RASHOMONIC.com

Monday, March 31, 2003

tastes like chicken

Over the weekend I skipped blogging to hang out with people. That means I'm a softcore almost-daily blogger. My friends Gary and Aaron came over on Saturday. We talked war, politics and films. Aaron said he was a Romaphile. Google turns up "Romaphile" in four places. A new word? What would Winkler say?

We also talked about money management. Aaron recommended Fool.com as a source of information and advice. Then he practiced a random act of kindness and left a couple bottles of his homemade beer in the fridge. I told Aaron about the guy in Dr. Korn's class who brewed chicken beer. And I told him to come back soon.

:: 12:32 PM [+] ::

capoieristas

A couple of weeks ago my friend Rudy blogged about a guy named Julio Hernandez who lived in the area. I bounced a few emails back and forth with Julio. He mentioned a free capoiera show coming soon to the Kennedy Center's Millenium Stage. Huh? He explained it was a form of martial arts and dance from Brazil. "Fly stuff," he said.


So Bonnie, Abby, Marianna, Elijah and I dressed up and went to the show a couple nights ago. Itapua Beiramar and his capoieristas spun and twisted and jumped over each other. Capoeira looks like a combination of fighting and b-boy dancing, improvised and set to music. You can see the whole show by searching for "capoiera" here. Bonnie and I enjoyed hanging out with Julio and Lisa, his girlfriend. After the show Julio and my little brother Elijah chased each other all over the red carpet.

:: 12:08 PM [+] ::

mind on the war

I keep thinking about it. Still no word on Patrick, whose unit suffered nine casualties fighting in Nasiriya on Sunday. Five of the announced casualties were known to be his buddies. The Marines are waiting for positive ID on three more bodies, so three families still haven't been notified. In a unit of 2,000 soldiers, Patrick is probably alive. I wonder what he's feeling right now.

:: 11:22 PM [+] ::

different angles

From Todd Boyd in The New H.N.I.C.:

The civil rights movement was dour, it was serious, and it was ultimately heavy in the way that it bore on the soul. Many people, Black, White, and otherwise, have embraced this era while rejecting any subsequent era as failing to live up to the standards of the one previous. It is within their best interest to hold civil rights up as the "be-all-end-all" of race in America. This is not only self-serving, it is utterly regressive.

From Ta-Nehisi Coates in "Paper Tiger" in the Village Voice:

While very few people want to say that Woods should carry an extra load of social activism because of the color of his skin, the truth is that, in presenting himself as apolitical, Woods is actually breaking with a long line of athletes who've taken political stands... African American athletes are increasingly turning a blind eye to tradition... Unfortunately, Woods is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dumb jocks.

:: 11:25 AM [+] ::

friends in danger

Two of my friends have entered Iraq with U.S. ground forces. Wally is there to guard POWs as an MP, and Patrick is there with the Marines as a mechanic for an armored vehicle. Yesterday at the gym I saw CNN footage of Marine helmets on the sand near the charred, smoldering shell of an APC. I wasn't thinking about Patrick ...

Last night I got word that Patrick's unit (1st Marine Expeditionary Force, 2nd Battalion, Tarawa Force) was engaged in heavy fighting on Sunday and suffered casualties. CNN.com has posted an interview with Alessio Vincio, a reporter embedded in the unit who heard "heavy gunfire" just ahead and reports "a significant number of casualties, more than 10 ..." One of them could be Patrick. His sister Becky called my mom yesterday and said military officials are waiting for DNA testing to confirm each casualty before notifying the families of the fallen. "No news this week is good news," said Becky.

:: 11:02 AM [+] ::

burnin' and lootin'

Compared to human lives, the traces of the ancient world in Iraq might seem trival to think about during war. I studied the ancient world in college, though, so it's natural for me to care about Mesopotamia. Today via The Command Post I found "Babylonian Booty" from Newsweek:

“Ninety-nine percent of Americans don’t know the country they’ll be bombing is Mesopotamia,” says Dr. Huda Ammash, a high-ranking Baath Party official... [I]n the featureless plains of southern Iraq, the only high ground consists of the ruins of ancient cities. If the Iraqis make a stand, these mounds, which can be as much as four miles around and 80 feet high, are the natural places to do it.

The larger danger, scholars believe, is from looting... In 1991, with Baghdad’s iron control over the country shattered, “nine of 13 regional museums were completely looted,” says Richard Zettler, associate curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology... The plunder has been turning up ever since in dealers’ catalogs and at auctions around the world. Last week on eBay, sellers were offering 4,000-year-old cuneiform-tablet fragments (“Be sure to bid on this fantastic piece of history!”) ...

