shahzad and i have been practicing jazz lately. i think we’re getting really good! last weekend i went to see “last year at marienbad” at the film forum. i will write more about it after i see it again and hopefully the next time i won’t fall asleep. such as it was, ‘marienbad’ is not very conducive to napping - at least not like a good marc ribot solo concert, which marian discovered was perfect in that regard last thursday, at the stone. it was an absolutely beautiful 45 minutes of mostly pure improvisation plus some ayler & a standard & a folksong, all played on an old nylon string guitar that was barely microphoned, so that we had to strain to hear it, which was actually quite an interesting and uncommon listening experience. you heard the music in a much more structural way i think, but also you were engaging in the music more intensely, because your ears had to go out and meet the sounds halfway!! it sounds like this:

thomas and i had the pleasure of playing with master ribot, as members of the chocolate genius band, on tuesday at the apple store. we preceded a set by larry campbell w/levon helm on drums. man that guy has a beautiful sound on the drums! how do you do that? maybe a drummer can help us learn that skill, right drummers? drumming is hard! easy? hard? easy?

[youtube]jCdnBmQZ6_s[/youtube]

(another hand-me-down from djfadereu)

two versions of MLK’s famous ‘mountaintop’ speech, delivered the night before he was assassinated.

in iceland, no less.

last i knew, bobby fischer was living in budapest. i arrived there in 2000 and went to meet Bob Cohen for the first time, in his bar, the Cziga Cafe. There were chess players in the back of the Cziga; Bob told me that Bobby Fischer lived in the area and was known to come into the cafe once every year or so and kick all the chess players’ asses. The rest of the time he published pamphlets elucidating his anti-semetic, hungaro-japanese master race theory.

On my second trip to the region, i had the incredible privilege of being taken out to Transylvania by Master Cohen, where we visited with master fiddler Marton Kodoba and his son Florine, of the Kodoba family band from Palatka. The Palatka style is rough & emotionally intense - Martun, coaxed to play by our offering of bootlegged plum brandy, leaned towards us as he played, eyes half-mast but making searingly direct eye contact. Here is a picture of them taken by Fumie Suzuki:

I have since learned from Bob’s blog that Marton passed away in 2003. You can see the current incarnation of the Kodoba family band at work here.

update, 2:05 pm; a challenge to speak peppery readers: be the first speak peppery reader or blogger to write a texting novel

[youtube]bANzo7UpdEY[/youtube]

Today, I learned that if you don’t proofread emails, it is very easy to send someone an email with the sign-off: “Best retards, dawn”

God I just had possibly the worst moviegoing experience of my entire life. I am absolutely not exaggerating when I say that I *Hated* I Am Legend. It was an assault. I had to take Ibuprofen when I got home.

The only reason why we went to see it was that the non-dubbed choices were: Alvin y los Chipmunks; Bee Movie (saw it, would see it again but husband not interested); Golden Compass (no); and um… something with The Rock in it. So obviously we were in a bind.

I don’t know what to do now. Gray has suggested that we watch another movie as an antidote. We have two DVDs at home: Fritz the Cat and a super violent Colombian film called Rosario Tijeiras. So Fritz it is. And a stiff drink.

1. [audio:01 London Calling.mp3]
2. [audio:07 Gaza-Calling.mp3]
3. [audio:11 Wake Up (It's Africa Calling).mp3]

1. to remind us that pop-punk will never die. 2. from palestinian electronica collective checkpoint 303; their albums are all available free from their website (thanks to rasha for introducing me). 3. from the newest album by the great youssou n’dour; i would love this track without reservation if i could get rid of neneh cherry’s self-involved rapping; remix please?

for those of you somehow unable to attend my solo fiddle recital at the pure horsehair-curated music evening at zebulon last night, here is a recording:

solo fiddle at zebulon

A moment of pure comic art (to borrow a phrase from Sam) from Herge’s Tintin in the Land of Pharoah:

Besides beauty, this strip illustrates an important principle in comic book semantics: namely, that the ultimate contents of speech balloons are *phonetic strings*, i.e. sounds– and *not* propositions, thoughts, or what have you. This is pretty clearly shown by the fact that “… ous … al … ent …” expresses no thought. This is more or less that same as “says” as in  “John says, “you are a mushroom” “, as opposed to “says” as in “John says that you are a mushroom.”  So you can think of the balloon itself as a function which takes a phonetic string and returns a predicate of individuals. For example, the balloon surrounding “hi” represents that someone (the target of the balloon tail) says “hi”. Surprisingly, there is a lot of semantic intervention that goes on between the final representation of the phonetic string and the marks on the page. I’ll get into some of these complications in later posts.

Location. Unrelatedly, I’m in Chiapas with my parents, on family vacation. We’re currently staying in a beautiful bed and breakfast in St. Cristobal. St. Cristobal is lively artsy town, which appears to be an odd mixing pot of indigenous merchants and craftsmen, and mexican and foreign tourists (more of the former than the latter). The result is a tourist town of a very different flavor. St. Cristobal has been one of the hubs of the Zapatista movement, as well, so (apparently) indigenous peoples have greater than normal political representation. More on this as information arrives in my head.

Food. On the plane: delicious corn chips which looked basically like Fritos, except that they were flavored with lemon juice. Yum! Dinner: A great, salty walnut and chipotle soup (possible bean base), and quesadillas, which were more like folded pockets with cheese and various extremely good fillings, including a sauteed mushrooms and onions, beans (pinto?), vegies (spinach?), and something else I couldn’t identify. Really good. For desert, a mediocre chocolate donut who really wanted to be at much better mexican breakfast pastry.  Did I mention I’m pausing veganism during this vacation?