Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Shannon's On The Case

Shannon woke with a hangover. It had lasted two days.

The phone rang.

Bill, his partner said, "I need you."

The next sound was a death rattle.

Bill was now his ex-partner.

Shannon got out of bed with his hangover intact. He picked up his gat. Someone was going to pay for Bill.

Outside in the night air he stopped at the newsstand. "Cigarettes."

Ali said, "You stopped smoking three years ago."

Shannon lit up and said, "It was three years too soon."

The taxi to Bill's place cost $10. He told the driver to wait. The cops had yet to show on the scene. It was the change of shifts.

Bill was lying on the floor. A gun in his left hand. Blood stained the floor.

Someone was in the other room.

It was a girl.

Not a woman.

She looked at Shannon and asked, "Is he dead?"

Shannon looked over his shoulder. "Yes." He believed in telling the truth only because he was too lazy to tell a lie.

Shannon was no cut-out detective. He was the real thing. There wasn't many of them left around.

RICH BITCH - Die AntwoorD

/3.bp.blogspot.com/-SSo0GAfvFaw/UpVV0RFpl9I/AAAAAAAAV2k/70AAh0lNuDY/s1600/Die-Antwoord-Rich-Bitch.jpg" imageanchor="1" >

I love to hear her say FUCK THE UPPER CLASSES.

To hear RICH BITCH - Die AntwoorD please go to the following Url

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bdeizHM9OU

Arthur Lee ALONE AGAIN OR

In 2002 I caught two shows on Arthur Lee in Brooklyn

I was with Andrew Pollock from Andrix and Ivan Julian from the Voidoids

We sang to each song.

Everyone in the audience sang to every song.

With each stanza, with each chorus, with each word we realized how much we loved LOVE.

And this was not only people of age, because the audience was young old and then some.

Recently I cried listening to his music thinking how much I miss Arthur Lee.

Especially when I think about him coming out of prison and the Lemon Drops approaching him to say let's do a tour.

And him saying "Yes."

Beautiful.

To hear Arthur Lee perform ALONE AGAIN OR, please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdPLlxoT_as

Sunday, November 24, 2013

OLDbOY 2003

This afternoon I watched OLDBOY, a Korean revenge thriller directed by Park Chan-wook adapted from a Japanese manga of the same name written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya.

I was mesmerized by the movie.

It rips part the soul and plunges deep into the heart.

Nothing is spared in the search for the truth.

OLDBOY won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

I give it five *****

To view OLDBOY please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBXow2W8w-Q

The Birth Of Puberty

The temperature in New York is below freezing.

This afternoon my longtime fiend AK phoned from Jupiter Beach.

"It'll be in the 80s later. We might go to the beach."

Not a chance I'm swimming at the Rockaways till next summer.

"I called to tell you a funny story. My younger son came into my bedroom this morning and said he had two hairs near his penis. I told Reese about puberty and that his body was going through changes and at the end of my explanation he asked if he could start dating girls."

"What's wrong with that?"

"He's only ten."

"And what's wrong with that?"

Kids grow up so fast.

My youngest boy is five.

That is too young to date.

Happy XXXMas

Bordelle, the high-end lingerie line, came out with Christmas delights. One 18K-plated girdle dress will cost over $7000 in London's Selfridges department store.

There are less expensive options for a rich man to offer his mistress.

Fashion stylist Sasha Lilic asked, "Would you spend $7000 on lingerie?"

My answer was simple.

"I'd spent it to take off lingerie."

But I only have $200 in the bank, so for now I have to be happy with looking at $7000 on the flesh.

I have a good enough imagination to furnish the pleasure of giving and taking.

Lars Von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC

Nymphomania - Excessive sexual desire in and behavior by a female.

Lars Von Trier's new film NYMPHOMANIAC begins with a scene in which the female lead Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, is found beaten in an alley. The older man takes her home and Joe recounts the story of a life driven by sexual desire.

CHAPTER ONE

The Compleat Angler

How does an ordinary bag of chocolate sweets become a symbol of sexual victory?

As Joe and her experienced friend B embark on a train trip, they bet on how many men they can seduce on the ride.

The grand prize is a delicious bag of chocolate sweets, and it soon becomes clear to Joe that in order to win, she needs to lure the prey into biting the hook like a skilled fisherman.

