LA Weekly

In case you were just wondering whether or not paranoia had the best of you and whether or not that visceral sense of repulsion you'd get in the pit of your stomach every time you saw the sneering face of white-man's entitled contempt for all that is not he whenever Dick Cheney appeared on TV or in print, or in your nightmares -- rest assured, your feelings were warranted and precise.

Read the series in the Washington Post (part three, today, I believe) about how Cheney, as if we didn't know, is truly calling all the shots, at least all the important ones, and using the vagueness that is the office of vice-president to skirt oversight and/or appeal from staff or beauracrats who may disagree with any of his usually 100 percent disastrous ideas. He'll cry executive privilege when he doesn't want anyone looking, as when he holed up with his buddies in the oil business to fashion an energy policy, or say he's part of the legislature when it suits his need to be above executive oversight. This guy hates anything that smacks of egalitarianism or fairness (like health care) and loves anything that buttresses privilege, like cuts in capital gains, dividends, corporate regulation/taxes....Such a wanton pig of a robber baron we haven't seen the likes of since the turn of the 20th century.

How dinasaurs like this still survive in this day and age is beyond me, but the sooner they become extinct, the sooner the world can move forward.

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It says something about how deeply the horrors of this administration have penetrated that I didn't even have to look up how to spell Abu Ghraib (that is how you spell it, right?), but I did have to look up Olbermann. If you're like me, and you just watched Countdown With Keith Olbermann, American Hero, and then read Sy Hersh's piece with General Antonio Taguba (I won't say retired because he should still be serving, he should be medalled, he should be a hero), the guy who investigated Abu Ghraib and got his career ended for it, then you're really depressed. The level of evil that has taken hold of this administration is still shocking and still warrants disgust, disgrace and recriminations. If there was really justice in the world, Donald Rumsfeld's head would explode. I know that sounds like a childish polemic, but what's really childish is failing to fathom the levels of evil that have been and continue to go on with this administration. That and not demanding better.

Olbermann had as a guest the general who was in charge of Abu Ghraib, Janis Karpinski. She told of attempts to better secure the prison, after a mortar bombing killed nine detainees, most of whom were just civilians, and how she was met with admonishments from higher ups that "they were just Iraqis." She said the words were chilling. Way to win the hearts and minds, guys. It was a chilling report in general.

As for Taguba, he seems pretty clear that not only did the highest levels of the administration know what was going on at Abu Ghraib, but they knowling imported the abuse there by sending the spook in charge of Guantanamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller, to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. And then did their best to pin it on the lower level service men and women. Read the piece. This is real SS stuff. Is this what we're about? Is this how we're going to win the battle of cultures?

Let me quote Taguba from the piece: "From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, nd selfless service. And yet when we get to the senior officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

Yet we continue to violate those core values, and like parents in denial who childishly refuse to acknowledge that their kids are doing wrong, we make excuses.

Taguba may be in forced retirement, but if this report is accurate he will always be a soldier. The others who played a part in Abu Ghraib and its cover up may still be wearing the uniform, but they stopped being soldiers a long time ago.

Complicit, to a degree that is evil, has been the up until recently overwhelmingly Republican Congress, which simply surrendered its oversight duties, and still haven't properly exerted them - else why has no one in this god forsaken administration been held accoutable for nearly seven years of lies, cover ups and horror? -- preferring partisan power over the Constitution and the values of this country.

One is at a loss, really. Nothing said here is anything new, but that doesn't mean we should surrender our outrage.

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I tuned in again last Sunday, because for some reason I want to believe, but the show, unlike the word Cincinnati, still sucks after two episodes. And despite all the previous ruminations from me and others (see Feelings About John From Cincinnati) on how hard it is for Hollywood to capture the essence of surfing, here's why: it's a false set up. The show is two different ideas, one which is Davild Milch's about an outsider/alien who drops in on a small-time hustler living in a derelict/possibly haunted motel, and another, which is the Fletcher family's (on whom the show's surfing Yost's are based) that HBO foisted upon Milch. The LA Times did a brief bit on this in their near-promo package of the show a few weeks ago. It's a classic case of kooks (HBO) trying to capture the zeitgeist. You can almost picture the suits sitting around conference tables waxing to Milch about how "the kids will love it." But like all disingenuous ideas, the center won't hold, the phoniness comes through and what's possibly good (Milch's idea and writing) gets killed by what's bad: attempt to capitalize on "what's hot."

So you have a situation where the possibly interesting stuff, Milch's metaphysical musings about the dark heart of mankind and the possibilities of and for redemption playing host to the banal concerns of a douche-bag clan of surfers that we're supposed to care about because... they surf? As Dan Rather might say: that dog won't hunt. Maybe as the show proceeds we'll get more of the former and less of the latter. Let's hope so.

Meanwhile, did you catch the excellent Flight of the Conchords, which followed? That was some good shit. Funny, weird, irreverent and fresh.

