January 31, 2006
I'M BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND
... Coretta Scott King 1927-2006 ...
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land;
Oh who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
O'er all those wide extended plains
Shines one eternal day;
There God the Son forever reigns,
And scatters night away.
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land;
Oh who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
No chilling winds or poisonous breath
Can reach that healthful shore;
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land;
Oh who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
When I shall reach that happy place,
I'll be forever blessed,
For I shall see my Father's face,
And in His bosom rest.
...
January 30, 2006
COME AND GET IT
...here's what it looks like facing my end...we literally decorated the entire room around that simple bowl of pine cones...
...the detritus vault: a sizable sidebar thingy for storing place mats, silverware, and--very important--drink coasters...
...another angle...
...view from the front doorway...
...view from the inside corner...
...the chair I use to eat the big piece of chicken...
...one of the side chairs, just as it appeared 100 years ago...
...thanks for tuning in to "this week in new jersey dining rooms"...(just kidding about the pine cones)...
...
January 27, 2006
BREAKING GLASS
...the sound of one hand strumming...
today I'll be delving into the deep dank recesses of my cranial canyon to attempt to describe sound, and how it feels to make sound with your hands. back story: I have a very talented brother-in-law. I'm not entirely sure he himself knows how gifted he is. If he does, then he is one of the more monumentally humble people I've ever met. But regardless of his degree of predilection for declaring his own genius, it is an empirical fact that he has recently gathered sufficient information, which in concert with his practiced artisan's hand, has enabled the attainment of a high degree of excellence in the art of constructing guitar stompboxes. and not some sort of radio shack crystal radio kit-style electronics projects for cub scouts--I'm talking real deal holyfield boutique units. Generally speaking, these are "clones" of celebrated classic models (thus far, I've been throughly impressed by his treble booster, fuzz face, and ross compressor creations), albeit with custom features that provide more sonic depth and fidelity.
Enter my xmas present.
The unit pictured above is based on the Dallas Rangemaster circuit, which has been forever set into the firmament of guitar tone lore by the likes of Eric Clapton (the 1966 "beano" tone was a gibson les paul into a rangemaster into a marshall combo), Brian May (his red guitar--rangemaster--vox ac30), and Rory Gallagher (strat--rangemaster--vox ac30 or fender bassman)...and countless others since these units began to make the scene back in the 60s.
The custom element on this particular box is the second pot that sweeps in a variable degree of full-range sound. Thus: full counter-clockwise, it's the standard rangemaster treble boost circuit; moving clockwise adds in variable quantities of full-range sound, which is a no-brainer if you switch between instruments with varying degrees of high-end (from a telecaster to a les paul, for example).
The sound: here's the difficult part. Because if I were to play for you live, and kick it on, you'd hear the slight increase in volume, and the tweaked lift on the EQ. But your ears would probably miss what my fingers were feeling. Lately I've been using it with the volume/gain at about 2:00, and the tone at about 10:00. To the listener, it's a subtle difference. But when you're running this between a good guitar and a good tube amp, you are operating a very touch-sensitive and electrical combination. Because between "6" and "10" on your guitar's volume pot, you have a very handy means of taking your tone from glassy (!) clean to a lovely germanium-induced crunch. Not math-flunking headbanger metal crunch, but the sort of tone that distorts harder when you hit the strings harder. So, it's important to be using a good tube amp as well--this is fairly useless via anything solid state (and readers of this space already know that I'm no tube snob, but to achieve its special purpose, this particular technology needs be applied to a valve-based circuit).
So, here is the concept: distortion that comes from your own hands--not from a box that says "distortion"; not from an amp that's been wired to go ka-chunk ka-chunk, leaving you with surplus cash to spend at the hairdressers; not from a POD or a plug-in or a sansamp or a doubletriple rectifier detuned cornrow nu-moo what-have-you. You can actually feel the magnets interacting with the circuit as your signal hurtles like gangbusters at those en fuego vacuum tubes at the speed of sound.... kerrraaannnnggggg.....
and the heart and soul of this enterprise? germanium transistors. hand-picked and tested. these things are renowned for their inconsistency, and so you need to know someone (I don't; Paul does) who has access to a large batch, and has run them through a testing regimen, so as to locate the good ones. this things got 'em. and not to get too far ahead of myself, but this new rose has me already thinking about another sort of germanium-based creation: a fuzz face. [here's what nobody at Guitar Center will tell you: the best part of a good fuzz is its clean sound....wha? huh?]
and before I run out of synonyms for awesome, how about that design? we had been talking about the guitar tone cliche "glass" which is often used to describe the sound of a strat, and I mentioned something about those fire emergency boxes, with their instructions to break glass in case of emergency...and whaddya know? I'd forgotten all about that comment, but here it is, brought to life--fire engine red, and it does indeed break "glass" like a mofo...the volume/gain control reads "glass" and the tone pot reads "shatter"...at the top: "cvc custom," the logo of which matches the headstock logo on my custom-built strat...
by the by, these treble boosters were known to be very handy for adding some hair and presence to darker-sounding amps, such as the marshall jtm-45, and are certainly more immediately interactive with class A-type amps, such as the vox ac30 (or my own dr. z carmen ghia), but I've gotten great sounds with my class A/B boogie amp, whose tone is more along the lines of a fender combo. sky's the limit. kiss the sky? we'll see...
monumental kudos to brother paul...