Von Triers went hardcore on the trailer. Youtube pulled the segment due to a micro-second shot of fellatio.

At five hours long NYMPHOMANIAC promises to be an endurance test of will not to masturbate in the theater like the old days in Times Square.

Raincoats are optional.

To view the film clip of NYMPHOMANIAC, please go to the following URL

http://www.nymphomaniacthemovie.com

Sort Of Justice from the Scottsboro Boys

On March 25, 1931 a fight broke out a freight train traveling the Southern Railway line between Chattanooga and Memphis. Nine black hoboes battled a few whites and two women. According to Wikipedia the whites were kicked off the freight car and a posse stopped the train at Paint Rock, Alabama and arrested seven teenage blacks for assault.

Olen Montgomery, age 17, Clarence Norris, age 19, Haywood Patterson, age 18, Ozie Powell, age 16, Willie Roberson, age 16, Charlie Weems, age 16, Eugene Williams, age 13, and brothers Andy, age 19 and Roy Wright, age 12 or 13.

The two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, said they had been raped by the black teenagers.

A lynch mob assembled before the Scottsboro jail intent on exacting justice for the violation of the white woman. The accused survived the night thanks to the courage of Sheriff Matt Wann, who threaten to shoot the first person to come through the door.

According to Wikipedia he then removed his belt and handed his gun to one of his deputies. He walked through the mob and the crowd parted to let him through. He was not touched by anyone. He walked across the street to the courthouse where he telephoned Governor Benjamin M. Miller who then called in the National Guard to protect the jail before taking the defendants to Gadsden, Alabama, for indictment and to await trial by the all-white jury. Although rape was potentially a capital offense, the defendants were not allowed to consult an attorney. Most were illiterate.

The proceedings were held in typical Southern fashion.

"The courtroom was one big smiling white face." - Haywood Patterson.

Victoria Price took the stand. Her words condemned the boys.

"There were six to me and three to her....It took three of them to hold me. One was holding my legs and the other had a knife to my throat while the other one ravished me." - Victoria Price

The trial convicted the seven of rape and the judge sentenced six to death.

"He couldn't get us to the chair fast enough." - Haywood Patterson

The appeal trail knocked down the penalty to life imprisonment, even after Ruby Cates reversed her previous testimony.

The boys continued life behind bars into the 1940s for a mythical crime.

This week Alabama finally pardoned the Scottsboro Boy and Gov. Robert J. Bentley said in a letter, “The Scottsboro Boys have finally received justice."

The right thing to do was an apology in recognition to the injustice done to the Scottsboro Boys, one of whom was murdered in prison, then again everyone is guilty of something in the minds of the police; North or South.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

A Dead Man's Triptych

Last week Christie of New York auction off a Francis Bacon triptych for a record $142 million to an unknown bidder. The rich and even more rich were ecstatic with the result, since the high-altitude sale reinforces all recent purchases of trophy art by dead painters. The Guardian wrote, "There can be no doubt the night belonged to Freud as well as Bacon. When he sat for Three Studies of Lucian Freud in 1969, this painter of harshly real faces and bodies in sparse London rooms was ever so slightly in Bacon's shadow. Now they orbit one another as the two great British artists of the 20th century, and probably will always be grouped in art history as blunt individualists who defied the supposed inevitable progress of the readymade to paint like modern reincarnations of Velázquez."

Everyone in the Art world awaits the next grand coup, as the ultra-wealthy spend money like it was going out of fashion, however the masses of the world was working too hard to rejoice in the triumph of capital over labor.

$142 million could pay the monthly wages of the tens of thousands of Nepalis constructing the 2022 World Cup stadiums in Qatar for several years. Most of them are exploited for nothing. Hundreds have died in miserable conditions verging on slavery.

All to scrimp and save dinaris for the Qatari Museum of Art, which purchased the Francis Bacon work.

Sheikha Mayassa bint Hamad al-Thani, the sister of Qatar's emir, is dedicating her family's fortune to establish her country as an international cultural power.

Here's another triptych.

The Nepali man is holding a photo of his dead friend.

That is the price of Art.

Dead people.

