fyi, thanks to Kent’s intimate knowledge of TV schedules, Showcase runs current TPB episodes, but 2 weeks behind the latest ones on Thursdays at 9:30pm. This means that I can finally watch this season’s 2nd episode, and then hopefully catch up on Sunday’s episode at the same time. Way cool, especially when you want these suckers on tape.
Unless you buy the DVD….
that will be all.
This is a direct rip-off from Noonan’s blog, but I found it hilarious.
http://www.kaaos.org/weirdpic/
be sure to look carefully at this picture….. it’s very compelling.
As for Dylan, that sell-out, he’ll write anything to make a buck. Ok, I’m not serious, but the book did quote him directly telling Baez that he just wrote that stuff to become popular. There was some comment he made about a white kid telling people what was wrong with the world, and he thought it was hypocritical. Of course I think they were breaking up at the time, maybe he made it up.
In any case, it’s hard to look at this era of his career and take it seriously when the book ended before he wrote The Hurricane, for instance. I guess the author didn’t want to address that to closely since it probably didn’t fit with his theory.
by the way, thanks for the book Gibson. Want to borrow it now?
And the sub-basement is treating me just fine, thank you. My skin has a rugged green hue, bathed in healthful fluorescent light. It’s doing me a world of good down here.
🙂
Another sunny Friday. How’s that sub-basement at work treating you, Court?
I don’t buy the argument that Dylan only wrote protest songs to make money. He was writing them when he was nobody, and there’s still a strong suggestion of the subversive in his recent work. I think it is just too easy for the critics to criticize whatever makes a person successful. Are the Stones not about sex drugs and rocknroll just because they wrote Angie? Of course not. And Dylan is still about counter-culture in spite of the Band years.
So, I finished reading Positively 4th Street a little while ago. It’s a neat book about the life and times of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, mostly. I’m a weirdo for reading stuff like that maybe, but hey, what’re ya gonna do? So anyway, some of the more interesting tidbits that come to mind are;
– Dylan and Baez dated back then quite a bit, even got close to getting married,
– Baez is basically responsible for Dylan’s rise to fame, she had him sing at her shows before he could get his own gigs, they did duets together, she scolded her very conservative audience for talking during his set(!).
– Bob recorded Subterranean Homesick Blues and a few other songs from Bringing It All Back Home with a group of studio musicians the very first time they had met, let alone played together. The musicians hadn’t even learned the songs, it’s all more or less ad lib. That’s the take they used for the album. That’s way cool.
– Dylan invented most of his public persona several times over the course of his career, and the book I read made it out like Dylan only wrote protest songs because they would sell well, he abandoned the whole social protest thing after a period to do rock and roll with The Band, known as The Hawks at the time.
– During this same period Dylan also nearly drank and drugged himself to death. Shocker, I know.
Anyway, there’s lots more stuff in here that’s pretty neat. One revelation was that these folk musicians really didn’t do concerts very much, really much less than I thought. Also, most excellently there are several quotes from Tom Rush in there, he was always around there in the beginning. Cool stuff.
That will be all for today.
OK, I don’t mean to push my environmental concerns on you guys, but I think this is important enough to bother you all with.
This past February the Ontario government granted a giant Swiss corporation, OMYA, the rights to remove 4.5 million litres of water each day from Ontario’s tiny Tay River, which is near Perth. This works out to roughly 1.6 billion litres per year. This water isn’t even going to be used for drinking purposes, but for industrial processes (OMYA is a mining company). The Ontario government had initially denied OMYA’s request for the 1.6 billion litres per year. But, OMYA decided to appeal the ruling to the Ontario Divisional Court and the Minister of the Environment, Chris Stockwell. With OMYA threatening to warn foreign investors away from Ontario unless it got all the water it wanted, the Minister has decided to overturn the decision of the Tribunal. The Minister has taken this action despite the pleadings from his own ministry to wait until the issue has been given a full and fair hearing in court.
Needless to say, this removal will seriously impact the health of the river and the surrounding communities and environment that rely on it. But, worse than that, it sets a dangerous precedent which threatens every lake and river in Canada. Trade experts are already saying that if OMYA is allowed to take this amount of water, American corporations will come to Canada and demand equal amounts of water. And under the North American Free Trade Agreement there is nothing we can do to stop them. An article in the Ottawa Citizen has warned that if the OMYA ruling is allowed to stand, Canada will be opening the floodgates to water exports.
Fortunately, it isn’t too late to stop this from happening. For example a similar action was blocked a few years ago in B.C. (for which Sun Belt, a California company, is suing the government of Canada under NAFTA. The company claims that B.C.’s law violates several NAFTA-based investor rights and therefore is claiming US$10 billion in compensation for lost profits).
Here’s the article entitled Chris Stockwell’s Valentine’s gift: A slap on the face for citizens
OK, I’m gettin’ off my soapbox now.
And to prove it further, check out Ricky in this warm and fuzzy family movie, prior to the TPB show (presumably). The trailer is here, and you have to be quick because he’s not there long, but his one line is something like “They’re coming” and he looks remarkably Ricky-like. Julian is in this movie too, but he doesn’t appear in the trailer. Ironic that it’s a TRAILER, don’t you think?
Here’s the link, it’s the good old IMDB.
Hah. Don’t ask me why I took the time to find this alright?
Perhaps if we have the time we will try to rent this little flick for Sunday to see how warm and fuzzy the boys are in the “family oriented” genre.