Knownunknowns

Something for the weekend 28 - Kiss

2008-07-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

Black Diamond - Anaheim 1976
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Very likely my favorite musical performance ever. I could watch this ten times a day.

F.K. = BMOC? And, punctual!

2008-06-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Author Zadie Smith offers her thoughts on Kafka and Kafka preservers and biographers in the current issue [July 17, 2008] of the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: F. Kafka, Everyman

She leads with this surprising description of Kafka from a recent biography, followed by an amusing anecdote.

EXCERPT: [A]s found in Louis Begley's refreshingly factual The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay: over six feet tall, handsome, elegantly dressed; an unexceptional student, a strong swimmer, an aerobics enthusiast, a vegetarian; a frequent visitor to movie houses, cabarets, all-night cafes, literary soirees and brothels; the published author of seven books during his brief lifetime; engaged three times (twice to the same woman); valued by his employers, promoted at work.

But this last Kafka is as difficult to keep in mind as the Pynchon who grocery-shops and attends baseball games, the Salinger who grew old and raised a family in Cornish, New Hampshire. Readers are incurable fabulists. Kafka's case, though, extends beyond literary mystique. He is more than a man of mystery—he's metaphysical. Readers who are particularly attached to this supra-Kafka find the introduction of a quotidian Kafka hard to swallow. And vice versa. I spoke once at a Jewish literary society on the subject of time in Kafka, an exploration of the idea—as the critic Michael Hofmann has it—that "it is almost always too late in Kafka." Afterward a spry woman in her nineties, with a thick Old World accent, hurried across the room and tugged my sleeve: "But you're quite wrong! I knew Mr. Kafka in Prague—and he was never late."

Goes with Pizza

2008-06-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

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Sodas of the Times: Root Beer
N.Y. TIMES Chief Wine Critic ERIC ASIMOV and his fellow N.Y. TIMES critics take on the complex tastes of root beers in today's paper.
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Live long and prosper?

2008-06-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

Spotted at Agent Bedhead, the other singer from The Clash, doing well and looking his age. That is the kind of authenticity I respect.

Vote for your favorite Clash single at The Clash website link. I voted for Capital Radio, of course!
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Something for the weekend 27 - Siouxsie and the Banshees

2008-06-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Voodoo Dolly (Germany 1981)

Eureka!

2008-06-07T21:20:00.000-07:00

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Fountain of Vermouth discovered!
WEEKLY WOLRD NEWS by DORIAN WAGNER

EXCERPT: "We need to plant some olive trees."

The next Che?

2008-06-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person to hear something a little (or more than a little) off about the writing and, especially, the delivery of this NPR report on the arraignment of terror prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay facility?

Or this report in the N.Y. TIMES?
Arraigned, 9/11 Defendants Talk of Martyrdom
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, dared the tribunal at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to put him to death.

Something for the weekend 26 - Mud

2008-06-06T08:35:00.001-07:00

Tigerfeet

Yikes! (graph)

2008-06-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

Ezra Klein features a graph showing total borrowings by banks and other depository institutions from the U.S. federal reserve.

It's scarier than $4-a-gallon gas.
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Hey Frank!

2008-06-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

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Justice of the Peace Sued Over Courtroom Paddlings
N.Y. LAWYER, June 5 via ASSOCIATED PRESS

EXCERPT: A family sued a justice of the peace Wednesday, complaining that he ordered a man to paddle his teenage stepdaughter in the courtroom and threatened to convict her of truancy if he didn't.
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The family alleges that [the judge] told Zurita to strike his 14-year-old stepdaughter repeatedly on the buttocks in open court. It says the judge told Zurita the girl would be fined $500 if she wasn't paddled. Zurita said in an affidavit that he didn't feel as though he had a choice and that when he was done, the judge told him he had not struck the girl hard enough.

Arthur Kirkland: You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They're out of order! That man, that sick, crazy, depraved man...It's just a show! It's a show! It's "Let's Make A Deal"! "Let's Make A Deal"! Hey Frank, you wanna "Make A Deal"? I got an insane judge who likes to beat the shit out of women! Whaddya wanna gimme Frank, 3 weeks probation?
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Rhetorical question: Cuomo v. Obama

2008-06-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

I do not find using a rhetorical device that someone else has used to be plagiarism and its ridiculous that people even make that suggestion. What is interesting is seeing who uses the device to greater effect. In my opinion, its not even close:
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Bleeding Awesome

2008-06-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

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Adverts That Work: Kill Bill billboard, New Zealand
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Something for the weekend 25 - Hawkwind

2008-05-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

Silver Machine

Featuring Hippie Lemmy and Freaky Girl!

Room service? Cold gin time again?