The days never belong to them in Qatar.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Debunking the Debunkers

Supposedly Time-Warner controls up to 90% of certain segments of the USA media such as TV , newspapers, and books.

Time-Warner tells America what to think through CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, The Legal Talk Network, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, truTV, Turner Sports, The Legal Forum Radio Show, Atlanta Medical Journal as well as Time Inc. and Warner Brothers.

Recently the media giant has attempted to debunk the Kennedy legacy by attacking JFK's progressive politics on race and civil rights.

They ignore his sending troops to the South.

He was not a conservative,

He believed in changing America,

The media also suggested that JFK was a fiscal hawk.

Anything to suggest that the government of today mirrors that of the Kennedys.

Not true and more than JFK not wanting to go to Space.

The man had vision for this country.

To help the poor.

Something Time-Warner and Fox News have never done.

So fuck them.

They are lying for the rich.

When the time comes their place will be against the wall.

All we have left is the revolution.

ps the BBC is no better than CNN.

Absolute crap.

Wear What November 22,1963

Not only do I know where I was 50 years ago when I heard about JFK, I know exactly what I was wearing.

The school uniform for St. Mary of the Hills.

We miss you JFK.

Always have.

Always will.

Fuck the debunkers of Camelot.

THE DARK SWARM by Andrix

Music from Andrix

Words from MAYBE TOMORROW

Please go to the following URL

http://andrix.bandcamp.com/track/the-dark-swarm

Thursday, November 21, 2013

THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette' coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen's baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated 'le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie's final haircut by the guillotine.

Almost two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife, reincarnated the fashion during her tenure at the White House.

American women idolized the glamorous First Lady regardless of their politics.

Overnight millions of housewives hit their local hair salon to acquire the look.

Movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak further popularized the rage and within months the only women rejecting the coif were Durgin Park's gang of crew-cut bull dyke waitresses and the nuns at my grammar school, Our Lady of the Foothills.

The bouffant died out with the advent of the hippie era.

Young women grew long hair and coif was once more threatened with extinction, except for brief respite from the lead singers of the B-52s and the late English singer Amy Winehouse.

Last year Jamie Parker and I were happy-houring at Solas in the East Village. We had the Irish bartender to ourselves. Moira liked a good laugh and Jamie told her stories of his go-go bar in Pattaya.

After our second margharita an attractive woman walked into a shadowy bar. Her bleached blonde hair was stacked high on her head. Stiletto heels added another five inches to her Amazonian height.

"A model." Jamie Parker smirked at the passing beauty in designer drag.

"Probably coming from a shoot." The actresses in TV show MADMEN had revitalized the early 60s, although few woman in present-day America could pull off the time-travel make-over.

"She looks like a 1960s transvestite." The lanky ex-con squinted down the bar.

"And that's a bad thing." I caught the scent of Chanel No.5. She was high-class.

The goddess sat at the end of the bar and Moira went to attend to her need. She was into girls.

"Not in this light." It was almost night that deep in Solas.

"You don't like the bouffant?"

"Not at all."

"And why not?"

"Because the Mr. Kenneth who re-invented the hair style for Jackie Kennedy was queer."

"You have something against gays?" Back in the 60s gays were feared by young men, unless they were looking for a good time. This was the modern times. Gay-bashing was not in fashion.

"Me, I love gays, but gay hairdressers used the bouffant hair style as a strategy to turn straight men gay."

"What do you mean?" I wasn't following Jamie's line of thoughtlessness.

"Just that it's not a really natural look and women refused to have sex to avoid ruining the helmet of hair on their head, so men sought release elsewhere."

"With other men?"

"The sexual revolution freed us from our chains." Jamie was a couple of years older than me, although he didn't look it.

"I had a girlfriend with a bouffant in 1965." Jo and I met in the Mattapan Oriental Theater. We were both 13.

"And you went all the way?"

"Not even close." Steel-rimmed bras safeguarded against any attempts by unschooled boys to reach 'second base'.

"See."

"It had nothing to do with the bouffant."

"You're from Boston. Men from Boston love Jackie Kennedy's bouffant. You probably went to bed jerking off to the First Lady."

"Not that I can remember." Jackie O rode horses and spoke French. Women like her were destined to marry rich regardless of their hairstyle. "Jo was my muse. I know my place."

