Homeward Bound

Laura and I will be leaving in about twenty minutes to go to Midway Airport to catch our flight to Buffalo. We'll be in the Jamestown area until we leave on January 3rd.

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas.

Carol Chomsky, Wife of Noam, Dies at 78

From the NYT Obituary:

"In the 1960s, faced with the possibility that her husband would be jailed for his activities in opposition to the Vietnam War, Carol Chomsky resumed her education: a doctorate would be useful should she need to become the sole family breadwinner. Though that prospect did not materialize, she earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard in 1968."

Analysis of It's A Wonderful Life

This article appealed to my cynical-yet-inwardly-idealistic nature...

December 19, 2008

Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life

By WENDELL JAMIESON

MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.

He had set up a 16-millimeter projector and a movie screen, and rearranged the chairs. Book bags, jackets and overcoats were tossed on seat backs, teenagers sat, suspicious, slumping, and Mr. Ellman started the projector whirring. “It’s a Wonderful Life” filled the screen.

I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family.

Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.

Was this what adulthood promised?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

I haven’t seen it on a movie screen since that first time, but on Friday it begins its annual pre-Christmas run at the IFC Cinema in Greenwich Village. I plan to take my 9-year-old son and my father, who has never seen it the whole way through because he thinks it’s too corny.

How wrong he is.

I’m no movie critic, and I’ll leave to others any erudite evaluation of the film as cinematic art, but to examine it closely is to experience “It’s a Wonderful Life” on several different levels.

Many are pulling the movie out of the archives lately because of its prescience on the perils of trusting bankers. I’ve found, after repeated viewings, that the film turns upside down and inside out, and some glaring — and often funny — flaws become apparent. These flaws have somehow deepened my affection for it over the years.

Take the extended sequence in which George Bailey (James Stewart), having repeatedly tried and failed to escape Bedford Falls, N.Y., sees what it would be like had he never been born. The bucolic small town is replaced by a smoky, nightclub-filled, boogie-woogie-driven haven for showgirls and gamblers, who spill raucously out into the crowded sidewalks on Christmas Eve. It’s been renamed Pottersville, after the villainous Mr. Potter, Lionel Barrymore’s scheming financier.

Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement George had long been seeking.

And what about that banking issue? When he returns to the “real” Bedford Falls, George is saved by his friends, who open their wallets to cover an $8,000 shortfall at his savings and loan brought about when the evil Mr. Potter snatched a deposit mislaid by George’s idiot uncle, Billy (Thomas Mitchell).

But isn’t George still liable for the missing funds, even if he has made restitution? I mean, if someone robs a bank, and then gives the money back, that person still robbed the bank, right?

I checked my theory with Frank J. Clark, the district attorney for Erie County upstate, where, as far as I can tell, the fictional Bedford Falls is set. He thought it over, and then agreed: George would still face prosecution and possible prison time.

“In terms of the theft, sure, you take the money and put it back, you still committed the larceny,” he said. “By giving the money back, you have mitigated in large measure what the sentence might be, but you are still technically guilty of the offense.”

He took this a bit further: “If you steal over $3,000, it’s a D felony; 2 ½ to 7 years is the maximum term for that. The least you can get is probation. You know Jimmy Stewart, though, he had that hangdog face. He’d be a tough guy to send to jail.”

He paused, and then added: “You really have a cynical sense of humor.”

He should have met me when I was 15.

The movie starts sappily enough, with three angels in outer space discussing George’s fate. Maybe that’s what turned my dad off, that or the saccharine title. I’m amazed they didn’t spoil it for me in 1981, but I may not have been paying attention yet.

Soon enough, though, the darkness sets in. George’s brother, Harry (Todd Karns), almost drowns in a childhood accident; Mr. Gower, a pharmacist, nearly poisons a sick child; and then George, a head taller than everyone else, becomes the pathetic older sibling creepily hanging around Harry’s high school graduation party. That night George humiliates his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed), by forcing her to hide behind a bush naked, and the evening ends with his father’s sudden death.

Disappointments pile up. George can’t go to college because of his obligation to run the Bailey Building and Loan, and instead sends Harry. But Harry returns a slick, self-obsessed jerk, cannily getting out of his responsibility to help with the family business, by marrying a woman whose dad gives him a job. George again treats Mary cruelly, this time by chewing her out and bringing her to tears before kissing her. It is hard to understand precisely what she sees in him.

George is further emasculated when his bad hearing keeps him out of World War II, and then it’s Christmas Eve 1945. These scenes — rather than the subsequent Bizarro-world alternate reality — have always been the film’s defining moments for me. All the decades of anger boil to the surface.

After Potter takes the deposit, George flies into a rage and finally lets Uncle Billy know what he thinks of him, calling him a “silly, stupid old fool.” Then he explodes at his family.

If you watch the film this year, keep a close eye on Stewart during this sequence. First he smashes a model bridge he has built. Then, like any parent who loses his temper with his children, he seems genuinely embarrassed. He’s ashamed. He apologizes. And then ... slowly ... he starts getting angry all over again.

To me Stewart’s rage, building throughout the film, is perfectly calibrated — and believable — here.

Now as for that famous alternate-reality sequence: This is supposedly what the town would turn out to be if not for George. I interpret it instead as showing the true characters of these individuals, their venal internal selves stripped bare. The flirty Violet (played by a supersexy Gloria Grahame, who would soon become a timeless film noir femme fatale) is a dime dancer and maybe a prostitute; Ernie the cabbie’s blank face speaks true misery as George enters his taxi; Bert the cop is a trigger-happy madman, violating every rule in the patrol guide when he opens fire on the fleeing, yet unarmed, George, forcing revelers to cower on the pavement.

Gary Kamiya, in a funny story on Salon.com in 2001, rightly pointed out how much fun Pottersville appears to be, and how awful and dull Bedford Falls is. He even noticed that the only entertainment in the real town, glimpsed on the marquee of the movie theater after George emerges from the alternate universe, is “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”

Now that’s scary.

I’ll do Mr. Kamiya one better, though. Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Wonderful Life” manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly.

On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving.

I checked my theory with the oft-quoted Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy at New York University, and he agreed, pointing out that, of all the upstate counties, the only one that has seen growth in recent years has been Saratoga.

“The reason is that it is a resort, and it has built an economy around that,” he said. “Meanwhile the great industrial cities have declined terrifically. Look at Connecticut: where is the growth? It’s in casinos; they are constantly expanding.”

In New York, Mr. Moss added, Gov. David A. Paterson “is under enormous pressure to allow gambling upstate because of the economic problems.”

“We ease up on our lot of cultural behaviors in a depression,” he said.

What a grim thought: Had George Bailey never been born, the people in his town might very well be better off today.

Not too long ago I friended Mr. Ellman on Facebook. (To call him by his given name, Robert, is somehow still unnatural to me.)

I asked him about inviting us to stay after school to eat popcorn and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He said it was always one of his favorite films, if a little corny and sentimental, and that he always saw staying late with us as part of his job. If anything, he said, there was just as much to learn after school as there was during it.