“There are Iraqi antiquities everywhere you look,” says John Malcolm Russell, an authority on the region at Massachusetts College of Art. “And they didn’t all come from someone’s basement."

If there's anything besides McDonald's that typifies globalization, for better or worse, it has to be eBay.

:: 11:18 PM [+] ::

multi-colored wires

Today an opinion piece titled "Of Cowboys and Bombs" appeared in Arab News. Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi says:

Iraq is populated by Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Farsi and Caledonians. The religious groups represented in the country are Muslims, Christians and Jews. On the ideological map there are Islamists, Ba’ath, Nationalists, Socialists and Communists. Culturally and economically, there is a whole rainbow of colors and shades, ranging from nuclear scientists to illiterate farmers, ultra-rich war merchants and corrupt leaders to poor men and women who cannot afford even baby milk for their children.

Within these categories, there are many sub-categories. Among Muslims, for example, there are Sunnis and Shiites, and among nationalists you find isolationists and regionalists.

In the surrounding areas, we see a picture no less colorful and varied... All these varieties, differences and complexities make the region look like a huge, powerful bomb with thin, delicate, overlapping, multi-colored wires.

Later in the piece, Batarfi says the U.S. has expertise in the Mideast like "Mike Tyson's expertise in belly dance."

:: 5:20 PM [+] ::

where we're not

To keep a Christmas promise, Bonnie and I were going to take my parents on a quick trip to Manhattan today. We had planned to show them around Greenwich Village and the Met, among other places. Yesterday the ticket office called to say the bus was cancelled. Why? I wondered. This afternoon, listening to the news, it dawned on me ... there were 200,000 protesters in that part of town. Oh, well.

:: 10:47 PM [+] ::

no show

It's been a while since Bonnie and I hosted a show at The Nerve, the cafe-lounge that used to be our basement. Tonight my friend Luke was scheduled to rock the house with his band Luke. Luke and Luke are down from Boston for spring break, recording their next EP at a studio nearby. This afternoon Luke my friend called to say Luke his band needs to cancel tonight's show. They need more time in the studio before they go back to school at Berklee College of Music.

So another Friday night will pass in darkness at The Nerve. Sorry, everyone. You know downloading MP3s from the band's website isn't the same as feeling the foundation of a small house go buuump, buuump under your feet.


:: 3:51 PM [+] ::

straight from baghdad

This morning Andrew Sullivan links to a blog called Where Is Raed. "From Baghdad itself, the vivid, real-time blog of a young Iraqi," says Sullivan. Here's a sample:

The entities that call themselves “the international community” should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight...

Don’t expect me to wear a [I heart bush] t-shirt. Support democracy in Iraq not by bombing us to hell and then trying to build it up again (well that is going to happen any way) not by sending human shields (let’s be real the war is going to happen and Saddam will use you as hostages), but by keeping an eye on what will happen after the war.

The blogger also describes what's happening in Baghad, including last night's missile strikes. Check it out.

:: 9:33 AM [+] ::

hollywood people

Though Traffic may portray Latinos with more complexity than other films, it still plays into stereotypes. As Todd Boyd writes in The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop:

Even in an otherwise powerful critique of America's failed drug war, like the one forwarded in Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic (2000), the real evil revolves around a young, upper-class, White girl who is "turned out" on drugs and eventually is seen trading sex for dope with a drug dealer in the heart of the ghetto. The image is used to show how far she has fallen ... consumed by this larger, uncontrollable Black menace. This is not unlike the lingering suspicions of Black male rape of a White woman, foregrounded in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915)

No doubt, Birth has some ugly sterotypes. So does Traffic. The drug dealer scene communicates to white people, "See, black men are like this. Grab your pepper spray, get your shotgun, lock your chastity belts. Be afraid."

:: 8:07 AM [+] ::

ready or not

If I had to settle on someone, Benicio Del Toro would be my favorite actor. Bonnie thinks he's cool too ... Anyway this morning I'm reading Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America by Ed Morales when I come to this:

With his Oscar-winning performance in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, Del Toro broke through the mainstream with the most significant Spanglish performance in American film. He became the first actor to win an award for performing a major part of his role in Spanish in an English-speaking film. Although he is from Puerto Rico, he mastered a regional Mexican accent, and then spoke English with the same accent. His role was also prototypically Spanglish in that his character was at the very nexus of the intersection between the North and South ...

No wonder Benicio did a blurb for the book cover.

:: 5:39 PM [+] ::

your child's child's child?

Been out of town and offline the last couple of days, got home this afternoon. Happy to see Allhiphop.com back from the grave. Sounds like they had trouble with their host. To quote the press release:

We don't quit. We don't even consider that. We don't even joke about that. Allhiphop.com will be on the net forever. Forever sounds long huh? OK how is this ... Allhiphop will be here for your child's child's child ...

