Les fous sont rois et moi je bois Mao Mao
Towards Giving It the Olde College Try
— for Mas’ud Zavarzadeh
I buried it outside the Hall of Languages, at the top of the hill. Took a shovel, dug a hole in the pristine lawn at the end of the walkway and buried it. No one seemed bothered by it: not the campus police nor the associate prof looking for tenure. No one seemed to care.
That was forty years ago.
Act of Imagination (& Larceny)
The groove in the Rolling Stones’ classic cover of “Just My Imagination” (1978) comes straight out of Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” (1975). No plaints here. Geniuses steal. Follow the echoes below…
Driving While Brown: Stories from the Struggle Against Sherriff Joe Arpaio
Journalists Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block spent years chronicling the human consequences of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawless approach to immigration enforcement in Maricopa County, Arizona. In Driving While Brown, they tell the tale of two opposing movements that redefined Arizona’s political landscape—the restrictionist cause embraced by Arpaio and the Latino-led resistance that rose up against it.
What follows is a Q&A with the authors of Driving While Brown.
Act Locally!
First of the Month‘s correspondent Leslie Lopez has another outlet for her reportage from the Pueblo. Here’s a local labor story with national resonance that she published last month in La Cucaracha…
Roller Skating Tuesday
Lana Del Rey is set to release a new CD in July. Last time around she didn’t seem intent on “making the next great American record.” The will to go pop (without compromising) that made her Norman Fucking Rockwell undeniable in 2019 was missing from Chem Trails over the Country Club, which she put out earlier this year. The absence of f-words on Chem Trails may be a sign LDR sensed someone like Olivia Rodrigo would render slack style sub-urban (and all sold-out), but it also hints LDR’s rock ‘n’ roll attitude was on hiatus. OTOH, Chem’s Trails‘ “White Dress” came through, with a little help from the video. That, in turn, sent me back to a roller-skating video posted here last summer. Compare and contrast, or just roll on…B.D.
“The Dream of a Burning Child”
Click the link below to get closer to Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s epic painting of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, Don’t You See That I Am Burning.
https://www.miergallery.com/exhibitions/celeste-dupuy-spencer3/videos
The V Bottom of American Politics
It’s what we hoped for.
Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
The author has been keeping up with the Old Right’s angles on our time…
This Heat: You Are Not Dead Until You Are Warm and Dead
Dashiel Tao Harris writes about the first time she kissed a boy in this valedictory to childhood, but what may be most striking about her post is its focus on her friendship with another girl who’s becoming a woman too. American lit has often been stuck on amity between boys-to-men. It’s past time for young women to take their friendships to the page…
Going Down (Again) (Wednesday April 21, Trip #21)
Question: How can I mourn the life of Joel?
I am in Joel’s hospital room at Alta Bates, where I visited him so many times I lost track. That brutal winter of 2018. His heart is failing. He always looks happy to see me. I bring him Carl’s Jr. even though the doctor says sodium could kill him. Joel knows better than to believe her. There are certain pleasures we hang onto, a savor to life, that medical science doesn’t know.
Going Down (Wednesday April 14, Trip #19)
Question: How can I live a “legendary” life?
Mayday at Sea (The Outlaw Ocean Project)
Ian Urbina, author of The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier and organizer of the Outlaw Ocean Project just collaborated with the Los Angeles Times on a video and piece explaining how the sea is a dystopian place: “Too big to police and under no clear international authority, immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.” You can see the video after the jump here. What follows directly is another short video Urbina posted last summer…
Second Pandemic April
Windows open. Snowdrops up. Arms bare. Spring!
She wants her hands in dirt. No armchair spring.
I’m Not Looking for Trouble But…
On the day Stanford beat Arizona for the Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship, its coach, Tara Vanderveer defended women’s basketball in the New York Times. “I don’t think anyone says, ‘Well, professional basketball, they’re bigger and stronger, so I’ll just want to watch professional basketball.”
Actually, I say that.
It’s Tricky: Thinking Through “Dear Comrades”
When Putin was re-elected in 2018, Andrei Konchalovsky, director of Dear Comrades—the acclaimed historical drama about an atrocity erased from history during the Soviet era—spoke on RT of his “extraordinary joy” (though he sounded dutiful rather than giddy). Putin’s win, per Konchalovsky, was proof Russia was “going the right way.” I didn’t see his election spin on RT until after I’d watched Dear Comrades so it was a shock to hear him express disdain for the “fuss” made by Putin’s “paranoiac” critics since his film about the 1962 Novocherkassk massacre limns what happens in a country where no-one’s allowed to disturb powers-that-be.