He reminded me that it was an actual film print we saw; this was before video took hold. And he also proved to be a close viewer. It was Mr. Ellman who pointed out to me how cruel George is to Mary the night they first kiss, and who told me to keep an eye out for Ernie’s vacant stare when George gets into the cab. He said he cried the first time he saw it.

I asked him if he’d continued those December viewings.

“In later years,” he wrote, “it became too difficult to get students to stay. We started doing a festival of student-written/student-directed one-act plays right after the end of the fall show. Everyone was too busy to stay and watch a movie.”

It’s a shame.

So I’ll tell Mr. Ellman a secret. It’s something I felt while watching the film all those years ago, but was too embarrassed to reveal.

That last scene, when Harry comes back from the war and says, “To my big brother, George, the richest man in town”? Well, as I sat in that classroom, despite the dreary view of the parking lot; despite the moronic Uncle Billy; despite the too-perfect wife, Mary; and all of George’s lost opportunities, I felt a tingling chill around my neck and behind my ears. Fifteen years old and imagining myself an angry young man, I got all choked up.

And I still do.

John Paul Jones at 20th Annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam

(pictured with Derek Trucks, above)

John Paul Jones at Warren Haynes 20th Annual Christmas Jam

JPJ was a busy man over 3 days in Asheville, North Carolina, from December 11th through December 13th as a guest musician for several acts. He played bass, keyboards, and a lot of mandolin. A round-up of his performances follows, courtesy '3hrsoflunacy' of Led Zeppelin mailing list FBO and LZ website Royal-Orleans:

2008.12.11
1. DEL MCCOURY BAND (1 song - "Angeline the Baker")
2. WARREN HAYNES (2 songs - "Soulshine" and "Going to California")
3. GOV'T MULE (2 songs - "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "Get out of My Life Woman")

2008.12.12
1. DEL MCCOURY BAND (2 songs - "Squirrel Hunter" and "My Love Will not Change")
2. WARREN HAYNES (2 songs - "Soulshine" and "Going to California")
3. ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND (2 songs - "Dazed and Confused" and "Mountain Jam")

2008.12.13
1. MICHAEL FRANTI & JAY BOWMAN (5 songs - "Love Don't Wait", "Sweet Little Lies", "All I Want is You", "Hey World", and "I Got Love for You")
2. BEN HARPER & RELENTLESS 7 (1 song - "Good Times, Bad Times")
3. GOV'T MULE (5 songs - "Livin' Lovin' Maid", "Since I've Been Loving You", "No Quarter", "The Ocean", and "When the Levee Breaks")

(with Warren Haynes, above - and Danny Louis, below)

From the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times:

December 13, 2008
Jammers rock the night away

Paul Clark and Carol Motsinger

Not to borrow a line from a song played at the Christmas Jam, but really, wonder how tomorrow could ever follow today?

That, of course, is a play on a lyric from Led Zeppelin's "Going to California," which guitarist and jam founder Warren Haynes played with Zeppelin's bassist, John Paul Jones, at around 1 a.m.

In what was the biggest surprise so far in the 2008 Christmas Jam, Jones came farther than anyone ever to participate in the event, Haynes said before introducing Jones, who played mandolin.

Click here to watch video from the Christmas Jam.

Jones played earlier in the night with Del McCoury's bluegrass outfit. His second time on stage featured Haynes on acoustic guitar and vocals, with Jones once again picking on the mandolin.

The duo, who smiled and hugged at the end of their short set, also played "Soulshine" by The Allman Brothers. The crowd sang along, but truly roared with Haynes substituted the word "Carolina" for "California" in the "Going to California" cover.

Derek Trucks Band finished playing a little before 2 a.m., keeping the jam band spirit of the event by playing longer songs stuffed with guitar solos. One tune lasted close to 10 minutes, while the crowd, still strong, swayed along.

The Allman Brothers finished out the night, hitting the stage at around 2:30 a.m. and performing until about 4:20 a.m.
Haynes wailed on his guitar again, and was easily the hardest working man on stage tonight. He's played a few solos with almost every act on the bill.

Haynes has been a long term member of the Allman Brothers.

The band is also continuing the covers trend of the night. They've already played a version of Van Morrison's "And it stoned me."

As the clock clicked past 3 a.m., the crowd thinned, but the the die hard fans rocked to the final band of the night.

Jones surprised the fans that did remain and played the instrument he is most famous for mastering - the electric bass guitar. He jammed to Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused."

The band returned for one encore the Allman Brother's classic, "One way out."
In a rare moment for an event defined by surprise collaborations, Travis Tritt shone brightest alone, with his guitar, on stage during his 2008 Christmas Jam set.

The country crooner sung the heck out of his ballad, "Anymore," before the rest of his band, which included guitarist and jam founder Warren Haynes, returned to rock until 12:40 a.m.

Tritt shared the story behind songs, such as the instrumental "Picking at it." He said the title comes from his mother telling him to stop picking at his bug bites.

Singer-songwriter Joan Osborne finished her set around 11:40 p.m., in which Haynes crossed guitars with Audley Freed, who once played with the rock band, The Black Crowes.

The two traded solos during a blues tune. She also covered a ballad by local favorites, Jump, Little Children, who played in Asheville before they disbanded.

"It's my first time (at the Jam)," Osborne said, "So be gentle with me."

She later thanked the crowd for "inviting her to the party" and warned she might bum rush the stage during other people's sets.

In honor of the holiday, Osborne finished her set with "Christmas in New Orleans."

Warren Haynes and Gov't Mule took the Civic Center stage first on Friday. Against the cascading sounds of drummer Matt Abts' rolling cymbals, Haynes opened with Middle Eastern music-inspired improvisation, then asked the dancing, whistling and cheering crowd: “How're you doing?

“I would ask you how you're feeling, but I think you're feeling good,” Haynes told the crowd. “It's not that I don't care. It's that I already know the answer.”

The crowd returned the love with yells and cheers. The two-night Christmas Jam had begun.

A few songs later, Abts was hammering a wicked drum line to a Warren Haynes solo when Angie White Rikard, a fan from Charlotte, declared Abts “the best rock ‘n' roll drummer still alive.”

Rikard couldn't believe her luck in being there.

She had hoped to attend but didn't have a ticket until her cousin unexpectedly had one to spare. Rikard has been listening to Haynes since he hooked up with the Allman Brothers.

“Something about him strikes a chord with me,” she said, pacing herself for a night that was scheduled to go way past 1 a.m. “This is a great night. You get to see so many bands. You just have to hang in there.”

Dumpstaphunk took the stage next, about 8:30 p.m. And Katy White got her wish.

She loves to dance, and Dumpstaphunk is one nasty dance band.

White was in the middle of the crowd, grooving with about nine of her friends, all of them students at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga.

They came from all over, kind of a family reunion among friends, White said. She's from Savannah, Ga., and she, like most of her friends, would be spending the night in Asheville, she said.