"Don't we all." Jamie was in the States visiting his mother. She lived in the Bronx and thought that he was teaching school in Thailand, instead of running the Pigpen A Go-Go featuring fat pretty bar girls and skinny ugly pole dancers.

"My mom had a bouffant."

"Mine too."

"It had them feel like a queen."

"Better than knowing your place."

"Send the princess a drink on us," Jamie told Moira.

"Happily." Moira played for the other side.

"Do you like the bouffant?"

"It's very Kim Novak." The blonde had mesmerized Hitchcock in his film VERTIGO.

"Wasn't she gay?" Jamie asked eying me.

"I think so." Moira played for the other side. She was holding the model's hand. They looked like a nice couple.

If only for happy hour.

"Ah, here's to the bouffant." Jamie raised his glass.

"And Jackie O."

At my age I might think about her once in a while.

After all she was the mother of the modern bouffant.

Tough Year for the Green

The Boston Celtics are a storied team in basketball.

No NBA franchise has won more championship and suffered fewer losing seasons.

Last year Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett were traded to the Brooklyn Nets to complete the break-up of the Big Three.

"This is my team," Rajon Rondo declared to the Boston media, except the all-star point guard hasn't played a single game due to off-season surgery.

The other night the Celtics went down to the Houston Rockets.

The game wasn't even close and I wondered whether this year's squad was as overwhelmed by the rest of the league as the 1998-99 Celtics consisting of Kenny Anderson, rookie Paul Pierce, Ron Mercer, Antoine Walker, and Tony Battie, which went 19-31 in a strike shortened season.

The only Celtics team to rival that record was the 1978–79 Boston Celtics.

29–53 to finish 5th in the Atlantic Division.

The next year the revived squad lost to the 76ers and Doctor J in Eastern Conference Finals and won the NBA championship with the first Big Three of Bird, McHale, and Parrish.

I don't see that reversal of fortune happening this year or the next, but I am a Celtics fan forever.

No matter how high the hoop, I believe in the green.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

CNN the voice of nothingness

As the country approaches the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, the American media is revisiting the many theories of his death.

CNN came out to announce the debunking of one conspiracy.

The news article glossed over the possibilities without any depth.

Big surprise.

There is only one truth.

JFK was shot dead.

So were Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

RFK was killed in LA.

Arthur Bremer couldn't get to Nixon, so he shot George Wallace instead.

This country is not ruled by ballots, but bullets and that is the conspiracy.

Guns.

Free The North 30

Frank Hewetson and the rest of the Arctic 30 remain in Russian prison.

There is nothing good about this place.

"23 hour day lock up. One hour a day 'exercise'. No hot running water. Light on 24-hours … It's a mixture of hope and despair."

His partner and mother of their two children said to The Guardian, "I think he could consider that he might be getting a bit old for this kind of game. He could do a slightly less crazy version. Hopefully, he won't have too much appetite for doing it again in a terrible hurry."

Free Frank, free the Arctic 30, free the world.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Hiding in Scandal

You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal. Elizabeth Taylor

Check out the man hiding his face.

He couldn't be more guilty.

And the woman is free as the wind.

Few Have Chosen

Jen Rowley is young.

She loves posing for photos.

I met her at the 169 Bar on east Broadway.

She left that dive for San Francisco.

The City by the Bay must seem more free, but I bet she doesn't have health care and neither do most Americans even though the vast majority are covered by health plans at work.

ObamaCare has changed all that.

Millions of people are losing their coverage, because their insurers do not meet the minimum requirements of the health care legislation and Americans are not bothering to join the new health care network.

So far only 140,000 have signed up to the plan.

27,000 through the website.

The GOP have declared the program a failure.

Democrats are abandoning what they perceive is a 'sinking ship'.

In truth the current national health system is broken beyond repair.

Americans pay more than any other country for less.

They don't know it, until they need health care.

Healthy people don't go to hospitals.

Except to visit sick people and they are generally glad that they aren't sick.

Obamacare is not the answer to this dilemma.

It still depends on profiteering insurers.

National Health Care is the answer.

No matter what the fascist say and I'm sure that Jen Rowley also knows this.

