mushinnoshin

On November 25, 1987, a fifteen year old version of me went to my very first “real” concert, to hear one Alice Cooper at the Municipal Auditorium. I pushed my way up through the general admission crowd to hug the barrier for a front row view in spitting distance of Alice. By the end of the show, the “Raise Your Fist & Yell” tour shirt I had purchased was drenched in stage blood which I wouldn’t wash out for weeks.

Well, here we are just shy of 19 years later, and I just got back from a long delayed repeat performance by Mr. Cooper, at the Ryman this time. And while I was glad to see plenty of blood splattering the kids up front, I was perfectly OK with a regular seat back in the crowd, not taking any of that blood home with me : )

The show was fantastic, every bit as good as I remember. The theatrics might have been a touch more extravagent last time — since that was the 80′s way — but then too that could just be the interpreted memory of a 15 year old in awe. In any case the stage show was still a kick. The consumate showman, Alice knows what works and keeps it. He still has the guillotine, the straightjackets, miscellaneous body parts, and buckets of blood. He still weilds the crutch during ’18′, and wears the white tux for ‘Schools Out’ — just as he did in clips I’ve seen going back to the 70s.

Of course after almost 40 years, he’s built up a catalog extensive enough to guarantee he’s not going to play everything you want to hear, expecially when he’s got new material to plug as well. I told myself that I’d be completely content with the selection if he played one particular song. Well — I guess we compromised. Lemme ‘splain.

For those not familiar with his work — Cooper basically has two types of songs: the rock/metal anthems, and the theatrical gothic production pieces. The anthems are his bread & butter, and he got all the big ones: “18″, “School’s Out”, “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Under My Wheels”, and so on. On the other hand the theatrical stuff is what I like the most — and, well, he sort of did a medley which included parts of the one I needed to hear, “Steven” off of his “Welcome to My Nightmare” album.

So since I got part of the song, I’m basically happy, but get to reserve the right to compain : )

So what did I miss besides the full version of Steven? Well, “Sick Things” and “Dead Babies” are big ones. “I Love the Dead” we also got in medley, the whole thing would’ve been nice. “Halo of Flies”, his masterful step into psychedelia was another notable absence, though I didn’t really expect that one (especially tipped when the recording of it played in the pre-show). And of course I would have loved to hear anything from the “Raise Your Fist” album, since that was my introduction to him, though I understand it getting overlooked since in the scheme of things it wasn’t one of his bigger hits. Still, “Roses on White Lace” and/or “Gail” could’ve easily been worked into the goth medley.

In any case it was a helluva show, and Alice remains a top favorite.

if you’ve been paying any attention, you’ll have figured out that my musical tastes basically fall into a triangulation between the loud / scary / dark / angry, the artsy / intellectual / hi-brow, and the meditatative / psychedelic / trance-inducing.

Thus you’d probably not guess how much I like the band Cracker.

Well, I love ‘em, and I just got back from a fantastic performance by them, and fuck you Nashville for not making it a sell out, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good crowd — just shoulda been packed.

I don’t know what it is about them I like so much. I mean I’m not particularly into country, and there are hundreds of bands that do it better than them, nor am I really into blues, and still there are hundreds of bands that do that better; I do like a fair shake of angsty alternative, but here again there are plenty of bands more ‘alternative’ and more ‘angsty’. But these guys seem to catch just the right intersection of the three to get me. Maybe I just like David Lowery’s voice. Maybe I’m giving ‘em the benefit of Camper van Beethoven’s cool points — I mean, come on, you write a song like “Take the Skinheads Bowling“, you’re just going to be on my list for life. Or maybe I just totally identify with his quest: “I’ve searched the world over / for my angel in black / I’ve searched the world over / for my Euro trash girl”. Well, whatever it is, it works.

Funny thing was noting just how much ‘country’ there really is in their sound, being that we’re in Nashville and all. They did one number during which I could have sworn the whole club got transplanted down to the honky tonks on Lower Broad. Funny thing is most of the people in attendance would never be caught dead in those clubs. Hell, I almost never go to ‘em. But hittin’ those clubs & killing a bottle of whiskey with Lowery? Now that sounds like Good Times.