But not until they did some dancing.

It looked like a near-sellout crowd for the jam's 20th year in the 7,200-capacity arena. People had gathered and anticipated the show for hours. Bobby Starnes and Trey Hensley were among the first few hundred fans inside the Civic Center.

Both are guitar players, and both had come especially to see Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks. Starnes and Hensley, both from Johnson City, Tenn., were standing right in front of the stage, prepared to worship at Haynes' feet.

Before the show began, Abts, the drummer for Gov't Mule, was standing backstage, watching the crews make last-minute adjustments to the stage.

He's taken part in 12 of these Christmas Jams, and not just because he's a drummer in Haynes' band.

“It's all about Habitat for Humanity,” he said, mentioning the beneficiary of all the Christmas Jams.

“And this is Christmas,” Abts said. He said he spends Christmas with his family in Los Angeles, but “it feels more like Christmas here” in Asheville, he said, pointing to the audience in front of the stage.

Joe Bonamassa & Doug Henthorn Cover Zeppelin's Tea For One

An excellent cover in the style of Robin Trower/James Dewar of Led Zeppelin's Tea For One, from the underrated and under-appreciated Presence album.

Doug Henthorn is the lead singer in Healing Sixes - a band I was turned on to when Jason Bonham played with them for a while. Turck and I went to see them play at a small club in Cleveland in 2001. Joe Bonamassa is a great young guitarist; apparently he opened for BB King at the age of 12 (he's 31 now). This cover appears on his You and Me album and features an orchestral accompaniment.

The Smashing Pumpkins at Auditorium Theatre, Chicago on December 8, 2008

Setlist from spfc.org

* Ava Adore
* Cupid de Locke
* 1979
* 99 Floors
* Owata
* Sunkissed
* Soma
* Cherub Rock
* Zero
* Bodies
* Crestfallen
* I of the Mourning
* A Song for a Son
* Landslide [Nicks]
* Disarm
* Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
* Galapogos
* Gossamer
* As Rome Burns
* The Sounds of Silence [Simon]
> Li'l Red Riding Hood [Blackwell]
* The March Hare
> Suffer
* Age of Innocence

Encore:

* That's the Way (My Love Is)
* I Am One Pt. 2

Billy Corgan on the Future of The Smashing Pumpkins

From Greg Kot at The Chicago Tribune:

Originally posted: December 9, 2008

Billy Corgan dishes on the Smashing Pumpkins: The past is dead to me

Are rock bands meant to last 20 years?

“No, no, they’re not,” Billy Corgan said back stage Monday at the Auditorium Theatre. Which sounds a little odd coming from someone whose band, the Smashing Pumpkins, had just completed their 20th anniversary tour with a triumphant performance short on hits but long on drama and daring.

The tour was never smooth, with Corgan baiting his fans as much as sating them with a handful of Pumpkins oldies. When the Pumpkins opened a series of homecoming shows a few weeks ago, the 41-year-old west suburban native finished off the opening night at the Chicago Theatre with a combination rant/comedic monologue that angered many in his audience. “What do you want from us?” Corgan said with mock exasperation while fans booed or streamed toward the exits.

But on Monday the Pumpkins embraced delicate ballads, scorched-earth rockers and expansive psychedelia with authority. Corgan was in an affable mood, and the band ended the show by reaching into a coffin and tossing Christmas presents to the cheering fans.

It was a final joke from an artist who has always taken his work very, very seriously --- to the point of self-destructiveness. The 20th Anniversary tour and Corgan’s confrontational onstage antics are merely the latest examples of the band’s polarizing impact. Musically, the Pumpkins can still swing the heavy lumber. Only Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, the master drummer, remain from the original band. James Iha and D’Arcy Wretzky are long gone. The Pumpkins broke up in 2000, and Corgan says the “door was left open” for Iha and Wretzky to return when the band re-assembled in 2005. But things didn’t work out, and Jeff Schroeder and Ginger Reyes were enlisted to take their place.

The band’s 2007 comeback album, “Zeitgeist,” sank without a trace, but the retooled Pumpkins have developed a chemistry and power on the road since then.

Corgan, wrapped in a bathrobe and towels while chowing down on a post-concert steak, was upbeat and combatively optimistic about the future of Pumpkins Mach II. His message: We’re not a nostalgia band. “It’s not old band vs. new band,” he says. “It’s new band or no band.”

“Calling it a 20th anniversary tour, people expected greatest hits,” he says. “The casual fan who comes in and just wants to see the hits, they were not having it. But we’ve seen a real reactivation in the hardcore fan base.”

Tribune: Did the hostility of some of the audiences bother you?

Corgan: No, what bothers me is the notion that we’re done. We didn’t come back for the cash, we came back to be great again. It made me mad that people thought we’re done, that we don’t have a future. Get out. We don’t want you. We’ve never been that band. That happy band. We picked up where we left off. We’re not the retirement band playing our old hits. ... I don’t give a [expletive] that most of my heroes got lame when they turned 40. I spent most of the last decade thinking about that. Why do they go from this insanely high level of work to diminished echoes of the past? And I think it’s a coziness thing. You do something amazing and you don’t want to lose the crowd that tells you that’s amazing. You’re out in the cold. Well we like to be out in the cold. We’re done with the record business, so we’re free to do whatever I want.

Tribune: So “Zeitgeist” was the last album?

Corgan: We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance, and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.

Tribune: So how will you release music?

Corgan: Our primary function now is to be a singles band, that drives Pumpkins Inc. through singles. We’ll still be creative, but in a different form. We won’t do shows like this anymore, where we try to draw a good crowd and balance the past with the present. We’ll go small and do exactly what we want to do and stop playing catalogue. We’ll be like a new band that can’t rely on old gimmicks. I’m not stupid. I want people to feel good about what we do. What we weren’t getting [from playing a more balanced show with older songs] was excitement. We’re in the polarizing business. We don’t want a pat on the back: Good to have you back. We want a reaction, even if it’s a negative reaction.

Tribune: People are still talking about that show you did a few weeks ago at the Chicago Theatre.

Corgan: Energy we can do something with. Apathy we can’t work with. Who’s above us? Who’s lighting the culture on fire? Nobody. We don’t have to live in that world. We have the biggest manager [Irving Azoff] in the world. He tells us we can get there, we will get there. We will crack the egg like we did in ‘92, without doing something embarrassing like working with Timbaland. We will find how to do our thing and make it work. I can write songs. We’re big boys. We’ll do it. Last time I talked with you, I said we’re going to come back and make a better album. The album we made surprised us. We kept going back to this primitive thing. We wanted to do “Siamese Dream II.” Elaborate, orchestrated, but it wasn’t coming from me. It put us back in this organic process, and in this position of fighting back to why we do what we do. Now I understand it. It’s the difference between intellectual process and emotional process. We’re sober, healthy, we understand the business we’re in, and the pragmatic reality of what it takes. We have the skill set, we always have, and we belong in the conversation, and we will kick down the door to get back in the conversation. You take a milquetoast middle-of-the-road fake-tattoo band, we can out-write them. If you come up with the songs, the fans will show up. We found with “Zeitgeist” that the alternative audience isn’t alternative anymore. They’re a pop audience that listens to Nickelback. So doing a 10-minute song, nobody will listen to it. We have to come up with singles like “1979,” and come up with songs that sound good on the radio. We have to write those kinds of songs.

