Dr. Rat

Now I guess I have my conservative streak . . . This place just won't be the same without the Jazzmoose avatar of old. Jazzmoose, perhaps you are just sick of looking at yourself, but can't you keep the old avatar as a service to the public. You were a landmark. That Rushmorian visage was one of the things that held this place together. Without it we'll have to start the statement of purpose discussion again. --eric

giving it, brother, giving it... & while there are extremes of human experience, there is NO good reason short of extreme, extremely unfortunate abuse or mis-acculturation not to dig it. maketh love, not bad hollywood (or so-called "indie") movies, sweetie. the same goes for J-L G "Weekend," "Point Blank," Andre de Toth "Crime Wave" & "Day of The Outlaw," Fuller's war movies +++, Preston Sturges... then there's Brakhage, Harry Smith, the Fleischer Brothers, the GREAT Jorgen Leth... seriously, Rat, try to find as many Leth films as you can, even if you think you don't like film... MEANWHILE-- it is pretty funny to see ya'll rag on Keanu Reeves... as i said, i know NOTHING abt the guy... i can't imagine him being worse than Brad Pitt McConauhey Affleck Dicaprio etc. goddamn DeNire who's HORRIBLE i knew he was a goddamn hack when i saw "Heat" back whenever (just ok btw). FILM ASIDE-- do any of ya'll know abt a short film writ/dir by Ray McKinnon called "The Accountant"? he's also an actor, was on that show "Deadwood" i've never seen... anyway, "The Accountant" gets RAVES & has a PKD sound to it also... just wondering if anyone can cofirm/deny. orally yrs, clementine (bon vivant) On the oral sex image: we can agree on the giving end. I really think you are giving me the hard sell on film, though. Can it really be that good? I am skeptical, but . . . I will do what I can re: leth. Mind I do not live in a cultural capitol of our fair land, but there are some people who are interested in film at the local library. They actuall had a Harry Smith film. And the college I work at has a Preston Sturges festival going on right now--so I guess I shouldn't sell this place too short. For Reeves: you might want to have a look at his truly stunning performance in Much Ado about Nothing, just as an illustration of what one can get away with in Hollywood these days. If you haven't seen this you don't really have a proper perspective on just how bad the machine you hate can be--way beyond aesthetic head up ass syndrome. On the Accountant: it has become one of those films that people recommend to me when I tell them I don't like films that much. I'm actually going to be in Philly with a film buff friend of mine in a few weeks. I'll see if he's willing to indulge me. --eric

I suppose it's just the way it ends, but I never thought of A Scanner Darkly as a humorous novel... And Lon, you're right, of course: he'll screw it up. : Dick always had a lot of trouble ending his novels--a lot of them just collapse under the weight of agglomerated plot elements (psychic powers AND time travel AND aliens AND psychoactive drugs AND convoluted conspiracy theories . . .). He does better in Scanner and that may be one of the reasons I liek the book so much, but I tend not to credit Dick's endings much generally--a lot of times he just needed some way of dismounting, and about any contrivance might be utilized in that effort. Scanner Darkly definitely has its very dark quality, but I think what makes it stand out for me amongst Dick's later work is the fact that he was still able enough to get outside of that dark end of things to make jokes that are sometimes quite other than gallows humor. There are some great comic moments in the book. Which come to think of it is odd, since the funny moments in most of the early novels have more fo a satiric (laughing AT something/someone as opposed to laughing at the absurd qualities of the human condition) edge to them. --eric

I think Allen is right in that Aleman was working in the same sort of millieu (sp?) as Django, but without that "manic" quality, which to me often comes out in the really fierce propulsive quality of Django's playing. Listening to Aleman, the first thing we are bound to note is the absence of that drive. But I think that it is also possible that Aleman was able to do something quite his own and quite important while forgoing the manic--it just takes listeners a while to adjust to what we think is a missing piece (to a puzzle he wasn't working on). --eric

Well, I'd imagine that even receiving oral sex may not be universally loved--plenty of possible reasons why not. Not all of them to feel guilty or inadequate about, I should think. But anyhow, I have a theory that the deep love of film has something to do with the deep religious impulse. Someone else has made this observation before, I think. Therefore there's a sort of parallel between loving late PKD (which I have no patience for) and loving film as a sort of life-altering experience. Myself, I'd be a different person without having read Catch-22, but Chinatown (one of my very favorite films) could be eliminated from my synapses with nary a change in who I am or how I think. This is even true of more obscure, non-Hollywood pleasures I've watched--sorry, I can't list them straight off, just not top of mind sort stuff for me. I, myself, am more attached to the early Dick, when he was more pre-occupied with German philosophical matters. I still think he had some fairly prescient insights into consumerism years before cultural studies began to take mass culture seriously as an aesthetic/sociological phenominon. Certainly some of the stuff in High Castle has changed the way I think about "connoisseurship." Scanner Darkly I can read and enjoy a lot a sa humorous novel, but a lot of the later writing just seems to me to be a drugged-out cry for help. (I, obviously, don't have much of that religious drive, at least not of that particular flavor.) --eric

BTW: Interesting thread, thought provoking contributions. Sorry I can't offer a technical analysis at the moment, I'm heading for the tonic. --eric

I didn't know that Harvard had a dictionary of underwear! And as for Webster's, you gotta look at Ben, not Miriam. You laugh, but I think there is a big book on undergarments done by someone in a cultural studies department, somewhere. Not quite a bief dictionary, but getting there. --eric

That's the point I guess I was trying to make: I can enjoy film, but I don't look there for life-changning enlightenment. Scanner Darkly could have been very enjoyable. Maybe still will be. Reeves was good in one film, I hear, anyhow.

