it's like the old bidnisss thing, you have to look people in the eye or you're somehow a shifty character. in fact the opposite is true. every politician is a master of looking people in the eye and lying, so is every bidniss man. a moral, feeling, thoughtful person is not only dishonest but probably a terrorist. unbelievable adverts from amtrak, thanks for sharing linh. i remember when amtrak was not only fun but romantic. well, keep on fighting these pieces of shit every step of the way!
Linh: If anyone should be "sweating and looking nervous during transportation to and fro, its our State politicians, based in Harrisburg, those who are always smiling, "calm as a bomb" with daily per diem, & on-the-take from fatbacks.
Since you can be fidgety at times, while at other times look perplexed or even sweat, I'll call 911 as soon as I see you next.
As for Ali, he has a beard, like the guy in the video, and he also wears his knitcap indoors (mostly because I refused to turn up the thermostat during his recent visit), I'll speed dial 911 if he dares to lurk around my already unsafe neighborhood.
Linh: Caught me, you stinker! I was hoping to hide the stress & strain from having been fired, along with the brutal fallout from the U.S. economic "recovery."
Suppose the only way I could get "Straight" is to listen to either a Wilbur Mills or Netanyahu speech? Do you have their email addresses, cell phone numbers?
Ali: If you shave and wear yarmulke, I will give you sanctuary here in Taylor.
Linh, you asshole. How dare you call 911 on me? I'm growing a longer beard, a much longer mustache, I'll wear a white kufi, and just hang around your door all day.
Chuck, how about if I only wear a yarmulke but not shave?
Ali: The choice is clearly yours, but at least curl your sideburns?
Reflected more on Linh's pictures... It's strange when I look back to my August 1971 flight from Pittsburgh, to New Orleans, to Fort Polk LA, Basic Training and A.I.T. I remember a long-hair "draftee" who sat across airplane aisle, dressed in a Hell's Angels type costume, leather cap. After a stewardess served him coffee, he asked for liquor. Snooty, she walked away, he looked at me, said, Man, I'd like to fuck her!"
At the time, of course, well dressed & scary people in U.S. government, corporations and military were lambasting Vietnam.
In late-1980s, the late-Senator Eugene McCarthy mailed me his (autographed) book of poems, called "Other things and the Aardvark."
I don't enjoy taking-up readers precious time, but here is one of the poems by Eugene McCarthy, titled, "VIETNAM MESSAGE," and which I know lines by heart.
"We will take our corrugated steel out of the land of thatched huts.
We will take our tanks out of the land of the water buffalo.
We will take our napalm & flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows matches.
We will take our helicopters out of the land of colored birds and butterflies.
We will give back your villages and fields your small and willing women.
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles.
We will trust you to your gods, some blind, some many-handed."
McCarthy's humane poem would probably makes some Amtrak and T.S.A. officials a little nervous, but "many-handed," they get well compensated, get over it quickly.
I know McCarthy meant well, but consider "We will take our napalm & flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows matches."
"That scarcely knows matches"?! The image of Vietnam as so primitive and practically stone aged is outright racist, and both sides, pro and anti-war, lapsed into it.
As for "We will give back your villages and fields your small and willing women," it's another grotesque stereotype. Since American G.I.s dealt with prostitutes and were hounded by them, they made the leap that all Vietnamese women were whores, or "willing." With all due respect, fuck you, McCarthy! What if I say your wife and daughters are "willing"?
Even Martin Luther King blundered when he talked about the all-so-primitive Vietnamese, "They [American soldiers] wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals."
No thousands of Vietnamese children wandered naked like animals in any town. That just didn't happen.
Reviewing Apocalypse Now Redux in the Guardian, I wrote in 2001:
"As Willard's boat travels up the Nung river, the only signs of civilisation are two US army bases and, in the new extended version, a French plantation. This has nothing to do with the Vietnam of reality. As anyone who has been there will tell you, Vietnam is (and was during the war) grossly overpopulated. Rivers and roads are lined with settlements. The US, by comparison, is more wild. Another thing a visitor to Vietnam can readily see is the ubiquity of the written language - that is, of civilisation. Signs and banners are everywhere. None of this is apparent in any of the panoramic shots of Apocalypse Now. Coppola hasn't just withheld speech from the Vietnamese, he has also banned them from writing."
Linh: I am glad having mentioned Eugene McCarthy's poem and getting your knowledgeable angry response, and in addition, an uncomfortable truth about M.L.K.
Perhaps you & maybe others can understand my mis-perceptions, especially during current times when Muslims are portrayed as savage ragheads who want to kill us? My former Branch Manager, the guy who canned me, an intelligent chemist, "family man" & Boy Scout leader, wanted the U.S. to bomb and turn Middle East desert lands into GLASS.
There is something very basically wrong here (evil?) on how Americans are thought to THINK. M.L.K. and Eugene McCarthy were raised on such mis-education, and given an opportunity to reflect upon what you said, they MIGHT see their error, "racism?" I don't really know, but there are much WORSE examples being set today by respected U.S. politicians & Ministers... and their wives and children are busy enjoying "heaven" but are actually getting souls fucked over.
Thanks for including your take on the award winning Coppola deceit. Sorry to slow down "Carlisle Now."
hi linh and chuck, i totally agree with linh's assessment, for what my two cents are worth. just last night i listened to a john pilger speech in chicago called 'the invisible government', and stopped when he talked about 'the deer hunter', the only film, he said, that had ever moved him to blurt out in disgust in a crowded theater. i stopped there, as i said, to watch the deer hunter, a movie i don't think i've ever seen and that never appealed to me. i'm two thirds through, but yes, oh yes, it is disgusting. the 'gooks' are stupid and vicious, the invading army of whites is so deeply... human. i didn't know mccarthy wrote, but was shocked to see that poem. match sticks are essentially made of gun powder, no?--which the chinese, very much right next door to vietnam, created. i have only visited vietnam for one week, but remember, like in especially thailand but also korea and japan, the buddhist temples scattered around (despite all the bombing of twenty years before). vietnam and thailand--well, i suppose the philippines too--were the only southern asian countries i visited, but they felt pretty wild, and vietnam especially struck me as a bit scary. still, other than witnessing one isolated incident of violence, the people were very friendly, especially considering that i looked like their recent occupiers/genocidal maniacs. pilger is excellent on both the vietnam war and hollywood propaganda, for anyone who may not know. to quickly go back to the deer hunter, another point to be made is that NOTHING in the movie is authentic. they're supposed to be russian second generation americans--who, christopher walken, meryl streep and robert deniro??? it's supposed to be in PA--nothing was shot there, but mainly in cleveland, and also, bizarrely, in washington, for the snow capped mountain scene of deer hunting, which looks and feels nothing like PA. thanks!
