Ghost Hunters and GHI Re-runs: Observations

Money has been tight lately, so I've been spending more time at home, or at least doing things locally. Among the myriad of projects I have found for myself at home, I have also been watching the DVDs and iTunes downloads of my favorite TV shows. As I've mentioned previously, these are Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State.

I have Seasons 1-3 of Ghost Hunters in its entirety on DVD, and some episodes of Season 4 on iTunes. As I go through these, I can't help but notice that I really like some investigators and don't care so much for others. I'm not entirely sure why. I suspect it has something to do with talent in one area not necessarily translating to talent in another area. For instance, someone with a Ph.D. may be a bona fide expert on a particular subject; that doesn't mean that said Ph.D. is also a good teacher, even if they make their living as a professor. Pedagogy involves separate communication and organizational skills. Similarly--just because one is a scientifically-minded and meticulous ghost hunter does not mean that they will have television skills. Some people are awkward in the face of a TV camera, even if they're not stammering and fidgeting.

With that in mind, I'm presenting my opinion of the Ghost Hunters who have been on the program so far. I'm not including Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, as they obviously wouldn't be where they are today if they didn't have the right stuff for television. I'm also including some folks from Ghost Hunters International, as there is some cross-over in investigative staff. Bear in mind that I don't think I would necessarily do better than the people whom I consider the "weaker" links in the program. I feel very awkward in front of cameras of any kind, so I'd probably suck at it big time. So, I am not suggesting that I could do "better"; I am suggesting that observed over time, perhaps these folks just don't have the right fit for TV, even if they are excellent in the field.

Andy Andrews: Andy has the distinction of being on the first season of Ghost Hunters AND Ghost Hunters International. I don't know what it is about Andy, but I find him terribly annoying. He's obviously a good investigator and debunker. But he comes across with an arrogance that makes you want to smack him at times. I've heard this opinion expressed by others as well. I think he's okay as one of the team, but if he's in a lead investigative position--I don't know, he just doesn't seem to work.

Brian Harnois: For all of the controversy surrounding Brian, I actually like him a lot. Yes, like everyone else, I got tired of the drama between Brian and Steve, between Brian and Jason, but he has a very strong and distinct personality. Having a personality helps, and on the whole he seems fallible yet likeable. He was one of the stronger elements of GHI when its first season opened.

Carl and Keith Johnson: These twin brothers are demonologists. It's hard to get a distinct lock on what they're like, exactly--most of the time they were quietly in the background. I'm not surprised that they dropped off the GH series, as having a demonologist on a team like TAPS doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. I've seen Keith and his wife on Paranormal State, and I think that show is much better suited to their approach.

Steve Gonsalves: I like Steve. He's smart, well-organized as tech manager, and has a sense of humor. I'm sympathetic to his fear of heights, and I had great admiration for him when he actually climbed the St. Augustine lighthouse tower stairs in the dark. I've been in the St. Augustine lighthouse, and I didn't get past the second round of stairs at the bottom--my legs were shaking too much. His phobias, while unfortunate, do add to your sense of him as a person, though it's a shame they have to hinder his ability to do things so much. I actually have the same phobias, with the exception of a fear of flying.

Dustin Pari: Dustin is amazing. I don't know why I like Dustin so much as an investigator. Maybe it's because he reminds me of my nephew. But for whatever reason--the thing that Andy Andrews seems to lack, Dustin has in spades. I was delighted when he replaced Andy as the co-lead investigator on GHI--he really does a lot for that show. He just has a presence that gives him a lot of credibility. He doesn't get overly emotional about things, and when he does get rattled, it's genuine. The Leap Castle episode from Season 3 is a perfect Dustin episode--you should get a hold of it if you haven't seen it. One of those episodes where something ACTUALLY happens...

Dave Tango: It's hard not to like Dave Tango. He's earnest, genuine, and a good Jersey boy. (I'm from New Jersey, so I know what that looks like). His early gullibility and perpetual sense of wonder really makes him very likeable. You've also been able to see firsthand how he's grown as an investigator, which adds to the show.

Donna LaCroix: Hmm. Donna was a great case manager, and seems like a really great person. However, I was not impressed with her as an investigator. TAPS is supposed to be taking a scientific approach to things, but I feel like Donna was often on cases for the production company's hype value. She was more interested in what she could intuit--which is not a bad thing necessarily, but in paranormal investigation you have to be careful. A location can feel very spooky at night, and you can feel like someone is there with you--but most of the time there's no hard evidence for anything. After the first season of GHI, I was absolutely glad to see her go--she was terrible. I'm sorry, I know she left because of an illness, and I wish her well, but her running around screaming and holding up crucifixes did nothing for her credibility. She seems more like she belongs on that Scariest Places on Earth show.

Joe Chin: Joe is now on GHI, where I think he fits in a bit better. He's very quiet, hard to know too much about his personality. I don't have a strong opinion of him either way as an investigator, though I like him overall.

Kris Williams: Kris seemed okay when she first joined the TAPS team, but I've not been impressed with her over time. I don't know why the women in TAPS don't seem to fit in as well, but Kris lately seems more like a giggly twenty-something than a serious investigator. I really like Amy Brunei, the other female in TAPS, though she tends to get silly like Kris when they work together. I don't know--like Andy, there's something about Kris that just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned. I find myself getting bored and wandering into the kitchen looking for ice cream while her investigation scenes are on.

and, on GHI:

Robb Demarest: I thought Robb was terrible during the first season of GHI, but I have to say he's gotten 200 times better. I think Robb suffered from the problem of being a normal guy who's a good investigator, but was really awkward in front of a TV camera. He was too wooden looking in the early episodes, too robotic-sounding, and was trying too hard to be like Jason Hawes. When he complimented Donna and Shannon Sylvia for running around screaming like idiots, I wanted to smack him. It was embarrassing--he was finding places "haunted" without much convincing evidence--even the owners or caretakers of the locations were not convinced. However, since Dustin has come on board, and there have been some team changes, things look a lot better. Robb has developed his own style as lead investigator, and I actually like it a lot. He's clearly taken some kind of acting lessons or something, because he looks more comfortable in front of the camera, and the whole show seems less awkward and stilted.

Shannon Sylvia: I'm not even going to comment. Someone just tell me why she called in the Penn State Paranormal Society to investigate her house when she's an investigator herself?

Barry Fitzgerald: The other strong link of GHI, who originally appeared in GH's Leap Castle episode. Barry gets a little strange at times, and his assumptions are clearly colored by his Irish upbringing (there's a strong tradition of believing in the supernatural there), but he's still a great investigator, and adds a lot to the team. He does try new and different approaches and new equipment, which keeps the show from being formulaic. I hope he doesn't leave the show.

Brandy Green: Great case manager, and great investigator. She really works well with this team.


So, that's my take on TAPS. I know there has been plenty out there about how things on this show could be (or perhaps are?) faked, but I still like it better than most investigative shows I've seen, and still feel it has more credibility. I am sure some things are hyped for television, and some things need to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, skeptics will always be skeptics, and believers will always be believers--and those that fall in between would have to have an experience that firmly put them on one side or the other.

Currently, new GHI episodes are on the SyFy channel on Wednesdays at 9, and you can see past episodes here: http://www.syfy.com/rewind/?sid=32857

New episodes of Ghost Hunters will be aired this Fall. You can see recent past episodes here: http://www.syfy.com/rewind/?sid=32855

Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are on MySpace and Twitter (jchawes and grantswilson). There is a Facebook fan page for the show as well.

Birds

So, everyone knows the Alfred Hitchcock movie, “The Birds”. What I never understood was why the birds were attacking in the first place. Were they mad about Tippi Hedrin's "joke"? I still don’t get it.

But that’s a movie. In real life, I’ve been noticing a lot of bird-related delinquency, starting with larceny:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/seagull.asp

Ha-ha, cute! But then an airplane goes down over the Hudson River. Why? Because of...a bird. A Canada goose, to be exact:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227124.200

Okay, the pilot managed to handle everything correctly, and no one was injured. Canada geese are a pain in the ass—ask anyone who lives in Northern New Jersey. Usually the threat is in the form of goose poop that is EVERYWHERE. Now they’re getting a bit more aggressive. Hmm.

Then I saw this article about a baseball game:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=290611105

Okay, so in this one the bird gets hit. And if you’re an Indians fan, you would probably regard this as divine intervention. Still, those birds are interfering where they’re not wanted. But they haven’t attacked anyone, right?

Woman is Savaged By Angry Seagulls

I don’t know about you, but I think I need some more cats. Big ones.

Demonology

I don’t watch much television these days, but I’m still a sucker for two reality shows: Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State. I’m not so interested in “proving” the existence of ghosts or similar phenomena, but I’m very interested in the approaches people take to dealing with these “paranormal” unknowns. Paranormal is the right word, regardless of whether you believe in ghostly phenomena or not. By definition, to be “paranormal” is to be something anomalous with respect to our “normal” everyday experience. That doesn’t mean that we might not find an explanation for it; just that there’s no obvious logical reason for it. Some things are without explanation, and those are truly “paranormal”, whatever they might be. In any event, I would refer anyone who places too much emphasis on everything have a reasonable cause and effect to the late Mr. David Hume.