I just got back from seeing Jet Li’s Fearless. Verdict? Well, if you like marital arts epics, you’ll love it. If you don’t — well then what the fuck good are you anyway??

Seriously it was very well done, comparable to and on par with Hero. And — well I’ll let you see the story. But I’ll say it was a fitting way to mark Jet Li’s retirement from the genre.

So will the retirement stick? Who knows. I hear he wants to do some regular acting now. I actually think he can pull it off — he’s a better actor than people give him credit for. He speaks English as a second language, sometimes in an overdub, and often with cheesy dialog over which he has little control. Taken altogether people often see bad acting, when it really just is what it is. I think if he plays a role of a character such as an immigrant that might require slightly broken English, he’ll pull it off well.

One thing that struck me, outside of the film itself, was just how great it is that we’ve reached a point where kung-fu movies of this caliber and budget are being made, and getting major theater distribution, all still in Chinese with English subtitles. We’ve come a long way from the classic overdubbed Hong Kong pulp. And let’s face it, for some of the people that see this film, this might be all the reading they do this year : )

Of course my favorite Jet Li flick remains Unleashed, but that was an utterly different kind of movie. I may have to write up a post about that film sometime. Not today though. I will say that film was partly responsible for my opinion of his acting. Of course when you’re in the company of Bob Hoskins and Morgan Freeman…

Seeing the film made for a nice martial arts bookend to the weekend, since I spent Friday night in an extra “fight night” class at the dojo. I don’t do the Fridays nearly as often as I should, as evidenced by the nasty wallops I took on both sides of my rib cage. I’m actually a little fucked up, the ribs have hurt like hell all weekend and I’ve had some trouble getting the really deep breaths. But I did get through yoga OK, and they’re not as bad now as they were, so I don’t think there’s any serious damage. But, lest I had any illusions, I can be quite certain I’m not the one who’ll fill Jet Li’s shoes : )

However I do remain convinced that with enough training, I will be able to successfully defend my woman from robot ninjas.

Bin Laden is still loose, but we got Willie Nelson.
– David Letterman

(via The Free Liberal)

Gratuitous drug reform links:
Stop the Drug War
Marijuana Policy Project

Just another one of those, “ok you’ve signed, so now spam your friends” messages that I’d rather just paste in here…

Subject: Don’t let the Senate let President Bush off the hook for breaking the law

Hi,

This week, the Senate is planning to quietly hold a vote that would pardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans.

The bill would let the administration off the hook for breaking the law and make it legal to wiretap Americans, in secret, without any oversight whenever they want to.

Democrats and some Republicans are holding strong against it, and if enough of us speak up we can stop it. Can you sign the petition opposing the Republican move to pardon President Bush for breaking the law?

http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/

Thanks!

So Friday night I went to the first regular performance on my NSO season ticket. One sad thing, I had some really amazing seats to the preview concert — Orchestra row C and dead center — so it was really hard going back to the ghetto seats in the balcony : )

Ah well, next year perhaps.. anyway they tried to design the place so there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, and I think they pretty well succeeded, I had no real complaints except by contrast.

Musically the highlight was the Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich. I mentioned before my love affair with his 11th Symphony — well coincidentally at that same time I went out & bought a CD of the 5th as well. So it was quite a treat to find this piece up first in the season. I don’t think the 5th is nearly as good as the 11th, but it definately has some wonderfully dramatic moments.

Yesterday then I woke to a pretty busy schedule. Yoga in the morning as usual, followed by the ACLU-TN annual membership meeting in the afternoon, where we heard a speaker talking about the “Surveillance Industrial Complex” — chilling stuff. I am so grateful that we have a group like the ACLU fighting this stuff. There’e barely anything left of our 1st and 4th ammendments these days, and we have the ACLU to thank for most of what we’ve managed to keep.

