Flashes From Everywhere

 

When I started working at Moisson Montréal, I became friend with a former sex worker (mostly dominatrix) who exclusively listened to... you've guessed it: Heavy Metal. Released in October 2000, I gave her this Midian CD for Christmas (because I'm a cheeky lad).

I didn't mention it in the previous publication but Belinda, myself and Nataly went to see The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen at the cinema.

If you are unaware, this year South Park has been raising hell. They are satirizing every right-wing and Christian Nationalist concepts that the current American government upholds. This is the newest episode, and stay for the review discussion after their reaction to the episode.

And this one, for more footage.

In the second episode titled Got a Nut, Cartman became a master-debator against young college chicks on his laptop computer. Cartman then began to have a similar haircut to Charlie Kirk, whom recognized it himself, saying it was a beautiful homage. You have probably heard about him since his death just a few days later. So, let's have a look at this important discipline.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I started using youtube during the pandemic lockdown.

I liked the songs I heard on MusiquePlus from Richard Marx in the late 1980s, which led to my brother becoming interested in him as well.

My brother had Richard Marx's first two albums, and I would borrow them from him from time to time. This song was my favorite. It was composed in support of the Los Angeles-based organization of the same name doing work on behalf of runaways or underage victims of sex trafficking, child abuse or neglect and so on. 

I just love the comment left by some random dude:

How about we take a trip to Romania ?

Podcast, influencers, social-media...

With our favorite public-opinion follower cro-nasal sapien Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk.

Here's another story for you to conclude this section of our narrative. The Cool Like Dat Digable Planets, from an album I still own on cassette tape.

From Femme Fatale to Femme Fœtale... they have overturned Roe v. Wade.

(the lyrics to read along)

In this next section, we must have an idea about the puzzle chunks that surrounds that new season of South Park. A lot of what unfolded was the same kind of things I was already alluding to in this blog.

Let's have a comedian explain what those kind of lawsuits are always about. It's not complicated, and identical to what Richard Martineau did to our friend Alex Fatta as seen previously on this blog.

A lot of focus has been placed on late-night talk show since the cancellation of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Many are lamenting there's a one-sided attitude regarding the opening monologues not favoring the current presidency or the Right as opposed to those across the aisle. Let's see what it looks like.

So, only one doll. As long as it's not named Klaus Barbie...  This news media divide is very easy to make fun of. Reactionary sentiments ? Just as much.

But before we move on, in the next video you will often see a similar image:

So, just to be sure you understand what that image will signify:

And now, we can resume.

I know that the following song is not as charming as that Pee Wee Polka Dot Pig holding your toothpicks, but if you were to use Fishbone to clean out your teeth instead... 

I had already brought attention to all that stuff with that video essay about Sounds of Freedom and Angel Studios but here we go again, it's been a constant barrage of Epstein Files bickering for a good while.

To offer a counterpoint to what LazerPig said about the Frankfurt School, here's some of the things Herbert Marcuse had to say when interviewed by Chris Koch and John Simon for the radio station KPFA on 18 July 1964.

We need some more podcast here. This one is from former Barack Obama staffers and they'll give us some further context for what's going to follow.

For more of the story, Peter Thiel was one of the co-founder of a company called Confinity which would later merge with X.com co-founded by Elon Musk. Thiel will then take over Musk's position in that company and shortly after X.com will be renamed PayPal.

And now back to some more late-night talk show for a glimpse at what Palantir is about.

A small example of how AI works on Google. I was searching for the source of this clip by George Clinton. What I had to work with was the name of the host Yassin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def). 

I found the information I was looking for: this clip is from Def Poetry Jam, Season 6 Episode 5, March 16 2007. The poem was first recorded in 1994.

At first, Google told me something to the effect of there isn't any known collaboration between George Clinton and Mos Def, although they do similar-styled kind of music. I found the information I was looking for thanks to IMDB and here's what Google said immediately after I did the work.

Read the words in the research bar. The very basic prompts AI used to build its answer. 

Just like any human, AI doesn't know anything. It progressively learns, like everyone else. And we are teaching it what we are looking for all the time. The only impressive thing AI has going is a spectacular memory.

Would you rather vote for A. I. Pudincop or for R. J. Thompson ?

Save your new city councilor in the fridge for later. Grab some sliced bread instead and make some sandwiches for the rest of our journey here.

Oh, well...

Still, our favorite society is here.

October 1963, baby !! From the Carnegie.

Remember that classic ? One of the first musical commercial films (eventually to be known as music videos). With Allen Ginsberg in the back.

There's another rarer one of the same song, this time featuring Tom Wilson. Thanks, youtube. We can finally see it.

