One of the things I like most about Jon Bon Jovi is that he always gives a shout-out to his home state – the Garden State.

Heck, he even named one of his albums after Jersey.

And the love just keeps on coming. In the opening minutes of his recent appearance on “Inside the Actors Studio” (along with band mates David Bryan, Tico Torres and Richie Sambora), he gave us props once again.

“Where were you born?” asked host James Lipton.

“In the great state of New Jersey,” Jon proudly replied. “Perth Amboy, New Jersey.”

“And here’s a little-known fact,” he continued. “Richie, David and I were all born in the same hospital – delivered by the same baby doctor.”

I believe he’s referring to Raritan Bay Medical Center. Wonder if Dr. Greenberg is still practicing or if he’s retired?

On a side note, I’ve known Bon Jovi (not personally, of course) for most of my life. But what else would you expect of someone who was a teenager in the ’80s in New Jersey?

My association with the band goes a little farther, though: I was present for the filming of the band’s “7800° Fahrenheit” single “Only Lonely” in 1985 at a club called Modern Times in Jon’s hometown of Sayreville. (The club is now very well-known as Starland Ballroom.) If you squint really hard while watching the video, you might see me. Or not. Hey, I was only 15 and 5′7″!

I don’t remember much else, except there was a lot of standing around in a large crowd of people. Not surprisingly I didn’t get anywhere near Jon or any of the other band members. But I was there.

In the meantime, if you get the opportunity definitely check out David’s “The Toxic Avenger Musical.” I saw it last year at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse and it was a lot of fun. It’s got a lot of Jersey jokes in it, so you’ll enjoy it that much more if you’re a Garden Stater.

And Richie was just in his hometown of Woodbridge this week, where a street leading into the high school was named in his honor. You can read my former Home News Tribune colleague Chris Jordan’s story about Richie’s time in Middlesex County right here, and there’s a whole online gallery of photos here.

Who says you can’t go home?

Does the following joke ring any bells? It should in today’s world!

The Squirrel and The Grasshopper

The Rest of the World Version.

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs, dances, and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter and dies out in the cold.

The End

The Australian Version.

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs, dances, and plays the summer away. Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.

A social worker finds the shivering grasshopper, calls a press conference and demands to know why the squirrel should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, are cold and starving.

ABC News shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food.

The Australian press informs people they should be ashamed that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer, while others have plenty.

The Labour Party, Greenpeace, Animal Rights, and The Grasshopper Housing Commission of Australia demonstrate in front of the squirrel’s house. The ABC, interrupting a cultural festival special from St Kilda with breaking news, broadcasts a multi cultural choir singing ‘We Shall Overcome’.

Bill Shorten rants in an interview with Laurie Oakes that the squirrel got rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the squirrel to make him pay his ‘fair share’ and increases the charge for squirrels to enter Melbourne city centre.

In response to pressure from the media, the Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The squirrel’s taxes are reassessed. He is taken to court, and fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as builders for the work he was doing on his home, and an additional fine for contempt when he told the court the grasshopper did not want to work.

The grasshopper is provided with a Housing Commission house, financial aid to furnish it, and an account with a local taxi firm to ensure he can be socially mobile. The squirrel’s food is seized and re-distributed to the more needy members of society – in this case the grasshopper.

Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrel has to downsize and start building a new home. The local authority takes over his old home and utilise it as a temporary home for asylum seeking cats who had hijacked a plane to get to Australia as they had to share their country of origin with mice. On arrival they tried to blow up the airport because of Australians’ apparent love of dogs.

The cats had been arrested for the international offence of hijacking and  attempted bombing, but were immediately released because the police fed them pilchards instead of salmon whilst in custody. Initial moves to make them return to their own country were abandoned because it was feared they would face death by the mice. The cats devise and start a scam to obtain money from people’s credit cards.

A 60 Minutes special shows the grasshopper finishing up the last of the squirrel’s food, though spring is still months away, while the Housing Commission house he is in, crumbles around him because he hasn’t bothered to maintain it. He is shown to be taking drugs. Inadequate government funding is blamed for the grasshopper’s drug ’Illness’.

The cats seek recompense in the Australian courts for their treatment since arriving in Australia.

The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dog during a burglary to get money for his drugs habit. He is imprisoned but released immediately because he has been in custody for a few weeks. He is placed in the care of the probation service to monitor and supervise him. Within a few weeks he has killed a guinea pig in a botched robbery.

A commission of enquiry, that will eventually cost $10 million and state the obvious, is set up.