so painful to watch. still five minutes to go. fucking actors! shameless. the scenes where you're presumed to feel the most, the 'profound' scenes, are the worst. i'm at the omlette and 'god bless america' part. it's what they do to average people, joe schmuck, cannon fodder, the members of the work force, the members of the armed force, and the police force. a celebration of ignorance, of stupidity! these are supposed to be people who feel deeply, who care very much, who are real, who have heart. in reality, what are they? high-level actors, the most soulless of the soulless. who we must worship, for their looks if not their acting ability----if not their great moral strength, courage, and character! on a side note, the vietnam scenes are filmed in thailand, presumably the canal scenes, very murky and romantic to the naive. to my very limited knowledge, there's no similar quarters in saigon. also, russian roulette is the, it seems, point almost of this garbage. maybe we're supposed to feel some deep sense of life itself, good versus evil (wonder which we're supposed to be--see c. walken after being madeover by the wicked, soulless, evil, drug addict vietnamese). there are i think four major scenes of russian roulette in this movie. as if this game could have any meaning at all--oh yes, it DOES in fact make some people try it. according to wikipedia, it was probably first done by a russian officer in ww1---hardly a cultural tradition. what shite
The Deer Hunter was popular around Scranton area, and after the film's Byzantine Catholic wedding & at the reception, people drank "Rolling Rock" beer and that became a big seller in my favorite bar at the time, "Julia's Hotel," Old Forge, PA.
Eugene McCarthy wrote quite a lot of political poetry, one in particular that appeared in the shady "New Republic," and criticized Oliver North & arms for hostages crimes. Can not recall the poem's name though; something about the "antediluvians," but it upset the G.O.P.
I must go on You Tube and listen to John Pilger's "Invisible Government" speech (Chicago). Thanks, Larry. Recall talk like that circulating after C.I.A. whacked J.F.K., but most locals were hypnotized about a need to stop Communism "Domino Effect" in Vietnam.
As a politically deaf teenager, late-1960s, I recall lots of scary U.S. Rulers around, and not to flippantly anoint the late-Gene McCarthy, but Hunter S. Thompson volunteered to write speeches for him and the other notable "anti-war" presidential candidate, R.F.K.
Hard to pin down with any ideological tag, Hunter ran for Woody Creek sheriff, rode with Hells Angels, drank with them in wild bars which Linh would like, smoked lots of pot, and in the end covered the N.F.L. before taking himself out.
You want a good laugh, Larry? Go on You Tube and search Hunters S. Thompson interview with Rolling Stones, Keith Richards. Stoned, Thompson surprises the Stone and they talk about the "afterlife."
There are no Vietnamese or Vietnam in Deer Hunter or Apocalypse Now. Megalomaniac Coppola declared that his stupid movie "is not about Vietnam; it is Vietnam," and racist Americans with their Heart of Darkness vision of Vietnam believe him.
And they believe the Russian Roulette scenes as profound and iconic of the Vietnam War, although there was no instance of it ever occuring in Vietnam, and it certainly could not have happened in the heart of Saigon anyway.
I can go on for hundreds of pages about the lies Americans of all political stripes tell about Vietnam. Psychotically narcissistic, they don't see or hear anything but themselves, and just as they had/have no interest in Vietnamese, they do not see Iraqis, Syrians or Ukranians either. They're not interested in any voices but their own. All of these "great" American movies about Vietnam are just about "me, me, me, suffering white man!"
Back to Deer Hunter, here's Peter Arnett's take, "In 'The Deer Hunter,' the enemies in Vietnam are ugly, sadistic torturers, while the American boys are noble; the Saigonese are greedy gamblers willing to bet on an American's blowing his brains out--they show no concern over the imminent collapse of their city. The movie was touted as being a major antiwar film, but it is packed with simplistic answers to some of our most enduring anxieties."
hey chuck, thanks for writing back. i feel like i'm in a bar--but i generally drink alone, cause i must stay home and it's much cheaper. yes, hope you check out that pilger, i'm watching another one now, called 'real possibility of nuclear war' re ukraine, also very good. i loved hunter s. thompson way back when, in the early nineties i think, when i was hanging with some wild men, took a summer off from philly and lived in taos new mexico. anyway, i did like him, and just may still, though i'm wary of all 'celebs', especially the sexy kind that johnny depp plays. but let's face it--he wrote 'fear and loathing in las vegas'--what a f'n brilliant book. haven't seen and wouldn't see j. depp's version. as with so many, eg madonna as frida khalo, i feel an obvious truth--that to hollywood, absolutely nothing is sacred. also, nothing beautiful, despite what they pretend to. chatting to a friend yesterday about some of this stuff, eg how hollywood actors are very often of a certain type. i think tom cruise is an excellent prototype: fucked up, loveless childhood, will do anything to be famous, and yes, would happily partake in initiation rites. (by the way, i've watched several hours worth of 'conspiracy theory' documentaries and speeches the past few days, from ole dammegard on jfk, mlk, john lennon, bob marley, whitney houston assassinations, to hours of david icke, to something called i think 'everything you believe is wrong' by i think a lloyd pye or something, about bigfoot and planetary collisions and that humans don't belong here, with lots in there on the royal family...) lots of satanic stuff in there, very convincing, and i thought of some of your recent comments. did read his hell's angels way back, excellent. as to rfk being anti war, read gore vidal on him, i suggest. vidal hated him, thought him totally phoney. not the gv had every claim to purity himself, though he does come across that way. still, best friends with hillary??? and jfk??? satan anyone? will try to get to that thompson richards video. like something i read richards said fairly recently, how much he hated the royals. he had an interview about five years ago i came across, this is right before i moved back to england to experience real culture shock (it takes usually several years before it hits one, so most people don't know anything about it), he was talking of jean-luc goddard's documentary on the stones (i've only seen the openinng 'sympathy for the devil' bit--very good), but he said some sort of put down like he was french new wave art house etc, but coming to england he had no idea, he was in way over his head. this is a very correct, deep, telling comment on the british and how they view themselves, including their blood cousins in usa and elsewhere, who still have the highest admiration for it (generally, who has the biggest balls). getting sidetracked.... cheers chuck
The only American movie where wartime Saigon is recognizable is "Green Eyes," and if you want to see a more recent Saigon, then check out Tran Anh Hung's "Cyclo," and his "Vertical Ray of the Sun" is a very sensitive portrait of Hanoi.
Gontran de Poncins' From a Chinese City: In the Heart of Peacetime Vietnam is a wonderful book about Cho Lon, the Chinese section of Saigon. In 1955, de Poncins moved into a residential hotel in Cho Lon and stayed for a year, if I remember correctly, and his account was first published in France in 1957.