Okay, enough about that. Let's talk about the greatest rock bands and musicians of all time, inspired by a list done by Rolling Stone a few years ago that I happened to trip upon recently. You can look up RS's list. Here's mine.

1. The Velvet Underground
Almost everything you hear on indepent/alternative radio owes to Lou Reed and these guys.
2. The Beatles
Only number two because my personal taste is a little more toward the dark side, but, jeez, how can they really be number two?
3. The Who
Almost everything you hear on album-oriented rock stations owes to these guys and in particular the album Who's Next. They were the first, really, to turn it up to 11, but they did it with a teenage wasteland's worth of angst, poignancy and vulnerability that endears.
4. The Rolling Stones
It's easy to forget how great this band was because they've been putting out crap for so long, but from 1968 - 1972 they were simply awesome. They made the blues fun and sick and sexy and dark, completely opened up the possibilites of the genre to become rock and roll as we know it.
5. Led Zeppelin
Responsible for the greatest riffs in rock n roll history. Epic and mighty in the truest sense of the words.
6. The Replacements
I know, probably not a lot of support for this one, but I love these beautiful losers. There's something incredibly compelling about the band's refusal to grab the brass ring while self-consciously chronicling their own flameout. The first postmodern band? And Westerberg is a genius songsmith. Not to mention, they were Nirvana before there was Nirvana.
7. Joy Division
The most depressing collection of music ever assembled that's still incredibly beautiful and disturbing at the same time.
8. Bob Dylan
Of course. The lyrics, yes. But the melodies, jeezus. He'd be higher if my personal tastes ran more towards the elegiac.
9. The Kinks, Faces and Gasoline Alley-era Rod Stewart
For that indelible British thing of that era. Wistful and ballsy at the same time.
10. The Sex Pistols
Has any band changed everything the way the first five bands (and Bob Dylan) changed everything since the Sex Pistols? For punk and everything that punk is and ever should be, they belong on the list.

I know, this list doesn't have much of recent vintage to recommend recent vintage, but The White Stripes and The Arcade Fire seem to be the only bands of recent times really swinging for the fences the way these bands did and I think the jury's still out on them. What about Nirvana, you say? Well, Nirvana was seminal, but they have about three songs that will be around forever, which is about seven less than their Creedence Clearwater-esque counterparts, Pearl Jam, and I just don't think they ultimately cut it.

And, finally, if you worry that there are no heroes left in the world, watch Countdown With Keith Olberman.

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It's always Beatles time, but with the 40th Anniversary of Sgt. Peppers upon us and Paul McCartney delivering (from many accounts) his best record in a long time, the Beatles are once again, Here, There, And Everywhere.

So, I'm driving out to Vegas and listening to Revolver. Can you imagine how heads must have been blown straight off of people's shoulders when that bomb dropped. It's so outlandishly amazing that if it came out today it would still melt people's faces away. Sgt. Pepper gets a lot of the hype as the Beatles masterwork, and as a conceptual piece it's groundbreaking and certainly important, but it's one of the least listenable Beatles' records to me -- it's still mindblowing, but it's degrees less mindlbowing than some of their other records. Which is kind of like saying 107 (the temperature today) is hot, but 110 (what the temperature is supposed to be tomorrow) is hotter.

It's hard to fathom all of the things that went right for the Beatles to happen, many have tried and reams have been written. And my colleague, Kate Sullivan, has a great piece coming out this Thursday on Paul and his new record, so I don't want to try to act like I've divined anything new to add to the chronicles, but, man, it sure was a miracle. Think about it, in 1965 these guys came out with "Eleanor Rigby", "She Said, She Said", and, perhaps the most mind-bending of all, "Tommorow Never Knows." I freak when I hear that song. I mean, if it came out today it'd still stop time in its place. I mean, you'd literally be driving down the street, it'd come on the radio and everything would freeze. Traffic lights, traffic, birds in flight, the hands on the clock tower, the breeze would even stop and everything would just wait until it was over and then everything would be like: did you hear that shit?

The beats on that song are precursors to the best electronic music; the crazy effects and sound loops, the staccato fuzzed-out guitar solos laid down the map for almost everything that followed it through psychedelic heyday of rock. It's beyond anything anyone's even able to think of these days. Nuts.

While we're on the subject, I do have to say, it's always tripped me out the way people bag on Ringo. That guy is a fucking unbelievable drummer. To not get this is to be somehow caught up in some Nearl Peart infused layer of hell. Come on now, I can't see how these wildly experimental songs would have held together without Ringo's drumming. He's there all the way propelling the song on and adding amazing dashes of high hat and cymbals and explosions at just the right time and then bringing you back with that steady, fat beat when shit's about to go off the rails. And if you think Keith Moon didn't learn a thing or two from Ringo, you don't know shit.