Additional money is put into funding a drug rehabilitation scheme for grasshoppers.

Legal aid for lawyers representing asylum seekers is increased.

The asylum seeking cats are praised by the government for enriching Australia’s multicultural diversity, and dogs are criticised by the government for failing to befriend the cats.

The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose. The usual sections of the press blame it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity and his traumatic experience of prison. They call for the resignation of a minister.

The cats are paid $1 million each because their rights were infringed when the government failed to inform them there were mice in Australia.

The squirrel, the dogs and the victims of the hijacking, the bombing, the burglaries and robberies have to pay an additional percentage on their credit cards to cover losses, their taxes are increased to pay for law and order, and they are told that they will have to work beyond 65 because of a shortfall in government funds.

The End

Like the old cowboy said: “Thur’s truth in them thur wurds!!!!!”

It doesn’t take a dimwit to see the comparison between this tale and the current way of things in many ‘liberalised’ countries with their excess of ‘human rights’ and ‘politically correct’ ideas.

The ways of the modern world are myriad – mostly insane!

Roy.

I encountered a man eating out of a residential garbage bin the other day on Morton Avenue, which forks east off northbound Echo Park Avenue at the Magic Gas minimart. Our eyes met for an instant, and he went on about his business, squeezing the last bit of whatever it was out of the plastic packaging. Interestingly, although he was eating out of a garbage bin he was wearing blue nitrile exam gloves to protect his hands.

A day or so later I was heading north on Echo Park Avenue toward home, when I stumbled on crumbling sidewalk and was unable to regain enough equilibrium to keep from falling almost flat on my face on the concrete. My teeth and cheekbone still hurt a little bit, but I don’t think I broke anything; my right shoulder and palm absorbed enough of the impact to prevent it. Felt pretty foolish so didn’t miss a beat, jumped right back up and kept going. Hard to look cool after falling on my face. I walk fast, maybe that was part of the problem, but I was paying attention, looking straight ahead of me when I fell. Not jabbering on my phone.

Sidewalks all over Los Angeles are in crappy condition. This was true in my old Glassell Park and Eagle Rock neighborhood as well as Echo Park. Why can’t some stimulus money be used to create jobs to repair them? There appears to be money for lowering corner curbs for wheelchair access, a project that continues. Why not make the entire ride smooth and make sidewalks safer for everybody?

There was a beltway hike on Veteran’s Day. Five people took part. There is another report here.
The hike began on time, which may be a first. The start was behind Amsterdam Avenue, and the first part went north towards the Piedmont Park expansion. That project is still under construction, and it takes a visionary to see what will become of that acreage.
Moving back south towards Monroe, a discussion arose of the various neighborhood issues with the Beltway, and development/gentrification/restoration in general. PG learned a new phrase…in addition to NIMBY, there is now CAVE…Citizens against virtually anything. There was a bit of criticism of parties involved, with PG more sympathetic to the cautious neighborhood organization types.
Going under the Virginia Avenue bridge, the beltway path became vegetation heavy. This continued on towards Ponce. There is a big magnolia tree in the location of the former outfield of Ponce de Leon Park, with PG wondering if the two trees there were old enough to be big trees 50 years ago.
The bridge over Ponce de Leon, behind Big Sears/City Hall East, was a life threatening experience. There is no railing beside the rail ties, and rubber mats, with big holes in them, nailed over the rail ties. It was necessary to step on where the mat was nailed down to the ties, which PG found to be an exhilarating adventure.

Past Ponce, more vegetation waited on the tracks. The North Avenue Bridge is wide and in good shape, as is the Ralph McGill bridge. The hike proceeded under the Freedom Parkway bridge, which had the best graffiti of the afternoon. Soon a break was taken, at a gloriously restored restaurant.
Angel was expecting heavy vegetation on the next part of the journey. When the crew arrived on the line, they were astounded to see the rail lines had been cleared. There were fresh tracks in the mud, which, with the heavy rains on tuesday, meant that the clearance had occurred that very day. Indeed, before long a bobcat was seen scraping kudzu off the long abandoned rail lines. It seems like the process of converting this onetime rail corridor into a hike&bike  path is beginning to spring into action.
Walking under Edgewood Avenue, there were people camping out. They were looking for a train to hop on, to take them out west. The hiking crew spent a few minutes talking to them. PG left a couple of minutes before the rest of the crew, and felt a drop of rain. The rest of the hikers came along behind, and made their way to a vehicle on Edgewood to ride back to the starting place.

A married couple was watching the show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” At the end of the show, the man said to his wife, “I think we will have an early night.”