P.S. I wonder how Vietnamese managed to smoke so many Gauloises, 555 and their own thuốc lào without matches, and I suppose they managed to create one of the most sophisticated and varied cuisine in the entire world by rubbing stones together for fire. That must have been a real bitch!
thanks linh, it's all so obvious once you see it. but they keep the blinders on you for so long! (unless you're directly effected, like any minority, like what your icelandic friend said about john wayne--coincidentally, john pilger in the video i'm watching just mentioned green berets and how he laughed out loud till he and friend were literally chased down some alabama street back to hotel in around 68). it comes down to childhood. kids can't conceive of the low lifes out there, and these extreme lowlife shit bags are the ones who take advantage of this. it goes right up to and through (for most) adulthood. look at the democrats with kerry or obama, trying to sort of 'read' him, like, oh he says this but he means something else---and no matter how bad, rotten, murderous, evil the man is, they can NEVER EVER get it through their skulls! (not putting people down really--i've experienced all this myself, and it's very hard at first to get your head around, before it's totally obvious--though what's not obvious, to me at least, is what's REALLY, really going on). i can say on a personal level, that i know, other than you and a few poems you've recommended, no vietnamese writers. but i have studied in some depth japanese culture and chinese, and am very impressed. when i lived in korea, america, even new york, seemed slow, just bumpkins. it is a whole universe, that would be just fine--no, much better than that--if the west didn't exist at all. but, as i had at the time, a steady diet of hollywood movies, it's incredible the shit you believe. cheers!
we're writing at the same time so i've missed your latest additions, linh. will try to check out recommendations. these shameless people make me sick!!!!! and what really happened in vietnam, and cambodia and laos? american armed forces FIREBOMBED it. john pilger somewhere quotes the dow chemical spokesperson who BRAGS of napalm that it sticks to the skin 'like shit to carpet', this gelatinous gasoline they set fire to countless women, children, and yes, men with. who has died for these crimes? i mean people like kissinger, rumsfeld, bush, obama, clintons, wolfowitz, breshnev, blair. it was that and agent orange and land mines. our democratic legacy in those innocent countries. who, i ask, deserves this? or a nuclear bomb on their city? or hellfire missiles, or drones, or daisy cutters, white phosphorous, etcetera. i've already proclaimed my, for now, ignorance of vietnamese culture, literature and arts (other that what i briefly saw myself). but bertrand russell, i remember, saw the chinese as a nation of artists and poets. could vietnam be the same? i've read some translated ancient chinese stuff, tu fu and older. the southern, outlying regions, it seemed (if memory serves), were considered uncouth, barbaric. presumably all along the southern and western borders, including vietnam. but much of that surviving stuff, no, all probably, was just their own jingoistic propaganda(?) well, i'm in way over my head. still, nice to think of some of my enjoyable asian studies, especially involving drinking loads of sake!
I wouldn't call China, Vietnam or any other country a "nation of artists and poets," for I'm sure those types can only be a small minority anywhere. Likewise, the percentage of Vietnamese who are insensitive assholes is probably not significantly higher or lower than anywhere else.
thanks for clarification, linh. you're absolutely right. i in fact didn't particularly notice a single sensitive type in my week in vietnam, but i was stoned, drunk, hanging out in bars, doing this type of 'experience' of the country. i didn't even bother going to the tunnels around saigon, though i did hit the war museum and looked at the famous us embassy from outside. but it was all rough, shady, nighttime characters i saw. would love to go back. also, great comment on vietnamese food. i've also experienced this on federal boulevard in denver many times, top notch.
When you talk about Vietnam being scary and wild, you're talking about its urban environment, for Vietnamese cities, especially Saigon, are a lot crazier and, in many ways, more intimidating than Western ones. Saigon is an overwhelming place, but I wonder, though, how it compares to Manila and Bangkok, which you've experienced and I haven't.
As for Vietnamese cooking, the real hardcore stuff is to be found inside Vietnam, of course, and not anywhere else. In Hanoi, the fish for one dish was traditionally found in only a confluence of two particular rivers, because the fierce currents forced it to swim harder, thus firming up its meat. Now, that's very picky, eh?
Speaking of being sensitive, when I told my Saigon friends that regular Americans would take poetry writing classes, they were delighted and even astounded. To them, it was proof that Americans are very sensitive and cultured.
hey linh, i'm enjoying this conversation, but i'm out of beer and it's making me hungry! great stuff about hanoi river fish. my wife would love it--total food snob. i must say i appreciate top food immensely, but when single live on stuff like ramen and kraft macaroni and cheese (must say i doctor it well enough--condiments, condiments, condiments!) your comment on saigon sent a chill down my spine. oh it did feel wild! we hired two guys with motorcycles to take us around, like taxi drivers. they would wait outside the bar for hours, they would take us to find opium (my obsession for the trip--i just wanted to try it, never again!). there didn't seem to be traffic lights at that time in saigon, late 90s, so at every intersection there were motorbike and bicycle collisions. almost no cars, just bikes. i loved that. also, you could smell week all over the place, and we regularly smoked it at sidewalk cafes. i spent very little time in manila, but it struck me as truly scary, and it seemed bigger than saigon, but i don't know. bangkok had the beautiful temples of all gold as it had never been bombed, also its canal system, also khao san road (ruined as always by hollywood and leo dicaprio), backpacker central but still pretty darn fun, especially after leaving miserable, frozen seoul for a t shirt in february! the big red light district in bangkok was definitely scary, and i had a frightening experience with a bouncer in a bar there, and wasn't sure i'd get out. very big city. i can't say, also i spent a few days of my week in vietnam in nha trang, a much more manageable city, though also wild! it's the motorbikes as much as anything, and the carefree girls without helmets conversing as they fly down the road, weaving this way and that. this may be a faux pas, but my first impression of vietnamese food was the french influence--our first morning there, breakfast was an omlette, a baguette, and macaroni and cheese. i was in heaven, as in korea they don't eat cheese or bread. in nha trang we had a six or seven course meal at an outdoor restaurant that was big enough to be on both sides of a street--they had to cross the street to bring our food. there was fish grilled at the table with some kind of steak, a seafood soup, an outrageous gigantic salad.... i'm forgetting several things, also the fantastic coffee and drinks. cheers man
If you had decent baguette, then that's not usual, for normal Vietnamese baguettes are pretty lame, and its croissants laughable. As for cheese, most Vietnamse are only familiar with Laughing Cow, that mushy stuff that comes in wedges. The nouveau riche of Vietnam, though, are becoming snotty at astounding speed, and all the international delicacies are flooding in to serve these elites.
In Hanoi in 1995, I had a locally produced feta cheese, and that was very unusual.
A normal Vietnamese breakfast is sticky rice or noodle soup. In Saigon, you can get a hot bowl of noodle soup at six in the morning.
Eating is the main pleasure among Vietnamese, and that's why you can see them eat at any time, and it's rare to see them just drinking beer without eating. Of course, the poorest hardly eat, but that's another story.
A standard Vietnamese greeting is, "Have you eaten?"