Some people think hip hop is a passing moment, another fad. Will hip hop die like disco? Not with b-boys like Mr. Wiggles still making disciples.

:: 11:57 PM [+] ::

the talented mr. paulson

Andrew Paulson and I took a lot of the same classes as undergrads at George Mason. Since he had total recall of lectures, he would skip notetaking and create sketches. In class I used to crane my neck to see what was next ... haunting images would emerge from his sketchbook. Andrew's portfolio is online. I especially like his sketches. And he's working on a storybook of Greek myths.

:: 7:51 AM [+] ::

fixers

The car is in the shop today. They just called with an estimate that's twice what I expected. Sometimes I wonder if my mechanic is crooked, so I bought a book called Making Sense of Car Care a few months ago to set me straight. The book says to (1) find a shop with a good reputation, (2) become a regular customer, and (3) don't act suspicious - just trust them and pay their prices.

Then last night I heard that my friend Jonny got jacked by the same shop earlier this week. They charged him $700 ... but he caught a guy in a lie about the repair and ended up paying only $100. I wish I could do the work myself. I grew up reading books, not fixing machines. Now I sit and talk trash while the fixers go to Disney World.

:: 9:10 AM [+] ::

no kidding

Dan is a kid I played with growing up. Now he's the lead singer of a local punk band. A few days ago he showed up at the front door to ask about an idea. He wants to get a few punk bands together and do a benefit concert for hungry kids in Iraq. I admire that.

:: 5:55 PM [+] ::

kryptonite

I have more respect for the National Enquirer than I do for hip hop mag The Source. Still, I dig what co-owner David Mays says at the front of the April issue:

If I know anything about Hip-Hop at all, I know it has been a powerful force to help bridge the tremendous gaps between the races. I know that Hip-Hop has been the Kryptonite that has helped a generation of white people like myself withstand all the Euro-centric school curriculums, the racial fear tactics used by many mainstream media outlets, and a variety of other ingrained forces in in our society that program our minds in a way that ensures the continuance and permanence of racism in America... Hip-Hop has the power to change the world since it is a culture that works to destroy stereotypes, promote racial unity and empower the most powerless and underrepresented segments of our society.

Then he takes off the gloves:

the way in which Eminem is marketed, promoted and publicized is ... contributing to a whole new generation of white kids that could grow up thinking Hip-Hop is theirs and that they have no responsibility to respect where it truly came from.

That's a hot topic.

:: 9:26 AM [+] ::

parr's nose

Driving in the car this morning, listening to Russ Parr's radio show on D.C.'s own WKYS, got thinking about Mr. Parr's nose for controversy. He gets people talking about race relations like nobody else. The show can feel like fun and games, but there's deep stuff in there. Monday: Russ asks about Bringing Down the House, inciting a debate over Queen Latifah's apron-wearing performance. Today: Russ gets co-hosts and callers to argue about (1) Jewish support for the war on Iraq and (2) freedom of speech and ethnic slurs. Russ goes beyond norms in dominant media and Black media to get people open and straight with each other. His official biography says

Russ' wife and children are paramount in his life. His devotion to his family is paralleled only by his commitment to his listeners and community issues.

I know former President Clinton is a friend of Russ. Maybe the two of us could start a fan club.


:: 5:43 PM [+] ::

tags to riches

It would be cool to meet Gajin Fujita. This piece says he's an artist who

fuses traditional Japanese imagery with contemporary graffiti technique and style to create intensely colored, powerful works.

Another piece has photos of his work and stuff like this:

Q: L.A. is a hyper-hybridized place. You were born in Los Angeles. How was it growing up as a Nisei in a primarily Latino neighborhood?

A: You know, it didn't dawn on me until people brought it up. I just thought it was all normal. I didn't think too much of it, although I did get a lot of flack, my brother and I, for not being Latino... The fact that I grew up in such a different environment than my own heritage was probably a good thing. I made friends with people from many different races. Today I feel rather lucky to have had these kinds of experiences, this way of being raised.

Gajin's advice to young artists?

Keep working on what you feel and stick with what you create. Keep working at what you want to see.

:: 4:24 PM [+] ::

feeling drained

Don't know why I've been so low on energy the last few days. Here Madonna says her publicity stunts in the early 90s were

about money and power and the way things looked - getting people's approval - all that stuff. I was just being an ego-driven nutcase. I thought I was doing a service to mankind, being revolutionary, liberating women. I wasn't.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm an ego-driven nutcase. Maybe that's why I'm drained.


:: 12:37 PM [+] ::