SIDEBAR: my brother Dan is premiering his new show, in Paris, this week, and the work I've seen--oil paintings (and prints?) are breathtaking. Covering new ground entirely. We're very proud of you Dan, and can't wait for you to take the show stateside!! break yr legs......................
...
January 26, 2006
SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
...I'll take two, thanks...
one for me and one for thudstaff, which would afford us each the ability to exchange roles on the fly...the interesting challenge would be amplification...what to use? it might be cumbersome to use an A/B switcher to change amps every time you toggle between guitar and bass, and while modeling technology might enable a preamp/PA kind of solution, I'd prefer to stay in the world of tube amplification...so I'm thinking something like a fender twin (perhaps with 15-inch speakers?)--an amp I'm not usually fond of, but it would certainly provide big powerful clean tones with mild tube coloration, and then we could various stomp pedals to coax each instrument toward its happy place...a good compressor, perhaps an EQ, would also be crucial...it's a good thing our drummer isn't easily confused...
on the guitar end, I'm encouraged by the inclusion of P90s, instead of the usual rickenbacker guitar pickup, which is just a bit too jangly for my style (though I've always been fond of the rick's bass pickup tone)...it's a nice guitar tone, but not me at all...
coming soon--gear reviews on the fedronas treble booster and analogman blues driver mod...a thrillingly mellifluous stratocaster tone recipe...
...
January 25, 2006
HANG ON ST. CHRISTOPHER
...as "Nice Guy Eddie" in "Reservoir Dogs" (1992)...
very saddened to learn of the death of Christopher Penn, an actor whose work I've always enjoyed--his skill manifested by the fact that I never really gave him much thought. He typically melded, with perfect pitch, right into the fabric of whichever story he was serving. And he did have a knack for the dark stuff--the unhinged, murderous brother who suddenly mows down his own family in Abel Ferrara's "The Funeral," or the man whose frustrations with his wife's occupation (sex phone operator) explodes into brutal murder in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts." Always right on the money, always in key...the William Bendix of our day.
...
January 24, 2006
DAY OF THE LORDS
...being a yes-man ROCKS!...
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. "
...
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
-Eleanor Roosevelt
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January 23, 2006
TOO MUCH FUN
...there's something about men in tights...
say you spent your youth wearing the drab khaki of the nazis...and then you decided to enter the priesthood, whereby you found your calling as the enforcer, putting down the liberation theologians, by threat of excommunication, and after a few decades of reviving the most stringent and conservative (opus dei, anyone?) elements of "holy" dogma, you find yourself as acting sheriff of the global program to evade and silence the cries of the thousands of children your own clergy were guilty of raping and molesting.
so after this long and distinuished career, today you find yourself sitting at the throne of power-the capo di tutti capi, the holy see--the dictatorial head of government of the very church you've spent your life working to bend to your will and all-encompassing vision.
so what do you do now?
the answer: acrobats!
god bless us, everyone....
...
January 20, 2006
THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
a few mind chiclets for the weekend:
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by
starving the best part of the mind.
-William Butler Yeats
Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt.
-Robert Green Ingersoll
If you wouldn't write it and sign it, don't say it.
-Earl Wilson
There is no Hell. There is only France.
- Frank Zappa
...rest in peace you bad motherfucker...
..."man on man sex? homoerotic leanings? spunk-nuzzling leathermen? season tickets to the opera? I have no idea what you're talking about, Chris Matthews...perhaps you misheard me...I was referring to lobby reform...by the way, loved that Michael Moore-Bin Laden remark... Chris? Hello? Are we still on?" ...
...
January 19, 2006
GIMME SOME TRUTH
THE FORGOTTEN WOUNDED OF IRAQ
by Ron Kovic
Thirty-eight years ago, on Jan. 20, 1968, I was shot and paralyzed from my mid-chest down during my second tour of duty in Vietnam. It is a date that I can never forget, a day that was to change my life forever.
Each year as the anniversary of my wounding in the war approached I would become extremely restless, experiencing terrible bouts of insomnia, depression, anxiety attacks and horrifying nightmares. I dreaded that day and what it represented, always fearing that the terrible trauma of my wounding might repeat itself all over again. It was a difficult day for me for decades and it remained that way until the anxieties and nightmares finally began to subside.
As I now contemplate another January 20th I cannot help but think of the young men and women who have been wounded in the war in Iraq. They have been coming home now for almost three years, flooding Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center and veterans hospitals all across the country. Paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded and maimed, shocked and stunned, brain-damaged and psychologically stressed, over 16,000 of them, a whole new generation of severely maimed is returning from Iraq, young men and women who were not even born when I came home wounded to the Bronx veterans hospital in 1968.
I, like most other Americans, have occasionally seen them on TV or at the local veterans hospital, but for the most part they remain hidden, like the flag-draped caskets of our dead, returned to Dover Air Force Base in the darkness of night as this administration continues to pursue a policy of censorship, tightly controlling the images coming out of that war and rarely ever allowing the human cost of its policy to be seen.