In my Some Kind of Cheese Orgy, there's a longish poem about the ubiquity of the verb "eat" in the Vietnamese world view and conversations.
hi again, (just slept some) yes, looking back, my breakfast--and let's not forget the coffee with sweetened condensed milk (at least i think that's what it was)--well, as i came from korea the sight of a baguette and mac and cheese (this was in a decent hotel) alone made my mouth water. also, ask my wife, i'm famously not fussy, especially when it comes to junk food. when she was in america she was obsessed with our sugar intake, especially in bread. son's hungry--will get back to you soon!
the junk food that as a good american i grew up on--it's comfort food, from boxed stuff like pizza potatoes and mac/cheese to pizza, to cheesesteaks, white flour/bread is pretty ubiquitous, also some sort of cheesy flavored sauce or actual cheapo cheese, but sugar is the thing. being in england, i've been having some great cheeses, especially a certain stilton (blue) which to me is heaven itself. smelly cheeses like brie don't sit well with me. but 'some kind of cheese orgy' has on many occasions described my life! linh, i wish you would document your 'hundreds of pages' of propaganda atrocities regarding vietnam. this is what ward churchill does re the american indian, and i think it's very important work. i know you're mainly a poet, but just a thought--maybe you could be an ethnic studies professor they can later put on trial and take tenure from. i'll stop now. thanks
Evolving from the picture of nervous man on Amtrak train..., O man, I enjoyed this series of comments so much and LEARNED.
Larry (in particular): Having followed his career origins, it's painful (but $-natural) to see Johnny Depp become a teenage idol. Depp was friends with Hunter S. Thompson, and he paid Hunter's funeral expenses, including ashes fired out of a cannon, with weird Senator Wind-Surfer John Kerry in attendance.
A question? By chance did you see Jim Jarmusch's 1995 black & white film, titled, "Dead Man"? As in Linh's gripping picture, the movie begins with Depp riding a train across prairie, and his parents dead, he arrives in the town of Machine where he's supposed to have a job at a steel factory. Suddenly the train stops, and white PASSENGERS are aroused, stand, open windows and begin shooting at buffalo herd. The movie is very weird-good, and I am unsure about its meaning, but Jarmusch seems to look at Wall Street America and its doomed destiny much like Linh Dinh does. Neil Young, an artist whose also been all over the political spectrum, does "Dead Man" wild ass soundtrack.
Finally, Larry, months ago, Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article on the book "JFK and the Unspeakable," by James W. Douglass. I bought the book "good-used" at amazon.com, and after reading ESPECIALLY the bone chilling chapter called "Washington and Dallas," I learned exactly WHY Paul Craig Roberts shot the thought of James W. Douglass from a cannon and traversed miles of C.I.A. cover-up and ended up in our Taylor Borough mailbox. Hard to control even MY own reading list, but "JFK and the Unspeakable" is scary and should make well-dressed & smiling Ruling Class nervous.
Palm Sunday today, hosannas on back of a Scranton school bus, pax in terra! Thank you.
Fellows: Don't like being mysterious, and will cut bullshit about Palm Sunday reference, above. "Jade Helm 15" Special Ops. coming soon to southern cities, and not riding upon back of a mule. Look at Alex Jones interview with San Antonio police chief? Thanks!
hey, thanks chuck, also thanks for reminding me of jfk and the unspeakable, i'm sure that's the one that got me going for a while and i was always blabbing to innocent bystanders about. saw that depp film and liked it. also, my sort of original trinity was dyland, neil, and lou reed, interrupted for a while by rush (from about 83 to 88). so i used to anyway know neil extremely well, along with the others. oh the many memories. esp first moving to the mountains, colorado, age 20, and meditating on the west with neil, everybody knows this is nowhere and much more, danger bird (zuma), tonight's the night. man, he was so powerful. have had some mixed feelings about all of them in recent years, to be expected. will try to get to the alex jones interview. watched some of him on my 'weekend within the week' of high density conspiracy theories, this was one with him making fun of british voices and saying something about paul revere would get a blunderbuss, put it to so and so's chest and boom. pretty f'n funny. cheers to all
Larry: Few months ago, Neil Young planned a performance in Tel Aviv, but cancelled. I really like his music, but his politics of late are all over-the-place -- Knee jerk, "Shaky" released "Let's Roll" after 9/11. Hard to figure, but for me, there's no better rock & simple beautiful music in western hemisphere.
Used to smoke weed to Neil's classics during days of no Corporate randoms, I love song "Helpless" sometimes I feel that way, and his "Greendale" L.P. is very cool.
Thanks for responding... if possible, try and stay with James Douglass and the riveting chapter, "Washington & Dallas." !
must make correction, i meant brzinski, not breshnev, though no doubt he had his moments too, but evil mastermind brzinski's who i meant, active at least since carter. also, linh, forgot to mention the half day or so spent at a lovely temple in saigon, where the first thing that greets you is a pond full of turtles. beautiful on a rainy day. also, my favorite temples in bangkok were what i called 'mom and pop' temples, sometimes four to a street, just a smallish room, very warm from hundreds of say 2 1/2 ft high candles. very peaceful and beautiful. but you know, i've yet to try pho. also, to rudy, mosul 76 i can imagine was amazing--you're lucky to have seen it before whitey bombed it to oblivion and killed its sons and daughters.
quick last comment for chuck. the early nineties was the last neil young album i bought. don't know greendale at all. did see jonathan demme's documentary, quite good. an ex girlfriend from philly moved to nyc and was demme's secretary. we chatted on the phone--once she said, guess whose number is in the rolodex? (neil's) i begged her, for sure, but she would've been fired if she'd given me it. also, 1989, i was living outside pittsburgh when found out neil would finally play snl. i called nyc information, they put me through, and went looking for neil (it was the afternoon of the show). they came back and said he'd just stepped out but could they take a message? i said tell him dan from pittsburgh called. oh, days of stupid youth! his reagan stuff was terrible. and, like all these guys, it heavily influences youth, me of course included, though i give myself some credit in always treating it like the joke it is. i must say i hated that 911 song when i heard it. also, was grateful to linh for stuff he wrote a few years back on dylan, the phoney. still, i agree with you chuck on neil's simplistic beauty. i too loved helpless, esp as i grew up in michigan, very close to ontario where that song's set. speaking of, forgot to mention i grew up in the world corporate headquarters of dow chemical, midland MI--utterly oblivious to all their crimes it goes without saying. how i hate them now.
37 comments:
An email from Frankfurt, Germany:
Hey Linh,
thanks - gosh, is this real?? A guy is sweating and looking nervous and THAT in itself is suspicious??
If we applied that on German subways there'd be a hell of arrests - lächerlich! (Ridiculous).
And people fall for this?? I always thought Americans to be kinda naive, but if the majority really believes this..... puh.
Anyhow - thanks for posting this
Take care
Christian
.
it's like the old bidnisss thing, you have to look people in the eye or you're somehow a shifty character. in fact the opposite is true. every politician is a master of looking people in the eye and lying, so is every bidniss man. a moral, feeling, thoughtful person is not only dishonest but probably a terrorist.
unbelievable adverts from amtrak, thanks for sharing linh. i remember when amtrak was not only fun but romantic. well, keep on fighting these pieces of shit every step of the way!
