closest neighbors. Visitors have said it is fortified with sandbagged shooting positions,
trenches and an underground bunker built of concrete and wood. The Grays have been
without electricity for nearly six months because they did not pay the utility bills, said
Jonathon Gray, who, like his father, has been unable to work at his trade as a carpenter
because of the need he feels to remain holed up.
Fence lines and trees carry hand-lettered signs like "Disobedience to Tyranny Is Obedience to
God," "90% of Catholic Priests Are Child Molesters" and "We Are Militia and Will Live
Free or Die.
"
Asked today whether he or his father was a member of a militia group, Jonathon Gray only
smiled and said, "No comment."
But last weekend, by the account of both Mr. Gray and the local press, members of various
militia groups as well as religious fundamentalists -- more than two dozen people in all --
visited the family to offer support, many bringing food and other supplies.
Even today, as Mr. Gray and his brothers stood watch, a neighbor who would give her name
only as Punky stopped on the dirt road running alongside their property and told him: "You
keep them out of there. Don't let them in. If you need anything, give us a call."
"I wouldn't let them take my grandchildren either," she said.
NADER
In a message dated 8/23/00 5:12:28 PM, NJ4Nader writes:
Harper's Magazine -- September, 2000
Cover Story: A CITIZEN IN FULL (excerpts)
Ralph Nader campaigns for president with a course in civics
By Lewis W. Lapham, Editor of Harper's Magazine
"We can have a democratic society or we can have a concentration of great
wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
-- Louis
Brandeis
Ralph Nader declared himself a candidate for president on February 21 in
a Washington hotel, and for the next two months the national news media
were careful to ignore the proposition. Although well-known as a zealous
consumer advocate, Nader didn't enjoy much standing as a politician.
So little was said about Nader's presidential campaign in February and
March that as late as April 10 it wasn't hard to find New York sources
supposedly well-informed (editors at Doubleday, columnists for Vogue) who
hadn't been told. They had heard that somewhere west of the Pecos River
Pat Buchanan was on the hustings for Ross Perot's troubled Reform Party,
but if in answer to a question about the November election I said that
I intended to vote for Ralph Nader, I could count on expressions of genuine
surprise.
Most of the upscale media adopted a complacent tone when they were obliged
to take notice of Nader's campaign in early May. The candidate by then
had placed his name on the ballot in fifteen states; actively in search
of votes, he was making stump speeches in Kentucky and South Carolina,
attracting endorsements from prominent celebrities (among them Willie Nelson,
Susan Sarandon, Pearl Jam, and Paul Newman), apparently being taken seriously
by the United Auto Workers union. Still not enough of a campaign to warrant
mention on the political web sites maintained by ABC, CBS, and CNN, but
certainly a curiosity deserving of the same attention paid to spotted owls
and giant pandas.
Nader's candidacy gained currency during the spring and early summer (his
acceptance in Denver of the Green Party's presidential nomination, nearly
$1 million raised in campaign contributions, his name on the ballot in
another ten states), but the official portrait in the media (that of the
harmless reformer, high-minded but faintly ridiculous) wasn't retouched
until June 30, when the New York Times promoted him to the rank of public
menace. The upgrade took the form of an impatient editorial, royalist
in sentiment and pompous in tone, reprimanding Nader for his meddling in
an election that was beyond his sphere of competence and none of his concern:
"He is engaging in a self-indulgent exercise that will
distract voters from the clear-cut choice represented
by the major-party candidates, Vice President Al Gore
and Gov. George Bush.
"It is especially distressing to see Mr. Nader flirt
with the spoiler role.
"Of course, both Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader have the
right to run. But given the major differences between
the prospective Democratic and Republican nominees,
there is no driving logic for third-party candidacy
this year, and the public deserves to see the major-party
candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field."
Disappointed as well as piqued, the editorialist acknowledged Nader's "legacy
as a conscience-driven crusader" and took the trouble to commend him for
championing the cause of automobile safety and having "sharpened Americans'
awareness of the flaws in their political system." Which was why it was
distressing to see a man once principled destroy his reputation with conduct
unbecoming a moralist. His irresponsible behavior threatened Al Gore's
chances in "swing states like California," and if he were a true gentleman
and a real liberal he would stay with the seat belts and leave the politics
to the professionals.
