elvis would have loved it

Watching the live performances at the James Brown arena on CNN in Augusta,Georgia with James Brown laid out in his gold coffin and Michael Jackson on stage,the only really white entertainer on the stage
And the black tv news commentator reporting the event? ..the Music Critic for the Wall StreetJournal with Princton University pronounciation.
His low key comments on James Brown a condescending insult to a champion in his time of the black ghettos
Not to mention the Reverend Stapleton’s putdown of hiphop,the music of the James Browns on the street corners of today
Bizarre fucked up stuff
Like a family quarrel being viewed by millions of voyeurs around the world
Elvis would have loved it

encore

Dear Landlord of Memory Lane:
I remember when James Brown did a no-show at Place des Nations during the 70s. Free concerts in those days, all you had to do was get to the Expo islands with your "passport" in hand. Place des Nations was packed,waiting for The Godfather of Soul to arrive and perform "I Feel Good."

Well, to make a long story. . . and a long wait short. . . James Brown failed to attend his own concert. The audience didn't feel too good about that. Papa had probably found a brand new bag of cocaine -- or some new sex machine in his hotel. It started to rain at around midnight, and so I left a deserted Place des Nations to take the night train home before the subway closed.
I won't say it too loud, but the crowd wasn't too proud of James Brown.
Ray

The right thing

I decided to pull a copy of 'John Brown's School Days' from a dusty back shelf of my collection
It’s a 19th century best seller exposing the exceptional brutality of private school training for boys in elite British institutes like Rugby
In the first part we get the details of Tom Brown’s ordeal as a freshman subject to the bullying of the older students and in the second part his miraculous rescue from the bullies by a new Headmaster,a zealous man of faith,the celebrated Thomas Arnold
The ever earnest Reverend Doctor Arnold believed that the introduction of a new educational system based on a higher morality would soften the bullying behavior of the elite students in schools like Eton,Winchester and Rugby who were expected to take positions of social responsibility The elite must be taught to do ‘the Right Thing’ but how does one do ‘the Right Thing’ when the whole of it is wrong.

Tom Brown and his classmates were born into a privileged class whose power and prestige was based on the brutal exploitation of working class people and the violent oppression of colonialized persons of color.In 1857,the same year ‘Tom Brown’s School Days‘ was published,British officers during the “Indian Mutiny’ tied Hindu rebels to the mouths of cannons and blew them to pieces
The same officers no doubt read the best selling ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’and went to church every Sunday to sing hymns praising the God of Love and Peace and maybe even made it a point to say a prayer for their victims.

Brecht on morality:

Since every man is good and bad at the same time,the question is rather to know in what and for whom he is good or bad.Only in their social consequences can one judge acts.'

lost his soul

I never saw James Brown live but my old pal Jackie Robinson taught us all how to do the James Brown spin and once I split my jeans trying to do the splits to ‘Poppas Got A Brand New Bag’ at a dance down in the Pointe.
I still cherish my ‘James Brown Live at the Apollo’ album but I lost a big chunk of respect for the ‘Godfather of Soul’ when he came out for George Foreman in the celebrated 1974 ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ boxing match
All the people in the know figured Mohammed Ali was going to lose to Foreman so James Brown went with the smart money and lost his soul
You got to be dumb to be smart

O Ghosts of Spirits Past

Hotel Queen Elizabeth Lobby notes:
Easy chairs and fireplace with view out of window of Place Ville Marie with its promises of a future that never happened
cosy comfort décor with soft xmas music,a bourgeois celebration of ‘Home Sweet Home’ with a hollow echo and hidden cameras
one old guy asleeping in imitation Victorian easy chair and awaking up eyeing me with questioning frown
another guy nearby on cell phone speaking in cheery dulcet tenor of a deal in process that will probably impact on lives of thousands
“ ..the Swiss or Londoner?..oh..yes..interesting times.. ..complications..he’ll be back..he’s a businessman.. more money on the side for Stephen.. maybe let George in..of course..that’s understood..”
suddenly next week or next month somewhere in the world another famine or another civil war
reported on CNN
O ghosts of spirits past

tell them you're dave fennario

I tell Liz I want to go uptown on Xmas Eve to take notes on xmas past and present but probably should go on my own because I just want to sit somewhere for a couple hours in some place like the Hotel Queen Elizabeth lobby
We can’t as usual co-ordinate anything and as usual getting in each other’s way on what’s happening or suppose to be happening while escorting me,a take out Second Cup coffee precariously balanced on my walker seat,into the Queen Elizabeth lobby where we’re definitely being checked out by the staff cause we sure don’t look like we got American Express cards.
Liz straightens out the cuffs on my jeans and then after a kiss on the cheek says-she kills me-she says
“If they come over to throw you out,tell them you’re Dave Fennario and you’re taking notes”

you can join the gang if you find this funny

I tell Liz my spin on the latest non-news event to get main stream saturation coverage-the three climbers lost and assumed dead on Mont Hood
“I hope it doesn’t discourage other yuppies from making stupid mistakes”