Linh: If anyone should be "sweating and looking nervous during transportation to and fro, its our State politicians, based in Harrisburg, those who are always smiling, "calm as a bomb" with daily per diem, & on-the-take from fatbacks.
Yo Chuck,
Since you can be fidgety at times, while at other times look perplexed or even sweat, I'll call 911 as soon as I see you next.
As for Ali, he has a beard, like the guy in the video, and he also wears his knitcap indoors (mostly because I refused to turn up the thermostat during his recent visit), I'll speed dial 911 if he dares to lurk around my already unsafe neighborhood.
Linh
Linh: Caught me, you stinker! I was hoping to hide the stress & strain from having been fired, along with the brutal fallout from the U.S. economic "recovery."
Suppose the only way I could get "Straight" is to listen to either a Wilbur Mills or Netanyahu speech? Do you have their email addresses, cell phone numbers?
Ali: If you shave and wear yarmulke, I will give you sanctuary here in Taylor.
Linh, you asshole. How dare you call 911 on me? I'm growing a longer beard, a much longer mustache, I'll wear a white kufi, and just hang around your door all day.
Chuck, how about if I only wear a yarmulke but not shave?
Ali: The choice is clearly yours, but at least curl your sideburns?
Reflected more on Linh's pictures...
It's strange when I look back to my August 1971 flight from Pittsburgh, to New Orleans, to Fort Polk LA, Basic Training and A.I.T. I remember a long-hair "draftee" who sat across airplane aisle, dressed in a Hell's Angels type costume, leather cap. After a stewardess served him coffee, he asked for liquor. Snooty, she walked away, he looked at me, said, Man, I'd like to fuck her!"
At the time, of course, well dressed & scary people in U.S. government, corporations and military were lambasting Vietnam.
In late-1980s, the late-Senator Eugene McCarthy mailed me his (autographed) book of poems, called "Other things and the Aardvark."
I don't enjoy taking-up readers precious time, but here is one of the poems by Eugene McCarthy, titled, "VIETNAM MESSAGE," and which I know lines by heart.
"We will take our corrugated steel out of the land of thatched huts.
We will take our tanks
out of the land of the water buffalo.
We will take our napalm & flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows matches.
We will take our helicopters
out of the land of colored birds and butterflies.
We will give back your villages and fields your small and willing women.
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles.
We will trust you to your gods,
some blind, some many-handed."
McCarthy's humane poem would probably makes some Amtrak and T.S.A. officials a little nervous, but "many-handed," they get well compensated, get over it quickly.
Yo Chuck,
I know McCarthy meant well, but consider "We will take our napalm & flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows matches."
"That scarcely knows matches"?! The image of Vietnam as so primitive and practically stone aged is outright racist, and both sides, pro and anti-war, lapsed into it.
As for "We will give back your villages and fields your small and willing women," it's another grotesque stereotype. Since American G.I.s dealt with prostitutes and were hounded by them, they made the leap that all Vietnamese women were whores, or "willing." With all due respect, fuck you, McCarthy! What if I say your wife and daughters are "willing"?
Even Martin Luther King blundered when he talked about the all-so-primitive Vietnamese, "They [American soldiers] wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals."
No thousands of Vietnamese children wandered naked like animals in any town. That just didn't happen.
Reviewing Apocalypse Now Redux in the Guardian, I wrote in 2001:
"As Willard's boat travels up the Nung river, the only signs of civilisation are two US army bases and, in the new extended version, a French plantation. This has nothing to do with the Vietnam of reality. As anyone who has been there will tell you, Vietnam is (and was during the war) grossly overpopulated. Rivers and roads are lined with settlements. The US, by comparison, is more wild. Another thing a visitor to Vietnam can readily see is the ubiquity of the written language - that is, of civilisation. Signs and banners are everywhere. None of this is apparent in any of the panoramic shots of Apocalypse Now. Coppola hasn't just withheld speech from the Vietnamese, he has also banned them from writing."
Linh
Linh: I am glad having mentioned Eugene McCarthy's poem and getting your knowledgeable angry response, and in addition, an uncomfortable truth about M.L.K.
Perhaps you & maybe others can understand my mis-perceptions, especially during current times when Muslims are portrayed as savage ragheads who want to kill us? My former Branch Manager, the guy who canned me, an intelligent chemist, "family man" & Boy Scout leader, wanted the U.S. to bomb and turn Middle East desert lands into GLASS.
There is something very basically wrong here (evil?) on how Americans are thought to THINK. M.L.K. and Eugene McCarthy were raised on such mis-education, and given an opportunity to reflect upon what you said, they MIGHT see their error, "racism?" I don't really know, but there are much WORSE examples being set today by respected U.S. politicians & Ministers... and their wives and children are busy enjoying "heaven" but are actually getting souls fucked over.
Thanks for including your take on the award winning Coppola deceit. Sorry to slow down "Carlisle Now."
hi linh and chuck,
i totally agree with linh's assessment, for what my two cents are worth. just last night i listened to a john pilger speech in chicago called 'the invisible government', and stopped when he talked about 'the deer hunter', the only film, he said, that had ever moved him to blurt out in disgust in a crowded theater.
i stopped there, as i said, to watch the deer hunter, a movie i don't think i've ever seen and that never appealed to me.
i'm two thirds through, but yes, oh yes, it is disgusting. the 'gooks' are stupid and vicious, the invading army of whites is so deeply... human. i didn't know mccarthy wrote, but was shocked to see that poem. match sticks are essentially made of gun powder, no?--which the chinese, very much right next door to vietnam, created.
i have only visited vietnam for one week, but remember, like in especially thailand but also korea and japan, the buddhist temples scattered around (despite all the bombing of twenty years before). vietnam and thailand--well, i suppose the philippines too--were the only southern asian countries i visited, but they felt pretty wild, and vietnam especially struck me as a bit scary. still, other than witnessing one isolated incident of violence, the people were very friendly, especially considering that i looked like their recent occupiers/genocidal maniacs. pilger is excellent on both the vietnam war and hollywood propaganda, for anyone who may not know. to quickly go back to the deer hunter, another point to be made is that NOTHING in the movie is authentic. they're supposed to be russian second generation americans--who, christopher walken, meryl streep and robert deniro??? it's supposed to be in PA--nothing was shot there, but mainly in cleveland, and also, bizarrely, in washington, for the snow capped mountain scene of deer hunting, which looks and feels nothing like PA.
thanks!
so painful to watch. still five minutes to go.
fucking actors!
shameless.
the scenes where you're presumed to feel the most, the 'profound' scenes, are the worst. i'm at the omlette and 'god bless america' part.
