the cia headquarters in langley va is now called The George Bush Center for Intelligence.

song of the common loon

song of a humpback whale

Acconci Studio: poet---->artist---->design guy ?

current wines containing stagecoach grapes (of which my father owns a small share) --

atalon merlot and cabernet, 1998

cain 5, cain concept, cain cuvee

conn creek merlot, 1998

fisher coach insignia, 1998

hobbs napa valley cabernet, 1999

honig cabernet, "stagecoach cuvee," 1999

miner family merlot, vineyard designate: stagecoach 1999

rabbit ridge reserve merlot, 1998

robert pepi sangiovese, 1999

round hill van asperen, merlot and cabernet

rutherford hill reserve merlot

stag leap wine cellars, napa valley cabernet

tom eddy cabernet, 1999

villla mt eden, grand reserve cabernet

villa mt eden, signature series, 1998

zd cabernet, 1998

Celestial Themes in Art
(lots of images on one page: slow loading)

APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX
NY Post
Expanded, cleaned-up version of hallucinatory 1979 masterpiece. Running time: 196 minutes. Rated R (violence, female nudity). At the Astor Plaza and the Lincoln Square. This version of the 1979 masterpiece has been re-edited by director and co-writer Francis Ford Coppola and co-editor Walter Murch to include nearly 50 minutes of footage left out of the original release.

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893–1941 at the whitney.

"Michael Moorcock, a living saint of English gutter fiction, once observed that Victorian middle-class morality had erected wrought-iron rails about the confines of what could be considered literature--essentially Jane Austen and the novel of manners. All other forms of writing, like genre fiction and the literature of the fantastic, were exiled to the wastelands out past the perimeters. Literature was a vanity mirror for the social strata that could afford to be literate, and only writing that reflected an absorption in the social intricacies of the book-buying classes would be allowed past the gate, past the critics, past the guard dogs. This still obtains. No admission for the too-flamboyantly attired, for the impassioned and overexcited, for the rowdy or intoxicated or possessed, who are relocated to where the surfaced roads peter out and the inbred web-toed monsters really start to kick in. With the gothic melodramas and pornographies and ranting pamphlets. This isn't a nice district. You're not likely to have a park named after you. On the other hand, there are advantages . . ."

--from an interview with Alan Moore, writer of the graphic novels Watchmen and From Hell.

Broadcast TV is all but hopeless. I figured Muslims in Appalachia had to be the most fascinating subject around, but it turned out to be utterly boring. It was on Ch25, the public service channel that shows lots of ethnic programming, along with PBS stuff that didn’t make the cut at Ch13. They do have one good show: Classic Arts Showcase. It’s a clip show, but without the frenzied presentation we’re used to. There’s no host, just a stately sequence of videos, with long dissolves between them, and titles superimposed at intro and exit. Like MTV, but very slow. Everything is public domain or donated. Mostly it’s classical music, but a wide range of performances from different times, including a lot of historically notable footage. It’s interesting to see how the conventions of performance and presentation have changed over the course of the last century. They also have dance, bits from theater and movies, and once in a while they come up with some weird gem, like an obscure quasi-futurist animation, a vaudeville routine, or an architecture documentary. Beats “reality” programming, and it’s easy to ignore while you’re trying to write a post.

High Life

i guess this isnt a new story but as a result of the cloning decision in congress yesterday it resurfaced as an aside. i remember a raelians story from last year but i didnt remember the cloning angle.

Bourbon and Branch

Gettysburgh, Pickett's Charge Cyclorama

The excellent tech site Ars Technica has an in depth interview with some of the technical people behind the Final Fantasy movie. Lots of detailed information.

It's Ghost World and not the Apes....

...that have drawn the Mairianne Nowottny and Donnna Bailey (Shell) comparisons.

have to say i am in joying my afternoons drinking rum at the bar des palmistes, watching the people, the old colonial buildings, this was once a hotel, one of the only hotels, where many an explorer stayed, now its bar, cyber cafe, video rental etc (staying with the times??)....

have to say i'm disapointed with the food so far, most restaurants are empty so i avoid, not that anything on the menu brings me in, dont want to do anything against nature but its sadening that all wild game is off limits recently to non indiginous indians, i was hoping for rodents and wild pig etc to be here, oh well, but even the fruit is a bummer and the market is boaring, maybe the feast of the patron saint on the river village next week will show some more wild stuff (all hotels have been sold out for months), and the jungle trip will provide some fresh interesting fish....