Here's to you Ringo. And, as always, here's to the Beatles.

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Hilariously bad. Why can't Hollywood ever get the surfing mileau correct? Wait, could it be because the shows are generally done by people with little or no experience in that arena?

I just got done watching the finale of The Sopranos (yawn) and watched with interest, as my friend Arty Nelson would say, the premiere of David Milch's next big thing, John From Cincinnati (what a great name, Cincinnati, just writing it is cool). For weeks people at work have been asking me if I'm excited about it, because, you know, I'm the guy at work who surfs. So, bouyed by great expectations, and the show's pedigree, I watched...with interest.

About 30 seconds in, I realized it was going to suck. Based closely, despite the creators' denials, on the notorious and troubled surfing Fletcher family, it gets just about everything wrong in terms of tone. The biggest problem is the dialogue, and, well, everything else, like creating a show about nothing. The dialogue is expository to a fault, and delivered in the cadence of a New York cops and robbers drama; nothing rings true to the setting. The matriarch of the family, played by Rebecca DeMornay (still hot), speaks in a Brooklyn or North New Jersey (carryover from the Sopranos?) brogue. The drama, or action, such as it is, so dialed up over nothing -- even the heroin addled scion seems like he's on meth -- that you wonder how anyone's lives, even surfers in Southern California, could have so little going on in their lives that the major dramatic point, whether the youngest of the three generations of surfers should enter a harmless contest, causes such a ruckus of in-fighting you'd think they were discussing whether or not the kid should join the Army Rangers and go off to Iraq.

The point being that nothing here resembles real life, not even for a band of surfers. When you enter the room screaming about nothing and keep up the screaming about nothing all show long, what's there for an audience to relate to our or to like? Shit, even Tony is on a more even keel and has something resembling a relatable life than these people, and there's actually something at stake in his drama. This is what happens when people who know nothing about it try to exploit a zeitgeist. About the only thing that rang true in anyway was the ending seqeunce in which the crew goes surfing, and that's probably because real surfers were shot for the footage. Maybe they should have gotten somebody like Stacy Peralta (Lords of Dogtown, Riding Giants) to direct the premiere. Maybe it'll get better. Shouldn't be hard.

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It's been awhile since I've last posted, so I want to apologize to my loyal readers -- and you three know who you are. Didn't feel like I had anything to say about much of anything for awhile, but I've been shaken out of my malaise by something that just can't be ignored any longer, by what can only be regarded as THE STORY OF OUR TIMES. I refer, of course, to the Paris Hilton jail or no jail saga.

I woke up this morning and turned on the TV while while I had my breakfast of two (I'm on a diet) large bowls of colon blow and coffee and the news was all Paris, all the time. There again was the ubiquitious Harvey Levin of TMZ.com, the hardest working infotainter in the biz, breaking it all down for the Good Day LA crew. Harvey never sleeps. I think he was even on CNN doing the Paris the other night, you know, being treated like a journalist. It's truly awesome.

In case you've been living under a rock, or have a life that, unlike most of America it would seem, isn't consumed with triviality, Paris, after having her 40-day sentence to County all but commuted by Sheriff Lee Baca, may be headed back to jail. Seems there's been an uproar in the community -- whatever the hell that is in this case -- about the kid-glove treatment. Also, city attorney Rocky Delgadillo, never missing an opportunity to stand up for truth, justice, and the Los Angeles way, is pissed at Baca for fucking with the judge's sentencing and parole guidelines and is considering filing a contempt of court charge against the entire Sheriff's department. This is awesome. Or, as Paris might say: That's hot. I mean, this is the Los Angeles city attorney who should be spending his time investigating the endemic corruption in city agencies and departments (water and power, buildings dept., the port agencies)... but he's making his big play with Paris.

And what's hot about it, obviously, is the absolute absurdity that it embodies. Of course, using the trials of Penelope Pit Stop (Paris) as a metaphor for the banality of American culture is cheap and easy, but I'm going to do it anyway. This isn't evil, it's banal. And, of course, banality is it's own form of evil. Meanwhile, as I was reminded at a screening of the excellent Michael Winterbottom movie, A Mighty Heart, which is adapted from Mariane Pearl's memoir of the search for her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, that's there's a whole other narrative playing out beyond most of our comprehension, or desire for comprehension, one that in some ways involves the very future of human relations. Of course, Pearl was beheaded by jihadists. The film is a great, entirely unsentimental, and devastating. It leaves one wondering about how we're ever going to get out of the mess the world finds itself in right now, a mess in which there's enough blame to go around for everyone. Maybe such things as Winterbottom's film can act as a corrective, a splash of cold water in the face of our self-indulgence, but probably not. It's seems we'll always have Paris.

Meanwhile, I can't help but think in the clown parade that is this sad and profoundly stupid drama, Hilton is the one who's coming out looking the best.

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