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"Forget all the myths you've heard about the White House. The truth is that they're not very bright guys and things just got out of control." Deep Throat, to Journalist Bob Woodward, Watergate Scandal, Nixon Administration
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Hi folks,
Doesn't Tony Blair have a hypnotic and seductive
public personae! Not too many 'Blairisms' in his speeches. No
website devoted to his language screw-ups. Soft spoken, reassuring,
he probably reads a mean bedtime story. A lot like Hugh Grant.
He has a gracious demeanour. (Blair would have probably shrugged
off the Monica Lewinski thing more like Hugh did with Divine Brown.)
Hard to believe that he and Bush are saying exactly the same thing.
Here's a interesting experiment you can try at home: listen to
Tony Blair speak first, and then pretend what George W is saying
is a translation of what Blair just said (say, for rednecks).
Then remember: it's not pretend.
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Government
This little tidbit contains all you really need to know about bureaucracy:
Pythagorean theorem: 24 words.
Lord's prayer: 66 words.
Archimedes' Principle: 67 words.
10 Commandments: 179 words.
Gettysburg address: 286 words.
Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words.
US Government regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words.
(Thanks to JUVeldman).
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JOE D. VS GEORGE W.
I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with Alan Howe, from the Sunday Herald-Sun. He's on my newsletter list - although we go head-to-head on most issues involving Iraq - and he respects me (I think) despite my (as he so eloquentitis-ly puts it): " . . . rabid, loony Left, Pentecostal tree hugging, bomb hating, peacenik, where-have-all-the-flowers-gone and if-I-had-a-hammer personality faults." I was happy to see that Mike Edmonds, who writes The Eye section of the weekly Herald Sun, quoted Alan in today's paper. However, Alan, or 'Howie,' as his friends like to call him, won't like the bit where Mike refers to Bush bopping around the oval office singing my song, 'My Home Ain't In The Hall of Fame', while deciding who to next invade. Shades of John Lennon! - sounds like another fellow peace creep in the closet over 'der at the Herald Sun. Good 'onya, Mikey.
You might recall that I mentioned a few newsletters ago that Bush's twin daughters' favourite singer was Robert Earl Keen Jr, who recorded and released this song of mine as his first single. What I wasn't aware of, at the time, was the fact that their father, 'the Dubya,' was also a big fan of Robert Earl's!
" Keen's sensitive, nuanced songwriting -- along with his constant touring -- has won him a large, devoted and very boisterous following that includes First Daughters and noted party animals: Barbara and Jenna Bush, who each have named Keen as her favourite musician, and whose Dad recently declared himself a Keen admirer. . . . the anthemic opening track, (Joe Dolce's) "My Home Ain't in the Hall of Fame" is rapidly emerging as the definitive Keen statement, despite the fact that he didn't write it." LoneStarMusic.com
Yikes! I better deal with this right now - so here is my official:
The kids sound ok though. Here's more about those wild Bush daughters: thefirsttwins.com
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FOLK VICTORIA SHOW
Last reminder to Melbourne folks about one of my rare hard-to-find-as-hen's-teeth live solo performances this Friday, at The East Brunswick Club Hotel, with Julie Levy. (Go to last week's newsletter in the Archive Section at the bottom for more detail.) Some special guests have been threatening to surprise me but we'll have to wait and see. Very limited seated so book. Notice the reasonable admission charge.
Friday July 25th
The East Brunswick Club Hotel
280 Lygon Street, East Brunswick
Start 8.30
Door price: $8 / $6 conc.
Enquiries: 9481 6051
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50 Cent
I've never been a big fan of hip-hop, especially
gangsta-rap, even though US rap group, KRS-1, has done
a superb cover version of one of my songs. I do like the grooves
and I even like the competitive poetic rap-offs, or whatever they
are called. They remind me of those old beatnik poetry slams.
Allen Ginsburg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti would have ruled. Problem
is, nobody today employs intelligent contemporary vitriol in lyrics
like the early Blonde-On-Blonde Dylan did. (Ginsburg
used to say that Dylan was too hung up on rhyme and it would be
his downfall. He probably was correct.) But the main thing
I have always objected to in hip-hop music (and any kind of art,
for that matter) - is lack of vision. The street excuse: 'Telling
it like it is'- is not like it 'IS', anyway. I subscribe to this
'IS': 'Without vision, the people perish. . .' Proverbs
29 v 18. Gospel of St Magoo. An easy example
of vision in a pop song is 'Imagine' by John Lennon. Imagine
. . . Vision. Where's the vision in Eminem? My favourite Eminem
song is 'Stan,' but there ain't a drop of vision in it.