Mosul, Fallouja, Basra, Baghdad, a roadside bomb, an RPG, an ambush, the bullets cracking all around them, the reality that they are in a war, that they have suddenly been hit. No more John Wayne-Audie Murphy movie fantasies. No more false bravado, stirring words of patriotism, romantic notions of war or what it might really mean to be in combat, to sacrifice for one's country. All that means nothing now. The reality has struck, the awful, shocking and frightening truth of what it really means to be hit by a bullet, an RPG, an improvised explosive device, shrapnel, a booby trap, friendly fire. They are now in a life-and-death situation and they have suddenly come face to face with the foreign policy of their own nation. The initial shock is wearing off; the painful reality is beginning to sink in, clearly something terrible has happened, something awful and inexplicable.
All the conditioning, all the discipline, shouting, screaming, bullying and threatening verbal abuse of their boot camp drill instructors have now disappeared in this one instant, in this one damaging blow. All they want to do now is stay alive, keep breathing, somehow get out of this place anyway they can. People are dying all around them, someone has been shot and killed right next to them and behind them but all they can really think of at this moment is staying alive.
You don't think of God, or praying, or even your mother or your father. There is no time for that. Your heart is pounding. Blood is seeping out. You will always go back to that day, that moment you got hit, the day you nearly died yet somehow survived. It will be a day you will never forget--when you were trapped in that open area and could not move, when bullets were cracking all around you, when the first Marine tried to save you and was shot dead at your feet and the second, a black Marine--whom you would never see again and who would be killed later that afternoon--would carry you back under heavy fire.
You are now with other wounded all around you heading to a place where there will be help. There are people in pain and great distress, shocked and stunned, frightened beyond anything you can imagine. You are afraid to close your eyes. To close your eyes now means that you may die and never wake up. You toss and turn, your heart pounding, racked with insomnia ... and for many this will go on for months, years after they return home.
They are being put on a helicopter, with the wounded all around them. They try to stay calm. Some are amazed that they are still alive. You just have to keep trying to stay awake, make it to the next stage, keep moving toward the rear, toward another aid station, a corpsman, a doctor a nurse someone who can help you, someone who will operate and keep you alive so you can make it home, home to your backyard and your neighbors and your mother and father. To where it all began, to where it was once peaceful and safe. They just try to keep breathing because they have got to get back.
They are in the intensive-care ward now, the place where they will be operated on, and where in Vietnam a Catholic priest gave me the Last Rites. Someone is putting a mask over their faces just as they put one over mine in Da Nang in 1968. There is the swirl of darkness and soon they awaken to screams all around them. The dead and dying are everywhere. There are things here you can never forget, images and sounds and smells that you will never see on TV or read about in the newspapers. The black pilot dying next to me as the corpsman and nurse tried furiously to save him, pounding on his chest with their fists as they laughed and joked trying to keep from going insane. The Green Beret who died of spinal meningitis, the tiny Vietnamese nun handing out apples and rosary beads to the wounded, the dead being carted in and out like clockwork,19- and 20-year-olds.
There is the long flight home packed with the wounded all around you, every conceivable and horrifying wound you could imagine. Even the unconscious and brain-dead whose minds have been blown apart by bullets and shrapnel make that ride with you, because we are all going home now, back to our country. And this is only the beginning.
The frustrations, anger and rage, insomnia, nightmares, anxiety attacks, terrible restlessness and desperate need to keep moving will come later, but for now we are so thankful to have just made it out of that place, so grateful to be alive even with these grievous wounds.
I cannot help but wonder what it will be like for the young men and women wounded in Iraq. What will their homecoming be like? I feel close to them. Though many years separate us we are brothers and sisters. We have all been to the same place. For us in 1968 it was the Bronx veterans hospital paraplegic ward, overcrowded, understaffed, rats on the ward, a flood of memories and images, I can never forget; urine bags overflowing onto the floor. It seemed more like a slum than a hospital. Paralyzed men lying in their own excrement, pushing call buttons for aides who never came, wondering how our government could spend so much money (billions of dollars) on the most lethal, technologically advanced weaponry to kill and maim human beings but not be able to take care of its own wounded when they came home.
Will it be the same for them? Will they have to return to these same unspeakable conditions? Has any of it changed? I have heard that our government has already attempted to cut back millions in much needed funds for veterans hospitals--and this when thousands of wounded soldiers are returning from Iraq. Will they too be left abandoned and forgotten by a president and administration whose patriotic rhetoric does not match the needs of our wounded troops now returning? Do the American people, the president, the politicians, senators and congressmen who sent us to this war have any idea what it really means to lose an arm or a leg, to be paralyzed, to begin to cope with the psychological wounds of that war? Do they have any concept of the long-term effects of these injuries, how the struggles of the wounded are only now just beginning? How many will die young and never live out their lives because of all the stress and myriad of problems that come with sending young men and women into combat?