it's what they do to average people, joe schmuck, cannon fodder, the members of the work force, the members of the armed force, and the police force. a celebration of ignorance, of stupidity! these are supposed to be people who feel deeply, who care very much, who are real, who have heart. in reality, what are they? high-level actors, the most soulless of the soulless. who we must worship, for their looks if not their acting ability----if not their great moral strength, courage, and character!
on a side note, the vietnam scenes are filmed in thailand, presumably the canal scenes, very murky and romantic to the naive. to my very limited knowledge, there's no similar quarters in saigon.
also, russian roulette is the, it seems, point almost of this garbage. maybe we're supposed to feel some deep sense of life itself, good versus evil (wonder which we're supposed to be--see c. walken after being madeover by the wicked, soulless, evil, drug addict vietnamese). there are i think four major scenes of russian roulette in this movie. as if this game could have any meaning at all--oh yes, it DOES in fact make some people try it. according to wikipedia, it was probably first done by a russian officer in ww1---hardly a cultural tradition.
what shite
Larry: Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
The Deer Hunter was popular around Scranton area, and after the film's Byzantine Catholic wedding & at the reception, people drank "Rolling Rock" beer and that became a big seller in my favorite bar at the time, "Julia's Hotel," Old Forge, PA.
Eugene McCarthy wrote quite a lot of political poetry, one in particular that appeared in the shady "New Republic," and criticized Oliver North & arms for hostages crimes. Can not recall the poem's name though; something about the "antediluvians," but it upset the G.O.P.
I must go on You Tube and listen to John Pilger's "Invisible Government" speech (Chicago). Thanks, Larry. Recall talk like that circulating after C.I.A. whacked J.F.K., but most locals were hypnotized about a need to stop Communism "Domino Effect" in Vietnam.
As a politically deaf teenager, late-1960s, I recall lots of scary U.S. Rulers around, and not to flippantly anoint the late-Gene McCarthy, but Hunter S. Thompson volunteered to write speeches for him and the other notable "anti-war" presidential candidate, R.F.K.
Hard to pin down with any ideological tag, Hunter ran for Woody Creek sheriff, rode with Hells Angels, drank with them in wild bars which Linh would like, smoked lots of pot, and in the end covered the N.F.L. before taking himself out.
You want a good laugh, Larry? Go on You Tube and search Hunters S. Thompson interview with Rolling Stones, Keith Richards. Stoned, Thompson surprises the Stone and they talk about the "afterlife."
Thank you!
Hi x larry,
There are no Vietnamese or Vietnam in Deer Hunter or Apocalypse Now. Megalomaniac Coppola declared that his stupid movie "is not about Vietnam; it is Vietnam," and racist Americans with their Heart of Darkness vision of Vietnam believe him.
And they believe the Russian Roulette scenes as profound and iconic of the Vietnam War, although there was no instance of it ever occuring in Vietnam, and it certainly could not have happened in the heart of Saigon anyway.
I can go on for hundreds of pages about the lies Americans of all political stripes tell about Vietnam. Psychotically narcissistic, they don't see or hear anything but themselves, and just as they had/have no interest in Vietnamese, they do not see Iraqis, Syrians or Ukranians either. They're not interested in any voices but their own. All of these "great" American movies about Vietnam are just about "me, me, me, suffering white man!"
Back to Deer Hunter, here's Peter Arnett's take, "In 'The Deer Hunter,' the enemies in Vietnam are ugly, sadistic torturers, while the American boys are noble; the Saigonese are greedy gamblers willing to bet on an American's blowing his brains out--they show no concern over the imminent collapse of their city. The movie was touted as being a major antiwar film, but it is packed with simplistic answers to some of our most enduring anxieties."
.
hey chuck,
thanks for writing back. i feel like i'm in a bar--but i generally drink alone, cause i must stay home and it's much cheaper. yes, hope you check out that pilger, i'm watching another one now, called 'real possibility of nuclear war' re ukraine, also very good.
i loved hunter s. thompson way back when, in the early nineties i think, when i was hanging with some wild men, took a summer off from philly and lived in taos new mexico. anyway, i did like him, and just may still, though i'm wary of all 'celebs', especially the sexy kind that johnny depp plays. but let's face it--he wrote 'fear and loathing in las vegas'--what a f'n brilliant book. haven't seen and wouldn't see j. depp's version. as with so many, eg madonna as frida khalo, i feel an obvious truth--that to hollywood, absolutely nothing is sacred. also, nothing beautiful, despite what they pretend to. chatting to a friend yesterday about some of this stuff, eg how hollywood actors are very often of a certain type. i think tom cruise is an excellent prototype: fucked up, loveless childhood, will do anything to be famous, and yes, would happily partake in initiation rites. (by the way, i've watched several hours worth of 'conspiracy theory' documentaries and speeches the past few days, from ole dammegard on jfk, mlk, john lennon, bob marley, whitney houston assassinations, to hours of david icke, to something called i think 'everything you believe is wrong' by i think a lloyd pye or something, about bigfoot and planetary collisions and that humans don't belong here, with lots in there on the royal family...) lots of satanic stuff in there, very convincing, and i thought of some of your recent comments.
did read his hell's angels way back, excellent.
as to rfk being anti war, read gore vidal on him, i suggest. vidal hated him, thought him totally phoney. not the gv had every claim to purity himself, though he does come across that way. still, best friends with hillary??? and jfk??? satan anyone?
will try to get to that thompson richards video. like something i read richards said fairly recently, how much he hated the royals. he had an interview about five years ago i came across, this is right before i moved back to england to experience real culture shock (it takes usually several years before it hits one, so most people don't know anything about it), he was talking of jean-luc goddard's documentary on the stones (i've only seen the openinng 'sympathy for the devil' bit--very good), but he said some sort of put down like he was french new wave art house etc, but coming to england he had no idea, he was in way over his head. this is a very correct, deep, telling comment on the british and how they view themselves, including their blood cousins in usa and elsewhere, who still have the highest admiration for it (generally, who has the biggest balls).
getting sidetracked.... cheers chuck
The only American movie where wartime Saigon is recognizable is "Green Eyes," and if you want to see a more recent Saigon, then check out Tran Anh Hung's "Cyclo," and his "Vertical Ray of the Sun" is a very sensitive portrait of Hanoi.
Gontran de Poncins' From a Chinese City: In the Heart of Peacetime Vietnam is a wonderful book about Cho Lon, the Chinese section of Saigon. In 1955, de Poncins moved into a residential hotel in Cho Lon and stayed for a year, if I remember correctly, and his account was first published in France in 1957.
.
