Cinema 16 blurb in the New York Times

Congrats to friends Molly Surno of Cinema 16, Rachel Blackwell, and my old band Dirty Churches for making some ink in the NYT. See the original article here.

A still from Rachel's film Rituals, screened April 9th at Galapagos.

No Immunity for former AG, in Abdullah Al-Kidd v. John Ashcroft

From AllGov.com and ACLU.org:

Last Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a September 2009 ruling that Al-Kidd may go forward with his claim that Ashcroft bears responsibility for the former's wrongful detention, dismissing a petition filed by Ashcroft to have the decision reconsidered en banc.

"In March 2003, Kidd was arrested at Dulles Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Saudi Arabia to work on his doctorate in Islamic Studies."

Kidd was detained for two weeks, and then asked to live with his wife's parents in Las Vegas for 15 months.  His detention was ordered under 18 U.S.C. § 3144, commonly known as the "material witness law."  The ACLU, filing suit for the plaintiff, contends that Ashcroft implemented a distorted version of the law to pre-emptively detain Kidd (along with others) with no probable cause, rather than secure witnesses with actionable information or testimony.

Capital is caring less.

Love, please understand, my first memory of death in the family was a party.

A short list of Canadian bands that should've been in the Winter Olympics opening ceremony

 Instead of Flaming Lips*, we got flaming penises

Sure - the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games opening ceremony was impressive in terms of logistics and scale (what Olympics ceremony isn't?), but why did "Inspire the World" have to translate into "Bore me to (Ice-cube) Tears?" Why is a former new-waver, Ignatius Jones, giving us Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams?

What the ceremony did inspire me to do was compile a short list of Canadian bands (thanks to Wikipedia) that I would liked to have seen instead:

• Black Mountain
• Broken Social Scene
• Chromeo
• Crystle Castles
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor <- perhaps enough Winter Olympics dough would bring them out of hiatus...?
• Junior Boys
• King Khan (with whatever crew he chooses)
• MSTRKRFT
• The New Pornographers
• Skinny Puppy (can you imagine?!)
• Any of the Unicorns spin-off bands

* - I know the Flaming Lips aren't from Canada - Oklahoma has finally officially recognized them as their own - but the giant bear seemed like something right out of their concert playbook.

Black Mountain - "Wucan"

"Awesome-Blage '09" closing reception at Artjail, this Fri., Jan. 8th, from 7-10PM

The show I'm in, "Awesome-Blage '09" is having a closing reception this Friday, Jan. 8th, from 7-10PM.  With live performances by Big Game and Open Ocean.  At Artjail, 50 Eldridge St., 6th Fl., NY, NY 10002.

Something I heard on the radio that resonated with me

On his Oct. 13 show, Brian Lehrer asks Deepak Chopra the naturally skeptical question about how the pursuit of enlightenment isn't just solipsistic "navel-gazing," to which Chopra responds:

"Because you see, solipsism is self-centeredness, more or less. Whereas meditation takes you beyond the separate self; it takes you to a trans-personal domain. And ultimately, enlightenment is a state where you don't actually believe in your personal identity at all, because you realize that your personal identity is a transient, impermanent, ephemeral manifestation of a more universal consciousness, and that's the only thing that it is. So it's the antithesis of solipsism." (Deepak Chopra, WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, 13 Oct. 2009)

The form of Chopra's answer has undeniably achieved a level of cliché familarity. But I nonetheless agree with him, and think that recognizing this difference is probably harder than most people would expect, or is a distinction that some people - despite their entire lives - never even consider.