The two shows take two very different approaches to the paranormal, though there is some overlap. Ghost Hunters relies entirely on evidence caught on film or audio; personal experiences, unless they are of a very physical nature, are usually discounted. The idea is to be more scientific in their attempts to identify truly anomalous phenomena. Given the nature of reality TV, this doesn’t always happen, but at least they’re giving it a shot.

Paranormal State also has a tech department that records audible and visual evidence, but they also make use of mediums and demonologists in their work. Ryan Buell, the team leader, does not attempt to hide his rather Catholic approach to such phenomena (I’m not suggesting this is bad, it’s just something to be noted). Additionally, they will bring in priests or ministers to do house blessings, and may bring in professional counselors to talk to affected parties as well. While I don’t agree with all of Ryan’s assumptions (e.g., the idea that 3am is the time that “mocks Christ”, a medieval Catholic notion), on the whole I would say the team pretty good about separating legitimate phenomena from hysteria or other factors. Even Lorraine Warren, an occasional visiting demonologist on the show, has been a pleasant surprise. She’s much more cautious than she used to be about labeling things as “demonic”—in fact, she hardly does it at all. Truthfully, I don’t think “demonic” phenomena really happens all that often.

But what is “demonic” phenomena? I was revisiting some old Paranormal State episodes on iTunes last night, and was watching the “Devil in Syracuse” episode, where the demon they won’t name is afflicting a family. This is supposed to be the same demon that is or was following Ryan from place to place. Of course, I can read lips, and they show a scrambled version of the name, and I know exactly which demon it is. Interestingly, Abramelin and other grimoires have described this particular demon as holding principle sway over this world and its desires.

I like this particular episode, because it makes some good points about the demonic. First, the house they are visiting is a complete mess. A family friend comes over regularly to add fuel to the family’s fear. And the couple who live there has serious marital discord. Ryan accurately notes that the demonic feeds on fear, weakness, and depression.

Which leads me to my own definition of the demonic, for better or for worse. Like the divine or angelic, the demonic is a deep psychological phenomena that can manifest as something physical, or affect the physical—like any deep psychological phenomena. It’s not unlike poltergeist phenomena in this way (though it is theorized that poltergeist phenomena have a hormonal component as well). It affects people who don’t have sufficient psychological boundaries. I would say “spiritual”, too, but they are really bound up in the same thing. To be possessed or affected by such a thing requires a very unique set of psychical and mental circumstances—and an invitation or evocation.

So how can demons be named and labeled? Deities and angels can also be named and labeled. They are qualities, elements of human experience. The form and function of such qualities are part of what is observed in the collective unconscious.

The theology of the demonic is highly developed within Christianity, particularly Catholic Christianity. The Church has special rites of exorcism to deal with these undesirable elements. Sometimes the rites work, sometimes they don’t. A lot of the rite’s ability to do good is based on the belief of those taking part in the rite. It would also depend on the psychology of the victim—sometimes the victim is unwilling or unable to let go of the offending influence that has taken over. But I would still say the offending influence is internal, not external, even though it may manifest in external ways. As one of my professors once said in seminary, “there is nothing ‘mere’ about psychology”. To call something psychological is not the same as saying “You’re imagining it”, or “It’s all in your head”, in a dismissive sense. Depth psychology is as tenuous an area as occult practice, and requires a great deal of caution when “jumping in”.

Which brings me to another assertion that Ryan frequently makes on shows dealing with the demonic. He refers to the encounters as a literal battle “between good and evil”. I would suggest that this is not exactly the case, though it is true on some level. The Eastern conception of the demonic is a bit easier to follow, and I think resolves some of the difficulties of the Western Christian perspective.

There is an extended prayer/chant/story in Hinduism called Srichandipath. It is part of a larger work called the Devi Mahatmayam. In this, the rishi (seer, holy man) explains to a businessman and a king the mysteries of the goddess Durga. To summarize—both devas (gods) and asuras (demons) populate the world. For many yugas (cycles) there may be a relative balance between the two, but eventually the asuras take over everything. This is characterized by a society that is greedy, self-centered, materialistic, and ignorant. The gods are forgotten, and the asuras “rule the Three Worlds”. Eventually the gods will call upon the great Devi (goddess) who is beyond the visible universe to help them. She appears as Durga, a goddess carrying weapons and riding on a lion (or tiger). In the Srichandipath, she comes on two different occasions, both times to do battle with and vanquish the asuras, and both times she is victorious.

There is another hymn related to the Srichandipath called the Mahisasuramardini Stotra. There is particular part of the seventh verse that I’ve always found interesting. It says:

Shiva shiva shumbha nishumbha mahahava tarpita bhuta pishacarate

It doesn’t translate nicely into English, but it basically says that the Goddess (i.e., Mahisasuramardini, or Durga) delights in both the “auspicious” god Shiva and the “inauspicious” Shumba (demon of self-conceit) and Nishumba (demon of self-depreciation), and the ghouls that feast on dead souls. What it implies is that both the “good” and the “evil” are manifestations of the Goddess (referring to Adiparashakti, the Supreme Primal Consciousness), and therefore all are “good” in the sense of being in the “order of things”, for lack of a better phrasing. The goddess doesn’t step in and get rid of the demons until they have completely tilted the balance of life in their direction. The goddess herself represents the Numinous, and is beyond concepts of good and evil. Life cannot happen unless there is a perceived split from the initial Unity of things. This is the basis of the Adam and Eve story (Eve is not a culprit in this view—worldly life can’t happen unless she and Adam recognize separateness), and it’s also the Kabbalistic and Gnostic view of life. Through pairings of opposites, life is created. We spend our days in separation, and eventually seek to become one with that essential Unity again. In order to do this, we need to “play” at life, deal with the demons, and eventually vanquish them along with our egos to achieve that final Unity. In such a world view, it’s hard not to believe in reincarnation—there is no way that this happens in one lifetime.

So, what is “demonic” is not particularly unnatural—all of us have both “divine” and “demonic” qualities, and we spend our lives trying to negotiate them. In rare cases, they can take shape and possess us—the same is true of the Archetypes that unconsciously rule our lives. In those cases, it takes highly symbolic acts (sigils, spells, prayers, whichever is used) to remove one from a possessed state. Other types of possession can lead to various forms of madness, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. In any case—the demonic is not all that abnormal, unless you are talking about possession.

Word of Christ...

Paul Tillich would have a field day with this one:

"It's too hard", Pt. 2: Editorial Process

“Editorial process” is the selecting of authoritative sources. There’s that word again—“authoritative”. No one likes it, but it’s a bit like what your mother told you about eating your vegetables—it’s good for you, so swallow it. (And no comments from those of you who know I don’t eat vegetables...:)).

There are many discussions in library science about what makes a source “authoritative”. An article peer-reviewed in a respected journal has more credibility in a research paper than a blog posting written by a twenty-year-old. Non-fiction collection developers purchase books and other resources for libraries that have met some criteria for having authoritative merit. Reference librarians serve the same function—they are there to help you weed through all the crappy information you find to get the useful stuff, and also to teach you how to make those decisions yourself. At least that’s what happens in an ideal world.

However, what happens more often is that “research” papers from students are becoming cut-and-pastes from Wikipedia, or whatever they found first on Google. They don’t even ask librarians for help. Students act surprised when they get to university or college and get failed for handing in such papers. One might chalk it up to student laziness, but recently I came across a more disturbing example of not using editorial process.

The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in recent months about Reiki therapy. I happen to be a Reiki Master, so I pay attention to these things. In short, the Bishops did not want Catholics to receive Reiki treatments because there was “no scientific evidence” that it works, and because it was outside the Catholic religion and potentially “dangerous” to a Catholic soul.

When I first read this, I thought it was a joke. These men had studied theology, they were leaders and scholars. There’s no scientific evidence that prayer, anointing of the sick, or most of their other practices work for anyone. And how does an energy therapy “endanger your soul”? How in the world did they come to this conclusion? Where did they get their information about Reiki? There are many nuns and communities of Sisters that offer Reiki therapy as part of their work. Did they ask any of them? How about the experts in the Reiki field? People like William Rand and Frank Arjava Petr?

William Rand himself looked into the statement, and followed up with his own statement. He looked over the resources consulted by the Church, and found that most of them were just random websites with misinformation. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation on the Web about Reiki.

I don’t know if the Church has acknowledged Rand’s statement, or if they’ve amended their declaration, but to me, it’s a lesson in not doing proper research. People who still care about what the Church says are going to avoid or view with suspicion a practice that may be beneficial to them or to others. While Reiki may heal some, no responsible practitioner makes any claim to heal anyone—it’s a relaxation technique. It is religion neutral, and often used in hospitals as an enhancement to traditional therapies. Rejecting Reiki makes the Church look stupid, and puts those Catholics who receive or engage in Reiki treatment in a tight spot for no reason. All because they never bothered to ask anyone who had done real research on Reiki’s origins and practices. It pays to select your sources carefully.

Public service librarians face another challenge. I can’t speak for international education, but in the United States, elementary school teachers are expected to push students to absorb as much material as they can in a short space of time. This doesn’t leave time for developing things that can only be learned with time and patience—such as language skills, writing skills, and research skills. The students are burned out by the time they’re twelve. When they grow up and go to college, they are unable to do any of these things well—they can’t spell, they don’t use proper grammar, they don’t have good oral communication skills, and they are clueless about research. They also no longer care—they don’t want to learn at this point, they just want to get the grade and get out. Why not? Because “it’s too hard.” This is the teacher’s excuse, and it’s the student’s excuse. It’s an uphill battle, and everyone is tired of fighting it.

