This is your state of mind during the Bush years

(c) 2005 K Smokey Cormier

Happy Halloween ... Día de los Muertos ... Oíche Shamhna ... the fire festival ...

To read a fascinating history of this holiday, click here.

They Walk Among Us

(c) 2007 K Smokey Cormier

Halloween - Dead Kennedys

So it's halloween
And you feel like dancin'
And you feel like shinin'
And you feel like letting loose

Whatcha gonna be
Babe, you better know
And you better plan
Better plan all day

Better plan all week
Better plan all month
Better plan all year

You're dressed up like a clown
Putting on your act
It's the only time all year
You'll ever admit that

I can see your eyes
I can see your brain
Baby, nothing's changed

You're still hiding in a mask
You take your fun seriously
No, don't blow this year's chance
Tomorrow your mold goes back on

After halloween

You go to work today
You'll go to work tomorrow
Shitfaced tonight
You'll brag about it for months

Remember what I did
Remember what I was
Back on halloween

But what's in between
Where are your ideas
You sit around and dream
For next halloween

Why not everyday
Are you so afraid
What will people say

After halloween

Because your role is planned for you
There's nothing you can do
But stop and think it through
But what will the boss say to you

And what will your girlfriend say to you
And the people out on the street they might glare at you
And whadya know you're pretty self-conscious too

So you run back and stuff yourselves in rigid business costumes
Only at night to score is your leather uniform exhumed
Why don't you take your social regulations
And shove 'em up your ass

Halloween ... closer and closer

photo by K Smokey Cormier

Halloween is coming .... are you ready?

Photo taken from a film ... photoshopped by K Smokey Cormier

Folks, can you tell who's in the photo?

Are you preparing for the night of costumes and disguises ... the night of the Celtic New Year ... the days of the dead ... the festival of the dead ... All Hallow's Eve?

Irish + Bleak = Booker Prize

Reuters photo

On the Yahoo news website there’s an article about an Irish writer winning the Booker Prize. In the article they associated the word “bleak” with Irish twice (and an association between bleak and the Booker Prize actually). True?

Methinks there is a component in many Irish people for bleakness. Maybe that’s why some Irish have drinking problems. There is that moment of hilarity when you get drunk ... moment, mind. And if you continue, like a couple of my family members do, on to oblivion. Is it to wipe out a certain bleakness? I think a sizeable portion of Russians have that component too ... I usually refer to it as “being glum.” Don’t be so glum, chum.

Anyway ... on to this writer: Anne Enright and her prize-winning novel, The Gathering.

"It is an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language," he [chairman of the judges Howard Davies ] told reporters after the judges spent 2-1/2 hours closeted together picking the winner of the prize of $100,000.

Enright herself described the book as "the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepy."

"When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case, they shouldn't really pick up my book," she has admitted.

Asked if winning the famous prize under a harsh media spotlight might now provoke writer's block, the 45-year-old Enright said: "I am no spring chicken so it won't stop me squawking."

To read the entire article, go here.

Sidra Stitch and her art-site travel books

Just read an article in the Oct. 13, 2007 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle about a woman who writes books that are part art book, part travel guide. The art-site books "identify and evaluate contemporary art, architecture and design."

Sidra Stitch will visit a region and then write about interesting art to see in that region.

Here's an excerpt in the article about the San Francisco edition of her book:

For example, she wonders, just how many of us have admired the sailboats moored at San Francisco's St. Francis Yacht Club in the Marina district and missed conceptual artist Peter Richards' installation "The Wave Organ" at the end of the jetty that extends from Yacht Road? "This wave-activated acoustic sculpture is a superb example of site-specific environmental art. It is one of the best-kept secrets in the city and ought not to be missed," Stitch writes as part of a longer description in the 2007 edition of her "art-SITES San Francisco" guide.

So far she's written books about the following regions:

• London
  
• Northern Italy
  
• San Francisco
  
• Paris
  
• Britain and Ireland
  
• Spain
  
• France
  

To read the entire article which also talks about her background and how she got going on these projects, click here.