She is a young woman.

In the prime of health, but aren't we all?

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Cats on LSD

Luckily I had no cats in the 70s.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Oink Oink Sniffer Snout

Back in the 80s I was exiting Paris at Charles De Gaulle Aeroport.

A French SWAT team cordoned off a corridor.

An unclaimed bag lay against the wall.

After a minute a small pig trotted over to the bag and sniffed at the potential 'bombe' with its pink little snout.

The pig shook its head as an all-clear sign to the armed CRS.

They blew up the bag.

It was contained with women's underwear.

A very messy affair.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Wind River Mountains 1998


In the Spring of 1998 my 78 year-old father and I were on a road trip through Wyoming and Montana. We picked up a rented car in Bozeman, Montana and stopped the first night in Chico Hot Springs. The next morning the two of us continued down Paradise Valley to Yellowstone Park.

Buffalos grazed the new grasses in the low valleys and my old man marveled at Old Faithful's punctuality. He had never been to this part of the West.

"I wish your mother was with us." She had passed away in Boston from previous year.

"Me too." My mother loved to travel.

We spent a night near Inspiration Point and headed south in the morning.

Snow tipped the jagged high peaks of the Grand Tetons, but my father didn't talk much of the long stretches between towns. His thought rested on his dear Angie.

When I was behind the wheel, we listened to the country-western stations. My father switched to his classical CDs during his driving shift. Sometimes he cried during the opera arias. My mother had a great singing voice.

On our journey's fourth night we stopped Pinedale. The mountains to the south were painted pink by the setting sun and the clear evening sky shone with the cosmos. My father marveled at the remote beauty and I told him, "Back in the 1830s mountain men hunted beaver in that wilderness."

"Doesn't look like it's changed much since then." My father had fought Maine's Great Fire in 1947. He knew his woods.

"Probably not."

There was only one way to find out and during our steak dinner at the hotel restaurant I pored over a map of the Wind River Mountains and plotted out a day's hike across the range from south to north.

"What are you thinking?"

"That tomorrow I might take a hike." I pointed to a trail crossing the mountains. "I calculate the distance to be about fifteen miles."

"Distances in the mountains are different from distance on the road," my father cautioned with the wisdom of a Boy Scout leader.

"Walking two miles an hour should take no more than ten hours to cover that distance. You drop me at the southern trailhead and pick me up at the northern end." I was in good shape for a man my age.

"These aren't the White Mountains."
Back in the early 60s our family had climbed Mount Monadnock, whose summit was a little over 3000 feet.

"I know." The Wind River Mountains' highest peaks towered above 12,000 feet.

"That could end up being a long fifteen miles." My father didn't walk anywhere. At Yellowstone I had to drag him to view Old Faithful's eruption of steam. "You're not as young as you think you are."

"None of us are." I finished my wine and refilled the glass with water. I didn't need to start tomorrow's trek with a hangover. The trail crested two 9,000-foot passes.

"I don't like you doing it on your own," My father liked playing it safe, but he was only in condition to talk me out of attempting this hike and not accompanying me.

"I'll be careful." Only two years earlier I had hiked in the Himalayas.

"It's your funeral, so please don't take any shortcuts. That's how people get lost."

"Yes, sir."

The next morning we woke at dawn and ate quick breakfast.

"The weather report predicts clear skies," I said getting into the car.

"The weather here isn't the weather in the mountains." He gazed at the peaks.

"There isn't a cloud in the sky."

"Now."

"I'll be fine."

My father dropped me at the southern trailhead north of Pinedale.

I checked my bag for my map, compass, knife, water, food, whistle, matches, flashlight, an all-weather jacket, fleece, and camera. It was 7:34 AM.

"Good day for it." Sunset was ten hours away.

"I'll be waiting on the other side."

I set out on the trail and soon was surrounded by wilderness. Bighorn sheep danced on rocky tors and elk herds groomed the alpine meadows. Indians had hunted these animals and trappers had caught beaver in the glacier-fed streams back in the early 19th Century. I fell into a good pace. No other bootprints marked the trail.

Within an hour I reached a bald promontory two miles from the trailhead. Mountain peaks barricaded the western horizon. My mother would have loved the view and I toasted her in heaven with a sip of water.