So, what is the answer to “it’s too hard”? I haven’t a clue. It certainly won’t be a three-word solution. I do know this—if librarians and other library professionals don’t understand and stand by the basics of their profession, the answer may be that we don’t need libraries or librarians. I’m not suggesting for a minute that this is a correct answer, but it may be the conclusion that society comes to if we are no longer in the business of providing organized access and editorial process. After all, they can search Google and Wikipedia at home.

"It's too hard", Part I: Access

This morning I was thinking a lot about my current profession. I have a lot of ambivalence about librarianship in the 21st century, and I’m sure I’m being kind when I say that. I started thinking about exactly what’s wrong with the profession today. I realized that I can summarize the whole complex mess with three words: “It’s too hard.”

Librarianship has two principle components: organization/access, and editorial process. The former is traditionally associated with cataloging, technical services and systems. The latter is associated with reference services and collection development. However, there is not a strict separation—both components need to be integrated to have a successful library environment.

Let’s look at the first one. Organizing information into somewhat meaningful categories is the backbone of what we do, even if the taxonomies used are highly imperfect. Over the years, standards of organization have been developed that are very complex—in the United States we use AACR2 and LCRI for description, LCSH for subject access, LCC or DDC for classification, and MARC format to make the records accessible in an inventory system.

This system worked great for books, but the information world is no longer about just books, or even about physical items that you can check out. A lot of material is now digital and virtual, and this presents a challenge in an organization system reliant on describing physical items. But we still have many, many physical items in our libraries, so we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Unfortunately, “it’s too hard”.

We already have massive amounts of data in the form of MARC records—bibliographic data and authority data. For the non-librarian—bibliographic data is what you see in your catalog when you search for an item. It describes the book/DVD/CD, whatever. Within that bibliographic data is something called “authority controlled” data—author names and subject headings in particular (yes, some titles too, but I’m not going there right now). There is a separate unseen authority record for every author, every subject in your catalog. Those records not only contain the chosen “authoritative” form of the name or subject, but all other seen variations—and in the case of subjects, related terms, broader terms, and narrower terms. The idea is that one heading is chosen as the one listed, and if you search for something different, a message will pop up telling you to “see” the authoritative heading, or to suggest other possible headings. Sounds good, yes?

Well, it should be, but no. Library catalog systems have not been designed to make good use of authority data. Keyword searches only search the bibliographic record. So, if you haven’t used the terms in the bibliographic record, you’re “SOL” if you stop with a keyword search. The only way many systems allow you to access the authority records is to do a “browse” search—if you do a subject browse, you will then get the benefit of those extra messages if you type in the wrong thing.
There are many problems with traditional catalog searching, but I won’t go into detail about that here. Recently, integrated library system vendors have been trying the “faceted” search approach, which does allow keyword searches to access the authority data. This is a big improvement, and I do hope libraries implement faceted search interfaces when they become available.

However, we still have another problem—library users don’t search the library catalog. Yes, I know, it’s a generalization, but I’ve seen enough surveys of library database usage to know that the catalog is the last place people look, especially if their past experience has been trying to navigate a crappy Boolean/BRS search engine. In university libraries, I’ve seen another problematic trend with respect to the catalog—students don’t want to use books, or at least they want the bulk of their information from online resources. And who can blame them? It’s easier to get things online, and in certain fields, the information in books is out of date by the time the book is printed and distributed.

Still, there is a lot of good information in books that is missed, so libraries want users to use the catalog, and they want them to check out or at least look at the book sources. Ideally, it would be nice to have a federated search that allows you to search the catalog AND the electronic resources at the same time, and give you one result set. But wait!, you say—such products already exist! Indeed they do. And they are highly inadequate, because of yet another problem—the searching protocol problem. Try this: go to your local library, and look up something in the catalog. Look up anything you want, though a more complicated search makes it more fun. Keep your result list—print it out, whatever. Now go to your library catalog via another site--
Did you get a list of items? Good. Save that, or print it out. Now—go home and go to a neighboring library’s site that offers access to your catalog. It could be through another County library system (e.g., if you are in New Jersey, search catalog.mainlib.org in Morris County, then search the same catalog via Passaic County or Bergen County’s site). Do the same search you did in your library and look at the list of items. Compare it to the first list. Are they the same? I’m betting they’re not, especially if your search was more complex.

This is because of the Z39.50 protocol. When you use a search protocol that allows the different library servers to “talk” to each other, the search is not executed by the system in the same way. And that’s just in a regular library catalog—try putting an Ebsco or Proquest database into the mix. Their searching is entirely different.
The bottom line is that one federated search will often give you disparate and confusing results. A standard, consistent search that would give you relevant results across different platforms has not been effectively developed.

The point I’m trying to make is that we have very good data, and for all of our technological developments, we don’t seem to be able to design library systems that make good use of this data in a simple, user-friendly way. Why not? Apparently, “it’s too hard”.

Instead of treating this as a programming/technology issue, the library profession has attempted to rewrite the rules. There are huge flowcharts about “relationships” between different types of “entities” that looks like a huge, confusing Peyton Place of data, only not nearly as interesting. Ever practical, the Tech Services staff and librarians are responding by saying. “Nice flowchart. So what do we do with it?” Over the last 4 years of workshops, conferences, and lectures, I’ve not yet heard a coherent answer to that question. Two big mistakes are being made—letting academics drive the rule-making, and allowing the technology to compromise basic organizational principles. Programmers don’t understand the principles behind the library data structures, and rather than try to learn them, they’d rather we dropped all that “fancy” stuff and made it simpler. The academics go along with this, because I think they somehow believe that the idea of traditional librarianship is obsolete, and that they have to “get with the times”. All I can say to that is—librarianship is still librarianship regardless of the technology. The fact that a lot of things are “born digital” now shouldn’t be making us scramble to change our standards. Digital object metadata is not useful for physical items by itself, and shouldn’t be treated as such—just as the converse is also true. But we don’t demand that the technology accommodate us because we’re told “it’s too hard”.

Part II tomorrow...

Found Footage Festival’s Bad Movie Night

Last weekend I was in downtown Manhattan for the Found Footage Festival’s Bad Movie Night. I talked about the Found Footage Festival in a previous post. This particular event is a little different; it involves screening movies that were found at yard sales, thrift stores, etc., as opposed to watching short films like training videos, exercise videos, and such.

First, a word about the venue. The 92nd Street Y has opened up a space in Tribeca, near the Holland Tunnel. It’s a very nice space, with an open café when you walk in. That evening, my friends and I had the misfortune to be waiting in/near the café while they were having their improv night—poetry, spoken word, what I think was supposed to be comedy—all backed by a band playing what I think was supposed to be jazz. With apologies to the performers, I’m sorry to say it was horrible—my friends and I could not stop laughing it was so horrible. The music was frequently out of tune. Singers with the band kept trying to create vocal sound effects , but they were just as bad as the band. Most of the time I thought they were either suffering from intestinal distress or perhaps this was the get-together night of the melodramatic actors guild. In any case—I know we were not alone in our opinion of the sets. Frequently, members of the café staff would come out from the back to watch the band; the looks on their faces suggested it was giving THEM intestinal distress. And more than once I heard the ticket office staff apologizing to those coming for other performances “about that noise out there”.

So, I suppose bad music and poetry was a great set-up for a bad movie. We had a late start, but eventually we got into the theater at about 10:15. Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett were both there, along with the two guys who found this particular bad movie at a thrift store in Ohio. They divided the movie into 3 parts. Nick and Joe kept offering Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary, and at the end of each “part” they would get up to offer comments, and what little background information they could find about the actors in the movie. (The female lead in the movie is now a Kung Fu black belt). They even had a quiz at one point, during which they gave away copies of the movie for correct answers. My friend Liz ended up winning one of the copies.

The movie itself—it was—CONFUSING. The movie was called “Computer Beach Party”. It was clearly made in the 1980s, and apparently did have some level of wide distribution. However, the Internet Movie Database doesn’t have any listing for it, and neither does anyone else. The director was someone who made two films in his career—the first one was bad, and I think he gave up after this one. I certainly wouldn’t admit to being involved with this one.

The plot—was there a plot? Something about a pirate ship; treasure found on a beach, where these two geeky guys live; some kind of sailing races on the beach; a mayor’s daughter who is inexplicably in love with one of the geeky guys who really has no acting ability or personality ; a mayor who wants to secretly buy the beach and kick out everyone who lives there so he can search for buried treasure; a stupid lifeguard and his friend; and beach parties where everyone is invited by computer prior to social network sites, and always featuring the band Panther, a bad 80s hair metal band who also did the crappy soundtrack for this movie. And there was a chicken car (seriously--a car with a large chicken on it) that always appeared when the idiot police officer character wanted to arrest teenagers for having sex on the beach. Yes, there was nudity, mostly boobs. Nick theorized that this was how the movie got any distribution at all.