To go to Sidra Stitch's web site, click here.

Note: I have no association with Sidra Stitch, her publisher ... but I do have a passionate relationship with the city of San Francisco.

Margaret Cho's Queerotica

One of my all-time favorite performers is Margaret Cho. She is so damn funny. There's a great article in the 10 Oct 07 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle written by Jeff Yang.

The scene: The Zipper Factory, a Manhattan midtown-west cabaret lounge whose decor is a psychedelic blend of Weimar Republic languor and zesty queerotica.

It's late, well past the do-you-know-where-your-children-are hour, and the butts in the theater's seats are mostly male, tanned, waxed, and gymmed to perfection. Pulling back the tatty velvet curtain, Margaret Cho steps onto the stage, her face a Cheshire mask, a sly smile tweaking her lips. Flexing the mike like she's wringing a neck, she shouts out, "It's Margaret, bitch!"

And all us bitches cheer, like the bitches we are.

Tonight's show, "The Sensuous Woman," isn't like any Margaret's put on before. Billed as an "adult variety show," it features Cho and some of her personal-favorite performers, an oddball mashup of comics and dancers and bawdy wenches, no holds barred, but plenty bared.

Wanna read all of it? Go here. It's a great article.

Only wished I'd seen the show in June here in the San Francisco Bay Area ... maybe there will be a clammer for her to bring it back to San Francisco.

And I am a major nester ... don't leave home at night much anymore ... but I would for Margaret.

A visit to Margaret Cho's blog is always fun.

Peace for John Lennon

Reuters photo

On Tuesday this week, Yoko Ono unveiled a monument to honor her beloved, John Lennon. And urged the world once again to give peace a chance.

A few years ago she had an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and I went to it. I loved it. I love her sense of humor and intelligence. I loved watching the fly movie ... a fly walks all over a nude woman's body to the soundtrack of Yoko making her weird screechy noises. I was the only one who watched it all the way through. You can catch it here. The film really is bizarre but for some reason it caught me. It's this strange mixture of sensual and humorous. I have a refrigerator magnet that is a still from this movie ... the fly exploring the woman's nipple. My kids' reactions to the magnet: "Eeeewwww!!"

I also have a magnet:

WAR IS OVER


If you want it

This slogan was on many billboards all over the world ... a project in the 70's of Yoko and John's.

Anyway the monument is this tower of light constructed on Videy island near Reykjavik's harbor (the Icelandic capital). They lit it yesterday because it would have been ... get this ... John's 67th birthday.

Pause while I catch me breath. I'm feeling old. 67 for Christ's sake.

It will stay lit until Dec 8 ... which is the anniversary of John's death.

Sean was there as was Ringo and George Harrison's widow Olivia.

"We're all here for Johnny's birthday and the big light," Starr said. "I love the light."

The tower is a beam of light, radiating from a wishing well bearing the words "imagine peace" in 24 languages. The plan is for it to be lit each year between his birthday, Oct. 9, and the anniversary of his death on Dec. 8.

Yoko chose Iceland because it was a very eco-friendly country that relied on geothermal energy. So, the light too will be lit by geothermal energy. Cool, eh? The woman's always thinkin'.

Screw you, you "she-broke-up-the-Beatles" assholes. Get a life.

Once was too much

Last weekend I saw the movie Once. I’ve been reading a lot of good reviews about it. But, I was disappointed with it. And I really wanted to like it a lot. I thought it was going to be one of those little-engines-that-could kinda movies. But not for me.

I thought the acting was really good. I believed that these were real people. The sound was awful. I had a hard time understanding dialog ... and lyrics in the songs. Me mum was Irish ... so I'm used to listening to Irish folks talk. So that wasn't the problem. The sound was just bad.

Plus, there were too many songs ... played all the way through with footage “in the background” so to speak. I got bored of that. So, I really disagree with those reviews that just rave about it.

Hope you've been resting, Janis

It was on this day--October 4-- in 1970 that Janis Joplin died.

I had just seen her in an outdoor concert in Boston a couple of weeks before.

Sigh.

In peace, hopefully, Janis.