I took out the trail map. The path divided into three directions. I took the northern fork to the nearest col. The distance to my destination was thirteen miles and I anticipated seeing my father in seven hours.

Light clouds obscured the steep pass. A sharp wind swept chilled air across the bare rocks and a strengthening flurry obscured the peaks. I put on my cap, fleece and jacket, then trudged down into the aspen forests, where the sun broke through the overcast and I took off my jacket to eat an early lunch of salami and cheese.

Reinforced I followed the trail up-and-down over several aretes, then switchbacked down to a creek.

The spring melt was flooding the path and I swam from one side of the torrent to the other somehow losing my way, so I backtracked a mile in soaking clothes.

Cold and exhausted I sat on a flat rock and dried my boots in the sun.

Thirty minutes later they were merely damp. The map had me barely halfway across the continental divide. I had only covered three miles in the last two hours.

A family of moose wandered across a boggy swamp. They were thin from a long winter. The wind carried my scent to them and they trotted into the forest. I pulled on my boots and tramped over a 9000 foot high pass. The air was thin and my heart was thumping a rapid beat.

I hadn't seen anyone all day and wondered whether I was on the right trail.

A sign post confirmed my suspicion.

I had missed my turning.

Correcting my error would take another hour at least.

I gazed at the wet ground. Bear tracks marked the path. The paw prints were three times the size of my feet. People died in these mountains and died easy from cold, starvation, and animal attacks. I counted my blessing and ate my last chocolate bar. At least I wasn't lost anymore.

At 5 O'Clock I was five miles from the northern trailhead. All of the path was downhill.

I made good time and arrived in the darkening parking lot, where my father was waiting with two rangers. The two rangers shook their heads, thankful that they didn't have to find my body and returned to their pick-up truck.

I must have looked a wreck, but better than a bag of bones wrapped in tattered clothing.

"Twelve hours on the nose." My father checked his watch.

"Better than thirteen." And certainly better than twenty.

"You hungry?" My father opened the car.

"You bet." I hobbled over to the passenger side and threw my bag on the floor. My legs were noddled al dente.

"Thirsty?" My father started the engine.

"And then some." I unlaced my boots. The smell was wretched.

"I got a six-pack of beer and a half of a cold pizza." My father cracked the window. "I thought you might need some nourishment."

"You know me all too well." I popped open the Coors and drained the can in one go, feeling every seconds of my 47 years. The pizza had an extra topping of pepperoni. "You don't know how good this is going to taste."

"Back in the Great Maine Fire of 1947. After the bulldozers stilled the last flames my crew and I had celebrated putting out the blaze with a pizza in Portland. It was the best thing that I ever tasted outside your mother's cooking."

"Same as this pizza."

"You know it."

Neither of us were mountain men.

We were simply a father and son on a road trip.

My mother would have liked that.

A Man's Best Friend

Three years ago my father passed from this world.

He is here with me more than ever.

A boy's best friend.

Frank Arthur Smith II.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Joni Mitchell 70

I love Joni.

It took me many years to admit that love, but there it is.

Happy 70th Birthday, Joni

To hear BOTH SIDES NOW and THE CIRCLE GAME please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTVjCWekS1Qx

Murmansk to St. Petersburg

Russian authorities have transferred Frank Hewetson and his twenty-nine Greenpeace activists from Murmansk to a St. Peterburg prison. This might seem like good news, however families and friends have yet to be in contact with the prisoners and the charge of environmental hooliganism carries a sentence of seven years.

This charge was leveled against the punk protest band PUSSY RIOT for performing in a Russian church.

Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was recently transferred to a new penal colony in Siberia as punishment for her protests against prison conditions at her previous gulag.

I hope Frank and friends are okay.

Until then FREE THE ARCTIC 30 and PUSSY RIOT too.

Record CO2 Emissions

This week the World Meteorological Organization announced that Atmospheric volumes of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change hit a new record in 2012.

"For all these major greenhouse gases the concentrations are reaching once again record levels," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud told a news conference in Geneva at which he presented the U.N. climate agency's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. "This year is worse than last year, 2011. 2011 was worse than 2010," he said. "Every passing year makes the situation somewhat more difficult to handle, it makes it more challenging to stay under this symbolic 2 degree global average."