But - it says it like it is: it's a ride off the cliff into oblivion.
The moral, if any: be nice to your fans or else they could self-destruct.
Most hip-hop and rap lyrics also trash women too much for my taste.
Richard Pryor once said, 'When black people call each other
niggas, we know what they mean, and when white people
call black people niggas, we know what they mean.' By the
same measure, when women call each other bitches, it is
definitely not the same as when men call women bitches.
And there's an awful lot of little boys out there talking about
bitches and 'hos. So. . . . fix up those problem areas,
kids, read a few more books, ease up a little on that motor-mouth
machine gun fellatio vocal technique and re-consider the ancient
poetic concepts of silence, space and the . . . . pause. Let those
words breathe a little, so they resonate, (like that ol'
wallflower, Emily Dickinson once said:
. . . and then lets all come back have another try at writing some lyrics that will last longer than a week. (Oh yes, and we might as well learn some singing while we're at it. It is called music, not just 'talking fast'. Probably a lot of potential great auctioneers out there, though.)
A recent article, by Richard Guillatt, in The Age Weekender, on 50 Cent, says it all and more:
" 50 Cent: Heavily tattooed, ultra-muscled
black New York ex-con - real name Curtis Jackson - who gave up
crack-dealing to become a rapper. His debut album, 'Get Rich
or Die Tryin', has sold more than two million copies; the
single In Da Club recently topped the Australian pop charts.
50 Cent has been shot nine times by rival drug dealers;
leaving a bullet fragment in his tongue that gives him a distinctive
slurred rapping style. His only rival for bullet wounds is legendary
gangsta-rapper, Tupac Shakar, also shot nine times. But
as Tupac is dead, 50 Cent is hip-hop's top bad boy. Being
'real' (ie. authentically from the streets) is paramount
in hip-hop, an art form created by the black American underclass.
50 Cent became a ghetto thug after his drug-abusing mother
was murdered when he was six. Ergo, he is the realest of real.
Even The Village Voice and The Face have suggested that 50
Cent - a rapper so real he could die at any moment
- symbolises a self-destructive, self-parodic dead-end for the
entire gangsta-rap genre."
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LOOK AND SEE TIME
As you know, the last US election was lost
in Florida by 870 votes. But 50,000 citizens and voters (mostly
Democrats) were prevented from voting there due to some tricky-dicky
manoeuvring with the ballots. (Al Gore, watching television in
exile, should rightfully be the US President at this very moment.)
If anyone else is confused by what all this actually means, have
a look at the following muti-media presentation which puts it
all together very succinctly:
Download (685K)
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" From the brief time that we did spend
occupying Iraqi territory after the (Gulf) war, I am certain that
had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur
in the tar pit we would still be there, and we, not the
United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation.
This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would
not have been happy to take on."
Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography,
"It Doesn't Take a Hero".
Cost of War and Theft
"Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and
are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Here is a escalating Cost-of-War Counter hypertext link that you can easily add to your websites. Have a look at mine and if you want one, just click on the link and follow the instructions:
(thanks to John Jacobs.)
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Recipe
This is the mother of all recipes. Probably the most complex dish I know and not recommended for amateurs (but, heck! try it anyway!). I first tasted this back in the mid-70s when I was singing country and western songs up and down the clubs on the Russian River, north of San Francisco. I met a folk singer by the name of Rosalie Sorrels and she also liked my song 'My Home Ain't In The Hall of Fame' and recorded it on her album, 'What Ever Happened to the Girl that Was?' She invited me and some friends over to her house and made me my first Mexican mole with a whole turkey! (Basically, a 'chocolate sauce' turkey, with chillies!) Other meats that can be used are chicken, pork or beef. Here is a recipe I've made many times using just chicken pieces, rather than the whole chook.
Ingredients:
16 dried mulato chillies (8 oz.)
5 dried ancho chillies (3 oz)
6 dried passilla chillies or chili Negro (2 oz.)
3/4 cup lard
1 tomato, grilled until skin is blackened, then peeled and chopped.
2 oz. Mexican chocolate (Ibarra), chopped.
10 peppercorns
4 cloves
1/2 tsp. aniseed
1 inch piece of cinnamon (1 tsp. dried)
1/2/ cup sesame seeds
1/2 tsp. coriander seeds
1/3 cup (2 oz) unskinned almonds
1/3 cup (2 oz) raisins
1/2/ onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 stale corn tortilla
2 slices stale bread
1 chipotle chili (canned will do) seeded
2 1/2 qts poultry broth
10-12 pound turkey, or 8 chicken breasts, or 2 chickens
2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup sugar
(WHEW!)