Here is a clip for your viewing pleasure:



Besides the obvious lack of a plot or any sort of real character development, the dialogue was all dubbed—the characters often had different voices in different scenes. The editing was really terrible—there were scenes that just show characters staring into space for several minutes, that clearly should have been cut. So—no plot, bad acting, lukewarm characters, and poor editing—all of the elements of what might be one of the worst movies ever committed to tape. Besides the Creeping Terror, of course.

Like Mystery Science Theater 3000, some movies are totally unwatchable without the benefit of snide commentary, and it looks like Bad Movie Night promises to fill that void in upcoming events as well. Be sure to look out for the next Bad Movie Night, featuring the film “Kindergarten Ninja”. It ought to be spectacular.

Eugene Mirman's Graduation Speech

Welcome to my 100th post!

About 10 days ago I was in New York City for Book Expo America, and a party given by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott, and the folks at McSweeney's and SMITHMag. Eugene Mirman was one of the comedians performing at this party. As part of his set, he read the draft of a graduation speech he'd been asked to give at his former high school (where he graduated with a blazing 1.9 GPA). It was amazing.

I was pleased today to discover that he gave this speech, and that the video recording of it was available on YouTube. With thanks to I-Am-Bored.com, here it is:

Jon Stewart Takes on Republicans

Most of American government is now ruled by Democrats, and the Republicans are not happy. In fact, not only are they not happy, they're really sore losers. This episode of the Daily Show aired almost 2 months ago (I'm behind on my TV viewing), but it's a pretty eloquent summation of the Republican temper tantrum:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
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Liverpool (Awaydays promotion)

May has been a strange month. I've not had time to do much writing or blogging. I attended the Damned show at the Fillmore in New York a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't even blogged that yet--usually I'm pretty prompt about such things.

I returned home from the UK (4th visit in the last 6 months) on Sunday. If you're guessing that I went to see John Foxx again, you would be right. This was not a formal gig; Foxx did a VJ/DJ set with Karborn and Dennis Da Silva as a promotion for the film "Awaydays" as part of Liverpool's Sound City festival.

Before I get into that, I want to mention Foxx's official web sites. A review of Google Analytics tells me that no less than 100 people over the last couple of months have come to this blog looking for information on John Foxx. While I'm pleased to have people reading this blog, it's mostly my opinion and not an official source of information on what John is doing. I worry that Google may be sending people here first rather than to the official sites. With a tip of the hat to Rob Harris, the official sources are:

Metamatic website:

http://www.metamatic.com

The Quiet Man blog:

http://blog.thequietman.co.uk/

The John Foxx MySpace page (run by Steve Malins):

http://www.myspace.com/foxxmetamatic

(There are actually 3 MySpace pages now--one for Foxx currently, listed above, one as a retrospective of Foxx's earlier work, and one for John Foxx's Ultravox).

If you're a Facebook user, there's also the "Metamatic : the Music of John Foxx" group page. I don't think any other Facebook pages for Foxx are official. As of right now, I don't believe there is any official Twitter feed, either.

(Update: thanks, Gem, for pointing out that the Facebook page isn't official--though I still consider it as such because news posted there comes directly from Rob).

Lastly--and I almost forgot--you can get e-mail updates on John Foxx by sending an e-mail to subscribe@metamatic.com.

OK, now that I've taken care of business--the Liverpool set. Karborn was besieged by technical problems from the moment he walked in and set up. Steve Malins and John Foxx told me that the set had worked perfectly right up until that moment--even on the train to Liverpool. Apparently there was a major software failure, and Karborn had to try to re-install the program while he was there at the set. Fortunately, he did get things going, but it took him almost an hour of tinkering to get things straightened out.

The set itself was pretty good--there was only one technical glitch once they got going, and the set consisted of clips from the Awaydays movie, backed by music from the film. The only Ultravox song I remembered hearing in the set was a remix of "Young Savage".

Afterwards, I talked to John Foxx and Karborn, and they both said that the set didn't go as well as they would have liked--that you got the "general idea" of how it was supposed to go, but it wasn't what they were hoping for. Karborn said that he thought 3 songs went well, and that the second half was better than the first. Foxx kept stressing that this was only an experiment, that they'd never done anything like this before--and they only had 3 days to put the whole set together. I imagine the fact that this wasn't their material was also challenging.

I don't know anything about the technicalities of these sets, so I just take their word for it--the DJ/VJ thing is more Karborn's business, so he would certainly know. To my untrained eye, the set was just fine--a bit repetitive at certain points, but I think it went fairly well considering all of the technical difficulties and time constraints. I have a brief clip of the set on YouTube (VERY brief, and taken with a digital camera, so it's not the best quality):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iYWhfQrjKw

YouTube has a couple of other clips taken by others as well, so look at the "related videos" if you check it out--their clips may be better.

Steve very kindly invited me to the aftershow at Heebie Jeebie's, and I had a lovely time chatting with everyone who came along. I never seemed to be without beer, and at one point I realized that my food to alcohol ratio was tipped heavily on the side of the latter. Fortunately, I didn't end up with any headaches or hangovers. We called it quits around 2am, and I headed back to my room to take a bath in the most magnificent tub I've ever seen.

I should also comment on the city of Liverpool itself. Liverpool has a reputation for being seedy, and perhaps it was at one time. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Liverpool isn't seedy at all--it's quite gentrified, and the people there are very friendly. Like any major city, I'm sure it has its troublesome elements, but I wouldn't say that it's the prevalent vibe of the city. I returned to London the next day, and was fortunate to have a gorgeous weekend to do things in the city.

Now I'm back at home and left to contend with the mysteries my cats have laid out for me in my absence (i.e., why there was blood all over my washing machine, where their food dishes disappeared to, etc.)--and looking forward to this weekend in New York City at BEA and the Rumpus party...

Goreyana and Childhood Books

After months of reading heavy-duty academic tomes on Jewish-Christian relations, the development of language, and the history of the Reformation, I decided to go for something lighter this weekend. This is the first free weekend I've had in awhile, and it's raining, so I can't do the gardening and yard work. It's the perfect time to sit down with a book and a pint of Guinness.

For whatever reason, I've had a hankering to re-read some of the early works of John Bellairs. John Bellairs did write novels and prose pieces for adults, but he was primarily known as a children's writer. Bellairs was recommended reading for us in the 4th and 5th grades. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, Bellairs was probably as popular of an author as Madeline L'Engle, Judy Blume, or C.S. Lewis (the Narnia series specifically). His most famous trilogy involved the Lewis Barnavelt character, beginning with A House With a Clock in its Walls. The stories take place in the late 1940s in New Zebedee, Michigan, and they do a great deal to evoke the time and the place. They are also probably the first example of the magical realism genre for me--Lewis's uncle and next-door neighbor are both practicing magicians, and yet are both very ordinary folk in all respects. Bellairs did have series involving other characters, but none of them equalled this first trilogy, in my opinion. After Bellairs's death, Brad Strickland tried to finish a number of Bellairs's unfinished works, all published as Bellairs/Strickland. As one might expect, these latter works all fall flat. I don't know of any author who has done well trying to write "in the style of" a particular author, except perhaps the Robert Bloch and August Dereleth stylings of H.P. Lovecraft.

The Bellairs books were also my first introduction to my favorite illustrator, Edward Gorey. Gorey was hugely popular in his lifetime, and even more so after his death. He is best known for the animated introduction to the "Mystery!" series that aired on PBS years ago, but that barely scratches the surface of his work. In 1996, a huge bibliography of his works entitled "Goreography" was published, and it's staggering to see just how much work Gorey did in his lifetime. I am a committed Gorey collector, but I have been limited to buying only 1 or 2 first editions, lithographs, or signed copies a year. Everything has just become way too expensive.

Gorey illustrated many children's books, particularly for Dial Press, but his own cartoon books were definitely not for children. About 12 years ago I did cataloging work for Baker and Taylor Books. One of the catalogers there told me about a children's book she encountered in the cataloging queue that absolutely horrified her. It was about a bunch of colorful bugs, all of whom are happy until a big black bug comes along. They all conspire to lead him to a cliff, then they push him off and drop a rock on him.

"Who would write such a horrible story for children?" she asked me.

"No one," I replied. "That's Edward Gorey's 'Bug Book'. And it's not for children."

Of course, the Library of Congress has subject-tagged all of Gorey's cartoon books as juvenile literature, and this is highly misleading, to say the least. Gorey writes about serial killers, children who are sold into slavery and then commit suicide, and a host of ghastly "alphabets" featuring gruesome murders. Works that don't cover these topics are usually heavy on puns, or mocking poor English translations of literary works. All of it is actually very funny, if you take it for the macabre humor it is supposed to be. One of my favorite lines ever is from Gorey's "The Loathsome Couple", about a man and woman who go about the business of murdering and dismembering small children. Gorey writes, "They met at a Self-Help Institute lecture on the evils of the decimal system, and immediately recognized their affinity." The whole thing is so weird, and yet so deadpan, gruesome humor with a totally straight face.