It is so difficult at first. You return home and both physically and emotionally don't know how you are going to live with this wound, but you just keep trying, just keep waking up to this frightening reality every morning. "My God, what has happened to me?" But you somehow get up, you somehow go on and find a way to move through each day. Even though it is impossible, you go on. Maybe there will be a day years from now, if you are lucky to live that long, when it will get better and you will not feel so overwhelmed. You must have something to hope for, some way to believe it will not always be this way. This is exactly what many of them are going through right now.
They are alone in their rooms all over this country, right now. Just as I was alone in my room in Massapequa. I know they're there--just as I was. This is the part you never see. The part that is never reported in the news. The part that the president and vice president never mention. This is the agonizing part, the lonely part, when you have to awake to the wound each morning and suddenly realize what you've lost, what is gone forever. They're out there and they have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives and children. And they're not saying much right now. Just like me they're just trying to get through each day. Trying to be brave and not cry. They still are extremely grateful to be alive, but slowly, agonizingly they are beginning to think about what has really happened to them.
What will it be like for them when one morning they suddenly find themselves naked sitting before that mirror in their room and must come face to face with their injury? I want to reach out to them. I want them to know that I've been there too. I want to just sit with them in their room and tell them that they must not give up. They must try to be patient, try to just get through each day, each morning, each afternoon any way they can. That no matter how impossible and frustrating it may seem, how painful, regardless of the anxiety attacks and nightmares and thoughts of suicide, they must not quit. Somewhere out there there will be a turning point, somewhere through this all they will find a reason to keep on living.
In the months and years that are to follow, others will be less fortunate. Young men and women who survived the battlefield, the intensive-care ward, veterans hospitals and initial homecoming will be unable to make the difficult and often agonizing adjustment.
Is this what is awaiting all of them? Is this the nightmare no one ever told them about, the part no one now wants to talk about or has the time to deal with? The car accidents, and drinking and drug overdoses, the depression, anger and rage, spousal abuse, bedsores and breakdowns, prison, homelessness, sleeping under the piers and bridges. The ones who never leave the hospital, the ones who can't hold a job, can't keep a relationship together, can't love or feel any emotions anymore, the brutal insomnia that leaves you exhausted and practically unable to function, the frightening anxiety attacks that come upon you when you least expect them, and always the dread that each day may be your last.
Marty, Billy, Bobby, Max, Tom, Washington, Pat, Joe? I knew them all. It's a long list. It's amazing that you're still alive when so many others you knew are dead, and at such a young age. Isn't all this dying supposed to happen when you're much older? Not now, not while we're so young. How come the recruiters never mentioned these things? This was never in the slick pamphlets they showed us! This should be a time of innocence, a time of joy and happiness, no cares and youthful dreams--not all these friends dying so young, all this grief and numbness, emptiness and feelings of being so lost.
The physical and psychological battles from the war in Iraq will rage on for decades, deeply impacting the lives of citizens in both our countries.
As this the 38th anniversary of my wounding in Vietnam approaches, in many ways I feel my injury in that war has been a blessing in disguise. I have been given the opportunity to move through that dark night of the soul to a new shore, to gain an understanding, a knowledge, an entirely different vision. I now believe that I have suffered for a reason and in many ways I have found that reason in my commitment to peace and nonviolence. We who have witnessed the obscenity of war and experienced its horror and terrible consequences have an obligation to rise above our pain and suffering and turn the tragedy of our lives into a triumph. I have come to believe that there is nothing in the lives of human beings more terrifying than war and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth.
We must break this cycle of violence and begin to move in a different direction; war is not the answer, violence is not the solution. A more peaceful world is possible.
I am the living death
The memorial day on wheels
I am your yankee doodle dandy
Your John Wayne come home
Your Fourth of July firecracker
Exploding in the grave
...
January 18, 2006
FORTUNE TELLER
...a pithy vignette depicting my personal exodus from city to suburb?
OR...
...an apocalyptic preview of the 2006 election season?
...
January 17, 2006
BLUES POWER
I recently sent off one of these...
...to this guy...ANALOG MAN
that's a whole lot of tube screamers... the deal: he's going to swap out the low-quality/low-cost components and transform it into a conduit of tone nirvana...
this is the hope, springing, as it does, eternal. thus far, I have accumulated a small drawer full of overdrive, distortion and fuzz pedals that see little to no usage....
the blackstone mosfet overdrive is truly gorgeous-sounding, but really works best with my HD super90-loaded tele. to use it with humbuckers, you really need to tweak it all over again...when I was using the tele full-time, great...but now, not so handy....likewise, the keeley DS-1 is a superb fire-breathing distortion device--for humbuckers...my frankenstrat with the duncan JB in the bridge sounds awesome in a big rawk sort of way, but my standard spec white strat merely sounds louder with it, and I already have sufficient supply of "get loud" options in the chain. So that's out. I do like the fulltone fulldrive for the strat, but just the first stage, uncompressed. I did a nifty mod whereby you put washers under the push-pull switch, so it can't be depressed accidentally, and therefore it's always in uncomp'd mode...that works great for rhythm work and lower volume lead playing--lovely on a strat's neck pickup, but I've only been fond of the second boost channel on rare occasions...while the assumption is that it would constitute a second "lead" channel, in some ways its muddy qualities make it better suited for extra chunky rhythm playing. in any case, I prefer the BD-2 for the second stage lead thing (and/or another, heavier rhythm sound--it reacts well to the strat's volume pot). it's tighter, more tweakable (perhaps because it isn't in comp-cut mode?)...and since these two pedals seem to be working the same general EQ space, I can use each one for a specific role, and they also seem to work together quite nicely...