P.S. I wonder how Vietnamese managed to smoke so many Gauloises, 555 and their own thuốc lào without matches, and I suppose they managed to create one of the most sophisticated and varied cuisine in the entire world by rubbing stones together for fire. That must have been a real bitch!
thanks linh,
it's all so obvious once you see it. but they keep the blinders on you for so long! (unless you're directly effected, like any minority, like what your icelandic friend said about john wayne--coincidentally, john pilger in the video i'm watching just mentioned green berets and how he laughed out loud till he and friend were literally chased down some alabama street back to hotel in around 68).
it comes down to childhood. kids can't conceive of the low lifes out there, and these extreme lowlife shit bags are the ones who take advantage of this. it goes right up to and through (for most) adulthood. look at the democrats with kerry or obama, trying to sort of 'read' him, like, oh he says this but he means something else---and no matter how bad, rotten, murderous, evil the man is, they can NEVER EVER get it through their skulls! (not putting people down really--i've experienced all this myself, and it's very hard at first to get your head around, before it's totally obvious--though what's not obvious, to me at least, is what's REALLY, really going on).
i can say on a personal level, that i know, other than you and a few poems you've recommended, no vietnamese writers. but i have studied in some depth japanese culture and chinese, and am very impressed. when i lived in korea, america, even new york, seemed slow, just bumpkins. it is a whole universe, that would be just fine--no, much better than that--if the west didn't exist at all. but, as i had at the time, a steady diet of hollywood movies, it's incredible the shit you believe. cheers!
A good site about media brainwashing is Vigilant Citizen.
we're writing at the same time so i've missed your latest additions, linh. will try to check out recommendations.
these shameless people make me sick!!!!!
and what really happened in vietnam, and cambodia and laos? american armed forces FIREBOMBED it. john pilger somewhere quotes the dow chemical spokesperson who BRAGS of napalm that it sticks to the skin 'like shit to carpet', this gelatinous gasoline they set fire to countless women, children, and yes, men with. who has died for these crimes? i mean people like kissinger, rumsfeld, bush, obama, clintons, wolfowitz, breshnev, blair. it was that and agent orange and land mines. our democratic legacy in those innocent countries. who, i ask, deserves this? or a nuclear bomb on their city? or hellfire missiles, or drones, or daisy cutters, white phosphorous, etcetera.
i've already proclaimed my, for now, ignorance of vietnamese culture, literature and arts (other that what i briefly saw myself). but bertrand russell, i remember, saw the chinese as a nation of artists and poets. could vietnam be the same? i've read some translated ancient chinese stuff, tu fu and older. the southern, outlying regions, it seemed (if memory serves), were considered uncouth, barbaric. presumably all along the southern and western borders, including vietnam. but much of that surviving stuff, no, all probably, was just their own jingoistic propaganda(?)
well, i'm in way over my head. still, nice to think of some of my enjoyable asian studies, especially involving drinking loads of sake!
Do click on their Vigilant Report.
Hi x larry,
I wouldn't call China, Vietnam or any other country a "nation of artists and poets," for I'm sure those types can only be a small minority anywhere. Likewise, the percentage of Vietnamese who are insensitive assholes is probably not significantly higher or lower than anywhere else.
thanks for clarification, linh. you're absolutely right.
i in fact didn't particularly notice a single sensitive type in my week in vietnam, but i was stoned, drunk, hanging out in bars, doing this type of 'experience' of the country. i didn't even bother going to the tunnels around saigon, though i did hit the war museum and looked at the famous us embassy from outside. but it was all rough, shady, nighttime characters i saw. would love to go back. also, great comment on vietnamese food. i've also experienced this on federal boulevard in denver many times, top notch.
Hi x larry,
When you talk about Vietnam being scary and wild, you're talking about its urban environment, for Vietnamese cities, especially Saigon, are a lot crazier and, in many ways, more intimidating than Western ones. Saigon is an overwhelming place, but I wonder, though, how it compares to Manila and Bangkok, which you've experienced and I haven't.
Linh
As for Vietnamese cooking, the real hardcore stuff is to be found inside Vietnam, of course, and not anywhere else. In Hanoi, the fish for one dish was traditionally found in only a confluence of two particular rivers, because the fierce currents forced it to swim harder, thus firming up its meat. Now, that's very picky, eh?
Speaking of being sensitive, when I told my Saigon friends that regular Americans would take poetry writing classes, they were delighted and even astounded. To them, it was proof that Americans are very sensitive and cultured.
Of course, I did add that only a tiny percentage actually do so. Still, they were amazed that regular people would pay to learn how to write poems.
hey linh,
i'm enjoying this conversation, but i'm out of beer and it's making me hungry!
great stuff about hanoi river fish. my wife would love it--total food snob. i must say i appreciate top food immensely, but when single live on stuff like ramen and kraft macaroni and cheese (must say i doctor it well enough--condiments, condiments, condiments!)
your comment on saigon sent a chill down my spine. oh it did feel wild! we hired two guys with motorcycles to take us around, like taxi drivers. they would wait outside the bar for hours, they would take us to find opium (my obsession for the trip--i just wanted to try it, never again!). there didn't seem to be traffic lights at that time in saigon, late 90s, so at every intersection there were motorbike and bicycle collisions. almost no cars, just bikes. i loved that. also, you could smell week all over the place, and we regularly smoked it at sidewalk cafes.
i spent very little time in manila, but it struck me as truly scary, and it seemed bigger than saigon, but i don't know.
bangkok had the beautiful temples of all gold as it had never been bombed, also its canal system, also khao san road (ruined as always by hollywood and leo dicaprio), backpacker central but still pretty darn fun, especially after leaving miserable, frozen seoul for a t shirt in february! the big red light district in bangkok was definitely scary, and i had a frightening experience with a bouncer in a bar there, and wasn't sure i'd get out. very big city.
i can't say, also i spent a few days of my week in vietnam in nha trang, a much more manageable city, though also wild! it's the motorbikes as much as anything, and the carefree girls without helmets conversing as they fly down the road, weaving this way and that.
this may be a faux pas, but my first impression of vietnamese food was the french influence--our first morning there, breakfast was an omlette, a baguette, and macaroni and cheese. i was in heaven, as in korea they don't eat cheese or bread. in nha trang we had a six or seven course meal at an outdoor restaurant that was big enough to be on both sides of a street--they had to cross the street to bring our food. there was fish grilled at the table with some kind of steak, a seafood soup, an outrageous gigantic salad.... i'm forgetting several things, also the fantastic coffee and drinks.
cheers man
Hi x larry,
If you had decent baguette, then that's not usual, for normal Vietnamese baguettes are pretty lame, and its croissants laughable. As for cheese, most Vietnamse are only familiar with Laughing Cow, that mushy stuff that comes in wedges. The nouveau riche of Vietnam, though, are becoming snotty at astounding speed, and all the international delicacies are flooding in to serve these elites.
In Hanoi in 1995, I had a locally produced feta cheese, and that was very unusual.
A normal Vietnamese breakfast is sticky rice or noodle soup. In Saigon, you can get a hot bowl of noodle soup at six in the morning.
Eating is the main pleasure among Vietnamese, and that's why you can see them eat at any time, and it's rare to see them just drinking beer without eating. Of course, the poorest hardly eat, but that's another story.
A standard Vietnamese greeting is, "Have you eaten?"
