Do we finally get the extra army pieces on each turn?
I saw video of this “ceremony” last night was throughly freaked out.

The Associated Press
BAGHDAD – The United States inaugurated its largest embassy ever on Monday, a fortress-like compound in the heart of the Green Zone – and the most visible sign of what U.S. officials call a new chapter in relations between America and a more sovereign Iraq.DIPLOMATIC FORTRESS

HADI MIZBAN/The Associated Press
The U.S.’ new embassy in Iraq is in Baghdad’s Green Zone and is the United States’ largest.
The adobe-colored buildings that cost $700 million sit on a 104-acre site and have space for 1,000 employees – more than 10 times the size of any other American Embassy in the world.

Rising high above the fray of films worth seeing is Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon War. The synopsis:

One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore about that period of his life.

Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images …

Support art and go see it.

Well, it could be Wasilla…

“and what also floats in water..?”
“a duck!”

“who are you..who are so wise in the ways of science…?”

OK, couldn’t help it. There was just too much good stuff this year…

SIDE A
1. James Blackshaw - “Gate of Ivory” from Litany of Echoes
2. Grails - “Reincarnation Blues” from Doomsdayer’s Holiday
3. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - “Moonland” from Dig Lazurus Dig!!!
4. Constantines - “Our Age” from Kensington Heights
5. Mogwai - “Local Authority” from The Hawk is Howling
6. Evangelista - “Lucky Lucky Lucky” from Hello, Voyager
7. Snowman - “The Horse (Parts 1&2)” from The Horse, The Rat And The Swan

SIDE B
1. David Byrne & Brian Eno - “Strange Overtones” from Everything that Happens Will Happen Today
2. Women - “Shaking Hand” from Woman
3. mom - “Skipping Stones” from Little Brite EP
4. Gala Drop - “Ital” from Gala Drop
5. Hauschka - “Alma” from Ferndorf
6. Why? - “A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under” from Alopecia
7. Spiritualized - “Walking with Jesus (live)” from iTunes Live: London Sessions
8. Deerhunter - “Nothing Ever Happend” from Microcastle

For perhaps arbitrary reasons these artists weren’t included in the previous post, but all are more than worthy of mentioning…

New offerings from older guards Cave, Spaceman, and Byrne/Eno held up nicely to the scrutinies longevity can bring. Out-of-nowheres Gala Drop, mom, Women, and Snowman were the surprises which make mp3 culture worth a damn. And then of course there’s the always reliable Grails and Mogwai, two longtime favorites who continue to open the next door.

Onward to ‘09!

Well it’s the end of 2008, the surf sucks and I’m battling a token seasonal cold. So what better time to recap this year’s highlights in music?

Selections are broken up like any piece of vinyl: SIDE A and SIDE B. Though there’s no hierarchy, SIDE A would be more of the fire and brimstone picks, albums with a bit more of a kick and of higher energy, while SIDE B drifts further out into the temples of unconsciousness. Kinda like Bowie’s Low.

Also included are accompanying PODcasts for each SIDE. So feel free to download and get a better sense of what the hell I’m rambling on about.

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Up by 276 and counting. Go Stuart!!!

[UPDATE] 1:15 PST - down to 241, but still holding.

[Update 2] 1 vote for Lizard People ic

As a form of closure on this whole 8 year debacle– to recap, reboot, and move on– last month i picked up and read Frank Rich’s 2006 book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth. Boston University Film Professor Ray Carney gave this appraisal which made me go to the library the next day to borrow it:

I just stumbled on a copy of Frank Rich’s The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth. Read it and weep. What a deeply perceptive, wonderful, and sad book about the culture we live in, the politicians who govern us, and the journalists who (cravenly, callowly, shoddily, exploitatively) report on it all. Go to a public library and take it out. You can read it in a night or two. Ponder the consequences of postmodernism triumphant, and realize that its moral and intellectual abdications are not confined to works of art or criticism. Frank Rich shows that Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld were living postmodern possibilities that Jean Baudrillard only theorized about. They transformed the campy, cute postmodern dream into a real world nightmare — so that torture and waterboarding and suspensions of habeas corpus, in their world of style-surfing, become “expressions of the Geneva Convention.” Anything can mean anything if you only master the form of the presentation and the right tone of voice as you pronounce it. Rich’s America is a country where the ad campaign has replaced reality, a culture where the flash and dazzle of style and spin and appearance have replaced pathetically old-fashioned concepts like truth and reality. Thank you, postmodern artists and critics. This is your work. This is the world you celebrate. Welcome to the future. Orwell and Huxley had nightmares about this world, but they were unable to delay its appearance– the appearance of the there where there is no there there. And it’s no surprise that it took a drama critic (not a political reporter) to understand the Bush White House. Being President and conducting a war is all just a performance. It’s all theater. Who says it has anything to do with bodies and blood and death? How old-fashioned. Thank you, Frank Rich. What an amazingly sad and revealing book you’ve written about ourselves and our world.

Extra points to Carney for taking to task artists and their critics who actively promote and elevate detached irony and cleverness over real experience and truth. It’s the perfect parallel… Bush and crew were, as he says, “living postmodern possibilities.” They mastered the manipulation of language, the embedding of subtext, the crafting of images. Once their version of a truth was successfully fashioned, when they acted they in effect created their own reality. Perception became a game of data contortion, and up until Katrina it was an entirely one-sided match. And how sad it took the establishment media even that long to figure out these hucksters. Four years too late at least.
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well, speaking about playing yer acoustic guitar..and american folk/roots/blues….

there simply isn’t anyone better than Kelly Joe Phelps..

you heard about that deal Robert Johnson made at the crossroads with Bethelzebub..?
some say Kelly must have done something similar.

A heavy favorite of Steve Earle, Bill Frisell, and my man Martin Simpson..he knocked me out the first time I heard him.

here’s the bonus:

he’s playing tonight in Ventura at some little place called Zoey’s on Main St; at 8pm.
Sunday at McCabes in LA.

do yerself a favor..go see him.

Did the Republican’s really just push us deeper into recession because they hate Unions and want more foriegn and cheap labor in the South?  

These guys are complete assholes.

I hope Bush feels just enough guilt to allow a bridge loan out of the already approved $700b.  He’s already the worst ever, but maybe he’ll add a second positive astrick to his presedency to go along with his AIDS record in Africa.

Picking up on the Dr.’s educational and excellent last post, I got to thinking about the contemporary crop of acoustic guitar players. People like Glenn Jones, Sir Richard Bishop, Steffen Basho-Jung, Harris Newman… all exceptional musicians outright, but each more importantly are guitar sculptors of architectural space and sound. Like Fahey and Kottke before them, the faculty of their playing transcends the technology their instrument.

Two personal favorites though are Jack Rose and James Blackshaw. Rose comes from Philadelphia and was an original member of the noise/drone band Pelt in the 90s. In the 00s he’s focused on his solo guitar, releasing a handful of albums under his own name. Kensington Blues (2005) would be a highlight among the highlights. His playing is an informed mix raga, ragtime, and the blues. When all three collide, like in the first song of this clip, it’s money in the bank of my eardrum.

Blackshaw is a surprisingly young London-based guitarist. He’s, in my estimation, responsible for some of the most unabashedly beautiful music of the last four years. His two latest releases, Cloud of Unknowing (2007) and Litany of Echoes (2008), sees his playing reaching a critical mass… almost classical in composition, the resonating frequencies of patterns and shapes he subtly shifts over time work to bring a sort of altered state of clarity to the listener. Dreamtime on a 12-string.