Tribune: Why’d you break up the Pumpkins in 2000?

Corgan: The real story was Iha was driving me out of my mind. He was so negative. The guy literally drove me insane. When I walked out of that band, I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t have a direction, a central focus. I wandered through different things, but I couldn’t find that central thing. As soon as I got back in the band my brain started working again. I was engaged again.

Tribune: Did you make a sincere attempt to invite back Iha and D’Arcy?

Corgan: Sincere in the sense that we have to allow them the opportunity. They have the right to at least have the conversation. We said the door’s open. We were met with complete indifference. Darcy doesn’t care. And James, it was a money thing. They haven‘t done anything musical since they left. They were never that into it. They were into it in ‘92, when it was fun. When it got crazy, everyone went their separate ways. It’s like a bad marriage. So we opened the door [to them returning]. But there was no way they were gonna want to work like we want to work, and take on the crap of the business again. But we gave them the opportunity if they wanted it. Now that we’ve found people who we trust and are really dedicated, the door is closed. They’re done. They’re never coming back.

Tribune: But why call it the Pumpkins? It gives people a chance to doubt the band’s legitimacy and your motives.

Corgan: It’s my band. Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of this band can go [expletive] themselves. That’s old thinking about bands. Show me any band that lasts for any tenure, they don’t have the original members. This world doesn’t care about that. They just want to hear the songs. They got karaoke singers now fronting big bands.

Tribune: You said a few years ago that you were going to try and keep your mouth shut and let the music be the story. But that hasn’t been the case.

Corgan: I tried that for a while and it wasn’t working. I’m cemented in an image. I have to move to France to change that. I’m not a humble musician, but I am a humble human being, I have perspective, I have God in my life. [In the band] we talk a lot about spirituality and about why God made us musicians and why we’re here to do what we do. And we have decided in our estimation that God put us here to try new things, and be innovators. With all that’s going on in the world, is that the worst thing?

Tribune: That would seem to be the artist’s role.

Corgan: Let me be blunt. When Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album I pay attention. Same with Neil Young. Because they’re major artists who have something to say. I consider us in that category. When we do something it should be taken seriously, even when we’re off. If we’re marginalized by the culture, we’re not going to play dead and say thank you for our B-plus status. I poured my blood into my songs. I’ve had a bad marriage and seven bad girlfriends in a row. I make sacrifices to do my work. That’s not victim talk, that’s nobody’s fault, that’s a choice I made for me.

greg@gregkot.com

__________________

Billy published a post-interview "clarification" on the Pumpkins website:

I enjoyed talking to Greg. He is a very well-liked and respected writer, and outside of one small misquote (I don't recall saying we needed to write songs like '1999'. I think I said '1979'), the interview is an accurate potrayal of my feelings. But let's be clear here. I never said I would never play any old songs ever again. That's just drama if that's what people hear, or want to hear. What I've said is that we aren't going to play most of those old songs any more because it locks us into permanent reunion band mode, and we are over it. For some fans to be upset at a band that plays 48 songs over 2 nights, the great majority of which are old, shows you the level of insanity we deal with. The word is called entitled. If they are entitled to demand, we are entilted to be who we are without reservation. There is no apology in that. We feel good, happy, and strong, and that should be the story here. Nobody owns us. We own us. Where is the happy ending of 'the band that once self-destructed is back and playing great and is looking forward to the future?'

If you come see us on some crazy big tour you will hear a few familiar songs, because that is the right forum for it. But it certainly won't be the main focus. When we play small venues we won't be playing those songs pretty much at all cause that won't be the place for it anymore. But that doesn't mean we are even gonna play at all. It doesn't make sense to some now and we understand and we are ok with those that leave because they are stuck in some year from a different decade. We'll be fine without them. Thanks, and goodbye. Just remember us when we say 'I told you so'. Because we are on our way back, and that's that. (Insert smiley face right fucking here). As I said to some fans, if after 20 years we are one song, or one show away from losing your loyalty, good riddance then. We don't need that energy around us.

Our message has been consistent: don't ask us to do or be anything that will once again lead to the death of the band. The band's survival comes first. We can debate aesthetics and marketing platforms later. If you want us to fall away, fade away like some dust and relics it aint gonna happen. We are here to stay. We deserve to be here, and are proud of what we have gotten right thru the years. And we are truly grateful to those fans that trust us like family. The kind of extended family where you can make a mistake, say something not quite the right way, and still be welcomed home. There will never be anything wrong with flying too close to the sun.

God bless everybody here, BC

One Year Ago Today...

...I witnessed Page, Plant, Jones, and Jason Bonham at the O2 Arena in London.

An incredible experience.

Here's one tiny part of a very rambling email retrospective I wrote for the Zeppelin email list For Badgeholders Only today about my emotions that night:

We waited fairly patiently through the opening acts. I hadn't had
anything to drink since around 2pm because I was intent on enjoying
every bit of Led Zeppelin without thinking about how much I had to go
to the men's room. This might not have been the most intelligent
idea, since I felt like I was literally going to pass out about three
songs into the set from a combination of locking my knees while
standing up for hours and the sheer unbelievability of the moment I
was witnessing, but at the time, it seemed imperative. Even though
the line we had been standing in was fairly long, it compressed down
into a surprisingly small area as we were assembled outside the inner
doors of the arena, prior to having our wristbands checked. I recited
to Laura the same thing I had been saying for the past few hours... I
had only seen Jimmy Page play once - in Pittsburgh in 2000 with the
Crowes - and for that reason, I would like to be on the right side of
the stage. However - if there was an obvious difference between right
and left in terms of how close we could get, I'd move like a bullet
for Jonesy's side (I had seen JPJ play three times and met him on two
occasions). Well, the crowd was seven rows deep on Page's side when
we race-walk/jogged in past the disapproving O2 staff, while the crowd
was paltry on John Paul's side. JPJ's side it was - and we settled
into the second row - able to grasp the rail when we needed it. We
were positioned just slightly to the right of Jonesy's Korg keyboard
rig, and I was understandably ecstatic about that turn of events. As
the concert transpired, the guys seemed to huddle around the drums
anyway, so I felt like we certainly made the right choice.

Prior to Good Times Bad Times:

I felt as if I was about to collapse. My back felt as if rigor mortis
had set in, but my legs were jelly. I clamped down on Laura's hand as
the tears welled up in my eyes and I yelled some guttural sound of
triumph and vulnerability. It was really happening, and I was there.
The culmination of ten years of becoming an increasingly obsessive
fan, over the years of 16 to 26 - the memories of subjecting friends
and relatives to hours of the albums and the bootlegs... I was living
it all in those brief moments, even as I was singing '...when I
whispered in her ear, I lost another friend...' From Puffy and Jimmy
on SNL in May 1998 all the way to December 2007...