In my Some Kind of Cheese Orgy, there's a longish poem about the ubiquity of the verb "eat" in the Vietnamese world view and conversations.
Linh
"A standard Vietnamese greeting is, "Have you eaten?""
It's also a standard Chinese greeting. My wife is Chinese from Hong Kong. I lived there for two years.
I lived in Iraq(Mosul) for a year (1975-76) - most memorable year of my life. First thing Arabs do is offer food.
I have no words adequate to condemn the US for what they have done to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... Same goes for what they did to Vietnam.
hi again,
(just slept some)
yes, looking back, my breakfast--and let's not forget the coffee with sweetened condensed milk (at least i think that's what it was)--well, as i came from korea the sight of a baguette and mac and cheese (this was in a decent hotel) alone made my mouth water. also, ask my wife, i'm famously not fussy, especially when it comes to junk food. when she was in america she was obsessed with our sugar intake, especially in bread. son's hungry--will get back to you soon!
the junk food that as a good american i grew up on--it's comfort food, from boxed stuff like pizza potatoes and mac/cheese to pizza, to cheesesteaks, white flour/bread is pretty ubiquitous, also some sort of cheesy flavored sauce or actual cheapo cheese, but sugar is the thing.
being in england, i've been having some great cheeses, especially a certain stilton (blue) which to me is heaven itself. smelly cheeses like brie don't sit well with me. but 'some kind of cheese orgy' has on many occasions described my life!
linh, i wish you would document your 'hundreds of pages' of propaganda atrocities regarding vietnam. this is what ward churchill does re the american indian, and i think it's very important work. i know you're mainly a poet, but just a thought--maybe you could be an ethnic studies professor they can later put on trial and take tenure from. i'll stop now. thanks
Larry, Linh & Rudy:
Evolving from the picture of nervous man on Amtrak train..., O man, I enjoyed this series of comments so much and LEARNED.
Larry (in particular): Having followed his career origins, it's painful (but $-natural) to see Johnny Depp become a teenage idol. Depp was friends with Hunter S. Thompson, and he paid Hunter's funeral expenses, including ashes fired out of a cannon, with weird Senator Wind-Surfer John Kerry in attendance.
A question? By chance did you see Jim Jarmusch's 1995 black & white film, titled, "Dead Man"? As in Linh's gripping picture, the movie begins with Depp riding a train across prairie, and his parents dead, he arrives in the town of Machine where he's supposed to have a job at a steel factory. Suddenly the train stops, and white PASSENGERS are aroused, stand, open windows and begin shooting at buffalo herd. The movie is very weird-good, and I am unsure about its meaning, but Jarmusch seems to look at Wall Street America and its doomed destiny much like Linh Dinh does. Neil Young, an artist whose also been all over the political spectrum, does "Dead Man" wild ass soundtrack.
Finally, Larry, months ago, Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article on the book "JFK and the Unspeakable," by James W. Douglass. I bought the book "good-used" at amazon.com, and after reading ESPECIALLY the bone chilling chapter called "Washington and Dallas," I learned exactly WHY Paul Craig Roberts shot the thought of James W. Douglass from a cannon and traversed miles of C.I.A. cover-up and ended up in our Taylor Borough mailbox. Hard to control even MY own reading list, but "JFK and the Unspeakable" is scary and should make well-dressed & smiling Ruling Class nervous.
Palm Sunday today, hosannas on back of a Scranton school bus, pax in terra! Thank you.
Fellows:
Don't like being mysterious, and will cut bullshit about Palm Sunday reference, above. "Jade Helm 15" Special Ops. coming soon to southern cities, and not riding upon back of a mule. Look at Alex Jones interview with San Antonio police chief? Thanks!
hey, thanks chuck,
also thanks for reminding me of jfk and the unspeakable, i'm sure that's the one that got me going for a while and i was always blabbing to innocent bystanders about. saw that depp film and liked it. also, my sort of original trinity was dyland, neil, and lou reed, interrupted for a while by rush (from about 83 to 88). so i used to anyway know neil extremely well, along with the others. oh the many memories. esp first moving to the mountains, colorado, age 20, and meditating on the west with neil, everybody knows this is nowhere and much more, danger bird (zuma), tonight's the night. man, he was so powerful. have had some mixed feelings about all of them in recent years, to be expected.
will try to get to the alex jones interview. watched some of him on my 'weekend within the week' of high density conspiracy theories, this was one with him making fun of british voices and saying something about paul revere would get a blunderbuss, put it to so and so's chest and boom. pretty f'n funny.
cheers to all
Larry: Few months ago, Neil Young planned a performance in Tel Aviv, but cancelled. I really like his music, but his politics of late are all over-the-place -- Knee jerk, "Shaky" released "Let's Roll" after 9/11. Hard to figure, but for me, there's no better rock & simple beautiful music in western hemisphere.
Used to smoke weed to Neil's classics during days of no Corporate randoms, I love song "Helpless" sometimes I feel that way, and his "Greendale" L.P. is very cool.
Thanks for responding... if possible, try and stay with James Douglass and the riveting chapter, "Washington & Dallas." !
must make correction, i meant brzinski, not breshnev, though no doubt he had his moments too, but evil mastermind brzinski's who i meant, active at least since carter.
also, linh, forgot to mention the half day or so spent at a lovely temple in saigon, where the first thing that greets you is a pond full of turtles. beautiful on a rainy day. also, my favorite temples in bangkok were what i called 'mom and pop' temples, sometimes four to a street, just a smallish room, very warm from hundreds of say 2 1/2 ft high candles. very peaceful and beautiful.
but you know, i've yet to try pho.
also, to rudy, mosul 76 i can imagine was amazing--you're lucky to have seen it before whitey bombed it to oblivion and killed its sons and daughters.
quick last comment for chuck.
the early nineties was the last neil young album i bought. don't know greendale at all. did see jonathan demme's documentary, quite good. an ex girlfriend from philly moved to nyc and was demme's secretary. we chatted on the phone--once she said, guess whose number is in the rolodex? (neil's) i begged her, for sure, but she would've been fired if she'd given me it. also, 1989, i was living outside pittsburgh when found out neil would finally play snl. i called nyc information, they put me through, and went looking for neil (it was the afternoon of the show). they came back and said he'd just stepped out but could they take a message? i said tell him dan from pittsburgh called. oh, days of stupid youth!
his reagan stuff was terrible. and, like all these guys, it heavily influences youth, me of course included, though i give myself some credit in always treating it like the joke it is. i must say i hated that 911 song when i heard it. also, was grateful to linh for stuff he wrote a few years back on dylan, the phoney.
still, i agree with you chuck on neil's simplistic beauty. i too loved helpless, esp as i grew up in michigan, very close to ontario where that song's set. speaking of, forgot to mention i grew up in the world corporate headquarters of dow chemical, midland MI--utterly oblivious to all their crimes it goes without saying. how i hate them now.
Post a Comment