She answered, “Okay, but when I get to bed I am going straight to sleep.”

And he said, “Is that you final answer?”

She replied, “Yes.”

He said, “Okay, then I’m going to phone a friend.”

I went to the Bob Dylan concert down in Springfield last month.

Dylan in Springfield is a collision of worlds for me.  I first learned to love Dylan while I was a student in Springfield and have lit out for many of his concerts while I still lived there.  But this was the first time I’d seen him take a stage in Springfield.  So, the highlight of the show? Mostly that it happened in Springfield, my wife’s hometown.

And since we are on the subject of My Wife’s Hometown:

I would have hoped for more selections (and stronger selections) from Together Through Life.  He did only two – My Wife’s Hometown and, during the encore, Jolene.  What goes through this amazing man’s head, I would like to know?  How does a poet with the genius of Dylan ponder the compilation that is Together Through Life and conclude: I think I’ll make My Wife’s Hometown and Jolene staples of my live performances.  But, then again, this is the guy who left the timeless Blind Willie McTell off of the Infidels album but reserved a slot for the ridiculous throw-away, Sundown on the Union, among other stinkers.

Happily, the set included more numbers from Modern Times than any other single album: Thunder on the Mountain, Rollin’ and Tumblin‘, Beyond the Horizon, and Nettie Moore.  Nettie Moore was significantly re-arranged musically and I heard it with new ears.  A song of heartache, despair and paranoia and the fitting and wonderful lyric “I’m beginning to believe what the Scriptures tell,” Nettie Moore always made a strange impression on me.  The song is about many things, and I want to keep listening to it for new clues.  But, on one level, it seems to be about a hopeless man finding consolation and respite from nihilism in his own dark musings to the ghost of a woman he once loved.  The music of the live performance created a strange, foreboding atmosphere and Dylan’s delivery was like all the Shakespearean tragedies packed in and overflowing from a simple folk song.

So that was another highlight.

No songs from the new Christmas album.  I wouldn’t have minded that.  I love the new Christmas album.  My favorite track so far: Must Be Santa, a wonderful, rollicking sing-along that includes, apropos of nothing, a fast-sung list of 20th Century U.S Presidents mixed in rhymingly with reindeer names.  I’m not an uncritical Dylan fan, and I’ve read some harsh reviews by reasonable people panning Christmas in the Heart.  But I just know I’m going to feel good dusting off these MP3 files once a year each December and basking in their warm, sentimental glow.  And who better to sing cheery holiday tunes than an old Jew with the blood of the land in his voice?

You ever feel like Kevin Spacey’s character in “American Beauty?”

You have an indoor job that doesn’t require a lot hard physical labor. So theoretically you have an easy job, but you come home from work every day tired. You’d think you would have lots of energy, because let’s face it. You work in a sensory deprivation chamber. Isn’t that supposed to be relaxing? You find that it isn’t. Despite the lack of stimulation somehow your job is stressful, but despite all the work you do you sometimes feel like if your job disappeared tomorrow it wouldn’t affect the world at all. Sometimes you feel like your job is pointless. You have no job satisfaction.

In fact, your satisfaction with the rest of your life is wanning. The only places you ever go are to work, a gas station, home, a grocery store, and occasionally a restaurant or mall. Wash, rinse, repeat over and over again. Your life is a skipping CD. It’s become so routine that you can do it without thinking, and sometimes you do. Months fly by and you don’t even realize it because you’ve been asleep at the wheel the whole time.

Then one day you take a vacation to some place you’ve always dreamed of, and your vacation probably goes something like this: You spend the whole vacation running from attraction to attraction in a wild frenzy trying to fit everything into your short trip, which makes you more exhausted than when your vacation started so that you’re relieved when you get home. When you get home you realize you spent way more money than you budgeted, because you got overcharged for everything, and now you’re going to stress out over making your money back. Despite all the problems with your vacation it still got you thinking about how jealous you are of the people who live in the picturesque place you visited, and now you’re depressed because you had a taste of a better life (that you know someone else is living), and now you have a frame of reference with which to measure how dismal your bland, stressful, circular life is.

So you get back to your bland, stressful, circular routine and the memory of your vacation quickly rides the conveyor belt of time to the back of your mind. You don’t realize it, but if you had have enough money or vacation time left you’d take another vacation as a round about way to buy happiness, but since you can’t do that you’re forced to endure the unfulfilling lifestyle you’re trapped in. So you try to find little ways to bring some happiness in your life (or at least ways to feel alive): buying a new hat, masturbating, watching a movie, going bowling, getting drunk, eating at a new restaurant, etc. But these are just scenic pit stops on your drive down shit highway and don’t change the fact that you’re driving down shit highway.