Greenhouse gas emissions are set to be 8-12 billion tonnes higher in 2020 than the level needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees, the U.N. Environment Programme said on Tuesday according to Reuters. Global Warming denialists were not shaken by these findings and wrote on Huffington Post the three following opinions;

1.) Eventually it will become clear to all (or most), that anthropogenic global warming is essentially a hoax. And it is a hoax that is all about taxation, wealth distribution, and the fleecing of the public. Unfortunately, believing in "climate change" has become a religion for many so I suspect it will be many years before some folks begin to realize they have been hoodwinked.

2.# Cool. I've been enjoying the mild winters and summers. No droughts or hurricanes this year. If this is Global Warming, keep it coming!

3.) Let's not overreact. This was a sign of progress one hundred years ago. We have at least 1000 years to watch things. So, in 3013 we can sit down and talk. There's places to go, golf to be played, and fun to be had. Spring 2014- taking two oldest grand kids to Disney World. Will also go Punta Cana or Cancun for an all inclusive vacation. Many seniors known as snow birds maintain a winter residence in Florida. People in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela don't live this way. we are Americans. We do.

They like the rest of their kind are blind to the changes in the atmosphere.

Last year I went to the local fishing pier in SriRacha Thailand. I have been living there for 20 years. The sea was over the pier. I had never seen the sea that high and asked the fisherman if they had. No one had and an old salt said, "Too much ocean."

Denialists can wrap themselves around the comfort of ignorance, but something has changed and not for the better.

Two years before the entire center of Thailand was flooded under 3 meters of water for months.

No one had ever seen it that high.

This year the nam-tuam was only 2 meters.

Last year I was in New York for Sandy.

No one had ever seen anything like that.

Welcome to the new world where the ocean swell swarms the coastal communities to baffle resort realtors' old claim that they aren't creating new beach front properties.

So drive your SUVs and eat your potato chips watching football in front of flat screen TVs in MacMansions that don't make you look fat.

For better or worse we're doomed and it's too late to do anything about it.

Te morituri salutamus.

Ago tibi gratias

ie those who are about to die salute you, but I will ignore your ignorance.

World population 2050 - one billion.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

The Romance Of Blow

The 1970s were a beautiful time.

And so were the 80s.

And I liked it.

Toronto's Crackhead Voting Bloc

More proof that the War on Drugs has been lost by the forces of Law and Order came with Toronto's mayor publicly admitting to smoking the pipe on a drinking binge.

Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. There have been times when I've been in a drunken stupor. That's why I want to see the tape. I want everyone in the city to see this tape. I don't even recall there being a tape or video. I want to see the state that I was in."

Calls for his resignation were countered by a 5% upswing in his approval rating, yet Rob Ford has refused to leave office, "I was elected to do a job and that's exactly what I'm going to continue doing."

Mayor Ford also added, "Folks, I have nothing left to hide. I would do anything, absolutely anything to change the past, but the past is the past and we must move forward."

A little more than 1% of Canadians used crack in 2012 according to surveys.

Judging from that 5% uptick I reckon that Rob Ford is depending on the crackhead voting bloc to solidly support his re-election attempt as long as the Mayor came out in favor of legalizing cocaine, so that Toronto could flourish with the job creation from the opening of crack dens throughout the city.

Personally I've never used the stuff.

But no man's poison is another man's cure.

Monday, November 4, 2013

LOVELY SLEEP by Peter Nolan Smith


The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that Dtam-ruaat meant 'make blood', however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent on the last syllable.

Thai culture remains strong, however beer is beer and pizza remains pizza, so foreigners don't starve to death in the hinterlands. 1150 is telephone number for Pizza. Pay the gas and the motorcycle delivery boy will drive to the most distant reaches of ban-nok i.e. the sticks.

Other commonly shared words are whiskey, taxi, sex, and WC for 'water closet', which along with pizza cover most human needs.

This week I returned to New York from Bangkok via Narita Airport.

27 hours from Soi 12 in Jomtien to Fort Greene in Brooklyn.

Most people would have taken several days to recover from such a trip. I needed money and showed up at work 10 hours after passing through customs at JFK.

