this is getting out of hand...

so here i sit-- i'm even listening to an xmas album, albeit a my morning jacket one, for christ's [ha!] sake-- feeling like little steven on the sopranos doing pacino in godfather III. they keep pulling me back in!

i should explain: for the last couple of days-- this is going to feel good to get off of my chest-- for the last couple of days i have been feeling bad about the couple of columns i wrote a little while back concerning religion, people's religions, etc... well, not feeling bad* as much as feeling misunderstood and that i didn't quite explain myself fully.

for the record, i have no problem with people's religions, up to a point. inasmuch as i don't care, for instance, what kind of music you're into. pulling up next to me at a red light in your car, blasting some dreadful, tuneless horror, adding to the cacophony of things in any given day that i don't want to hear, well that's something different altogether now, isn't it? that's how i feel, basically, about religion.

when someone quietly tells me they go to church on sundays and then leaves it alone, it's like telling me you're an ashlee simpson fan. and i'd never, in good conscience, through the course of a conversation, tell a teenage girl that ashlee simpson-- though she does-- totally sucks and has no redeeming value whatsoever**. nor could i ever look a hardworking dude in the eye and tell him that i think limp bizkit almost singlehandedly destroyed all music as we know it and in the future must be stopped at all costs. i mean, i just couldn't do it***. someone's awful taste in music is totally their own concern and none of my goddamn business.

force me to have to listen to it and you're on your fucking own, on the other hand. watch out.

bringing me back to silvio dante's bad michael corleone impression... my ire had just about calmed when i saw this. for the most part it's hilarious-- let's watch two republican nut jobs try to out- christ each other-- but it got me to thinking: this republic has stood for the better part of 250 years and this is, in a huge respect, is as far as we've gotten? a bunch of people blasting shitty music next to me at a stop light?

~lee.

*insert hilarious catholic guilt joke here. c'mon, you know you wanna.

**i'd be wrong, anyway: the redeeming value is inherent in that teenage girl's appreciation of her [pp. 202. the republic, plato].

***how 'bout those for cliched examples, huh?

it's already been sung, but it can't be said enough -- all you need is love...

john winston ono lennon

9 october 1940 - 8 december 1980

war is over if you want it.

jon and stephen, we hardly knew ye...

"When W.’s history is written, he will be seen as the rebellious teenager crashing the family station wagon into his father’s three most cherished spots — diplomacy, intelligence and the Gulf."

-Maureen Dowd,
from the New York Times
5 December 2007

[i would've said "petulant, rebellious teenager", but that's just me.]

everyday it's something new, isn't it? makes me wish the studios and the wga would reach an agreement so that the daily show and the colbert report would hurry up and get back on the air. there is so much hay to be made out of bush and his administration's response to the new nie report-- somewhere between emily litella: "never mind" and walter in the big lebowski: "fuck it, dude, let's bomb 'em anyway"*-- i mean, it's a crying shame the comedy we're missing out on**.

but i want to try to get away from the politics for the next little while... my blood pressure needs a rest. thanks for hearing me out. here's wishing you have a beautiful day.

~lee.

*come to think of it, that's a pretty apt analogy for the bush foreign policy as a whole: wildly inept, stubbornly misinformed, and mostly deaf.

**also it's a crying shame what's happened to our country in these last six years. sigh.

paul krugman in the international herald tribune...

wanted to pass this along, which i found informative. paul krugman, although i wish he was more assertive when on television, is a guy i really like.

~lee.

got to get you into my life...

good morning, beautiful people. i am writing you from within what seems like a spinal tap smoke effect-- my wife was toasting some bread on the stove and went to take a phone call, leaving the kitchen [and the stove]. fast forward fifteen minutes and it's like apocalypse now in there, martin sheen coming up through the water with the war paint on. apparently i need to change the batteries in my smoke alarm, by the way.

i don't really have any agenda this morning [to be honest i never really have an agenda-- the brilliance just uncontrollably pours outta me. i don't ask questions], except to ask you a favor: won't you let me know that you're out there? leave me comments. lavish me with praise. excoriate me with criticism. affect me in no way with your ambivalence. i want to hear from you. what are you thinking? how are you feeling? what are you wearing? anything you want to hear more from me about? less? want to know where to send your check?

i am going to leave it at that this morning-- the treadmill beckons*. have a beautiful day.

~lee.