At my last place of employment, my supervisor and her husband used to go to the Gotham Book Mart in Midtown regularly when Edward Gorey came to read from his works. Each time they went, they got him to sign editions of his works that they had purchased. One year at Christmas, my supervisor left a huge shopping bag under my desk. I opened it, and it was full of the Gorey signed first editions, pop-up books, and even dolls made of his characters. She told me, "I've had them for so many years, and I have to get rid of stuff. I decided you would be the one to give them a good home." I was flabbergasted. That was one hell of a gift. I still have all of those items to this day. I acquire more each year by poking around antiquarian book fairs, checking bookseller lists, and browsing the Strand's rare book room.

The picture above is of just a few of my Gorey items.

Influences

I always find myself in a curious conundrum when it comes to literature and music. I enjoy hearing and reading things that are original, or at least re-worked in a creative way. At the same time, I find myself postponing the experience of new things. Anyone who has made a mix CD and mailed it to me knows this well. While I’m happy to receive it, I’m not always anxious to listen to it. The same is true of artists that I like. Every time Sleater Kinney put out a new album, I would buy it, and then let it sit for days, sometimes weeks, before I would pop it into the CD player. I usually loved their previous album so much that I was afraid the next one would be a let-down. Never mind that they had a habit of putting out better and better albums each time; I always figured that the other shoe would drop, that one day I would become disillusioned, or feel that they had “lost” it. That never actually happened, but the expectation of disappointment is an interesting one.

With literature, I find the problem occurs when I walk into bookstores. I look at hundreds of books, and always end up choosing the same authors, or gravitating towards things I’ve read a hundred times. I’ve finally finished going through several weeks of the NY Times Book Review, and I found many things that sounded interesting. Yet, when I walk into a bookstore, I’m totally at a loss. I’m afraid to commit to buying something that I might not like. I’ll fly 3,000 miles to see a concert or art exhibit that I am uncertain of, but I hem and haw about buying a $12.95 paperback.

I’ve started to wonder: What is wrong with me? This isn’t a financial issue, and it’s not as though I’m afraid to take risks. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it has as much to do with my personal boundaries, in the way a relationship does. I’ve always been very sensitive when it comes to images. Something truly horrifying can frighten me for weeks. Something very sad can make me feel sad, or at least very disturbed, for an equally long time. In relationships, I am actually quite sensitive as well, and have had feelings seriously hurt enough times that I am very choosy about who I allow to cross my personal boundaries. If I think they’ll do damage with their tenancy in my heart, then they don’t get the lease. And if someone tries to break in, or even trespasses unknowingly, they get ejected rather aggressively. However, I do find that I’m willing to take relationship risks if the situation intuitively FEELS right.

All of this is also true about my relationship with music and literature. If I’m feeling rather isolationistic, then I may not want new influences intruding on my environment. It could be because I’m stressed out, just went through a major trauma, or had some other experience that makes me want to stick with the familiar.
I have days where I feel bolder and riskier, and this generally corresponds with an openness that I feel in personal interactions as well. I’m more likely to pick up something new when I’m in these moods. But I generally won’t make a sudden move towards a style of literature or music that I’m not familiar with, or have felt indifferent towards in the past. Again, as in relationships, I often have to be introduced to something new by someone whose opinion I respect.

The consequences of this are varied. A good friend may give me a new mix of songs, but the stress of not knowing if it will leave me exhilarated or flat often makes me avoid listening to it for awhile. Sometimes I listen to a piece of music or read a book just to oblige someone, a bit like going on a date at the urging of a friend—I do it more out of politeness and obligation than actual interest. But sometimes I’m taken by surprise, and really like what I hear or read. Or, I dismiss it at first, but rediscover it later, and really love it. It’s possible in the latter case that what I’m hearing or reading may suddenly and synchronously fit in with feelings I’m experiencing at that time, so it becomes a wonderful serendipity.

The one exception with regard to reading is non-fiction academic books on certain subjects of interest. I’m apt to pick up an academic book before I’ll pick up a novel. And why not? Non-fiction doesn’t cause the same kind of turmoil and emotion that a fiction book may elicit, unless is it about a very painful subject (the Holocaust, for instance).

All of this comes back to boundaries. Art, music, literature—and yes, religion (I can’t get through a blog post without mentioning that, can I?) are extremely personal, and often reflect our own issues and conflicts. I find that I want to pick and choose my emotional battles, and I keep fairly strict boundaries, hence the lack of “adventure” in these matters. But as I’ve noted before, life is not that controlled, and the most wonderful things often come about by accident. I think I’m better off allowing myself to have a happy accident than to remain so predictable in my tastes.

Random American Weirdness

Sometimes living in America gives me a headache. Don't get me wrong--I love this country, and it has many great things about it. But nationalism always makes me cringe. There is something vaguely creepy and insincere about it. It's like the 21-year-old Egyptian I dated a few years ago--he was very sincere in telling me how much he loved me after knowing me for all of 2 hours. (Of course, he was adorable, so I just laughed and thought, "this will be fun for 15 minutes"). And, as predicted, he moved on in a short span of time. But that sort of a love declaration is like many public expressions of patriotism--just plain absurd and embarrassing.

For instance--I saw clips from this video on Found Footage Festival Volume 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4difPEQ8wA4

If you got past the first verse, you're either too sentimental or very brave. I had 2 immediate thoughts while viewing this:

1. Emigration is sounding good.
2. The Onion had a great post-September-11 article on such songs: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31472

With regard to my first thought, it's probably a case of the grass looking greener elsewhere. For instance, I love Britain, but then there's that thing called "Proms". After looking at some of the footage from that event, I realized that cheesy nationalism probably exists all over the world in some form, making it more like a human genetic defect. But I have grumbled before about large-scale public displays of feeling that are entirely false, so I won't repeat myself on that.

You have to admit, though, democracy is a great thing. Those of us living in democratic countries hardly do enough to exercise or protect our rights, but occasionally you get the very cool protest against a government or public figure. For instance, there was this recent protest against French president Nicholas Sarkozy:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/5013742/French-protest-by-reading-Nicolas-Sarkozys-least-favourite-book.html

No one would think up a protest like that in the United States. ("You say you hate this book? Well, we're ALL going to READ it now. So, Va te faire enculer!") It's a creative way of thumbing your nose at someone, and involves reading, so to the French people I say: très bien!

On another topic, I was recently made aware of a video produced by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). (Makes me think of LOLcats. :)). The video was created as a response to the various American states legalizing gay marriage. Massachusetts was the first, and surprisingly Iowa followed suit recently. Now New York has proposed legislation allowing gay marriage. I've always said, why not? If marriage isn't merely a business arrangement, you should marry whoever the heck you want to spend your life with, regardless.

But the National Organization for Marriage's video puzzled me. They show people saying things like:

"I'm afraid" (of what? Lewis Black's "gay mafia"?)
"I'm a California doctor who has to choose between my faith and my job." (What the hell does that have to do with anything?)
"My rights will be taken away." (Huh? How?)

Fortunately, the great Stephen Colbert was on the case with this one--here is a link to the original video, and Stephen's satire:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/224789/april-16-2009/the-colbert-coalition-s-anti-gay-marriage-ad

XKCD Comic--Couldn't Say It Better Myself...

Hudson, New York Exhibitions and Such

I’ve been on the road quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. At the end of March I was in Washington, DC on business, and this past weekend I was in Hudson, New York to see the Peaceable Kingdom exhibition at the BCB Art Gallery on Warren Street.

The exhibition was lovely, with a very eclectic mix of art and photography relating to animals and nature. There were works from about 14 different artists. It included everything from black & white sketches of animals by Patti Smith, to silk-printed photographs by Susan Fowler-Gallagher, to the whimsical/folky art of Rodney Alan Greenblat. I was really struck by the artwork of Eric Rhein, who uses various materials to create images that look like sketches. There were also works by John Foxx at this exhibition, which was my main reason for attending; it’s one thing to look at digital artwork on the Internet, it’s quite another thing to view it “live”. While I enjoy looking at the photos of John’s work on the Quiet Man blog and posted to MySpace, seeing it up close was an eye-opening experience. You get the full effect of the prints without having to scroll or deal with computer resolution issues.

I chatted briefly with Bruce Bergmann, the owner of BCB Art, who had an exhibition of Foxx’s Cathedral Oceans back in 2004. Foxx is an occasional contributor there, and a future exhibition is a possibility. The opening was very successful—by the time I left the place was packed almost wall to wall. If you are in the Hudson area and want to check out the exhibition, it is running until April 17.

While in Hudson, I stayed at the Inn at the Hudson, owned by Dini Lamot and Windel Davis. I learned that Dini and Windel were in a band at the end of the Seventies/early Eighties called Human Sexual Response. (Coincidentally, they happened to open for Ultravox when they toured the U.S., in Boston). They’re both amazingly interesting guys, the Inn is just magnificent, and Dini is a fabulous cook, so I recommend the place highly.

Dini has had a rather interesting and varied career, and recently had an exhibition of his own digital artwork at the Carrie Haddad Gallery, also on Warren Street in Hudson. He gave me a quick slideshow of his works, under the title “Photoshop 101,” and it is an altered view of some of Hollywood’s female icons. You can take a look at the photos from that exhibit here—they were described as “extremely ironic and weirdly sincere”, and I can’t improve on that description.

BBfiction taken offline

An FYI for those of you reading my fiction blog, http://bbfiction.wordpress.com :

The site has been taken down for the time being. I am rewriting most of the stories that were posted, and many are being submitted for publication in a newer, much improved form. If items are accepted for publication, I'll post the links to the stories here.

