Sunday, October 30, 2005

sonja needs...

straight from rich's blog:

and if you didn't LOOk at rich's blog, which you really should, just google your name, and add 'needs' after it.
i assure you that hilarity will ensue.

this is an update of the Sonja Needs thingie because i found really funny stuff this time - someone looked at this page the other day, so i checked.

Sonja needs both bread and roses. interesting..
Sonja needs to be nerfed big time. too true.
Sonja needs an angry expression. hmm, give me a minute...
Sonja needs snacks throughout the day. and that's how to gain 5 pounds on your vacation... sigh.


Sonja needs to find a new home - ain't that the truth!

Sonja needs to have a marriage license from County Clark which costs $55 - that's kinda scary. where IS Clark County, anyway?

Sonja needs a family that can give her a lot of time & love - my family's good like that, but i guess you can always have MORE love...

Sounds to me like Sonja needs a psychiatrist - well, that's just... well... alright, maybe a teeny bit true?!

Sonja needs a caretaker - DAMN, i'm not that old

Sonja needs to focus more - well, maybe that's... ooh... ice cream!!



i just watched Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids and i was blown away by it. this woman goes to india to photograph the red light district and falls in love with the children of the prostitutes. she gives them cameras and teaches them all about photography and sends them out to take pictures of their lives. she tries, in vain mostly, to get these kids into good schools so that the girls won't have to follow their mothers into 'the line'
rent it and watch it. the kids came out with some of the finest photos i've seen.


Alzheimer's and Picasso - a great article.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

books of the week

a heavy week of non-fiction

1) susan o'neill's Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam
2) edward rivera's Family Installments
3) virgil suarez's Spared Angola
4) editors tara herivel and paul wright's Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor
5) james ebert's A Life in a Year : The American Infantryman in Vietnam
6) keith david hamm's Scarred for Life: Eleven Stories About Skateboarders

next i think some poetry. i just got Song of the Simple Truth : The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos so that'll keep me happy.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

say so long, harriet
here's the spin: "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers - and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her," Mr Bush said. but it's a TKO for bush and his (in) ability to get anything done in his second term - and he thought it was gonna be easy!

will there FINALLY be justice in the Plame case?

here's an update of the possible migration (no pun intended - well, maybe a little) of the bird flu


truth IS stranger than fiction y'all well, she did pick a helluva time of the year to hang herself...


i'm back reading books on Vietnam - every so often i read all i can about that time -it fascinates me. one of my favorite jobs was working at Montrose VA hospital with all the vets.
that and civil war books - i can't get enough of those books. not the fictional accounts though - only non-fiction ones. thank god for library cards.
oh, and Ozomatli? still listening AND watching that DVD

that's it for now - have a good weekend all...

Sunday, October 23, 2005

part 2

you know how people think that by going to places like Costco that they save money by buying in bulk? i think that's bullshit. i just spent 100 bucks and all i needed was paper towels and tin foil. huh.



En la vida hay dos cosas ciertas,
Son la muerte y el cambio

still can't stop listening to ozomatli y'all...

burt bacharach and dr. dre?

now you KNOW shit's serious...! check this -


A new album titled "At This Time" arrives in stores on the first of the month with some intriguing attributes. Hip-hop beats crafted by Dr. Dre on three tracks. Politically charged lyrics, among them a bruising attack on the Bush administration. And the record label that's releasing the CD stepped in to ask the artist to tone down the raw language.
Most intriguing is that artist is none other than 77-year-old Burt Bacharach, a songwriter best known for his polished love songs and elegant orchestrations. Some of his tennis partners are going to be a bit rattled by all of this.
"I know, I know, all of this is going to surprise some people," Bacharach said in a wispy voice in a phone call from New York, far from his usual Pacific Palisades turf. "I wanted to take some chances. There are things I needed to say."
It's a good fit for him right now, being in a city of rain and hard edges.
"There was no fear here," he said. "I feel I have a new kind of freedom in making an album like this. In a pop song you're always a bit restrained. Where are you going to go in a three- or four-minute song that is intended for radio? There are limits. Here I went where I wanted to go."
Where he wanted to go required some seven-minute mini-operas, a 35-piece orchestra, three hip-hop producers, Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, jazzman Chris Botti and, for the first time in Bacharach's long and illustrious career of melody-making, lyrics he wrote himself.
The result is an album of high polish — everything Bacharach does with brass and piano is as decorative and shiny as brass buttons on a country-club sports coat — and gives him an adventurous auteur role here that makes him seem like Moby fashioning an album for a light-jazz radio station.
Bacharach is one of the most famous composers in the world and in his sixth decade in the business. He has won six Grammys and three Oscars. He's collaborated on 48 Top 10 hits but along the way wrote the lyrics to exactly zero of them. Old partner Hal David was the word man on "Walk on By," "The Look of Love," "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and most of the other signature works in the Bacharach songbook.
"Through the years did I contribute a line here or there or a title to a song? Yes. But this is a whole new thing for me." There's a revelation in his writing, too: Who knew the cheerful-looking fellow behind the piano was so angry? Take the most indignant track, "Who Are These People?"
This stupid mess we're in just keeps getting worse

So many people dying needlessly

Looks like the liars may inherit the earth

Even pretending to pray and getting away with it.

Not exactly "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." The songwriter says politics have never really been part of his personal composition.

"Vietnam, I'm sure terrible things happened, I know terrible things happened, but you know … some years I didn't vote and politics, that just wasn't my thing," Bacharach said.