From there it was pretty much straight up to Port Royal State Park for a cookout with some Nashville Gothic peeps. After some nice food & social we caravaned up the road to the Bell Witch Cave for the deluxe 2+ hour cave & cabin tour. Very very cool, great fun, highly recommended. I have to wonder though if having 30 or so goth kids descend on them at once might be scarier than anything the proprietors have ever seen from the witch : )

But it didn’t end there — I landed back in Nashvile around 11:20 PM — just in time to catch Donnie Darko playing the late show at the Belcourt. Great movie! I can’t believe I’d never heard about it before.

Now lets see what sort of fun I can find today…

Whilst waiting for the China Moon to ready my lunch today, someone handed me the below flyer promoting a yard & bake sale to benefit the Serentiy Ministries, tomorrow (Sunday Sept 17) from 8:00 ’til whenever. I figured the least I can do is put the word out on the Tubes. So if you’re in or around South Nashville tomorrow, maybe come on out, looks like a good enough cause.

Kleinheider on Gore.

Yeah pretty right on with those thoughts. Personally I’ve been rooting for a Gore 2008 campaign for a while now. Gore/Feingold would have me dancing in the aisles.

Of course I have to give props to Kn@ppster who’s been saying the same thing for at least a year now.

Seems like a good time to mention that I’ve added del.icio.us links to the sidebar, and I’ve got a Gore 2008 category going. Things are going to get interesting if he runs. And, barring an upset placing Feingold at the top of the ticket, I don’t see any sort of good news coming if Gore doesn’t run.

The funny part is that circa 1996 or so, our band was covering DK’s “California Uber Alles” with my updated version of the lyrics decrying a future Gore presidency. Times-a changin’ I suppose.

I’ve mentioned a few times the new voter re-enfranchisement procedures. Just wanted to post a note to anyone else trying to take care of this: at the ACLU town meeting, Ray Barrett, Administrator of the Davidson County Election Commission, indicated to us that the Certificate of Restoration could be filled out by the criminal court clerk in our county of residence.

After wasting an otherwise pleasant morning of my vacation, the Davidson County Clerk told me otherwise. I emailed the Davidson County Election Commission for assistance.

After a week and a half, a bureaucrat named Joan Nixon was finally kind enough to email me the form I already told her I had, but she did indicate that the form has to be filled out in the state/county of conviction. No explanation as to why Mr. Barrett told us otherwise.

I guess, ya know, you really should have to take time off work and fly 2000 miles or so across the country to fill out a stupid piece of paper in order to get your right to vote back. Because apparently our government exists in a strange nexus of the universe where they have yet to invent these little boxes with keyboards, monitors, & Tubes attached that those of us in the real world take for granted. Apparently it doesn’t even matter than I can go onto the public internet and pull up the record showing it fully closed.

And people wonder why I’m an anarchist.

Well, hopefully I can get them to do it by mail. I’m not going to hold my breath or dare to think it will be done in time for this election though.

The funniest part about all this? Felon voting? Big rigamorole. Felon running for office? Perfectly legal.

(Oh and in case anyone is wondering — I’m a convicted pothead. Real menace to society I was, spending all that time in my early twenties expanding my consciousness and listening to Pink Floyd)

Via CoolPeopleCare, here’s a family of sites that lets you turn daily clicks into charity action:

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/
http://www.thehungersite.com/
http://www.thechildhealthsite.com/
http://www.therainforestsite.com/
http://www.theliteracysite.com/
http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

I’ve added permanent buttons down in my footer. Though you have to click through identical buttons from inside the site(s), so obvioulsy next time it will be easier if you go directly there rather than through me.

On a similar subject, I’ll be joining Mr. Roboto and others for Hands On Nashville Day. Looks like some good work for a good cause.

And in related news, kudos to Google for launching google.org, their philanthropic arm.

I mentioned that I’ve been on a kirtan kick lately; Krishna Das has played a role in that. I mention that here because all this reminds me of an anecdote he tells in an interview on the DVD included with this CD. He talks about asking his guru how to find God. Maharajji answered:

“Feed people.”