Here's Whole Lotta Love (the first encore):

Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee on The Daily Show

Part One -

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 1

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Part Two -

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The Black Crowes at The Riviera Theater in Chicago, IL - December 5, 2008

Setlist from http://crowesbase.com

Wounded Bird
A Conspiracy
Thick N' Thin
Goodbye Daughters Of The Revolution
P.25 London
Dirty Hair Halo ->
Wiser Time
Whoa Mule
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
Good Friday
Movin' On Down The Line
Wee Who See The Deep ->
Take Off From The Future ->
Spider In The Sugar Bowl Blues Jam ->
Thorn In My Pride
Jealous Again
No Speak No Slave
- encore -
Cold Rain And Snow
God's Got It

# Vetiver opened the show.
# last "Spider In The Sugar Bowl Blues Jam" - 11/8/96

Kristof on Georgia, Russia, and Obama

November 20, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Obama, Misha and the Bear

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

TBILISI, Georgia

A wounded, angry bear is loose north of here, and it has people terrified.

The bear has ravaged this lovely country, a booming capitalist enclave that worships America, relies on a much-praised flat tax and has uprooted corruption almost overnight (in part by firing every traffic cop in the country).

A main road here is named for President George W. Bush, who visited in 2005. Everybody studies English, sometimes in the local McDonald’s franchises, and people seem bewildered at Western doubts about their behavior toward the Russians.

“We thought we had escaped them, and they came back and raped us,” said Alexander Rondeli, who runs a think tank in Tbilisi. “And people in the West are saying we have to tell them to be our guest.”

The architect of today’s Georgia is Mikheil Saakashvili. Misha, as he is universally known, is young, brilliant, charismatic, American-educated and staffs his government with people like him. You get the sense that any given Georgian cabinet official is about half the age and double the I.Q. of his or her American equivalent.

Now with Georgians mauled by the bear in the brief August war, they desperately want to join NATO for protection, and one of the few things that Barack Obama and John McCain agreed on in the campaign was to oblige by continuing the process of admitting Georgia into NATO.

In fact, that’s an awful idea. President-elect Obama needs a new approach to Russia if we want to avoid a new cold war, and we also need to get over our crush on Misha.

Look carefully and you see that Georgia isn’t quite the shining beacon of democracy that Americans sometimes believe.

“Journalists are basically forbidden from telling real stories,” said Sopho Mosidze, a television journalist. “If you watch Russian TV or Georgian TV, it’s the same. It’s government propaganda.”

Ms. Mosidze is bitter partly because the station she was working at a year ago was stormed by special forces carrying guns while she was anchoring a news show. She said that troops cut off the signal and then beat up some of the journalists. The channel soon was reborn as a pro-government station. Indeed, today all nationally broadcast TV stations are in effect controlled by the government.

Then there is the Georgian War of August. It’s still not clear exactly how the war started, but what is certain is that Misha’s narrative — an unprovoked Russian invasion that forced Georgian troops to try to defend their territory — is nonsense.

The most likely explanation is that Misha, tired of continuous Russian provocations and emboldened by American support, saw a chance to recover territories that Russians were nibbling on. That was spectacularly reckless, and as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented, the Georgian Army (along with Russia’s) fired cluster bombs that harmed civilians.

“It was possible to avoid this war,” said Nino Burjanadze, a former close ally of Misha who last month formed an opposition party to challenge him. “Because of miscalculation, my country was involved in a war it was clear that it would lose.”

Russia took advantage of the war on the territory of one of Georgia’s breakaway republics to invade Georgia proper, and, if it hadn’t been for forceful American and European protests, Russian troops might well have overrun Tbilisi.

Since then, the United States has announced a $1 billion package of aid for Georgia. We should remember that military assistance would be a waste, for Georgia’s Army will never be strong enough to deter Russia. In contrast, trade and investment give Georgia international economic weight and probably help discourage a Russian invasion.

Note to Mr. Obama: It would be a nightmare to have our troops tethered through NATO to Misha. In any case, Georgia doesn’t obviously qualify for NATO membership since it doesn’t control its full territory, while the talk about NATO pushes all the wrong Russian nationalist buttons.

“NATO is not Georgia’s future,” said Amy Denman, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. “Georgia’s future is economic growth. If they can continue the economic growth cycle they’re on, they’re safe.”

Because Russia behaves irresponsibly — including its latest disgraceful threat to base missiles near Poland — the temptation in the Obama administration will be to continue with NATO expansion and perhaps even with the ill-advised missile system for Europe. (We have so many better ways to spend money!) Instead, let’s engage Russia as we engage China — while still bluntly calling Russia on its uncivilized behavior.

Poking badly behaved bears is no substitute for sober diplomacy. We don’t want Barack to be another Misha.

Chomsky on the 2008 US Election (from October)

Chomsky actually surprised me a bit here by stating quite clearly that there IS a difference between Democrats and Republicans. While he stopped well short of a whole-hearted endorsement of Obama, he still urged people to vote against McCain. He cites the difference on health care in particular, and makes some excellent points about the marked differences between 2004 and 2008.

Et Tu, Fox?

Courtesy Talking Points Memo: "Here's Cameron telling Fox's Shep Smith that while trying to prep Palin for her interviews, McCain's staffers supposedly learned that Palin thought Africa was a country rather than a continent and didn't know what countries were signatories to NAFTA. And there's still more ..."

Newsweek Tidbits and Thoughts on The Day After

Obviously pleased with the outcome last night. I started to post something last night, but couldn't come up with anything profound... not surprising, I suppose. I'm a little more reassured about living in the United States now. Turns out that the majority of us can ignore idiotic implications about "past radical associations" and the laughable charges about being a socialist.

Just because a Democrat has been elected does not mean that I think all is right with the world, everything will be fine, and that I will be happy with everything that the Obama Administration does. I'm cautiously optimistic, but there will be the inevitable disappointments.

The early indications are that Rahm Emanuel will be offered the position of Chief of Staff. I'm willing to be persuaded, but this might be his first mistake. Emanuel worked for Bill Clinton's White House and was responsible for pushing NAFTA and other not-so-liberal policies. Not a great sign. He knows the House of Representatives well and would push back against Pelosi if needed, but I guess we'll just have to see.

Many people have said that Larry Summers will be picked as the new Treasury Secretary, and I'm not so sure about that either. I'd favor Bob Reich, former Secretary of Labor, but he probably won't get it. I don't think it would ever be offered to someone like economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman - whose columns I often link to here - although I don't really see why not.