When he and David did look to geopolitical headlines for inspiration, the result wasn't exactly high-definition rhetoric. In the gorgeous 1967 hit "Say a Little Prayer," it turns out that it was a distant solider boy who Dionne Warwick was fretting about during her daily routine. The singer said years later that "we were sending a message to our kids in Vietnam." Who knew? It's safe to say that for most pop fans, that message remained safely encrypted.
Not so with the new CD. Asked about the unveiled references, Bacharach's voice began to vibrate with emotion as he indexed his frustrations with the Bush administration.
"The world I see right now is so upsetting that I feel I have to say what I feel," Bacharach said. "At my age, and at this time, things are getting worse by the minute, worse by the day. And this album is that."
The album opens with "Please Explain," which is hung on the ominous chest-thump and orchestral weave of a Dre-fashioned drum-and-bass loop. The slow build leads to Bacharach's vocals, which have always been limited as an instrument and — again, like a Moby album — are often half-hidden behind orchestral corners. ("I'm very self-conscious about my vocals," a sheepish Bacharach conceded.)
The first lyrics on the album make it clear that Bacharach is worried these days that love, sweet love, may not be enough for the world anymore.

There was a song I remember

said "What the World Needs Now … "

Where is the love

Where did it go

Who broke our hearts

'cause we need to know.

Trumpet player and composer Botti met Bacharach on two separate occasions that were a year apart before the song "Dreams" coalesced as a complete work.
The young musician said that Bacharach's talent is to set aside pop convention and somehow create music that attains a near-universal appeal.
"What he does harmonically and rhythmically is so complex and rare because it seems so simple and natural on the surface," Botti said. "Dig deeper and look at what he's doing and you'll see why musicians — from jazz backgrounds or pop or classical or hip-hop or whatever — all respect him."
Botti said the famously mellow Bacharach is a "wonderful collaborator — you can't write all those lovely songs and not be a nice guy, right?"
Maybe so, but Bacharach nearly shed some of his warm and fuzzy persona. This album came mighty close to arriving in stores with a parental advisory sticker.
"Who Are These People?" features Costello, in his best pinched-rage voice, decrying liars and leaders who "can't admit when they're wrong." It ends with Costello singing: "See things really have to change/ Before it's too late."
But in the studio the song had a different ending involving a certain f-word. Bacharach was persuaded by label executives to put a less spiky ending on a lushly orchestrated track.
"But I loved the way it sounded."
The songwriter repeated the original line a few times, savoring the phonetic charge of the bomb he almost set off.
"We should have left it in," he said. "That line says it all.
"That's where we are. I'm being honest."
He says now he expects to release the R-rated version as a single or download or import. "I want people to hear it."

By Geoff Boucher, LA Times Staff Writer 10/22/05

Friday, October 21, 2005

friday night blues


so i don't usually bring work up here, but today was a shit-ass day which has only reaffirmed my deep dislike of some people - well, alright, most people. i don't think that there exists a more self-centered, self-involved human alive than my employer. the lengths she will go to make herself look good to anyone astounds me. she finds a way to make EVERYthing about her, no matter what it is. you all thought Katrina was a hurricane that affected folks in new orleans, right? nope. it totally was about her when she couldn't cancel a credit card because the computers were down in NEW ORLEANS!! and she threw a fit - i almost fell over dead. and since i am NOT prone to exaggeration, you know it's the truth. thank god it's friday and i don't have to be anywhere near her until monday, which if you ask me is too damn soon. the good part of the story is that steven is visiting his friends at binghamton and i am alone (sorta - there is the dog) until sunday night.

there, i feel better. have a good weekend, i know i will.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

insomnia has its advantages...

books i've read this past week:

1) clive barker's Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
2) jasper fforde's (yes, there are 2 f's) the big over easy
3) charles cross's biography of kurt cobain called Heavier than Heaven
4) simon winchester's Krakatoa
5) jack finney's Time and Again
6) anna funder's Stasiland: True Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
and
7) jose torres' We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords

and i recently bought the live (at the Fillmore in san francisco) Ozomatli, AND it comes with a DVD that i just can NOT stop watching. those guys are on fire! i have a huuuuge crush on the trumpet player...no, wait the trombone player...no wait the - oh hell, on ALL of them!
get it. watch it. you won't regret it.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

magic on the lake

a dog & turtle show

so my (so-called) fearless, terrifying pitbull puppy is afraid of the rain. yup. the. rain. she refuses to go out in it. which would be funny if it didn't mean that she's holding in all her bodily functions until it stops. and, my friends, it doesn't look like it's EVER going to stop. the first time i tried to take her out she jumped up on me to get under my umbrella. stupid, she's not - just a bit ridiculous.

one of my turtles died. i'm not exactly sure of what, but i knew he wasn't feeling great when i took him out with the other two to feed and he didn't try and eat me. then he didn't eat anything which is no good. i was going to take him out alone to feed him the next day, but i didn't have the chance. he went that quickly. i was pretty surprised at how sad i was - that may sound heartless, i know, but turtles aren't the most cuddly of pets (like my petrified pooch) so, the tears kinda took me by surprise.

this constant rain is depressing me. i don't mind the cooler temperature, but the raw-ness of the past few days is starting to get to me. and i need a new winter coat - hell, i need new winter clothes, winter shoes - you name it, i need it. and i HATE HATE HATE shopping. yes, that's right. female. hates shopping.

the day before halloween is my dad's 72nd birthday. we used to call it gate night. i don't know what everyone else calls it though i've heard different names. well, that's pretty old, isn't it? 72? he lives in florida (where all jews go to die apparently) although not in boca. he's on the gulf side in sarasota. right down the street from pee wee herman's parents house. for real. he drives a camaro - (my dad, not pee wee, or his parents) the fast one too. he's kind of nuts, i guess. still calls me kid. i like that.

well, the dog wants to play so this is where i'll stop for now.