It so happened that June 30 was the same day on which I had arranged to
interview Nader in Washington, also to accompany him on his afternoon rounds
of the television talk-show circuit. I'd read the Times editorial on the
plane from New York, and when I arrived shortly before noon at Nader's
campaign headquarters on N.W. Fifteenth Street, I discovered that it had
been received as a gift of rare good fortune. The few campaign workers
present looked like graduate students -- young, idealistic, underpaid,
not the kind of people given to cutting deals with trade-association
lobbyists
or shouting into telephones -- and their response to the rebuke was less
loud or sarcastic than quietly pleased. It meant they were making progress.
The lead editorial no less, publicity that money couldn't buy, 618 words
of fatuous indignation proving Nader a candidate in fact as well as theory.
Several recent news clippings posted on the walls confirmed an uptick
of interest from syndicated columnists suddenly as worried as the Times
about the damage likely to be done to Gore, and among other signs as hopeful,
Nader's web site was receiving 20,000 visits a day; 12,000 volunteers were
setting up storefront operations in every one of the fifty states; there
was talk of a campaign bus, maybe even television commercials; some of
the national opinion polls were conceding Nader 7 percent of the prospective
November vote, as opposed to 2 percent for the far more lavishly financed
Pat Buchanan; Vogue had called with the request for an interview; so had
CNBC and Slate.
I found Nader in the front room on the third floor. He was wearing his
customary rumpled suit. The standard press description gets it right about
Nader's frugal habits and bookish manner -- sixty-six years old and never
married, he doesn't own a car, a cell phone, or a credit card -- but it
misses his candor, his modesty, and his wit. More amused than offended
by the Times editorial, he asked me if I knew who might have written it:
"You've got to love these people," Nader said. "They think the American
electoral process is a gated community."
Never in recent memory, he said, have the Democratic and Republican parties
so closely resembled each other, and if the absence of 100 million citizens
from the polls in the 1996 presidential election didn't indicate, or at
least strongly hint at, an impressive lack of respect for the threadbare
wisdoms in office (and thus "a driving logic" for a third party, or any
party at all that could reinvigorate the country's moribund political
debate),
then what would it take to prompt the editors at the Times to smuggle their
heads out of the sand? For ten years the American electorate has been voicing
its objection to "a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and
for the Du Ponts." The party of discontent voted for Ross Perot, elected
Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota, made credible the candidacy of John
McCain, paraded in animal costumes through the streets of Seattle.
Several well-wishers already had telephoned that morning with the suggestion
that Nader distribute reprints of the editorial as an endorsement, on the
ground that anybody who so provoked the Times couldn't be all bad, and
when Studs Terkel called from Chicago to offer the same advice, Nader said,
"Remember that you're talking to your friend, the clutterer. Obstructing
the playing field for next autumn's Yale-Harvard game."
They talked for five minutes, then it was John Anderson on the phone, saying
that when he had run as a third-party candidate in 1980 the Times had cast
him in the same role --"spoiler," "ego-driven" nuisance, no friend of
America.
"You would think," Nader said, "that in twenty years they could come up
with some new words."
The judges on the bench of prime-time opinion say that Nader lacks charisma,
but the word admits of different interpretations, and if it can be referred
to a lively intelligence as well as a bright smile, Nader seems to me a
good deal more charismatic than David Letterman or Brad Pitt. I know of
few spectacles more entertaining than the play of a mind being put to
constructive
or imaginative use, and I like to listen to Nader talk. I never fail to
learn something new, and in Nader's idealism I find an antidote for the
cynicism that constitutes an occupational hazard on the shop floors of
the image-making industries in New York.
Accepting the Green Party nomination in Denver on June 27, Nader had
presented
his campaign as a question -- "How badly do we want a just and decent
society,
a society that raises our expectations of ourselves?" -- and in Washington
three days later he supplemented it with further commentary and explanation.
"Unlike Gush and Bore," he said, "I don't promote myself as a solution
to the nation's problems. The idea is to encourage a lot of other people
to use the tools of democratic government to take control of the assets
they hold in common -- the public lands, the public broadcast frequencies,
the public money. Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism, homophobia,
taxes, health care, urban decay, you're not going to go anywhere with it
unless you focus on the concentration of power. We have an overdeveloped
plutocracy and an underdeveloped democracy, too many private interests
commandeering the public interest for their own profit. Most Americans
don't realize how badly they're being harmed by the unchecked
commercialization
of what belongs to the commonwealth. If enough people knew what questions
to ask, we have both the ways and means to achieve better schools, a
healthier
environment, a more general distribution of decent health care."