Thanks to any and all who checked out the story drafts and gave their comments. I may use the site in the future to post newer fiction sketches.

Biblical Literalism and "Burning to Read"

Recently, in conversation with someone, I mentioned that I have a background in Religious Studies, and on occasion, teach the subject in universities. The question was then put to me: “Don’t you think there’s a conflict between religion and...science?”

The question is a natural one, given our current global religious environment. In the West and the Middle East, there are 2 apparent approaches to religion—the secular approach, and the fundamentalist approach. In terms of society and politics, this is really where the religion/science line is drawn—secularists are tolerant of religion, but science, logic, and reason are championed as the way to truth. Fundamentalists react against secularism, and feel that only God (as defined by said fundamentalists) can show us the true way. How do they know what God wants? Scripture.

I’d mentioned in an earlier posting that I was reading a book entitled “Burning to read: English fundamentalism and its Reformation opponents” by James Simpson. I’ve finally finished that book, and it’s given me a lot to think about with regard to religion and society, and the idea of Scriptural authority.

The translation of the Bible into English is considered to be one of the great “liberating” events of history. No longer bound by the traditions of a corrupt Church that served as interpreters of God’s word, the common people could now read the Bible and make judgments for themselves. Liberalism traces its roots to this time in the 16^th century, which is actually a tremendous irony. Simpson argues that the translation of the Bible did not make us more “free”—it bound us further, creating an atmosphere of suspicion, paranoia, moral authoritarianism, and violence. This appeal to Scriptural authority, called “Biblical literalism”, leaves its adherents “painted into a corner”.

Before I look at Simpson’s evidence, I will just state my view up front: Biblical literalism is bad. Bad, bad, bad. Did I mention that it’s bad? Human beings already have fractured souls, and this just shatters everything beyond repair. It turns God and the Great Mystery into a petty absurdity, and causes people with any common sense to reject the whole idea of God as ridiculous. There IS an alternative way to look at the “God” idea, but that is completely lost in today’s society. Either you’re a literalist, or you’re an atheist. The Catholic Church—the only institution in my humble opinion that still has ANY grasp of meaning in Christianity, totally blows it by focusing on stupid shit like abortion and gay marriage—trying to play the same game as the fundamentalists.

OK, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest—Simpson makes several points throughout the book. The first has to do with the idea of Scriptural authority, argued by Martin Luther, and supported by Bible translators like William Tyndale and George Joye. Simpson uses the term “evangelists” for those supporting this Protestant view, so that’s the word I will use.

The evangelist view of Scripture suggests that it is God’s literal word. It should not be “added to or subtracted from”, so the text must be taken as a whole (i.e., no verses out of context), and anything outside of Scripture can be dismissed as error. In order for this point of view to have any credibility, Scripture must be clear and simple, and its meaning transparent. Indeed, the evangelists claimed that Scripture was so simple, it spoke for itself, and no theological commentaries were necessary.

It’s not hard to see how this immediately gets messy, but Simpson also goes on to talk about what that Scripture actually says. The Old and New Testaments of the Bible are vastly different. The God of the Old Testament is irrational and temperamental; the reader gets the message that this God cannot be appeased. More accurately—God tells us what He wants, but there is no way we can do it. Ha-ha. So this throws out the idea of “good works”—nothing you can do will win you any favors, so there’s no point in thinking that. The casual literal reader at this point will realize that they are doomed. As Simpson says, they take an “abject” attitude towards the text, because it is hateful.

So what’s the good news? In the New Testament, Jesus suffers for our hateful, sinful nature, and in Jesus alone is there salvation. We see where the idea of “Once I’m born again in Christ, my old life is dead, and I am saved” comes from. But there is a problem. In order to create a flow between the Old and New Testaments, the concept of an Elect, a True Church, came into being. The doctrine of predestination has its roots here—God already knows who is saved through Jesus, but you don’t. Ha-ha once again.

So—where does all this leave the “liberated” reader? In a fearful, paranoid spot, I would imagine. He or she must determine if they are one of the “Elect”—and they do so by interpreting “signs”. Simpson accurately notes that this is trouble, leaving the door open for “hearing voices”. Frequently, the suffering and death of the evangelists at the hands of Henry VIII and his chancellors was seen as a “sign” of election—they should be pleased to suffer for the Truth. But it is all too convenient to convince oneself about the interpretation of “signs” from God. Even those who believe they are saved suffer from the uncertainty that they can’t really know for sure. This not only leads to self-righteousness (I’m more “right with God” than you are), it also leads to extreme proselytization. The reason that certain Christian groups feel the need to knock on your door and convince you of their beliefs is a testament to this uncertainty. If everyone else believes they have the truth, they will feel more secure.

Which brings us to another point of Simpson’s—the reliance on Scripture suggests a distrust of God. God needs to put his terms “in writing”, as it were. And, like a lot of legal jargon, it’s difficult to interpret. Protestantism has so many splinter groups precisely for this reason—the “simple and clear” text obviously is not so simple. Even Tyndale, in his first translation of the Bible, had to provide an extensive commentary, as readers could “fall into error” by incorrect interpretation. So much for the text speaking for itself.

The last major point in Simpson’s book relates to history and tradition. If the Catholic Church was in error for so many years, as the evangelists claim, then how could God have allowed humanity to err for so long? Evangelists tossed out as irrelevant any and all traditions that were not Scripturally based. In short, they throw away most of history, leaving us suspended in a single point in time, with no past to refer to, and no way to go forward and create future traditions. If nothing matters but the Bible—a narrative of events and traditions (yes, traditions) from a particular place, time and culture—how is there room for anything else? He discussed Thomas More’s attempt to argue against this Scriptural literalism (and More does have some good arguments if you get past some of the venom), but More eventually weakens and falls because he’s trying to fight his opponents by the very method he’s opposed to using. The Catholic Church still has this problem today, which is why they are lumped in with all other flavors of Christianity in the “secular/scientific” worldview.

The book was a fascinating, if not somewhat weighty read. I’m quite passionate about the subject, because I am very distressed by the state of people today, and I feel this literalist worldview has contributed significantly to the problem. There is no need to read the text literally, and no need to take sides. Amma said it best on her talk before the Interfaith Center of New York: “Spirituality is like a piece of sugarcane. The scriptures are the outer husk, and inside is the sweet spirituality. One must suck out the sugar and discard the husk.”

Simon Iff

Over the past couple of weeks I've been cleaning up the stairwell in my house. For those unfamiliar with my house (most of you), my upstairs is a large loft, with an open staircase with ledges big enough for bookcases. Naturally, the stairwell has become filled with books. Some of these have been piled up in corners for the last 6 years, and now that I plan to hang a piece of artwork in the stairwell that's worthy of cleaning all that up, I have done so.

In the cleanup process, I found my copy of "The Scrutinies of Simon Iff" by one Aleister Crowley. (I blogged about Crowley and the philosophy of Thelema a couple of years ago). These are a collection of short detective stories written by Crowley. I love this particular book, because you can get an excellent snapshot of Crowley's wit and his mind without slogging through all of his magical books and diaries, which can be difficult even for those well-versed in those subjects. What I like about Crowley is his bluntness, his extensive knowledge of literature, and his excellent grasp of what was a new field during his lifetime, psychology and psychoanalysis. It's no wonder the Victorians--the non-Swinburnesque ones--were terrified of him. Here are a few quotes that I love from that collection:

From "The Biter Bit" :

"'Evidence of Identity', by Dolores Cass, was the Book of the season. It was as dry as a treatise on trigonometry, but people read and discussed it as if it were a novel The Washington Square group all tried to look like each other so as to deceive the very elect, and succeeded perfectly, as there was not one ounce of individuality in the whole gang."

"You don't worry about matters unless you are potentially or actually capable of them. Tell me that my house in Pittsburg is burnt down, and I do not fret, because I have not a house in Pittsburg, and please God, I never will have!"

From "Nebuchadnezzar":

"Mrs. Mills entered the room. She was the kind of individual who doesn't matter to anybody. She had everything in a mild form. Simon Iff was reminded of Mrs. Nickelby, but one without enough imagination to be flustered over The Gentleman Next Door. He had to use all his tact and acumen to disinter her from the graveyard of General Reminiscences."

"But even as he spoke, the telephone rang. It was a voice unknown to the magician. It had appeared that Mrs. A had been telling Mrs. B at Mrs. C's dinner-party that Mrs. D had heard from Mrs. E that Mrs. F had a letter from Mrs. G saying that Mrs. H had met Mrs. I and Mrs. J's, the subject of discussion being Mrs. K's divorce. Mrs. L had then... it went on to the climax, where Mrs. Y had advised Mrs. Z to consult Mr. Iff; and might she call to see him? Mr. Iff regretted that he was sailing, that afternoon, to take up residence in a monastery on Mount Athos, and replaced the receiver."

From "Who Gets The Diamonds?":

"Simon Iff was considered a crank by many people; they based their opinion on those of his acts which were in reality severely rational."

"The tendency to standardisation is an eternal menace to evolution."

"His genial nod was intercepted by the waiter, who informed Iff, trembling, that pipes were not allowed. Simple Simon knocked out the tobacco, and rolled it in a piece of cigarette paper before replacing it in his pipe. 'This, my friend, is a cigarette holder.'"