Dr.Strangelove

Next time you see Doctor Henry Kissinger being interviewed on CNN as an expert on American foreign policy,I want you to think of this quote taken from the White House tapes that were released during the Watergate trials.
This conversation took place in the Oval Office,April 25,1972 between President Nixon,Doctor Kissinger,then Secretary of State and a White House aide

President:How many did we kill in Laos?
Ziegler:Maybe ten thousand-fifteen?
Kissinger:In the Laotian thing,we killed about ten,fifteen..
President:See,the attack in the North that we have in mind..power plants,whatevers left..the docks..and I still think we ought to take the dikes out now.Will that drown people?
Kissinger:About two hundred thousand people
President:No,no,no..I'd rather use the nuclear bomb.Have you got that Henry?
Kissinger:That,I think,would be too much
President:The nuclear bomb,does that bother you?..I just want you to think big,Henry,for christsakes.

In a later exchange Nixon observed to Kissinger:
"The only place where you and i disagree..is with regard to the bombing.You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians and I don't give a damn.I don't care."
Kissinger responded:
"I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.."

NO BLOOD FOR OIL
TROOPS OUT NOW

21st Century

If you're safe,you're not alive
If you're alive,you're not safe

good old days

Imagine if a patient from the Allan Memorial in 1959 said,help me please I’m being tortured by the president of the Canadian Foundation of Psychology,Doctor Ewan Cameron,who is conducting brainwashing experiments financed by the CIA because he wants to win the Nobel Prize.
That patient would have telling the truth.

Christmas Story

We've already been to the funeral parlour to pay respects to Sue Tyseck dead from an overdose but finally decided to go out on a frosty night to Saint Willibrord’s Church for the memorial mass,walking along Verdun Avenue in the dark expecting to see mass displays of xmas lights along the way,but there seems less than there used to be,a lot less on the Avenues once reknown for being ablaze with outdoor xmas displays
Outside the Metro Verdun station a crowd of people-maybe fifty of them-lining up in front of a Sally Ann emergency foodbank van for the discard food being given out in IGA plasticbags
Liz was shocked,seeing this for the first time
“Its getting that bad?”
Later some of the same people showed up in the church still carrying their IGA plastic food sacks looking dazed and not too brightly lit
“They’re the druggies that lived in the same building as Sue”said Elsie who was the first to show for the memorial mass and then Kelley and baby daughter in secondhand snowsuit and husband with stutter and missing front teeth
We nod hello sitting there in one of the pews listening to the echoing microphoned voice of Father Joseph Cameron quoting the prophet Elijah in a ritualistic drone when suddenly he announces-“This is going to sound strange,but the washrooms are downstairs and to your right”
The druggies took the hint and start shuffling out baggetty raggetty down the aisle stopping to say goodbye to Kelley and baby daughter while clutching their IGA food sacks and suddenly it’s a scene from the xmas story with the three not so wisemen blessing the child

“Away in the manger,no crib for a bed”

Sue Tyseck name gets mentioned by Father Joseph Cameron along with a long echoing list of other lost souls and then the regular parishioners line up to take communion with no visible change of expression before or after eating the wafer that’s been transformed miraculously by the mass into the body of Christ
No doubt the druggies might have stayed longer if that miracle had produced frenchfries and gravy instead of a wafer so thin you can see through it

fault in reality

2,917 American soldiers officially dead in Iraq and 22,000 wounded
Lots of young guys back in the US of A with arms and legs missing and even more with their brains scrambled

UPI reports:
'As many as 1 of every 10 soldiers from the war on terror evacuated to the Army's biggest hospital in Europe was sent there for mental problems.Between 8 and 10 percent of nearly 12,000 soldiers from the war on terror, mostly from Iraq, treated at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had "psychiatric or behavioral health issues," according to the commander of the hospital, Col. Rhonda Cornum.That means about 1,000 soldiers were evacuated for mental problems.The hospital has treated 11,754 soldiers from the war on terror, with 9,651 from Iraq and the rest from Afghanistan, according to data released by the hospital.'

The 60’s slogan..”Do not adjust your mind,there is a fault in reality”