Nader has been asking the questions for forty years. He established his
credibility as a consumer advocate in 1965 when he published Unsafe at
Any Speed, a fierce indictment of the carelessness with which General Motors
manufactured its cars. The book resulted in legislation that forced G.M.
to improve its automotive designs, and Nader went on to search out further
proofs of malfeasance almost everywhere else in corporate America, filing
investigative briefs against oil companies, banks, hospitals; publishing
another twenty books (about corporate accountability, the judiciary and
banking committees in both the Senate and the House, etc.); organizing
numerous civic-minded committees (among them the Center for the Study of
Responsive Law and the Public Interest Research Group); and bringing about,
or at least setting in train, changes for the better in the management
of the country's pension funds, classified information, and toxic wastes.
"The oligarchy," he said, never wants anyone to know what, or how much,
ordinary citizens can accomplish if they learn to use the power of their
own laws. Apathy is good for business-as-usual; so is cynicism. Convince
the kids that history is at an end, that nothing important remains to be
discovered, done, or said, and maybe they won't ask why a corporate CEO
receives a salary four hundred times greater than that of the lowest paid
worker in his own company."
The first of Nader's television appearances, a taped broadcast for CNN's
Crossfire, was scheduled for 2:00 PM, but he was slow to finish talking
to a reporter from Business Week, and in the car Theresa Amato, his campaign
manager, worried about being late.
As Nader was being ushered to his seat at the table between them, Theresa
and I found chairs against a back wall, and Novak greeted the candidate
with a condescending joke. "Well, Ralph," he said. "I see that you have
brought the whole of your bloated campaign staff."
Nader let the remark pass without comment, and while the technicians fixed
his microphone Novak turned to the teleprompter to read the opening tease.
Smoothing his vest, adjusting his tie, he puffed up his voice into the
registers of mock urgency and canned sensation, bringing his viewers the
promise of furious debate -- "Ralph Nader in the crossfire. Ralph Nader
and his third-party presidential campaign. Will it last? Will he find
money? Will he take votes from Al Gore? Is he serious? Can he win?"
The lights went briefly down, and during the lull that accompanied the
first commercial break, Novak sagged back into the posture of a bored
Washington
courtier, the Rosencrantz to Bill Press's Guildenstern (or, on alternate
days of the week, the Guildenstern to Press's Rosencrantz); it was obvious
that with respect to the questions he had just asked, his answer to all
of the above was no. Nor was he particularly interested in the interview
that he was about to conduct. Nader quite clearly wasn't going to be giving
tours of the White House or tipping anybody off to tomorrow's bombing of
Belgrade. But the show was the show, and what Novak had to sell was the
sport of bearbaiting. When the lights again came up, he instantly regained
the pose of "the citizen who cares" and began a garbled interrogation along
the lines of the morning editorial in the Times, "Are you really totally
indifferent to these two candidates?" "If you were to take away enough
votes from California to carry the state for George Bush, I think that
might elect him. Does that give you trouble sleeping?"
Nader said he could sleep. The Democratic Party had shifted its thinking
and policies so far to the right that the only difference between Bush
and Gore was the relative velocity "with which their knees hit the floor
when the big corporations knocked on the door."
Nader began to explain his reasons for saying what he'd said (i.e., with
specific reference to the Clinton Administration's record on child welfare,
medical insurance, national forests, the Glass-Steagall Act, etc., etc.),
but well before he could complete the bill of indictment it was time for
another commercial break, and as soon as the cameras returned for the second
half of the program, Novak was talking about "Ralph Nader, consumer advocate
multi-millionaire!" He had seen a newspaper report placing Nader's net
worth at $4 million, and real money in the hands of anybody to the left
of William F. Buckley struck him as prima facie evidence of hypocrisy.
Liberals were supposed to be poor; their poverty was what made them
liberals.
So, said Novak, as if peering under a pillow or a rock, you have $4 million.
Nader said the number was about right, but he went on to explain that
he lived on only a small fraction of the income and gave the bulk of it
to his several public action committees. The answer didn't satisfy Novak,
and for the next fifteen minutes, attempting to discredit Nader's claim
to the prerogatives of an idealist, he pursued the subject with questions
about how the money was invested, in what kind of stocks, and were those
companies cruel monopolies, enemies of the people, creatures of the corporate
state? Because Nader answered the quiz without embarrassment or evasion,
the effect was lost.
Twenty minutes later we were back in the car, and Nader was saying that
he thought the show had gone about as well as could be expected. He cited
the list of issues on which Gore had sold out his avowed concern for the
environment to the highest corporate bidder -- oil development in Alaska,
organic food standards, greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting chemicals, the
California redwoods.