Like many others, I'm very curious what the first priorities will be, or whether there will be a flurry of activity on all fronts. The wheels are certainly greased with the expanded Democratic majority, so hopefully the right things will get done quickly. Congressional Dems want to pass a stimulus package, but I don't think we need more small checks mailed to everyone. I think they should work on the infrastructure improvements that Obama promised - upgrading roads and bridges, hopefully a focus on a better and broader rail system that isn't so confined to the east coast, as well as broadband lines for rural communities.

I'm not overly encouraged about the prospects of any kind of education reform/progress. The rhetoric seemed in line with the status quo during the campaign. This has become more obvious to me as a vital issue since I've decided to enter the field.

Environmental initiatives need to be put into place within the first year - otherwise everything could conceivably fall back with a Republican congressional victory in 2010. Things are only getting further and further out of hand, and I haven't seen much to demonstrate Obama's focus on the issue. Perhaps he simply wasn't spending much time on it because it wasn't big issue with voters, but climate change is likely the most pressing crisis... it's just that the pace of the pressing is too slow for people to notice when their minds are on the economic downturn.

Obama's main interest seems to be in foreign policy. I don't recall hearing much from Obama on the subject of missle defense, but I'm very interested to see how he feels about what the Russian president had to say today/yesterday on the subject. His first statement about the Russian/Georgian situation was much more measured and careful than McCain's simplistic (and wrong) posturing, but then Obama came nearer to the ignorance of McCain/Scheunemann's position (that it was all 'Russian aggression'). Hopefully he'll be able to back off from that now that he's not campaigning (he was obviously worried about being seen as weak or "appeasing" Russia). Most people who have read anything about the conflict know that it's a hell of a lot more complicated than what McCain was telling Americans, especially his "We're all Georgians today" load of crap.

Pakistan and Afghanistan will be the most problematic, and could overshadow everything else if there is another attack in this country. If you want to know what the US faces, I would recommend reading this or watching this as an introduction.

I'd love to play analyst for a bit longer, but I have so much work that I've neglected... and now I have to get ready for class.

I congratulate Barack Obama and wish him the best of luck.

The Daily Show Investigates "Community Organizers"

Jack White & Alicia Keys New Bond Theme

"Another Way To Die" from the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. I like it. Surely better than the travesty for which Madonna was responsible in 2002. Maybe even a step up from Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name."

JPJ Confirms Page, Jones, & Jason Bonham are Working with Various Vocalists

Jonesy says that Robert Plant "just doesn't want to make loud music anymore" and confirms that rehearsals are under way with 'the odd singer.'

Talking Shit

From Salon.com, this is kind of an icky topic, but it's an interesting article.

____________
Let's talk crap
Our frank interview about human waste may horrify you about how the world cleans itself down there.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Oct. 16, 2008

If you're one of those Americans who does not leave the house without showering and applying deodorant, you may be surprised to learn that hundreds of millions of people around the world likely think that you're unclean, if not downright disgusting.

It's all about how you clean your butt.

In cultures that use water to clean down there after defecating, dry toilet paper as a substitute is something of an ass abomination. Yet to those of us raised on Charmin, using a bidet, even though it's more hygienic, is just as foreign.

Bathroom hygiene is just one of the foul and frankly fascinating aspects of what's euphemistically known as "sanitation," which British journalist Rose George explores in her new book, "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters."

For her reporting, George ventured into the bowels of London's sewer system with an emergency breathing apparatus strapped on her waist. She squatted in a doorless public toilet in China. And she visited slum dwellers in Mumbai who live in areas with 100 public toilets for 45,000 residents.

Here in the industrialized world, where we happily flush it and forget it, it's hard to imagine that literally billions of people elsewhere have no access to a toilet. It may also be difficult to believe that 90 percent of the world's sewage ends up untreated in oceans, rivers and lakes, some of that filth burbling out of our supposedly sophisticated sewage systems. While the humble toilet has added decades to the lives of those of us lucky enough to have one, George reports, it's also created a whole host of environmental problems.

Salon talked toilet, latrine and bidet with George by phone from London.

Some 2.6 billion people have no access to a toilet whatsoever, and that includes a latrine, a bucket or a box. They literally have nowhere to go. Can you talk about what that means?

Anyone who has traveled to India and taken an early morning train will know exactly what that means because all you have to do is look out of the window. What you'll see is people just simply squatting there, doing their business where they can.

What it means in terms of public health is catastrophic. Human waste can be extremely toxic. It can carry millions of bacteria, viruses and worms. And you don't want that kind of stuff lying around. But these 2.6 billion people, who have absolutely no sanitation, have no choice but to use the nearest bush or roadside. That means it's being tramped around in the human environment. It's getting into people's food, it's getting into their water, and it's making them extremely sick.

The death toll from diarrhea, which is largely caused by poor sanitation, is astronomical. It's the second biggest killer of children in the world after respiratory diseases.

Why isn't this more of an international health issue?

It's quite simply that we don't want to talk about it. There is a linguistic problem. We don't have the language for it anymore because we've resorted to euphemism. In the West, we've been able to resort to euphemism because we have the wonderful flush toilet and waterborne sewage system, which gives us the luxury of being able to flush something away and assume it will be treated elsewhere.

We literally flush it out of our mind as well, and it's not in public discourse anymore. This wasn't always the case. Three hundred years ago it was considered an honor to attend kings when they were seated on their toilets. People in the West have this great system and I think they just assume that it's the same for everybody in the world.

Is there a celebrity out there who wants to be the Angelina Jolie of toilets, making this a popular issue?

Matt Damon has started to talk about school latrines, which is great news. It's inevitable because he does a lot of great work on clean water. For example, if you go to a school in a village in Africa, you've got a nice clear water supply, and you've got the nice tap, but you've got no latrines. So obviously the kids are going to be contaminating the water supply because they simply have no sanitation. You've got to make the connection. You can't have clean water without decent sanitation.

You found in your research there's no single solution. Why not?

The answer is not that everybody should have a sewer or everyone should have a toilet. That is simply impractical, and most countries can't afford it. Culturally, in sanitation, we're very different around the world. People have different attitudes to hygiene and toilets. Some countries are fecal-phobic and some countries are not. China is quite at home with excrement, and uses it as fertilizer, whereas Indians are not. They're quite averse to any use of human waste.

In Benin, Africa, some very interesting research was done into what would make people buy a latrine. Mothers, who didn't have a latrine, could see that their kids were getting sick every week with diarrhea. They were spending money on medicine, and their kids weren't going to school, but they still wouldn't buy a latrine.

An academic named Mimi Jenkins discovered that the biggest incentive for someone to buy a latrine in Benin was to feel royal, because the royal family had one. It was a question of pride and status, it wasn't about health. Health messages never work, because nobody wants to be nagged, even when they've got the evidence in front of them.

So telling people, "This is where the cholera is coming from," doesn't have as much impact as appealing to their pride?

Exactly. It's what I call the "doctors who smoke" understanding of people. Doctors who smoke know it's bad for them, yet they still do it. What a lot of sanitation activists are saying is that we have to make people want toilets. It has to be something they aspire to and desire.

