Netflix

No film of its era--barring perhaps Apocalypse Now nearly a decade later--captures so perfectly the virulent maelstrom boiling beneath the sitcom veneer of "American values."* Here we have hippies peacefully bashing each other to rush the stage at Altamont, only to be clubbed by beer-swilling Hell's Angels using pool sticks and bike chains. Grace Slick tries to cool down the crowd with peace and love as the Angels punch Marty Balin of the Airplane in the face, knocking him cold as a virulent drugged-out crowd goes nuts.

The concert footage is excellent--the Stones at the height of their cocksure power are something to see. A few verses into Sympathy for the Devil at Altamont fights break out everywhere as fans rush the stage in Dionysic pandaemonium. Mick, only momentarily lost in that glorious onstage strut, becomes powerless and pleads with the crowd to stop as increasingly enraged Hell's Angels bash, kick, punch, club and eventually stab and kill a concertgoer who brandishes a gun. At the end of Under My Thumb a haggard limp Jagger sings "I pray everything's gonna be alright" over and over, uncharacterstically morose and obviously horrified.

My favorite moments: a fan somehow onstage and on camera with Mick begins to metamorphose into a werewolf under the influence of LSD. He's struggling to hold things together but obviously is about to freak out when two Hell's Angels notice him and throw him into the crowd. An enormous and completely naked woman with eyes on Jagger's unit claws and clubs her way through the crowd to the front of the stage, stomps on and pulls the hair of a couple young women there in an attempt to get to Mick, and is summarily beaten to a pulp by a bevvy of beer-soaked bikers.

Interspersed with the raw footage are shots of the bandmembers watching it all during editing; they're disturbed, anguished, and obviously fascinated by what they're seeing, awestruck by their own inability to control what they helped unleash.

*I love making blanket statements like this. Like I've seen a fraction of the films from that era, and as if captures so perfectly the virulent maelstrom etc. means anything at all!

A Run for all Seasons

I recall fondly traveling through the Alps with the Traveling Joneses and Buf and MA. Each day we'd see how gorgeous and sunny it was in the morning, how there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and off we'd go without raingear of any kind.

It rained every day in the Alps--typically brief squalls, but in Salzburg we really got dumped on. Five days in a row we saw blue cloudless skies and someone would say "should we bring umbrellas?" and we'd say "nah, look at the sky!" We continually got soaked because of plain stubborness, because we refused to acknowledge how quickly the weather can change in the mountains.

Lesson re-learned today, but instead of the lovely Alps I'm in Baltimore. When I left for class at 7:50am it was COLD, like high 30s, overcast, and windy, and I grudgingly wore my winter coat. When I left class an hour later it was sunny and WARM. I walked home, changed into my running gear, and about a half mile into a 6-mile run an astonishing wind began blowing, a dark line of smudge covered the blue sky, and it started snowing. I'm not talking flurries, I'm talking white-out conditions, pellet-like flakes blowing so fast they were parallel to the ground. The baseball hat I wore to protect my eyes from the sun was now needed to keep blinding snow out of my eyes. There was slush on the sidewalks and the roads, and my hands and legs were bitterly cold in the wind and wet. Traffic slowed to a standstill. Then, once I got two miles out, the sun came out again and it was almost HOT. That's when the hail started, then it rained, then it was HOT again, then it got COLD.

What's next?

DeLaying the Inevitable

The news that Tom DeLay withdrew from his re-election effort in Texas was bittersweet. I've grown so used to hating the guy that I find myself faced with a vacuum where once was a surefire outlet for negativity. Sure, we've still got Rove and Cheney and Bush and Rummy and all those other cats in the Whole Sick Crew, so there's no lack of hatred targets. But I have so much to go around. Who will step up and fill the void?

I'm hoping DeLay turns State's Evidence and rats out everybody for everything. I want Reed and Norquist behind bars for starters. Reed will have more reasons than prayer to kneel in prison.

DeLay's claim to be doing this for the good of his own party doesn't wash. I wonder if he was pushed out of the race? Can't imagine who'd have the cojones to try that move.

Are we there yet?