others that idle on the sidelines, awaiting a recording session "let's try this one" grab, include the fulltone ultimate octave (awesome for some things, especially bass--a really nice fuzz tone, but not versatile enough for my style/everyday use), prescription yardbox (another fun fuzz tone, would be more handy if I were involved in a 60s garage, yardbirds type of affair), proco rat2 (an old friend, in need of a new switch)...jeez, think maybe it's time for a potlatch? could be...
in any case, I'm excited about two upcoming additions--a germanium boost pedal, constructed by my ever-so-talented brother-in-law (yes yes, there IS a santa claus), and the newly modded BD-2 pedal. Expect big official reactions and evaluations in this space in days/weeks to come, and perhaps some photographs of the newly-assembled guitar rig down in the studio. Yup. Duct tape and everything.
...
January 13, 2006
FIGHT THE POWER
..."the fierce urgency of now"...
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
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...no posts until Tuesday....Happy Birthday Dad...
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January 12, 2006
BREAKING THE LAW
...a two-fer today. I just read this:
The Impeachment of George W. Bush
it's well-reasoned, substantive, and raises some questions I'd like to have answered, whether or not they actually manage to impeach the president, which seems like a long shot at this point, despite the strong arguments for doing so.
there is, of course, one really good argument NOT to impeach Bush, which can be expressed with two rather terrifying words: President Cheney.
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LISTEN TO THE MUSIC
...a recent shot of me, listening to my iPod and gettin' jiggy...
My iPod has such a small storage capacity that I can actually list what I've been listening to, and chances are good that I'll have an entirely different set of music installed by next week. Here's what's been in heavy rotation this week:
Babyshambles “Fuck Forever” & “La Belle Et La Bete”
The Bad Plus “Anthem for the Earnest”
Bill Frisell “East/West” disc 1, esp. “Shenandoah” & “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”
Cassandra Wilson “Someday My Prince Will Come”
Christy Moore “Live at the Point”
Galactic “Late for the Future”
Jeff Beck “Live at BB King Blues Club”
Jim Campilongo “American Hips” (I deleted the rest of the album and kept the title track, which swings like a mofo...)
Joe Strummer “Coma Girl” (I'm convinced that this would have been a minor radio and/or MTV hit, had he lived...just who are the "excitement gang?" we'll never know...)
Martin Taylor “Cotton Tail”
Medeski Martin & Wood “The Dropper” & “Combustification Remixes”
Nels Cline “The Giant Pin”
Paul Weller “C’mon Let’s Go”
Paul Westerberg “Crackle and Drag” (both versions)
Peter Murphy “Crystal Wrists”
PJ Harvey “To Bring You My Love” (the album. how could I have missed this one so completely? GENIUS...)
Richard Thompson “Cooksferry Queen”
Sonic Youth “Genetic” (Lee Ranaldo)
The Supersuckers “Jackalope Eye”
The Weakerthans “Aside”
The Zombies “Friends of Mine” (stereo mix)
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January 11, 2006
THAT'S RIGHT (YOU'RE NOT FROM TEXAS)
...the Academy Award nominations were announced this morning...
A king can stand people fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking.
-Will Rogers
I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues,
And public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
-Thomas Jefferson
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
War would end if the dead could return.
-Stanley Baldwin
We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as
deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.
-Robert Hayden
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're
dead.
-Leo Rosten
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
-Thomas Jefferson
If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a
computer to be moral.
-Samuel P. Ginder
Those who put out the people's eyes, reproach them for their blindness.
-John Milton
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
-Graham Greene
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to
worry about the answers.
-Thomas Pynchon
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January 10, 2006
FICTION ROMANCE
...don't sweat the details...
Last week I finished reading "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey. It was a xmas present, and I hadn't even heard of it, despite its bestseller status and deification by the unfat oprah...
My review: loved it. It was a moving account of how a man rid himself of the demons of addiction, and emerged with the chance at a new life.
Yesterday I read the Smoking Gun piece debunking its nonfiction status and suggesting that Mr. Frey had made most of his story up, that he hadn't actually experienced much of what he wrote about. Today, the NYT ran an article on this.
Fuck that noise.
I don't care. Could not care less if I tried. This entire world is a patchwork of lies and untruths. From the government on down to our own families, we are a race of fibbers, prevaricators, and lying cheating thieves. So what if a nonfiction author added some extra sugar to the recipe? I'm sure that it happens all the time. This sort of microscope only ever gets applied to bestsellers, and let's face it--many people (if I stop to think about it, I guess I lean this direction too) just flat out dislike the unfat oprah. I do think it's just a little bit creepy that so many thousands of people will buy a book just because she says to, and in fact the first thing I did after unwrapping my book was to remove the "O" sticker.