Isn't part of that incentive making defecating in the outdoors unappealing?

Yeah, and there's a very interesting movement going on in many developing countries, including India, Cambodia and Bangladesh, called Community Led Total Sanitation. It appeals to people's sense of disgust.

A few visitors will go to a village, and the villagers will want to show off their village to the guests. They'll take them around the village, and then at the end of the tour, the visitors will say, "Well, yes, that's nice, but can we see your open defecation grounds?"

Because they're polite, the villagers will take them there. The technique is to make people stand there and confront it, to not be able to turn away from the fact that they're shitting in the open, and that their kids are tramping it back into the village, and that they're all eating it. Someone calculated that people in villages who are doing open defecation are probably ingesting 10 grams of shit a day. That's pretty disgusting.

People will run off and dig latrines. Once the whole village is cleaned up, nobody will want to be the dirty person in the village. And once the village is cleaned up, the clean village will be in competition with the next village, and that village will want to clean up. It's a chain reaction.

Don't some governments pay for latrines, and the people don't always use them?

Yes. For 20 or 30 years, India has been pouring money into sanitation, and has been building, or subsidizing, lots of extremely nice latrines all over the country. But because they're nicer than people's houses, they get turned into a temple, or an extra room, or a goat shed, or simply used for storage. Because people have this engrained habit of going out into the bush, they don't see anything wrong with it.

Well, if you're used to going outside, maybe it's kind of gross to go inside, in a bathroom, or even near your home.

That is a problem, and that's what makes sanitation very tricky. In India, it is considered unclean to have a latrine close to the home. The answer is to make sure that it is a decent latrine, and it doesn't smell. It has to be an adequate latrine, it has to have some kind of fly-proofing, and some kind of vent pipe so there is no odor. If it's a decent enough place, then people get used to it.

Let's talk about some of the slums you visited where there are 100 toilets for 45,000 people. What happens then? People don't end up using the toilet, right?

They use it if they can. But if it takes half an hour to get from one side of the slum to the other, or you're waiting in line and the doors are falling off, and it's unpleasant, then people won't use it. They just go in the street, or on the roadside, or they find the nearest beach. There are beaches in Mumbai that are absolutely filthy.

What are flying toilets or helicopter toilets?

A flying toilet is a plastic bag. You defecate into the plastic bag, you wrap the plastic back up, and you throw it. Hence it's a helicopter or flying toilet. This is the only form of sanitation available to a lot of slum residents in Africa, particularly in Kenya and Tanzania. At least it's potentially containing the toxic human excrement, but obviously it's not ideal, and they're all over the place in the slums. It's quite a nice phrase for an extremely unpleasant practice.

Isn't it true that your own shit isn't a danger to you, it's other people's?

If you wanted to, you could probably ingest your own shit, but it wouldn't necessarily be toxic. But the problem is that shit is such a good vehicle for disease transmission. That's why we in the West have such good sewer systems and waterborne waste treatment. In about 1850 or so in London, a doctor called John Snow realized that cholera was being carried in drinking water, and it was being carried in human shit.

By some accounts, the toilet has added 20 years to the modern lifespan, so this thing that we won't even discuss is actually responsible for perhaps decades of all of our lives.

Yes, exactly. Last year, the readers of the British Medical Journal voted sanitation the biggest medical advance in the past 200 years. It is an amazing thing -- the toilet. We do live longer because of the toilet. Before sewers and toilets became popular in the 19th century, one in two children in London died before their 5th birthday. There was an enormous mortality rate, and that dropped dramatically, especially when soap and hand washing also became popular. We should be on our knees before the toilet.

We should worship at it.

We should worship the toilet. It's been an enormous medical advance. It's been fantastic, so I think that we should give it its due.



Even in industrialized nations, where we have sewer systems, our bathroom habits vary widely. For instance, there are two main ways of cleaning your butt. Can you talk about what those are, and who does what?

The world divides into water cultures and paper cultures. This comes into quite stark relief in Japan because Japan used to be a paper culture. Two hundred years ago they used sticks or stones or paper. And now, because Japan has had a toilet revolution, they've turned into a water culture, and they have very high-tech toilets with in-built bidets and drying systems that can massage you and probably sing to you.

But the U.S. and the U.K. stubbornly remain paper cultures, and attempts to introduce bidet toilets have failed. Hygienically, bidet toilets are infinitely superior. Using toilet paper to clean yourself down there makes about as much hygienic sense as cleaning yourself with a towel and imagining you're rubbing off the dirt. We've got a very unhygienic way of cleaning a place of our body that we would like to be very clean.

Actually, we're pretty disgusting, and we just don't realize it.

We are kind of disgusting. I'm being polite about it. In water cultures like India, where you see all these people going to do their business with a little cup of water, they think we're extremely dirty. They can't believe it. Muslims, who have to be scrupulously clean according to the laws of the Quran, also think it's kind of weird that we have this habit of using paper, and imagining we're clean. We're not.

Can you talk about the attempt of the Japanese company Toto to bring bidet toilets to Americans?

In Japan, Toto is an enormous company, and it's one of the great names of Japanese industry, like Sony or Mitsubishi. More households have a Washlet toilet, which is a bidet toilet, than have a computer. They've had astonishing success in Japan, so quite reasonably they thought, "If we can do it in Japan then we can do it everywhere else," because Japan was also a paper culture.

So Toto USA started about 20 years ago and they've been trying to introduce the high-tech or high-function toilet over here. Americans really aren't that interested. The Neorest, which is this stunningly gorgeous toilet, the top-range Toto toilet, has been installed in various places, including one large casino hotel in Las Vegas. It's apparently popular with celebrities.

What are some of the features of one of these high-end toilets?

One of the basic features is the lid will lift automatically. It will deodorize the room. It has special dirt-repelling, extremely advanced chemicals layered on the ceramics. They all have a remote-control panel next to the toilet so that you can adjust the heat. All the seats are heated; that's just standard. Some of the toilets can check your blood pressure. Some can test your urine. Some of them can weigh you. They can play you music. You can plug in your MP3 player. I think the only thing they can't do is read to you.

There is so much technology fetishism in the U.S. about things like our iPhones, but we just don't seem to have much interest in innovations in toilets?

The way to convert someone to the beauty of a Washlet toilet is to use one. I've spoken to lots of people, Americans included, who have been to Japan, and they just go, "Oh God, yeah, the toilets are amazing." But because they're not the widely spread yet in the states, most people don't come across them.

So, we're just content with these high toilets, which actually physiologically are kind of impeding our normal bodily processes. You actually don't want to be seated high up on the toilet. That's not helping your evacuation processes.

Squatting is better for you?

Squatting is better. I'm not suggesting that we all go and get squat latrines. But certainly toilets in the U.S. are very high now because they're like thrones or chairs, and that's not the best physiological position.

What's the story with ecological toilets?

In Germany, ecological sanitation is quite popular, and one of the most common ecological toilets is called a urine-diverting toilet. It makes very good ecological sense because if you make sewage less liquid, it's much easier to treat afterward.