So basically you have a tiny life, and it starts to feel claustrophobic. That compounded with your stress and lack of respite you start feeling depressed and develop panic attacks. You start to suspect that there’s something wrong with you, and all the self help books you read agree that you’re ungrateful emotional cripple for not being maniacly happy every moment of every day. Since the self help books didn’t solve your problems (and actually made you feel more guilty) you suspect there is something wrong with you biologically. So you go to see a therapist who puts you on antidepressants, which make your stifling lifestyle more bearable by forcing you to be happy chemically.

The problem isn’t that you don’t understand the self help secret of life, and the problem isn’t biological for most people. The problem is that our economy is design to force you into a repetitive, stressful, lackluster lifestyle that is too expensive for most people to escape. Nobody intentionally designed it like that. It’s just the way it happened. If beer or antidepressants help you get through it then you may as well try them, because you’re probably going to be stuck in the cycle for a long time. Here’s some other helpful hints for coping with modern life: Go insane. Get a hobby. Convince your boss to let you wear pajamas to work. Exercise. Work in the porn industry. Quit your job and move to a third world country.

Κυκλοφόρησε από τις Εκδόσεις Μοντέρνοι Καιροί το βιβλίο του Walter Isaacson, Αϊνστάιν: Η Ζωή του και το Σύμπαν.

quote:

“Henryk Broder kandidiert für das Amt des Präsidenten des Zentralrates der Juden”

‘Patient rights’ set me apart from my more enlightened colleagues. The massed bands of professional advocates, inspectors, relatives, mental health charities, public relations managers and health trust solicitors ensure that people with even the most dubious ‘mental disorders’ are insulated from the irksome risks and obligations of life like a protected species. I perceive work as the first therapy, not the final illusive goal, and can’t accept that maximising rights whilst minimising responsibilities can possibly provide successful rehabilitation within a society allegedly based on ‘give and take’ principles…

www.windowsofmadness.co.uk

I couldn’t help noticing that Carol’s eyes were like the cross hairs on the sights of a sniper’s rifle, but I was by now absolutely immune to any amount of sulking, and my mind wandered, not for the first time, into a reverie of paranoid self-analysis. I was getting old, and all around me deceit, excess and spin seemed to be turning mockingly orthodox, while my own values and beliefs lay buried under an avalanche of 21^st. century sleaze.

http://www.windowsofmadness.co.uk

New in at Cinema Books: Chaplin The Tramp’s Odyssey by Simon Louvish, $27.99 cloth. From the antics of the London music hall the little tramp triumphed in the new movie world of Hollywood.  Charlie Chaplin was not just the richest man in Hollywood with very real  personal demons but also a social and political critic whose views brought him banishment from his adopted home.  But the Chaplin films are heart and soul of this book, the reason we remember.

In a scandinavian shocker, BHO has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The former Chicago politician supports sending more troops into Afghanistan. These soldiers will not be greeted as liberators. The cowardly use of unmanned aircraft in this conflict continues, and has possibly  increased.
BHO supports the spread of war into Pakistan. In addition to the Nobel affair, this is a violation of the US Constitution. Killing civilians in Pakistan with unmanned aircraft has not been authorized by Congress. No war against Pakistan has been declared. For that matter, no formal declaration of war was issued against Iraq, Afghanistan, or Terrorism.
This is not the first bizarre decision by the Nobel committee. In 1994, the prize was shared by Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin. 1990 saw Mikhail Gorbachev make the trip to Oslo. Le Duc Tho declined the award in 1973, because there was no peace in Vietnam. His co-designate, Henry Kissofdeath Kissinger, accepted the award. The word “honor”(as in “Peace with Honor”) took a beating that year.
In other years, no one was awarded the prize. The money in those years was allocated to the main fund. This was the approach in 1966-67, 1939-1943, and 1914-1916. In times of war, it is not always appropriate to award a peace prize.

Charles Chaplin at Lone Star Studios in 1917. Lone Star was basically Chaplin’s own studio, formed by Mutual Film Corp for him when the star system began to really play a major role in early cinema production (and budget). Chaplin was the writer, director, and producer for most of his films with Mutual, besides of course being the star. This unheralded creative control was Mutual’s last bid to keep ahold of him. People wanted Chaplin, Mutual wanted people’s money, and didn’t want Chaplin to figure out that with all his money and star power he could just form his own production companies. Of course, pretty quickly he did, founding UA with Fairbanks and Pickford. I don’t need to tell you that, most likely.