*technically the treadmill is more mocking: mocking me for buying the fuckin' thing in the first place.

sunday morning, praise the dawning...

hey there everybody. it is a relatively overcast day here in sf but the wife and i are heading out in a minute for an xmas- related day anyway. before we go, however, i wanted to share with you senator jim webb, democrat from virginia, this morning on meet the press talking about what's going on in iraq. senator webb is a politician whom i really like-- smart, plainspoken, deliberate, maybe even a little bit hostile at times.

so if you're interested in what's going on in iraq, this is a great start. i implore you to watch. and of course in the interest of fairness, i've posted the white house response, taken from you tube. but please watch the meet the press first..

~lee.

meet the press...


NBC Meet the Press Netcast


response from the white house...


ps. also, for your trouble, and because i love you so much, here's a little fun at bill o'reilly's expense.

i'm not there...

i'm not there, the new movie by todd haynes about bob dylan, has just displaced the fisher king and the godfather as my favorite movie of all time. it is visually stunning, emotionally affecting, and sublimely exhilarating. stop reading this and go check your local listings.

alright. in nailing the moving target that is bob dylan, the only real complaint i have about the movie [i'll spare you the summary... this is my favorite write- up of the movie so far] is that... how do i say this? obviously, fundamentally, the movie is an exultation of the man's genius, both of the poetry/ majesty of his songs and also of his enigmatical shape- shfting [evidenced best by the bookend arthur rimbaud allusion-- "i is another"-- and by the billy the kid boxcar speech when he finds woody guthrie's guitar, "i know when i wake up i'm one person, and when i go to sleep i'm somebody else"]. what i take slight issue with is that none of the characters, save the woody guthrie character and maybe billy the kid, seem to exhibit the heart or humanity that i know dylan possesses. the early jack rollins character hints at it, but he is at the time too lost in the adulation by and his subsequent rejection of the protest movement to fully communicate anything other than confusion and wounded pride [the later rollins character i consider too peripheral and don't count].

the robbie, and especially the jude, characters for me don't do anything but reinforce the idea of the artist/ narcissist nexus-- which, of course, i'm sure exists to a certain extent in most cases but this is fuckin' bob dylan we're talking about here. while anybody with a more than cursory knowledge of the dylan mythos knows that in 1966 he often was a prickly and silver- tongued son of a bitch, staying up for days at a time fueled on speed, and heading for total oblivion* [most famously illustrated in don't look back], exactly like the jude character, i still wonder: was that all he was? what about the guy who was, at the very same time, out there singing 'mr. tambourine man'-- still one of the greatest transcendance- seeking songs of all time?

and again, anyone who's read any of the eleventy- billion dylan biographies out there, or really anyone who's ever listened to blood on the tracks, knows that in 1974 bob was in the middle of a divorce. the robbie/ claire portion of the movie parallells this very well**, but again i wonder: are we simply suppposed to intuit that the duality of his nature allows him to be both a complete asshole [i'm starting to sound like my mother here a little bit] in person, and that the songs alone redeem him?

i guess i just feel like i have to defend my man bob a little bit here. i wish there would have been a little more of his humor [and not the demeaning, acerbic humor of the jude character--that nico/ bobby neuwirth scene is pretty ugly] and a little more of his humanity [he's written some of the greatest love songs of all time-- "tomorrow is a long time", "you're gonna make me lonesome when you go", "mama, you been on my mind"!-- where's that fuckin' guy?] in the movie, that's all.

but again, let me reiterate that this is an incredible movie. and the songs are there [never before was i a huge fan of 'going to alcapulco' off the basement tapes, for instance, but the jim james/ calexico version is so haunting and beautiful that it's now a new favorite] to strike some balance, so it's not like the movie disparages dylan or portrays him in an unfair light. in fact, the depictions are quite honest as far as i'm concerned, judged by everything i know about him-- which is a fair amount [i'm no greil marcus, but i've done my homework].

if you're at all interested in the world's greatest living artist, go see it. i'd love to know what you thought.

~lee.

*cate blanchett deserves every bit of glowing press she's been getting for her portrayal of this, and the academy award.

**incidentally, the montage set to the bootleg series' version of 'idiot wind' [one of my top five favorite dylan songs of all time, though i prefer the angrier blood version] in the movie is so terribly sad that it was almost hard to watch. all in all, the movie made me well up at least three times, if not four, but it was during this scene that a few tears actually fell from my eyes. amazing.