What happens with the urine?

You can just pipe it off somewhere else. It's a very good fertilizer. It contains a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous, so you can put it on your garden if you want to. The toilets require men to sit down to pee, so that is a bit of a stumbling block. But Germans do it.

There's also the composting toilet, which uses no water whatsoever. It used to be known as an earth closet. You just have a toilet and you add some kind of ash, or soil, and it just decomposes and it's apparently odor-free. You can use it in your garden if you leave it composting long enough. It should be perfectly safe and pathogen-free, but you have to do it properly. There are lots of composting toilets in America now. They're particularly useful in rural or mountain areas.

I spoke to an ecological sanitation professor in Norway -- Norway is also very fond of ecological sanitation -- and he said that he has a friend who has a composting toilet. He said the friend has a little girl who had obviously grown up using a composting toilet, and when she went to school and saw this normal water toilet she was freaked out. She said, "What is going on? There's all this water," and she couldn't believe it.

Because we have such water issues these days, we really do have to question whether throwing several liters of clean drinking water into a toilet, dirtying it and then spending millions and a loss of energy cleaning it again is really the best way to proceed.

Besides using water and energy, what are the other environmental impacts of industrialized sewage systems?

When human waste is treated it is separated into effluent, which is the cleaned liquid. Then it's put back into the water system, and what you have left is solids, or sludge. That's all the dirt that you've cleaned out of the sewage. In the states, the most common way of dealing with this is to apply it to land. It's been renamed "bio-solids," and it's applied to land all over the country.

There is an increasing activist movement which is very unhappy with bio-solids being applied to land. One of their concerns is that there are heavy metals in the sludge, because our sewer system is set up so that everybody can put anything down their toilets, or their sinks. A recent investigation found that it's common practice for hospitals to put their unused pharmaceuticals down the sink or down the toilet.

We don't know what's in the sludge; it can change from day to day. The people who are against sludge being applied to land say that, quite reasonably, until we know more about it, let's be more cautious. On the other hand, bio-solids proponents are saying it's perfectly safe, it's all regulated, the EPA thinks it is safe, so it's safe.

How have your own bathroom habits changed since you started researching this book?

I put the toilet seat lid down before I flush. When you flush with it open there is a very fine spray of whatever you've just flushed all over the room. So, I thought, well, I'll just put the lid down, and I've become a bit of a nag about that idea.

Otherwise, I do think about our sewers. You can find motorbikes down sewers. You can find hospital aprons or syringes. There are all sorts of chemicals and pharmaceuticals and storm water. Grit -- anything that comes off a road and goes down a drain -- ends up in a sewer.

So I really think about what I put down the drain. I won't put cooking oil down the sink anymore because I've seen congealed fat blocking a sewer. It was disgusting. It's just these enormous blocks of fat. That's what really disgusted sewer workers, more than excrement. They hate it. It gets into their pores, and it makes their lives extremely dangerous because they have to remove it. And it blocks the sewers. It's just a very bad idea. Restaurants are pouring used cooking oil down the drain but so is everybody. And so I've become a bit of a puritan about that. I will wipe it out of pans and pour it on the garden.

I wash my hands differently. I wash them a bit more and I wash my wrists as well, because that's in the CDC's hand-washing guidelines, which are five or seven steps. But I also frown when I'm in a public toilet and people don't wash their hands. I give them looks.



-- By Katharine Mieszkowski

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

The New York Times

October 13, 2008

By JIM RUTENBERG

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin’s first turn on national television. The CBS News program “48 Hours” in 1993 devoted an hourlong program to what it called his prolific filing of frivolous lawsuits. He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.

“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”

He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

Rolling Stone: McCain as "Make-Believe Maverick" (By Tim Dickinson)

This is a devastating article that will doubtless be dismissed by McCain supporters and surrogates as character assassination (if it is talked about at all and not dismissed out of hand as just a production of the 'left-wing media'). However, I would like to see some of the more salient points refuted with facts rather than simply shooting at the messenger, which is what is more likely to occur.

The article is lengthy and not all of you will read it in its entirety, but to give you a flavor of it, here are some excerpts:

"In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot."

___

"He was a huge screw-off," recalls Butler. "He was always on probation. The only reason he graduated was because of his father and his grandfather — they couldn't exactly get rid of him."

McCain's self-described "four-year course of insubordination" ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.

___

Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."

___

Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.

There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan. As Bradley Smith, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, wrote at the time: "Appearance of corruption, anyone?"

___

McCain is sensitive about his physical appearance, especially his height. The candidate is only five-feet-nine, making him the shortest party nominee since Michael Dukakis. On the night he was elected senator in 1986, McCain exploded after discovering that the stage setup for his victory speech was too low; television viewers saw his head bobbing at the bottom of the screen, his chin frequently cropped from view. Enraged, McCain tracked down the young Republican who had set up the podium, prodding the volunteer in the chest while screaming that he was an "incompetent little shit." Jon Hinz, the director of the Arizona GOP, separated the senator from the young man, promising to get him a milk crate to stand on for his next public appearance.

During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain's wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was "getting a little thin up there." McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.

___

In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be "fairly easy" with an "overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, "Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?"

McCain was emphatic: "Absolutely. Absolutely."

___

Plant Says No To Zeppelin Tour

Yes, this makes me feel even more fortunate that I was able to make it to London last December...


Plant slams door on Led Zep tour
By Ian Youngs
Music reporter, BBC News

Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has scotched rumours that he is to tour with the band, describing speculation as "frustrating and ridiculous".

Last week, The Sun newspaper reported that he had agreed to a reunion tour.

But he has not and will not go on the road with anyone for at least two years after finishing US dates with Alison Krauss on 5 October, a statement said.

"Contrary to a spate of recent reports, Robert Plant will not be touring or recording with Led Zeppelin," it said.

"Anyone buying tickets online to any such event will be buying bogus tickets."

The rock legends got back together for a one-off concert, their first for 19 years, in London last December.

At the time, promoters said 20 million people tried to register for tickets as soon as they became available.

Speculation has since been rife that the surviving members of the band, with Jason Bonham, son of their late drummer John, would hit the road for a highly lucrative tour.

"It's both frustrating and ridiculous for this story to continue to rear its head when all the musicians that surround the story are keen to get on with their individual projects and move forward," Plant said.

"I wish Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham nothing but success with any future projects."

Plant has been reluctant to consider other projects during his fruitful collaboration with bluegrass singer Krauss.

Their album Raising Sand has earned them a Grammy Award and a Mercury Music Prize nomination, among other honours.

The other band members, meanwhile, are believed to be keen to work together again.

In August, Jason Bonham told a US radio station that he had been working on new material with Page and Jones.

The Sun has also reported that the trio have auditioned new singers to replace Plant on tour.

Meanwhile, guitarist Page was last seen performing Led Zeppelin's classic Whole Lotta Love with pop star Leona Lewis during the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.