Nat “King” Cole – Smile

Anyway, I have a less morally repugnant job than usual, providing content for a blurb on Chaplin and the feature Modern Times to appear in the playbill at a screening of early movies that were important to film history. So that’s what I’m doing with my day, although I think I scheduled a post a bit ago to appear later…time will tell.

Modern Times is the one where he goofs with the clock (wow, oversimplest thing I will hopefully say all day). You have likely seen clips from it.

vivir en una zona horaria diferente al resto de tus amigos,  en el mismo país, misma ciudad y mismo cielo te hace tratar al tiempo libre como al mejor de los whiskies. pensando siempre y lentamente en la madera y el manantial detrás del trago. nunca se habia escuchado música con tanta agua en la boca. nunca un gesto de pregunta había durado tanto tiempo, frente a la ventana, sin sentimiento de culpa… de prisa, de estar perdiendo el tiempo. los cuadros de marmol en el suelo han sido contados, uno a uno -sin pisar las lineas-; las escaleras son 8 en cada piso; los libros eróticos se dividen en párrafos semanales que duran todo… el tiempo… libre.  Ahh..

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L.

Modern Times (1936)

Dir. Charles Chaplin

Very famous scene, very deservedly so… I re-watched this the other night to just sort of put on, and of course, was entranced as usual.  Black and white photography has scarcely looked more magical, and set design scarcely more fully realized.  But this, this is just Chaplin doing what he does best.  Enjoy.

sprich für dich selbst!

und Englisch reden:

quote:

“Keine Ausnahme für die britische BBC: Bei seiner ersten Pressekonferenz nach dem Wahlsieg hat sich FDP-Parteichef Guido Westerwelle geweigert, eine Frage auf Englisch zu beantworten – nicht einmal anhören wollte er sie. “Wir sind hier in Deutschland”, schalt er den Reporter…”

more at spiegel online

So sprach er vor nicht langer Zeit:

]]> http://monoman.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/hutet-euch-vor-liberalen/ Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:28:34 +0000 monoman http://monoman.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/hutet-euch-vor-liberalen/

Ein großartige Documentation über Musik mit Inhalt und warum sie weder verschwunden, noch heutzutage leicht zu finden ist. Mit dabei sind unter Anderem die Roots, Erika Baduh, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews und viele mehr. Genießt es.

PS: Weil ich ihn für einen der bedeutensten Musiker aller Zeiten halte, hier noch etwas von Dave M.

Modern Times Exhibition – Children’s Trail
State Library of Queensland
Until 8th November

Running until the 8th of November, the State Library of Queensland is hosting the Modern Times Exhibition with its children’s trail.

The self guided tour features 250 installations of art, animation, photography and design specifically designed for primary aged children with many works including interactive elements.

For more information:
Modern Times – Queensland State Library

Multi si prea usor primesc epitetul de geniu, putini il si merita.

In privinta lui Charlie Chaplin, m-as mira sa fie cineva care sa ii conteste acest atribut.

Marele actor al filmului mut a jucat si in productii cu sonor, dar acest cantec din Modern Times (una din capodoperele sale fara voci) este adevarata revelatie:

CHAPLIN POATE VORBI! MAI MULT, SI CANTA!

St. Oronzo, A Saint For Modern Times

Times are challenging. The economy is in the tank. People are out of work. Traffic is getting worse and worse. Cell phones, iPods, video games and reality TV shows are driving us to distraction. Many people are either rancorous or apathetic. It’s getting harder and harder to know where you are headed in an ever more complex world.

As i poveri, the impoverished residents of Bari in Southern Italy knew a hundred years ago, when times are tough you need a saint on your side. You don’t have to be Italian or poor to ask for saintly guidance and protection. You only need faith. But, in the Machine Age, where human beings and other living creatures are viewed as profit-producing commodities, faith is a hard act to pull off. So, little by little you change your way of living: you consume less, you recycle, you pick up litter. You show compassion for the earth and her creatures. And you pray, even if you don’t think anyone is listening. You stick with it, this pilgrimage of flesh and spirit, even when you stumble. After a time, your compassion turns into passion and passion turns into faith. And when, after all this, you lose your faith, you keep on with your new way of life until your faith returns, gradually, imperceptibly, like the coming again of sunrise, or springtime, or the smiles of a summer night.

Note: “smiles of a summer night” is an allusion to Smiles of a Summer Night, a film by the great writer and director Ingmar Bergman.