I wrote that there was a lot to unpack in this movie, and Bolchegeek did it for us. Merci, camarade.

(The automated English subtitles are not so bad.)

I posted several Sinners reaction videos on this blog, so let's compare some of the plot with a TV mini series titled Small Axe.

In the Jamaican folklore, a duppy is a mean spirit. A restless ghost. 

As for Zion, that's the promised land, that place away from captivity and oppression. As descendents of slavery, repatriating to Africa can take many shapes, either physically or spiritually (philosophically, ideologically).

Babylon is anything related to the Western Culture, especially colonial empires. 

While I was watching Sinners for the first time, I could not refrain from adding these rasta connotations to the story. So, there you go. 

Shall we discuss religions ?

This next video was uploaded as Charlie Kirk was shot in Utah.

Good old Ronald. This is an album from a member of the Black Artist Group in St. Louis (we've seen them elsewhere on this blog). The record is publish by the German label linked to the Moers Festival. If you scroll down to the back cover, it's specified featuring Billy "Spaceman" Patterson (and I'm just making sure you will not miss Om’Mas Keith: Across the Board in there).

Welcome to Moers. Total recall.

(I don't know if you can still purchase a copy of the CD - I'll always encourage reading the liner notes - the website appears to only sell a digital version. Hopefully it comes with a pdf of the booklet included in the zip file.)

Remember the sixties and its public protests ?

The music doesn't match the video footage. They have taken parts of the songs That's It For The Other One and The Eleven from a show at the Electric Theater in Chicago on April 26, 1969.

PBS has just released a new documentary about the Hard Hat Riot.

(Sending a shout-out to our friend Paul McRandle.)

Let's talk about stories.

So many ways to examine or profile what some Americans believe their nation to be about. 

If interested in this book: Weak Nationalisms.

Or about his most recent: We, Us, and Them.

So, we have waited long enough and now let's get to it. The Christian faith-based american voters.

In the even further reaches of the religious american voters.

And without a doubt, one of the best story plot some of these guys have ever imagined.

And there's that.

Lots of bickering in the american "Left" right now around Democrat candidates receiving campaign donations through AIPAC, candidates under suspicion of being propagandists for the State of Israel over what is happening in Gaza.

 

I told you, that was all very hilarious. Let's move on and talk about books some more. 

And one of the most lazy (and lucrative) way to reject movies or TV shows is also to simply stamp the word Woke on them (as we already know).

This next guy wrote a few issues of The Simpsons comic books. Want to witness the might of an intellect going full gear over watching a movie or not ?

Spoiler alert: Sadly, the movie needed to be so much woke, and that's very frustrating. Due to that specific kind of sadness it produced on our reviewer, his movie assessment was forced to end on an intellectual processes shutdown.

As mentioned, the movie was written and co-directed by Saul Williams, whom you can see as Preacher Boy's father in the movie Sinners.

Or...

Remember The Simpsons ?

Before the appearance of podcasts, Conan O'Brien co-wrote episodes of that show for two seasons before getting the gig to replace David Letterman as the new host of NBC's Late Night.

Voices of executive producers Matt Groening, Al Jean and Mike Reiss, writer Conan O'Brien, animation director Rich Moore and producer/supervising director David Silverman

What happened to comedy recently in the United States of America ?

Comedians and podcasters, that's truly where it's at.

This will be our last late-night show interview here. We are going back to the very beginning of this blog with the Colbert Questionert.

Yo, Stephen ! Take your time and repeat after me: Steel Pulse. 

After the cancellation takes effect in May next year, perhaps Stephen will have some free time to watch White Riot.

You may have heard that after a joke made about Trump concerning Charlie Kirk's death, the late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live was briefly suspended due to some loose comments from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) towards broadcasters nationwide.

For its comeback, the show spent a week at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn, with special musical guests. Here's two of them, with very à propos musical selections.

This is it.

***

To the next song on the new Stereolab album.

They were playing in Montréal the day after that Living Colour performance for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show.

Stereolab · Flashes From Everywhere

Not intended to be believed

But rather to be learnt from

They offer endless meaning

Willing

My time has come

Awaken to the myth that

Lives within

Looking for different ways

To assemble the facts

Reveal the connections

The underlying cast

Introducing

Logos, mythos

The rose petals

Presenting a truth of a different order

Wisdom

Abiding truth

To uphold

Intuition is enrolled

To make things whole again

An imagination

Deep subjectivity

The gate to creation

To be the edge of history

Primordial themes of unity

Our longing to reunite

Mysterious journeying seed

Adventurous way to proceed