2008-05-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

Secretary of State Condi Rice Enlists in Kiss Army, So Watch Out, Iran!
A.P. by MATTHEW LEE, May 30
in New York Lawyer

EXCERPT: STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - The Kiss Army fan club has an enthusiastic new recruit: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In a departure from her normally staid diplomatic duties, Rice met the legendary glam rock quartet when they happened to share a hotel in the Swedish capital. Rice was in Stockholm on Thursday for an international conference on Iraq. Kiss had a sold-out gig to play on Friday. "I was thrilled," Rice said of her late-night encounter with frontman Gene Simmons and bandmates Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer..."

There's a photo at Ace's place. The current members of Kiss appear in the photo without their paint on. However, I'd bet former members Peter and Ace are painted green...with envy!

Monkey mind control

2008-05-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Or, if you prefer, you can go with this boring and strangely truncated, but accurate, headline:
Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own
N.Y. TIMES by BENEDICT CAREY, May 29

Its old news anyhow!

Palindromes, foreign and domestic

2008-05-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

Madam, I'm Adam
WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE by FRANK GRAY, May 28

Ones and Zeros for Guitar Heroes

2008-05-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Gamers Tinker With Power:
Bands and DJs hack into video-game gear to create instruments.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR by DAN FRITZ, May 15

h/t Rev. H

Something for the weekend 24 - Black Sabbath

2008-05-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (Paris 1970)

A cautionary tale. Turn and run immediately if you should happen to stumble upon a ceremony that calls for a human sacrifice. Don't wait to find out if you're the chosen one.

P.S. You'll see Ozzy's wicked acting skills if you stay for the chorus. If you watch to the end, you'll see that Ozzy was the original Star Wars boy. (Remember him?)

Extra credit: Girlschool - Race With the Devil

Race With The Devil - 1975 film trailer

Congratulations. Mister. Sulu.

2008-05-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Sulu Says So Long to Flying Solo
NEW YORK LAWYER, May 20

EXCERPT: LOS ANGELES (AP) _ George Takei said he will wed his longtime partner and business manager, Brad Altman, now that the California Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage.

What we are capable of:

2008-05-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

Phoenix Lander Is Ready for Risky Descent to Mars
N.Y. TIMES by WARREN E. LEARY, May 20
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South Africans Take Out Rage on Immigrants
N.Y. TIMES by BARRY BEARAK and CELIA W. DUGGER, May 20

Shaken, not stirred

2008-05-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

Ian Fleming was born 100 years ago this month (May 28). JOHN BURNS addresses the occasion in the NEW YORK TIMES today:

Remembering Fleming, Ian Fleming

EXCERPT: Rising early for a swim in the aquamarine waters in the cove below his idyllic Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye, Fleming tapped away at his Remington portable typewriter with six fingers for three hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon — 2,000 words a day, a completed novel in two months, all the while keeping up [a] sybaritic lifestyle...
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He described his first Bond book, “Casino Royale,” as “an oafish opus,” and offered further disparagement in a 1963 BBC radio interview. “If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive,” he said. Asked if Bond had kept him from more serious writing, of the kind achieved by his older brother, Peter, a renowned explorer and travel writer, he replied: “I’m not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.”
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Bond himself, Fleming said, was “a compound of all the secret agents and commandos I met during the war,” but his tastes — in blondes, martinis “shaken, not stirred,” expensively tailored suits, scrambled eggs, short-sleeved shirts and Rolex watches — were Fleming’s own.
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A section of the show titled “Friends and Lovers” has one of a stable of prewar girlfriends, Mary Pakenham, saying of Fleming, “No one I know had sex so much on the brain as Ian.” And another entry records the disdain of Fleming’s mother, Evelyn St. Croix Fleming, widowed when Fleming’s father, Valentine, was killed at the front in World War I, after she found black boa feathers littered across the back seat of her chauffeur-driven Daimler on the morning after Fleming borrowed the car for a night out — and a backseat romp — with a nightclub dancer called Storm.

Fleming also wrote the children's book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Buffy Saves Reporter's Soul

2008-05-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Vampire Slayer Buffy Saves Iraq Reporter's Soul
NPR by JAMIE TARABAY, May 19

Buffy the Vampire Slayer saved the world and the sanity of NPR's Jamie Tarabay while she was in Baghdad. Tarabay explores why she needed the slayer during her time in Iraq.

Something for the weekend 23 - Dr. & the Medics

2008-05-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

Waterloo

Awe and shock

2008-05-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

Two New Ways to Explore the Virtual Universe, in Vivid 3-D
N.Y. TIMES by STEVE LOHR, May 13

AND

Lightining strikes at the site of a volcanic eruption at REUTERS, by photographer CARLOS GUTIERREZ, noted at Drudge

Something for the weekend 22 - Adrenalin O.D.

2008-05-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

Live at CBGBs - 4 Songs