The dish can be prepared over three days.
Day One - Puree
both chilli and tomato mixtures. Make broth. Cover and refrigerate.
Day Two - Sear both purees and combine to complete sauce.
Brown meat and bake in sauce. Cool each separately, cover and
refrigerate.
Day Three - Skin and slice turkey/chicken, heat with sauce,
serve.
Method:
1- Stem seed and de-vein the dried chilis and reserve 2 tbles
of the seeds. Tear all the chilis into large pieces.
2- Heat 1/4 of the lard in pan. Fry chilies for several seconds
until they turn nut brown. Transfer to a bowl, drain fat. Cover
chilies with boiling water, weight them down, soak one hour and
drain.
3- In a separate bowl, break up the tomato. Add chocolate.
4- In a mortar and pestle, pulverize peppercorns, cloves, aniseed
and cinnamon. Add to the tomato mixture.
5- In a dry skillet, toast the sesame seeds, corinder and reserved
chili seeds, one kind at a time, until lightly brown. Add to tomato
mixture.
6- Heat another 1/4 of lard in skillet and add almonds until brown,
about three minutes. Drain and add to tomato mixture. Add raisins
and fry in oil until they puff up. Drain and add to tomato mixture.
7- Add onion and garlic to hot fat and cook 8 minutes. Drain fat
and add to tomato mixture.
8- Add tortilla to hot oil and brown. Break up and add to tomato
mixture. Do the same with the stale bread.
9- Puree drained chilies and chipotle chili in small batches,
adding enough broth to keep them moving in a blender.
10- Puree the tomato mixture the same way. Set aside the 2 purees
separately.
11- Heat 1/4 lard in skillet and brown turkey or chicken which
has been cut into several serving pieces. Transfer browned meat
to a roasting pan.
12- Leave a thin coating of fat in pan. Sear chili puress first,
sizzle until it turns dark brown (5 minutes). Add tomato mixture
next, same procedure (3 minutes).
13- Add 5 cups of broth, partially cover, reduce heat and simmer
about 45 minutes, (Should be the consistancy of heavy cream.)
Correct flavour to taste with sugar and salt.
14- Heat oven to 325 F. Pour suce over turkey or chicken in a
roasting pan.
Bake approx 1 - 1 1/2 hours. Remove meat from the pan and cool
slightly.
15- Skin meat and cut in large slices, remove bones. Arrange meat
on a heatproof serving platter.
16- Before serving, pour sauce over the meat, cover and heat in
350 F oven for 15-20 minutes. Before presenting, spoon sauce over
meat and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Can be served with refried beans, rice, tortillas, a green salad, fresh peas. Mexican beer. A lemon tart makes a nice dessert.
Although it takes awhile to make, it is worth it and you can freeze the sauce in small containers and use it over the course of many months.
It is also possible to buy quite good sauces
from Mexican Food stores which reduces the whole procedure to
simply about an hour's preparation. Or you can make the sauce
from scratch once or twice a year and freeze quantities of it
for casual use at other times. It is truly one of the great festive
dishes.
There is one location I know of in Melbourne for finding ingredients
and also ordering some excellent pre-made sauces:
mexicalifoodstore.com.au
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INCREDIBLE HONDA ACCORD COMMERCIAL
If you haven't seen the Honda Accord UK commerical,
you HAVE to have a look at it.
It's not available in Australia or the US but can be viewed and
downloaded at the sites below.
Before you watch it, it's very important that
you understand:
There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film.
Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you
see it. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something,
usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the
whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and
day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions.
The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete
including a full engineering of the sequence. In addition, it's
two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British
television, they're shelling out enough dough to keep any one
of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it is fast becoming the
most downloaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives
figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free"
viewings (Honda isn't paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!).
When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off
on it immediately without any hesitation -- including the costs.
There are six and only six hand-made Accords in the world. To
the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two
of them to make the film. Everything you see in the film (aside
from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord) are parts
from those two cars.
When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented
on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their
chairs when they found out it was for real.
Oh. And about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords,
the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start
doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet. It
looks a bit weird in the commercial. The voiceover is Garrison
Keillor.
(My friend John Jacobs has done some research on this innovative ad and has sent the following:)
Residents of the U.K. can order a free DVD of the spot which contains a full advert, a music video of the track that plays at the end, an illustrated guide to the parts used and a four minute making-of documentary. They can go here to order the free DVD:
Order DVD (UK residents only) or call the Honda UK Contact Centre at 0845 200 8000 to get a copy. It'll take about two business days to receive the DVD in the post (in the U.K.)
Related articles:
Snopes.com
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