I was exhausted from the trip, yet couldn't sleep and tried to explain to my son's mother why I couldn't sleep. My Thai is rudimentary and Mam was getting increasingly frustrated by my ignorance of the her native language.

"You stay here many years. Why you not speak Thai good?"

"Because I'm a farang."

"I know that." She sounded like she was saying 'farang kee-nok'. I know we aren't as good as them, because I have lived in France and the Thais are the French of the Orient.

Their chauvinistic love for their country's traditions, food, and culture border on fanaticism and after residing in Thailand I have to admit that they aren't half-wrong. The only problem was that I had to move back to America.

New York to be exact.

The other side of the world and this week my body clock was off by 12 hours.

Day is night and night is day.

"I can't sleep," I explained to Mam over Skype.

"Go sleep."

"Pom Lak Ter. Last night I had a dream about our staying in a house with no walls. It was in the middle of a rice paddy. Very beautiful. Made out of wood. You were sleeping in bed and I was holding Fenway."

Fenway was our son. He was two years old. Every night his body spun on the bed like a clock. I slept like a stone with him.

"Good dream?" Mam was a firm believer in beauty sleep, however children steal sleep from their parents like a CIA rendition torturer. The theft gave them control. Fenway was no different from the rest of the young in their preparation to usurp the strength of their mothers and fathers.

"Not a good dream. I see men in the dark. They attack us. I wake up screaming." I live alone in the top floor apartment of a Fort Greene brownstone. The walls were thick. No one heard my terror. "A nightmare."

"Fan raai." A nightmare was scary in every language.

"Yes."

"Are you thuuk-phee-am?" Mam was horrified at the possibility that I had been possessed by an evil spirit or 'phee'.

"Not at all." I never scoffed the Thai belief in ghosts. I had been to the house of a 'maih moht'. Magic existed in the heart and soul of her country, however my dream was the harvest of several sleepless nights. My next attempt to clarify the reason for my insomnia pierce the language barrier.

"You mean 'jet lag'?"

"Yes, jet lag." The word was the same for Mam as it was for me.

"Can not sleep?"

"No."

"I understand now." She had never traveled outside of Thailand, so the effects of jet lag were a mystery.

"I can't sleep. Four nights now." The CIA used sleep deprivation to persuade secret prisoners to tell the truth. I had slept maybe 10 hours since Tuesday.

"'Oht nawn' not good for old man." Mam was 26. I was more than twice her age. Youth had a mission to take over the world. No one lived forever.

"I'll fall asleep soon." I couldn't say when, but Mam cared about my health.

"Nom dee." She wanted me to reach 100 years old. Thais hated being alone.

And at the tender age of close to 60, so do I.

We have a couple of words for it in English.

"Never want to say good-bye." Barry White sang those words.

And I feel the same way too.

Like a man without a soul.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

SANBIKI NO SAMURAI or THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI 1964

After a several month binge of BREAKING BAD, THE SOPRANOS, WALKING DEAD, DEADWOOD, and BROADWALK EMPIRE, I once more abandoned Hollywood's TV offerings by forgetting the password to HBO and Netflicks.

I read books again, but last month I watched Sergio Leone's epic THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.

A suggested film was labeled ZATAOCHI, THE BLIND SAMURAI set in Japan circa 1840.

As a young boy of 8 I had been enthralled by Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI and I instantly fell in love with Shintaro Katsu's portrayals of a blind yakuza masseuse blessed with uncanny swordsmanship.

After viewing the complete collection I wandered further into chambara sword films of the 1960s and discovered SANBIKI NO SAMURAI or THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI in which three ronin or outlaw samurai defended impoverished peasants against a corrupt overlord.

The 1964 movie earned four stars from me.

No blaring background music, long sword fights, or car chases.

Nobility amongst the blackhearts.

Pure entertainment.

To view SANBIKI NO SAMURAI please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPR0aUA7n4E

THE GAMES WE PLAY - House of Art - Opening

Tonight November 2 from 6-9 pm the House of Art Gallery will present THE GAMES WE PLAY

So if you're around 408 Marcus Garvey Avenue in Brooklyn, check it out.

It's where to be.

I'll be wearing my Celtics Green.

Richard Beavers is 100% Knicks.

I love my sports.