Or perhaps there are those who consider this his come-uppance for describing an alternative route around the 12 steps, whereby an atheist finds his own path to sobriety without playing the superstitious "higher power" game and instead discovers the calming influence of Lao Tzu.
Ummm...hmmm....on the other hand, probably not. They just hate Oprah.
However, none of this matters. The story is inspiring, and the inner turmoils it describes--the extraordinary difficulties, and rewards, of trying to get a hold of your life and make it right by achieving sobriety--ring true. It is as if the weather man got crucified by saying that the hurricane would come from the east. But wait! they all said--it actually came from the south, you LIAR! Perhaps. but it's still a major hurricane and it still leveled the town, didn't it? so who gives a shit how it got there?
I don't. I think "A Million Little Pieces" will inspire and help thousands of people. So, go ahead and lie, Mr. Frey. As if we need more evidence of your humanity...
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January 09, 2006
FUCK FOREVER
...It's the story of a coked-up pansy who spent his nights in flights of fancy...
hey kids, remember when Kate Moss had to go into rehab and all the fashionistas went into a frothy palaver and all the fashion houses fired her for about 10 seconds and all of us cried why why oh why do the supermodels need to have the coke&dope when the whole world is at their feet taking snapshots?
this tale of addiction and redemption, of the rich becoming slightly less rich and then rich again, of a boyish girlchild (in love with a girlish boychild) for whom couture became a gilded medicine chest prison, of luxury polluting other luxury, of magazines flying off newsstands to titillate the barely literate--this fable of the shiny and the not-so-shiny was brought to you by former Libertines singer and bon vivant, Kate's on-again, off-again, passed-out-again lovetoy, Pete Doherty.
In the midst of all the brouhaha and flashbulbs, you might have read that he is in a band called Babyshambles. and after reading of his alleged $1,000/day coke&dope habit, along with a not-so-great duet with Dame Elton at the Live8 crapfest, disregarded that fact out of hand.
You shouldn't. Babyshambles rocks. their new single, "Fuck Forever" is one of the most catchy and beguiling pop confections I've heard in years. the album is called "down in albion"...I hear a very strong Kinks influence in the proceedings, which to my ears is always welcome.
Meanwhile, Kate Moss is still a spiritless clothes hanger with a crashing bore 12-step regimen to attend to. Leave her be. Check out Babyshambles while they're still current, before Pete Doherty's appetites make him a footnote.
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January 06, 2006
KNOCK ON WOOD
...pick hit of the week...
seems like I've been doing nothing but bitching all week....the church, the greed of the pezzonovante, the suckiness of christmas and the suburban momsters, and naturally the sizable population of good humans who died during the last 365 days, suggesting a heightened concentration of evildoers and crass opportunists with whom one must prepare to do battle with, in a new year that would appear to resemble a steaming vat of boiling flesh, a chasm of chaos, flying limbs, desperate violent fundamentalism, and helpless victimized children...
at least I have my health...
so, let's cap off the week on a positive note!!! Bill Frisell is a guy I've been aware of for some time, going back to the 80s. He used to be on ECM and make boxed-in 1980s-style new agey jazzesque music recordings using overmuch warbled chorus guitar tone. to my ears, the sonic equivalent of too much starch on the collar...but I kept paying attention mainly because he was into using long delays and loops even back then, as was I. but he, being the professional, had the good gear, while I, being the college student/neophyte, had homemade workarounds and cheap, malfunctioning delay pedals...then I got a digitech 8-second delay/sampler, and it got easier, but I still didn't have the capability of the electro-harmonix 16-second box that he (and Robert Fripp) used, nor did I have the chops. or the band. or the recording contract.
anyway, I was still on the outside looking in at this would-be frisell phenomenon. every time I checked back it was the same thing--a solidbody (!) electric, all out-of-tune-sounding with that bad chorus effect, and playing some slightly angular lines with some other berklee-sounding cats who had obviously done all their modal etudes and arpeggio drills like good little boys and girls. he seemed to be progressing toward something (e.g., no more ECM), but I was still unconvinced.
during this period I was also becoming increasingly disenchanted with the elevator music extrapolations of Pat Metheny (another chorus hound), who, despite having a world-class band, with brazilian elements and percussion and upright bass and a keyboard god and the ability to tour larger halls, began putting out "group" recordings that swerved hard away from swing and into the aspirin world of muzak (during this fallow phase, he actually had the gall to castigate, in print, his genre neighbor Kenny G)...once I heard his music in the aisles of an A&P, the fandom thereof was over. I stopped worrying about contemporary jazz guitar and began collecting Wes Montgomery organ trio sides.
then one christmas, my record store-managing brother-in-law gave me a few cd's, one of which was a recent frisell album (with the most excellent Greg Leisz on various six-string and steel guitars). no more chorus. now more wanking. covers of country and pop and traditional songs (some of which reminded me of the more catholic Charlie Haden approach). more emphasis on the composition. and while the bad chorus was gone, the wicked cool looping stuff remained. Bill had finally figured it out. And after two decades, we finally seemed to be orbiting the same bright orb.