From "In the Swamp":

"His stupidity and conventionality quite discounted his cowardice, for though he saw men dying all around him, he believed himself to be under the special protection of a deity called Jesus Christ by the Methodists, to whom he belonged, but to be carefully distinguished from a false god of the same name worshipped by Baptists, Wesylans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Plymouth Brethren, Agapemonites, Lady Huntington's Connection, or other savage sects. Intelligent men, such as the French or Germans, cannot colonise. The art needs a race too stupid to understand that it is being martyred. Empire is a dream, with nightmare passages. And men must be asleep to dream."

"'It is the doctrine of the Vicarious Atonement that does the harm,' said Iff; 'despite all Paul's special pleading, it is bound to destroy moral responsibility.'"

From "Psychic Compensation":

"Morals are the cause of madness. Unmoral people never go mad, except in the case where insanity is a symptom of some disease like tuberculosis. Madness is caused by a conflict in the will. Immoral, as opposed to unmoral, people often go mad; for their 'conscience' reproaches them--Satan divided against Satan. And moral people often go mad too, for their suppressed desires reproach them; and this is worse than conscience, because conscience is a factitious thing, an Intruder on Nature. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The penalty of disobedience is insanity."

From "The Conduct of John Briggs":

"All men are capable of every kind of evil intention. But some are incapable of carrying such intentions into effect, just as a paralytic cannot walk, although he may desire infinitely to do so."

And, one of my favorite quips from "Ineligible":

"She had no more sex than one of the oatmeal scones."

Electricity and Ghosts, Part II

In yesterday’s posting, I started to talk about “Electricity and Ghosts”, John Foxx’s discussion of the origins of the album, “My Lost City.” I had mentioned 3 components of those notes that caught my attention, and talked about the first two yesterday. Today’s posting is about the 3^rd component.

Foxx goes into wonderful detail about his experiences of parts of London (Shoreditch and Spitalfields in particular), New York, Rome, Tokyo. He notes the very European--very Roman--origins of many cities in the world, and muses about the universality of being part of the life of a city, of having parts of it "lost" to you. In thinking about Foxx's experience, I started to think about my own.

While London has been somewhat central to Foxx’s experience, New York has been central to mine. This is purely geographical—I was born and raised in New Jersey, and New York City was only 25 miles away.

I come from a family that you might call "provincial". My parents hardly travel at all, except to visit my sisters. They are not fond of having to travel, and having occasionally traveled with them, I can say they are not good at it. My mother grew up in Newark, New Jersey long before it became the city it is today (and if you want to talk about a shifting city, Newark is a perfect example--it's never the same from one day to the next, never mind one year to the next). It may have been her experience of losing her own mother when she was only 9, and ending up being largely responsible for her younger siblings--not the mention the poverty they lived in--that has made her so fearful of moving about, of losing the security of one safe place. Not only were we raised to be provincial, we were raised to be wary of the city, to stay away from it.

My brother moved to Manhattan in the early 1980s, and my first experiences of New York--Greenwich Village, the Twin Towers, Times Square, the subway system--was through my visits to the city with him. I enjoyed the time we spent in the city--it was so vastly different from the suburban home life that I had. However, when my brother died in 1989, it was portrayed as somehow being connected to the "badness" of the city, of its dangers, of being swallowed up--of just being a number and of no importance. I did spend time in New York while I was only a few miles away at Montclair State University, but it was always stressful. The city was overwhelming, and I always felt very insecure when I went there.

After September 11, 2001, I found my attitude towards the city had changed. Many Jerseyans stayed off “the Islands” after September 11. Initially this was with good reason—the air quality downtown was not only terrible, it was dangerous. But after a couple of months, I started to go there with some regularity. At first, it was like a ghost town—usually bustling places like Times Square were eerily devoid of activity. Gradually, things picked up again, but I don’t think New York was ever the same after that.

I used to feel that the city was highly impersonal and cold. Whether it is because of 9/11, or perhaps it is because I’ve gotten over my own prejudices about the city, I now find this to be untrue. I talk to people I don’t know all the time in New York City--on the subway, in Penn Station, walking through Union Square, or in Greenwich Village. I feel like I’ve discovered a current or flow to the city, and once I discovered that, I could go with it, rather than feel drained or overwhelmed by it. This is true of every major city I’ve visited, though the feeling of each city is very different.

Foxx talks about the way cities change over time, how things are built on top of older things, derelict areas are “sanitized”. Some places don’t seem to change over time, others are built up, torn down, and then eventually built up again. Cities have life cycles, just like everything else that lives. But some things, even though long past, don’t entirely go away. In modern physics, the idea of time is not so linear (interestingly, because of the discovery of the properties of electricity and magnetism). Time is not absolute in the relativistic view of the universe—the observe-ability of events is absolute. In Eastern thought, no time exists but the present—it is from that point that we interpret everything. It has been suggested that all events actually occur at the same time—it is only a matter of when and where we are tuning in. The apparent linearity of things can be transcended, and perhaps that is what Foxx is doing here.

In any case, food for thought here is endless, and I’ve probably rambled on long enough...

Thoughts on "Electricity and Ghosts", Pt. 1

My last posting was my impressions from listening to John Foxx’s “My Lost City” for the first time. Subsequently, more detailed notes written by Foxx on the origins of the album were posted on Foxx’s MySpace blog, under the title “Electricity and Ghosts”. Foxx is a brilliant writer, so even if you’re not a big fan, I would recommend reading the notes. I have figured out the reason that I like Foxx and his work so much—he creates things on a mythic level, something that humans in the 21^st century are desperately lacking. When I say “mythic”, what I mean is that his work intelligently reflects and comments on the way things are—it stirs things up, it challenges you to look at the world and to try to make some sense out of it. A lot of what passes as “art” or “music” only distracts or entertains. Foxx is not “merely” entertaining.

Foxx covers a lot of ground in the notes, but I found myself focusing on 3 specific things. One is the observation that much of modern media was borne out of attempts to communicate with the spirit world. The second is the idea of cities and their inhabitants as a kind of “swarm organism”. The third is Foxx’s observations about the cities he’s visited in his lifetime, and his relationship to them.

With regard to the first thing—that’s a pretty amazing connection, and I’d never thought of it. But it’s true—the discoveries of things like television, radio, and electricity came initially from attempts at spirit communication. What one hears or sees via any electronic media is very much like a ghost—a disembodied voice, or an image that is not really the person—it’s not the same as face-to-face contact with a real flesh and blood person. But that got me thinking about even the face-to-face contact. Much of that is like talking to the dead as well. Interaction with others involves smoke and mirrors—projections, agendas—people don’t listen, they are more interested in what they can get from you, interpret what you say in the light of their own issues and circumstances. It is very rare to find someone who really listens to you and tries to understand you on your terms, not theirs. Honesty is a hateful thing in communication—no one really wants to “know”, everyone wants things politely glossed over. It happens every day in all sorts of “political” situations; it’s also why those types of political meetings and interactions are useless and empty.

This is because the two sides of communication—talking and listening—are tied up in personal boundaries. We are talking across fences to each other. Even with love—that most intimate form of personal interaction and contact—real love is predicated on trust and respect. Both of those things have to do with personal boundaries. If I “respect” you, I respect your space, I stay back tactfully unless invited. If I “trust” you, I’ve invited you into my space, and you haven’t violated it. In order to respect someone’s boundaries and defenses, one treads lightly in conversation, not wanting to accidentally open old wounds. The person who engages in real communication is unfortunately open to having their boundaries violated. People want to be heard, validated, and understood, and simply retreat into themselves when they see the hopelessness of that. If someone actually listens—there is the danger of the feeding frenzy, of desperately clinging to the listener as someone who finally “understands” them. The distinction between listener and talker is lost, and the listener becomes a distraction for the real problem. The only way the listener can save him or herself is to cut off the talker, to reinforce the boundary. It’s a vicious circle, and there’s no graceful way out of it.

Which brings me to the topic of cities as “swarm organisms”. Foxx suggests that there is no real individuality, that we are all like bees to a hive, or cnidarians to a coral reef. Are the boundaries that we retain false ones? The problem between the priorities of the individual versus the priorities of the society is not a new issue. Ironically, as we have more and more media for communicating with each other, societies become more and more fragmented. The identity that binds a society together is often no more than a name, or a set of abstract characteristics. Yet, on some level, there is a forgotten unity that transcends all ideas of identity. Identity itself is temporal. Religion is supposed to be a social link to that unified state, but that also has fragmented. With the advent of Peoples of the “Book”, there is no longer an implied trust between the temporal and the eternal. There needs to be a written “covenant”, and for all the simplicity of it extolled by evangelicals, it’s not simple at all—much of it is patently absurd. Any attempt to interpret the ultimate and eternal is distorted and absurd. In the end, that connection too is forgotten, leaving people deader than ever.

In another of Foxx’s writings (I want to say “The Quiet Man” but I can’t find the chapter now) there is a chapter deals with the man deciding to become “electric”, and how that doesn’t change the empty, shadowy feeling. That is true—high energy only wears you out, gives you a rush, and you become addicted to the rush. You forget about what’s beyond the rush. Even with religious experiences (which are a rush in and of themselves), many people cling to the experience and never move beyond it. Jolts of ecstasy do not bring happiness. Happiness has little to do with feeling ecstatic. What goes up comes down, and the only way to get out of that is to get off the wheel.

