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Until today, this earlier post about the Iowa caucus still occupied the front page of this blog; since it was written, in the hoary, ancient days of January 25-26, the whole political landscape has changed. Back then, everything was "Dean Dean Dean" and now it's all "Kerry Kerry Kerry." The latter's pro-war vote will give him more credibility with Toby Keith's America, I guess, and he is at least now questioning Bush Jr.'s cred on defense issues. Without being for him, I can still say "let's hope he wins."
The same post discussed Alexander Cockburn's takedown of Errol Morris's film The Fog of War, and Cockburn has a few more thoughts today on Robert McNamara, specifically his 13 years at the World Bank. McNamara is reportedly unhappy that these glory years aren't mentioned in the movie, but Cockburn reminds us that sacking the Third World economically isn't any more noble than killing millions of Vietnamese, really.
In Vietnam, Agent Orange and napalm. Across the Third World, the bank underwrote "Green Revolution" technologies that the poorest peasants couldn't afford and that drenched land in pesticides and fertilizer. Vast infrastructural projects such as dams and kindred irrigation projects drove the poor from their lands, from Brazil to India. It was the malign parable of "modernization" written across the face of the Third World, with one catastrophe after another prompted by the destruction of traditional rural subsistence economies.Regarding the McNamara/Morris tour to promote the movie, Cockburn says: "It's as though Eichmann had launched a series of lecture-circuit pillow fights with a complaisant biographer." I know Democratic centrist types are wont to bash Cockburn as an "old lefty"--a lot of them sided with power-nebbish Eric Alterman in his recent food fight with the Counterpunch editor--but Cockburn is still the more incisive writer, and more fun, too.
Watch Great Teacher Onizuka morph into a museum inflatable here (360 KB file). This 22 year old biker turned student teacher is fantasizing about "being in his 40s and marrying a 16 year old." Don't ask.
Bruce Sterling, on his blog, steers us towards Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Dance Music, which definitely merits a moment or two of your time. It's a handy manual to all the different electronic dance genres, where you can hear samples and go "Ah, that's what Nu Style Gabber sounds like!" On the other hand, it's a novel and fairly persuasive form of criticism. Ishkur makes no bones that this is his take, and by combining a flowchart taxonomy with written argument and clickable soundbites, he's made a formidable first draft of pop music history.
I like the way he includes Dub as a forerunner of House (along with Disco); that's a little less America-centric than the usual version, which has NY djs moving to Chicago and reinventing disco with more electronics. (Curiously, Hiphop is treated as sui generis--under "Breakbeat"--when it also had a strong Caribbean influence, e.g., DJ Kool Herc.) He gives Techno short shrift, though, treating it as a genre for boring purists when it in fact has interpenetrated and informed almost all the other styles. It's interesting the way he divides early 90s breakbeat rave techno into Rave, which becomes the progenitor of Hardcore, and Breakcore, which spins off Jungle and Drum & Bass, but mysteriously, Rave never intersects with the "Techno" timeline and Breakcore never intersects with the "Breakbeat" timeline.* Also, I'm not sure I understand the distinction he makes between two 80s styles: EBM (Electronic Body Music, posited as a forerunner of Goa Trance) and New Beat (a Hardcore antecedent). When I hear both I just say "Belgian."
One style new to me is Speedbass, which sounds like a cross between Noizecore and what Ishkur's calling Experimental Jungle (AKA Drill'n'Bass). It seems very DIY and upload-oriented (see website at www.speedbass.net), and while it's a bit more chaotic than my usual around-the-house fare, it's hard to resist anything with repeated samples of whips cracking and Hollywood extras crying out in fake pain, for example, DJ Tendraw and the Gypsies Dog's "Vocal Tripe (I'm Gonna Hurt You Mix)."
*If I was going to collect a genre in depth (meaning spending a fortune tracking down 12-year-old vinyl and dubplates) it would probably be the one Ishkur calls Breakcore [in version 2.5 he changed it to "Oldskool Rave Hardcore"]. The energy and sheer creative nuttiness of that particular musical moment has never been duplicated.
UPDATE: There was so much to say here I forgot to mention that the writing on Ishkur's site is lively and funny. Some excerpts have been posted here.
There's a nice mix of video game and game-related music over at cuechamp. A good chance to hear artists frequently plugged here, including 8-Bit Construction Set and Monotrona, as well as punchy electro tracks such as Knifehandchop's "Ryu vs. Sakura," with samples of a Real Don Steele-type announcer (from "Streetfighter Alpha 3") yelling out stuff like "Select your fighting style!" and "Beat'em up guys!" Here's the link to the .mp3 of the mix; it's a 22MB file so you probably need broadband. And here is the playlist:
1. super mario brothers - london symphony orchestraWhile at cuechamp, I followed the link to Hektor, a graffiti-writing robot that produces some really clean, seductive imagery with a spraycan rigged up on pulleys. The principle recalls the Etch-a-Sketch, or I suppose what happens inside a mouse, only in reverse: the program translates data into sweeping movements of the dangling, spritzing can, within imaginary horizontal and vertical axes. The device is documented on the under-construction website with pop-up jpegs, a quicktime movie and an extensive pdf file. Now to figure out how to get it into the trainyards.
2. video computer system - golden shower
3. bmx kidz theme - input 64
4. saucemaster - 8 bit construction set
5. ah, enemy - monotrona
6. ryu vs. sakura - knifehandchop
7. manhunt (rephlex manhood remix) – lords of the dance
8. computer games - yellow magic orchestra
New Yorker movie critic David Denby's self-lacerating book about losing all his money in the late '90s stock bubble, discussed briefly a few posts back, fits into a larger story, but not the one told here--of Denby the noodge dispensing crappy criticism. No, the real story, according to this month's Vanity Fair, is that Denby's wife left him for a woman, and his daytrading binges grew out of his rage over that, or some such. Katha Pollitt, mentioned here briefly, also has more interesting things to offer than her discussion of the hypocritical standards applied to campaign wives: in this month's New Yorker, she discusses her obsessive cyber-stalking of her ex.
I know people think that weblogs emphasize the confessional and the private over substantive analysis, but the reverse is increasingly true. Lately, if you want to discuss art and politics outside the usual defined boxes, parse the contradictory positions of institutionally compromised critics, and find a wealth of links to Internet metacriticism, you'll likely find that in the blogosphere. If you want a good gossipy wallow in the tawdry personal misfortunes of these same institutional critics, the major media is for you!
You may have heard that CBS refused a Superbowl ad from the grassroots organization Moveon.org, because it dared to criticize the President. Where are we living, North Korea? The ad emerged from a competition among independent film and video makers called "Bush in 30 Seconds." The finalists from the competition are here. I haven't seen all of them but my favorite so far is "What Are We Teaching Our Children?" (high bandwidth) / (low bandwidth). In this parody of a junior-high school election debate, kids stand up and enthusiastically attack Bush's sorry record on the War, the environment, the economy, and so forth. Reaction shots from parents in the auditorium show the discomfort so-called adults feel at such bracing exercises of free speech in our current McCarthyite climate. This was CBS's reaction, too. I recommend watching the ads tomorrow and experiencing the exhilaration of still being free. I also suggest sending the links to a Republican friend with the note: "See, we can still do this!"