Carlos Castaneda fills in some gaps left by the previous volumes, going back and re-telling in much more detail his initial meeting with Don Juan. For much of this volume I found myself bored and incredulous. It seems that if Carlos had experienced many of these fantastic events so early in his apprenticeship that the surprise he shows later on (ie in the first two books) would be somewhat diminished. Had I the energy I'd go through and double-check all the dates in the third book with the dates in the first two; I'm positive things wouldn't add up, because it seems many of the lessons Carlos gets in this volume were introduced much later chronologically in Volume 2.

But the final third of Journey to Ixtlan satisfies a great deal as Carlos begins to lose his attachment to the world and his hopeless rationality. Eventually he manifests himself as a column of air...

...the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.

Decaffeinated

Last Thursday I ran out of coffee, a bag of strong Seattle's Best the Mrs. brought home from the west coast. Previously I'd been drinking Melita (the only palatable brand my grocery carries) and had finished off a bag of mellow roast picked up in the Yucatan as well. I love coffee, but over the years have whittled down my use to a single cup each morning (by "cup" I mean a 16-ounce mug). As an insomniac I have to watch caffeine intake. If I drink coffee or caffeinated tea after 3pm I'm up all night (and sometimes even without the caffeine).

I don't drink sodas any more and wanted to see what life would be like if I just gave up coffee completely for a while. Today is Day #4, and things aren't pretty.

The alarm went off at 7:15am. I have Arabic class at 8:00. I turned off the alarm and rolled over. Cha shook me 20 minutes later and said "Don't you have class today?" "No," I lied, and didn't wake up until 10:40, and when I finally got out of bed I was disoriented and felt stiff from lying down too long. Sunday all day I felt drained and empty and unable to concentrate, and this gloomy apathy greeted me anew today. I drank a cup of Yerba Mate this morning, which has either much less caffeine than coffee or no caffeine or a xanthine instead of caffeine depending on who you read. At any rate I did my usual weighlifting routine after the mate and felt weak as a baby, and my standard 5.5 mile run around Towson took about 10 minutes longer than usual to finish.

I seriously considered dropping my Arabic class after skipping it, just because I felt so tired and grumpy and unmotivated. Every patron annoys me today. I want to burn something down. I want to punch someone.

I'm glad I tried this experiment. One likes to think "I'm not an addict. I can take coffee or leave it." One is wrong. I have no intention whatsoever of staying off the sauce--coffee is one of life's essential pleasures, after all! But I'm going to try for two decaf weeks just to see what it's like. I might end up incarcerated before then, gleefully drinking bad coffee in the interrogation room, after strangling a Mass Comm major...

Netflix

I've seen this formula a dozen times before: dedicated teacher who cares about the students tries to do new things, inhuman bureaucrat in charge initially resists then takes credit for the results. Reprobrate young hoodlums succumb to the charms of Art and start behaving better. There are a few innovations to the standard mock-up but mostly this is a retread.

Worth a see, however, and a few sniffles await you at the end.

Le Weekend

Spring is fully established--today is our fourth straight in the 70s, and the dogwoods have bloomed. Next up are the azaleas.

Dropped in at the new Daedalus Books in Belvedere Square yesterday after shopping at the Market. Surprised to see a half-dozen former employees working there. I joked with one about "escaping" Borders, and she agreed it was a great thing, but I can't imagine any retail environment is much better than any other these days.

Daedalus escaped the labyrinth and lived, but Icharus had more fun.

Saturday night got my ass spanked at Risk. Note to Self: drive a stake through Yahtzee's heart whenever the opportunity presents itself. Don't let him linger.

Friday did nothing. I took a bath. Baths are great.

Netflix

I had some problems with Fernando Meirelles' overly busy MTV-style fast-edit jump cuts--they mostly distract attention from what is already a complicated narrative--but overall thought The Constant Gardener very satisfying. Rachel Weisz plays Tessa, an NGO researcher who accompanies her husband Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) on his mission to Kenya. While he muddles about in a low-level bureacratic post, she and an African doctor begin unraveling a conspiracy involving British government officials, intelligence operatives, and pharmaceutical giants to use poor Africans as unwitting guinea pigs in drug trials. Only after her murder does Justin realize what Tessa has been up to, and he takes it upon himself to re-create the investigation that led to her death. Very Kafka-esque, very pleasing to the paranoid pallet. Like its thematic forebear The Third Man, The Constant Gardener gives us a good idea of how the world really works. Strong performances from all the leads as well. After Spiderand Red Dragon it's good to see Ralph Fiennes still cleans up nicely.