This more recent release, "East/West," is a live recording. I am still just as intrigued and enthralled with the looping and delays (especially since the live format would suggest no overdubs), but now I just let it wash over me (I still have that digitech box, but I've also changed my approach)...and his continued mining of more traditional song forms (I heard it through the grapevine; shenandoah [!]; a hard rain's gonna fall [!!!]), while keeping with his obviously rigorous jazz chops background, works just beautifully.
aside from the use of loops, another aspect of his work that I find in common with mine is the goal of liberating "jazz" guitar tone from the gibson humbucker neck pickup prison. Frisell's tone is seemingly emanating from both pickups--neck and bridge--and furthermore, he is not trying to make the guitar sound like a saxophone...he throws in liberal amounts of natural and artificial harmonics, uses open strings (I have an instructional video by Tal Farlow in which he actually warns against the use of any open strings!), and isn't afraid of stating a simple melody simply. or perhaps I should just say that he makes it sound easy. those chord inversions he uses for the passing tones and melody on "grapevine" are pretty sophisticated...
also, he has a record called "Good Dog, Happy Man," which suggests to me that he is a dog person. as am I. and you know every dog in the kennel is quite lost until they find their own distinctive bark. Bill found his...
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January 05, 2006
STREET HASSLE
...the best deli in the world...
Funny how I never hear about the finest fromagerie or winery in France closing due to opportunistic landlords, or about the bankruptcy of Scotland's greatest distillery due to high rents. The Swiss aren't shuttering their world-class chocolatiers so they can replace them with Gap stores and Wal-Marts. Nor are the Tuscan farmers aren't being driven off their land because parking lots are more profitable.
Yet NYC's greatest deli (and since we, as a city, purvey the very best deli cuisine on Earth, we're talking creme de la creme here) is going to close because it's landlord is able to dictate a $9,000 a month rent increase.
Carnegie Deli is a tourist trap. Katz's is a cafeteria. We're talking world-class pastrami here...sandwiches which are steeped so high, it's a challenge to eat a half, and then you'd better make a beeline for home & couch, because your body is going to enter a digestive coma as if you're a lion who just gorged on antelope and needs a shady spot...
as Al Goldstein would say, the cholent is magnificent...what's cholent, you ask? well, your opportunity for finding out is about to vanish (unless you have a very talented jewish auntie)...
old-world appointments like real seltzer dispensers, table service from veteran professional waiters (no listless college students or wannabe actors here)...this is an irreplaceable landmark of NYC culture. And it's going away.
Giuliani/Bloomberg supporters should be happy. This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when the robber barons hold sway. Want to see the ugliest building in NYC? Just go to the place where the Palladium and Julian's Pool Hall used to stand (14th between 3rd & 4th). Rudy put it there. or come back in a few years to ponder what kind of business took over at the corner of 2nd avenue and 10th street (McDonald's, perhaps?). You won't be feeling like that sated lion on the savannah. you will feel quite the opposite: empty.
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January 04, 2006
ANTI-POPE
...the current pope, in hitler youth regalia, 1943...youthful indiscretion?...
"How The Pope Is Chosen"
by James Tate
Any poodle under ten inches high is a toy.
Almost always a toy is an imitation
of something grown-ups use.
Popes with unclipped hair are called "corded popes."
If a Pope's hair is allowed to grow unchecked,
it becomes extremely long and twists
into long strands that look like ropes.
When it is shorter it is tightly curled.
Popes are very intelligent.
There are three different sizes.
The largest are called standard Popes.
The medium-sized ones are called miniature Popes.
I could go on like this, I could say:
"He is a squarely built Pope, neat,
well-proportioned, with an alert stance
and an expression of bright curiosity,"
but I won't. After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and then he's the new Pope.
He is then fully armed and rides through the wilderness alone,
day and night in all kinds of weather.
The new Pope chooses the name he will use as Pope,
like "Wild Bill" or "Buffalo Bill."
He wears red shoes with a cross embroidered on the front.
Most Popes are called "Babe" because
growing up to become a Pope is a lot of fun.
All the time their bodies are becoming bigger and stranger,
but sometimes things happen to make them unhappy.
They have to go to the bathroom by themselves,
and they spend almost all of their time sleeping.
Parents seem incapable of helping their little popes grow up.
Fathers tell them over and over again not to lean out of windows,
but the sky is full of them.
It looks as if they are just taking it easy,
but they are learning something else.
What, we don't know, because we are not like them.
We can't even dress like them.
We are like red bugs or mites compared to them.
We think we are having a good time cutting cartoons out of the paper,
but really we are eating crumbs out of their hands.
We are tiny germs that cannot be seen under microscopes.
When a Pope is ready to come into the world,
we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well.
Some of the full-bodied popes are a million times bigger than us.
They open their mouths at regular intervals.
They are continually grinding up pieces of the cross
and spitting them out. Black flies cling to their lips.
Once they are elected they are given a bowl of cream
and a puppy clip. Eyebrows are a protection
when the Pope must plunge through dense underbrush
in search of a sheep.
--J. T. (1943--)
I got nothin' today...kudos to the Bad Plus, whose worthy blog is today eminently blogworthy, and to James Tate for his fine art...
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...and just like that--nothing led to something....