Thanks, Allen. --eric

Between the Bars has been my favorite. I heard she was on public radio denying any Holliday influence or any attempt to imitate Holliday. Bull, says I. --eric

Clem: I, too, am a huge PKD fan, and have coincidentally just been rereading some of his old pulps (timeslip, three stigmata, now wait for last year). The thing with Scanner Darkly is that in the right hands it might be a pretty good film. I'm not at all hopeful looking at the cast, though. For whatever reason, though, I've never got much from film, full stop. Not a medium that really reaches me in any intellectual way. It can scare me or make me sad or excited, but it never really makes me think, just inspires (sometimes intense, usually quite transient) emotions. --eric

Allen- Imprssive resume! While I have you on the line, I wonder if you'd answer a few questions I've had in the back of my mind for a while. (sorry is this seems like I'm quizzing you, but you know some things I don't, and there's only one way to get started on rectifying that!) As somebody in the busines, who do you think did the best work in 78 remastering and why. And, has the latest generation in computer technology and automated editing programs made a considerable improvement in how well 78s can sound when remastered. I know the editing programs that get down to my level of pedestrian audio production are WAY better now than they were 5 years ago. How about at the more exaleted level of remastering? --eric

Man, we don't need a mission statement, we need group therapy. Or is this group therapy? If this is group therapy the hell with group therapy, we need a mission statement! Hit reset. --eric

I have mixed feelings as well. I don't think there is anything that management can do about our situation here. I think that there are indeed some provocateurs here--and I don't think it matters whom I think they are. Some of you probably think I am a provocateur (and I do hope I'm spelling that right). But that someone should post this thread as a plea for civility and then telll someone to fuck off is symptomatic of our problem. I'm not being moralistic about this, I understand the temptation and the hostility completely--I've picked a couple of fights here myself. BUT, I think the solution to the bad atmosphere is for the people who value courtesy to practice it avidly, even when they don't feel like it, even when they have contempt for the person they are showing it to. Because courtesy is not a show of respect to the person who receives it primarily. It is a show of respect for yourself and for the whole of the forum. So the solution isn't to leave or to castigate the bad people, it is conduct yourself in the best manner you are able to. I sound like Bambi's mother, I know. But it's the only way I think. --eric

Well, yes, and critics of critics can only be held accountable to their own consciences, too, so be quiet! --eric

Perhaps so, but this plane only packs a camera, I think. --eric

Hmmm I'm not a musician, and I don't have a lot of theoretical (just heretical) musical knowledge, but I don't think you are right in your blanket statements about Brubeck's stuff. I'd say that perhaps one reason you think he's musically barren is that he's not trying to do the things you think he's trying to do. Not to say that I'm not occasionally driven up the wall by Brubeck's "locked hands" stuff (like on some of the live college recordings), or by what I perceive to be his pretentiousness (including some of the octet stuff in the latter category), but I do think that when he succeeds, he succeeds (a lot of his Columbia material). --eric

I know this has been kicked around before, but does the board have to become the forum where "deals gone sour" greivances get aired. As far as I'm concerned, deals should get cut between two people, off the board, and the settlement of any greivances should also be pursued somewhere other than here. If you think someone is using the board to entice others into bad deals, write to the moderating team, write to people on the board you know may be buyers (and let them decide whom to trust), but don't post. There's more than one sort of illegal activity for which this board *may* be liable for providing a conduit. This particular deal being one of them. I'd say buyers and sellers should feel free to meet here, but they ought to get off the square when they're doing their deal. And the board isn't responsible for seeing that deals go through as promised. --eric

I used to start my mornig show off every morning with Cal's version of Mongo Santamaria's Mi Guaguanco. A good way to wake up! May 5th it is. We can also say about Cal's personality that it helped him create a platform where other talented folks could shine. His own contributions were often overshadowed, yes, but creating that platform--for people like Armando Pareza (sp?), Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Chombo Silva, etc, etc.--was a great contribution in itself. --eric

I can't see what the big deal is. If you don't want stuff like this to happen, get off the internet, get your phone number unlisted and go off and live in a cave somewhere. Expecting some high level of privacy with zero effort and expense on your part in a wired society is not exactly intelligent. The big factor in being victimized by a stalker is not their knowing your address and phone number. And are stalkers really something we ought to be worrying about? How about the SARS virus, or catching aids from doorknobs or pit bulls or satanic cults or something like that? Just try to come to grips with the fact that you are a social being and that you can't have absolute control over all you interactions, what people say about you or what people know about you. Or head off to the cave. --eric

This is really too bad for chess. As well as being an adventuresome player, Kasparaov was also a forceful personality. I don't see anyone else really filling his shoes. As to the grueling nature of chess: I can't imagine many of today's superstar babies in physical sports being able to stand the pressure puts on a human being. Might want to check out the new book Bobby Fischer Goes to War on this general topic. And computers ending chess is kind of like cars ending track and field, don't you think?

Didn't like this one nearly as much as Readings -- the Book World review pieces are just too short. --eric I agree to an extent. The 'Readings' essays are generally longer and a bit more personal, but I'm finding a wealth of books that interest me in the 'Bound to Please' reviews. Now I just have to find the time to read them. Yes, it is good as a "book tips" sort of thing. But I really loved Readings, though I don't share his predilections for Nabakovian stuff or for supposedly beautiful prose stylist like Prolix. --eric

But, unfortunately you won't be visiting 3rd Street Jazz, where Sun Ra used to sell his singles hot off the press. That was really the place to be and buy. --eric

Seconds on the Philadelphia Record Exchange tip. If you are in Bucks, you might as well take an hour drive and head to the Princeton Record Exchange. They've got a really good dump ($5 and less used cds) where, with persistence, you can usually find something good. The full-price section is cool and lots of vinyl. --eric