I have not yet gotten to the discussion of the cities themselves, but I think I will save that for tomorrow...

Thoughts from listening to John Foxx’s “My Lost City” this morning

My copy of “My Lost City” arrived from Townsend Records yesterday, and I was anxious to listen to it this morning. I don’t make a habit of writing about my experiences with music. I feel that most reviews are pretentious, and I don’t really consider this a review per se—more my own mental ramblings after listening to the album. I think that music serves a religious function. When I say “religious”, I am referring to the Latin word “religare”—to link back or tie back. I find myself talking about this album because I think it serves that function very well.

I would say that many of the songs on this album have a hymn-like quality to them, if not somewhat fragmented. Reading Foxx’s liner notes on this does help put the album in context. It’s actually meant to be an album of fragments. Pictures made from the bones of old experiences. A tapestry of ghosts.

Why ghosts, though? What is the need of going back over the past, over things that are done and gone, and rehashing them? But that is how one makes sense of life. All of us ponder our ghosts at some point, no matter where they come from—places, people, events. The ones that haunt us are often the ones that reflect what we consider to be a failure—a memory of something wonderful lost, a sense of regret over the handling of a situation, something we wish we could go back to and do again, or fix. There is a sense of wanting “perficere”—to finish, to complete the situation as wished.

There is also the sense of “lost-ness”. The sense of being lost is ghostly in itself, because it is always a past or future thing—one is either experiencing a void where something was before, or they don’t know where they’re headed. Neither is “real”.

Regardless of where I am—I could be in my own neighborhood, in New York City, in Los Angeles, in London—people always seek me out to ask me things. And they’re not selling anything. They are lost. I commented aloud once after my input had been solicited by strangers for the third time in a 2 hour period. The person I was speaking to said, “Well, of course people ask you. You look like you know where you’re going.” He was right. I do know where I’m going. Nowhere. There isn’t anywhere to go. Life isn’t about rushing from one milestone to the next. As to past lost-ness, I’ve never believed in that. Everything is borrowed, and if it’s really yours, then it will find its way back to you, even if you appear to have lost it. Most of the time the only thing we lose are illusions. Clarity is a starkly beautiful bitch.

Fundamentally, we are fragmented. Our external experiences are only reflections of that, reminders that we are split in some fashion. Religion is supposed to provide a tool for integration, for linking those fragments back together in a way that is whole and harmonious. Sadly, religion today often fails at this—the tool is broken. Art and music are the only tools we have in this day and age for providing that link.

What I love about this album is how you really get the sense of harmonizing chaotic fragments, the bits that don’t seem to go together, the always imperfect attempts to bring some unity or order to those fragments. One gets the sense of going through the attic, finding things, dusting them off, deciding what to do with them, where they fit in. And like any good allegory—it’s not just a sense of old buildings, old memories. It also disturbs the deeper sense of separation.

If I take a step back and look at a lot of Foxx’s work, this is a continuation of a similar theme—the Quiet Man, Cathedral Oceans—the sense of looking back, putting fragments together, the sense of being lost, invisible, somehow all mashed up together in a collage, either visual or audio (or both). I consider it great art because it reflects something larger than the artist, a fact about the culture that we live in.

What fact? People are lost and they are broken, and haven’t a clue as to how to put their shattered selves together again—does anyone remember what it’s like to be whole? Brokenness is everywhere. People do different things with it. Some people collapse, some move through life ignoring the pain of brokenness, others try to build new structures out of the broken ones—or leave them behind for new structures entirely.

But brokenness is not something to despair; rather, it is to be celebrated. One should not be broken by their brokenness. To be broken is to be alive, to have been shaped in some way, not simply left untouched. What challenge is there in never being broken? I think one of the things I really like about this album is that it presents the pieces without judgment. They are simply there, for you to make what you will of the fragments. There is no aura of victimization here.

Enough said. I think this album is tremendous. In the sense of “tremendum”.

Snow Day Randomness: 2009 edition

Welcome to the third edition of Snow-Day Randomness. This has become an un-intentional tradition, which may or may not be a good thing. It does, however, have the benefit of quasi-meaningful distraction, otherwise known as "keeping me out of trouble". When it snows and I'm stuck inside, there is always potential for trouble. I get strange ideas when I'm alone in the house for too long. Having the cats here does not help that.

Today's snowstorm is particularly heinous in many ways. For one thing, it is bitterly cold and windy. The plus side is that shoveling ought to be a breeze, as the snow will not be thick, wet, and icy. But the drifts! I opened my door at 5:00 this morning to feed the basement cats, and could not believe how the snow had drifted against my door, and my basement door. And did I mention that it's fucking cold? I cannot help but think about the fact that it was about 60 degrees Farenheit in London the weekend before this last one. Why did I ever come back?

This weekend I have been on a tear to go through the mounds of books sitting in my stairwell for the last 5 and a half years, dust them off, and get rid of the ones I don't want. I accomplished this yesterday, with a price to pay today--my body is absolutely killing me. I still have a few more things to do, and another part of the house to tackle; "later" is sounding like a very good time for that (never mind shoveling snow), maybe after the Advil has kicked in.

I have been reading through the taglines on Fark this morning. Fark is a website run by Drew Curtis, and it is dedicated to news that is not news. Curtis has an entire book dedicated to the various categories of non-news, which is highly amusing, and somewhat scary. The proliferation of things out there in newspapers and in the news online and on TV that is just a lot of made-up garbage, or advertising posing as news is mind-boggling. The Fark site allows users to submit these articles with an appropriate tagline that summarizes the article. The best taglines/articles actually make it onto the Fark site. The non-news is divided into various categories: scary, obvious, asinine, dumbass, interesting, hero, and Florida, to name a few. If you're wondering about that last one, then you've never been to Florida.

Here are some examples from today's Fark:

Filed under "Stupid" : Headline: "U.S. airlines losing less luggage." Actual point of article: people aren't checking as many bags due to bag fees

Filed under "Florida": Woman arrested for aggravated battery with deadly weapon after stabbing boyfriend in face with her stiletto shoe

Filed under "Scary" : War brewing on the US-Mexico border. This is not a repeat from 1846

Filed under "Silly": LA County to proclaim "No Cussing Week." Yeah, good farking luck with that shiat

(California is going bankrupt, and someone is worried about swearing. The person leading this should talk to Lewis Black.)

I don't watch the news and barely read the papers anymore, precisely because of the phenomenon demonstrated by the Fark site. I can't tell you how many times my mother has come trooping over to visit me, handing me an article about some study that proves that something I am doing is going to kill me one day. (File that under "obvious"). Yet, if you read the fine print, a lot of these are sensational-sounding propaganda masquerading as a serious scientific study. Yet, people like her, who already worry too much about nothing, don't realize this and get even more worked up about nothing. There must have been a time when you could rely on a newspaper to provide sound journalism that had integrity. Those days are long gone, not even part of memory, so it's best not to assume that anyone in journalism has anything useful or true to tell you.

Before my thoughts get too well organized, and in the interest of the "randomness" tradition, I present to you:

15 Random Things I Have Learned Over the Years

1. The desire to clean everything in your house with a Q-Tip is a sure sign of one of 3 possible things: PMS, pregnancy, or a meth addiction. I'm sure someone will do a study that will correlate the 3.

2. Tequila is bottled evil. Not the good kind of evil.

3. Something kills everyone someday. If you think this is obvious, speak to the folks who continually admonish me for not getting an annual flu shot, not eating vegetables, and for drinking copious amounts of diet soda.

4. The fastest way to drive a bunch of unwanted and hung over twenty-somethings from your house after a night of partying is to play some early Pink Floyd singles. Say, "Apples and Oranges." Or, "It Would Be So Nice." (This is a leftover from my days of being married)

5. It is actually OK to be physically sick once in awhile. Never convenient, but you'll live.

6. If your job sucks so badly that you have to call and dump on all of your friends almost daily about how terrible your day was...time to get another job. Same goes for your marriage (though I wouldn't recommend running into another one of those.) It's not nice to bleed your friends dry of any pleasure they might have experienced during the day.

7. Beware of what Scott Adams calls "the rolling disaster." This is the person who is besieged daily by major catastrophes, usually self-created. When you encounter such a person--run, don't walk.

8. You do not have any more brains at 40 than you did at 20. Being older does not necessarily make you smarter.

9. If you find yourself tripping down the escalators at Penn Station at midnight because you are so wasted, it's probably not a good idea to drive home once you get to the train station.

10. If you are so attached to your job, your friends, your position in life, that you would completely fall apart if there was a big change--then you need to rethink your priorities.

11. Toyotas are difficult to break into, so try not to lock your keys in the car if you own one.

12. Everything is absurd, and should not be taken too seriously.

13. Never answer the phone, unless you really do want a new mortgage or want to order satellite TV.

14. You won't find real news in a newspaper or an online/televised news network. You need to go to a comedy show, or satirical newspaper like The Onion.

15. Work, politics, and day-to-day interactions are not logical. You can save yourself a lot of grief if you realize this.

I guess I should go shovel some snow.