2PM: this just in (watch for related papal excommunications of judges, litigants and/or jury if this case turns in the wrong direction):
The Times (online.uk) January 03, 2006
Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest
From Richard Owen in Rome
AN ITALIAN judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed.
The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.
Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence.
Yesterday Gaetano Mautone, a judge in Viterbo, set a preliminary hearing for the end of this month and ordered Father Righi to appear. The judge had earlier refused to take up the case, but was overruled last month by the Court of Appeal, which agreed that Signor Cascioli had a reasonable case for his accusation that Father Righi was “abusing popular credulity”.
Signor Cascioli’s contention — echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites — is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.
Signor Cascioli’s one-man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last April when he lodged his accusations of “abuse of popular credulity” and “impersonation”, both offences under the Italian penal code. He argued that all claims for the existence of Jesus from sources other than the Bible stem from authors who lived “after the time of the hypothetical Jesus” and were therefore not reliable witnesses.
Signor Cascioli maintains that early Christian writers confused Jesus with John of Gamala, an anti-Roman Jewish insurgent in 1st-century Palestine. Church authorities were therefore guilty of “substitution of persons”.
The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius mention a “Christus” or “Chrestus”, but were writing “well after the life of the purported Jesus” and were relying on hearsay.
Father Righi said there was overwhelming testimony to Christ’s existence in religious and secular texts. Millions had in any case believed in Christ as both man and Son of God for 2,000 years.
“If Cascioli does not see the sun in the sky at midday, he cannot sue me because I see it and he does not,” Father Righi said.
Signor Cascioli said that the Gospels themselves were full of inconsistencies and did not agree on the names of the 12 apostles. He said that he would withdraw his legal action if Father Righi came up with irrefutable proof of Christ’s existence by the end of the month.
The Vatican has so far declined to comment.
THE EVIDENCE
The Gospels say that Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, preached and performed miracles in Galilee and died on the Cross in Jerusalem
In his Antiquities of the Jews at the end of the 1st century, Josephus, the Jewish historian, refers to Jesus as “a wise man, a doer of wonderful works” who “drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles”
Muslims believe Jesus was a great prophet. Many Jewish theologians regard Jesus as an itinerant rabbi who popularised many of the beliefs of liberal Jews. Neither Muslims nor Jews believe he was the Messiah and Son of God
Tacitus, the Roman historian who lived from 55 to 120, mentions “Christus” in his Annals. In about 120 Suetonius, author of The Lives of the Caesars, says: “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, Emperor Claudius expelled them from Rome.”
January 03, 2006
I AM WOMAN
...I wish I weren't so busy minding my place...
“Play Date”
A one-act blog play
starring:
a man whose daughter is having a play date which he did not expect to be a part of
a woman whose daughter is playing with his daughter
the setting: suburban New Jersey. Two toddler girls are standing in front of a television, intermittently bouncing and dancing along with what's on the screen. Two adults sit behind them on living room furniture.
Her: what’s this video we’re watching?
Him: dan zanes.
Her: don’t you hate it when you see a guy like that, and he’s probably making millions and millions of dollars?
Him: Um, no, actually. Show biz is hard work.
Her: we saw Laurie Berkner with the kids once.
Her: how old would you say that woman is?
Him: no idea.
Her: don’t you hate it when women of a certain age do that?
Him: do what?
Her: wear pigtails like that and try to dress like they’re 22?
Him: um, no. I think she looks really cute.
Her: oh of course, yes, she’s very pretty. But pigtails?
Him: she’s a musician…
Later…
Her: so you know those ladies who don’t work, but still put their kids in daycare?
Him: nope.
Her: well, they all go out to lunch together.
Him: you don’t say.
Her: they love to go to lunch together every day. live to go to lunch together.
Him: the ladies who lunch...
Her: Anyway, I went to one of those restaurants they go to, and they had all these well-dressed, educated black men waiting on the tables there.
Him: …
Her: and I thought, maybe we can get some of those girls from the daycare center down there, to get them together. Not all of them, of course, but the ones who are, you know, from good homes…
Him (gets up abruptly): I’ll be in the basement…
The children, now dressed in princess Barbie outfits, form a parade and exit stage right. A loud bang, perhaps a shot, is heard offstage. The woman looks up.
Her: is that your washer? We had the worst time with ours last year. Flooded the whole basement…
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Hey there faithful blog reader! Are you like me? Do you wish you could continue to contribute to the war on christmas but can't shake the feeling that you'll be fighting alone, since the whole world has had its christmas holiday and is now enjoying what many like to call the new year? Well, fear not! This web site will be acting as a clearinghouse--throughout 2006--for new and exciting ideas and initiatives, as we diligently (and merrily!) prepare for this year's not-to-be-missed War on Christmas 2006!
send us your ideas, your conspiracies, your lunatic delusions!! We'll get them up on the site toot-sweet!
simply click on the "email" tile under the stratcat photo in the righthand column, and make it so!!
santa, reindeer, those demonic elves, baby jesus and all those suburban target practice hummels, are for now and in perpetuity, in the crosshairs!!
You can bet cash money--it's gonna be a stone gas honey!!! ho ho ho!!!
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