MB was asking about the medieval Cathars, relative to a wine label she's working on. Conveniently, along comes the New Yorker with a review of several books about them. They inhabited the Languedoc, a rich and independent area of southern France, stretching into northern Italy and Spain. They considered themselves Christians, but their dualism (similar to neo-platonic Gnosticism) marked them as heretics in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and they were mostly wiped out in intra-European crusades during the 13th century. The famous line, "kill them all; god will recognize his own" comes from one of these massacres. As practitioners of an "alternative lifestyle", the Cathars have been adopted as spiritual ancestors by mystics, French nativists, vegetarians, conspiracy theorists, and would-be heretics of all sorts. Not much is really know about them, beyond what we are told by their enemies, so it's been easy for latecomers to speculate, casting them in whatever light is convenient. Languedoc still produces fine wine, and it appears that heresy has enough cachet in some circles to provide a marketing rubric. There certainly seems to be good tourist trade built on the legends. As far as images go, this page from Google shows that, beyond their cross (a Greek cross encircled) the most persistent image is of a ruined castle on a crag, a romantic evocation of their promise and persecution, not to mention a great photo-op before the vineyard tour. Keep digging if you want to get into the really nutty stuff. This guy may know the secrets, but he wants $9.99 first. Disinfo has a treatment of the source I'm familiar with. This fairly levelheaded capsule comes from an interesting aristocratic site, which also contains a good collection of heraldic crosses. These may be of interest to Bill regarding the "surfer's cross" (see #86 & 102 ). But if you want to know what they did with the Ark of the Covenant (or was that the Holy Grail?), I'll never tell!

Tired of hearing the late conservative media honcho Katharine Graham described as a cross between Mother Teresa and Rosa Luxembourg? Read CounterPunch's anti-eulogy.

another reason to dislike Traffic,,,,????

i turned on channel two friday night in Miami, a movie is playing from the late 70's or ealy 80's, i dont know the name but it was about herion, filmed in pakistan, england, germany--let me tell you some parts

the England Drug Head has a daughter whom becomes a herion addict than a prostitute, he whom ignored her early on come to her resue

the top dealer is jailed, the wife runs the show while he's in, he get out cause the wittness is murdered by poison at breakfast after showing him his picture in the paper front page

the top aid of the dealer is murdered while talking to the boss on the phone

the movie ends with the cop walking in on a party at the dealer house, getting in the fight kicked out but does plant a bug

????

greetings from french guiana, this is a truely grand place, in the capital now (cayenne), just left the museè departmental which was full of stuffed animal's inc a giant caimen that washed a shore one day near by, the place was layed out beautiful and you get a real outback feel, yesterday when the plane pulled off the caribean and went inland a 100 miles my jaw allmost dropped, nothing but jungle and rivers cutting throught it--AWESOME--hope my luggage shows up (it was found in haiti) and my tour guide (he has my interior flights lodgeing info...)

Hey Frank, what's up? I've been missing you around here.

Princess and the Warrior--now that was a great love story.

its all most 20 years since my first travels abroad, sitting here sweating pro fusely, i never sweat this much 20 years ago, no did i post to my friends--i dont consider my self adventerous, i dont eat sea urchins, but now 20 years later i,m in my 50th country/territory, its a great caribean night here, i really like this country, cool blended unspoofed at least where i stay, the rum gave me good thoughts but this keyboard gives me trouble so i must quit, onward into adventurne i go, i` will get some DEET and go to the jungle just my tee shirt and my malaria pills::::pack light i said in the early daze (this is the wierdest keyboard i have ever seen-the french must all ways be different/cult)

Bad Pun Patrol

A former Hooters waitress slapped the restaurant with a lawsuit after her manager promised her a "new Toyota" for selling the most beer - and instead presented her with a new "toy Yoda."