"Critics tell me that I ought to work 'within the system,' but people 'within
the system' don't welcome new ideas. They like to talk about social change,
but when it comes to actually doing something, they remember that social
change is outrageous, un-American, and wrong. Look at the history of the
country. I don't care whether you're talking about the Revolution of 1776,
or abolitionists forcing the issue of slavery in the 1850s, about women's
suffrage, the late nineteenth-century populist revolt against the eastern
banks and railroads, the trade-union movement, Social Security, meat
inspection,
civil rights. The change invariably begins with people whom the defenders
of the status quo denounce as agitators, communists, hippies, weirdos.
And then, ten or twenty years later, after the changes have taken place,
the chamber of commerce discovers that everybody's profits have improved.
The captains of industry never seem to understand that a free democracy
is the precondition for a free market; try to turn the equation the other
way around, and you end up with an economy like the one in Indonesia."
By the time we returned to the building on N.W. Fifteenth Street three
more newspapers had called with requests for interviews, 60 Minutes had
expressed interest, and Tom Brokaw's producers had asked if it might be
possible for Tom to follow Nader into Minnesota with a camera crew. The
campaign staff was impressed, but not to the extent of sending out for
beer and paper hats. Like their candidate, they understood the political
crisis in the country not as an ideological quarrel between liberal and
conservative, Democrat and Republican, but rather as an argument between
the people who would continue the American experiment and those who believe
the experiment has gone far enough, between the inertia conducive to
acceptance
of things-as-they-are and the energy inherent in the hope of
things-as-they-might-become.
To the delegates at the Green Party convention in Colorado, Nader had defined
his politics as "first and foremost a movement of thought, not of belief,"
and later in the afternoon, riding in a taxi to the PBS studio in Arlington,
Virginia, I asked him whether politics so defined didn't set him up for
a good deal of disappointment. "Maybe it would if I were into mood changes,
he said.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer allotted Nader ten minutes at the top of the
broadcast and didn't bother with the theatrics of false confrontation.
Lehrer asked straightforward questions, but they were so tired and
perfunctory
that it was apparent he didn't understand Nader's critique of the sham
democracy. Nor, like Novak and Press, did he seem to know what was meant
by the phrase "economic injustice." Where was the problem, and why the
complaint? Here we all were in the most prosperous society ever to see
the light of heaven, real estate prices going nowhere but up, the ever
expanding middle class floating in suburban swimming pools on the buoyant
mattress of the Nasdaq, and why were we talking about poor people?
In the time allowed, the conversation couldn't become anything other than
an exchange of platitudes, but it permitted at least one memorable question
and answer. Lehrer was asking Nader what he would do in and with the office
of the presidency in the unlikely event that he won the election. How
could Nader possibly appreciate the complex workings of all those vast
and complex government agencies in Washington? Nader paused for a moment,
as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard. Then he laughed
and said, "Well, I don't know anybody who has sued more of them."
The station provided another taxi to return Nader to Washington, and he
offered to drop me at the airport if I still had policy issues that I wished
to raise. Once again we found ourselves stalled in traffic, but over the
course of the next half hour I mostly asked less lofty questions about
Winona LaDuke, the vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket
-- an Indian woman, a White Earth Anishinaabeg from Minnesota, Harvard
educated, an author, a social activist who shared his views on foreign
trade and human rights. He'd met her a few years ago and had been impressed
by her integrity and strength of character; he knew of no finer person
in the United States.
As my plane to New York climbed into a steep turn over the Potomac, the
sight of the Lincoln Memorial in the lovely evening light reminded me that
a democratic republic knows no higher rank or title than that of citizen.
The media prefer celebrities, who come and go like soup cans or summer
moths, unthreatening and ephemeral. Cheaply produced and easily replaced,
made to the measure of our own everyday weakness, celebrities ask nothing
of us except a round of applause. Like President Clinton, they let us
off the hook. Nader sets the hook on the sharp points of obligation to
a higher regard for our own intelligence and self-worth. Less interested
in the counting of votes than in the lesson of freedom, he mounts his
campaign
on the proposition that the party of things-as-they-are depends for its
continued survival on the party of things-as-they-might-become.
I got out bid on this photographic image/general @ e.bay. last friday
I fucked up !
SEX AND REALESTATE by Marjorie Garber
More Hairy Smith........
Anthology of American Music, Volume Four
"As Per The VV"