lørdag 29. mars 2008

Passion for the Possible

Corita Kent was an artist, teacher, philosopher, political activist, and possibly one of the most innovative and unusual pop artists of the 1960’s. However, what is perhaps even more incredible is that she was a catholic nun.

As the unorthodox leader of California's Immaculate Heart art department, her teachings and art making would become her career path for most of her life.

With a love of silkscreen printmaking, in 1962 Sister Corita began using popular culture images such as archetypal American consumerist products, grocery store signage and newspaper clippings alongside spiritual texts, song lyrics and literary writings as the textural focus of her work. She could be seen as the positive west-coast alternative to Warhol, possibly pre-dating him.

With fame, came the opportunity to bring her contemporaries to lecture at her teachings. Illustrious speakers including luminaries such as designers Charles and Ray Eames, musician John Cage, graphic designer Saul Bass and film director Alfred Hitchcock. During the countries significant change and unsettled political climate during the 1960's, Corita's representation of this unrest coupled with her rebellious and unconventional methodology infuriated certain conservative church leaders. She was dubbed a "guerilla with a paint brush” and left the order in 1969.

During the 1970's, living quietlty and devoted solely to making art, Corita was diagnosed with cancer and six months to live. She entered an immensely productive period creating several hundred serigraph designs for posters, book sleeves and murals as well as the “Love” postage stamp, reportedly the best-selling stamp in history. Corita eventually succumbed to cancer and died seven years later.

All of the above text was written by Aaron Rose, former curator of the Alleged Gallery in NYC and co-curator of the Beautiful Losers. I first saw the her work on Mumble Magazine online, and if you're interested in seeing more of Sister Corita's work you can check there. While I was in Berlin I stopped into the CircleCulture Gallery and this exhibit was being shown, to my surprise and happiness. Its pretty incredible stuff !

tirsdag 25. mars 2008

Flick Critique

Perhaps predictably, I liked this article and thought I'd pass it along.

Yeah Right: A Brief History of Skateploitation Cinema
Benjamin Strong
03.20.08



Detractors of the filmmaker Gus Van Sant often cite the prurient approach he takes to his pet subject, teen angst. And indeed in Van Sant’s new film, Paranoid Park, a high school skateboarder struggles with, among other things, his sexuality. But the flesh of newcomer Gabe Nevins (whom Van Sant cast via MySpace) isn’t the only thing being leered at. Van Sant also exploits skateboarding.

When Van Sant was interviewed recently by Blake Nelson, the author of the YA novel on which the film is based, Nelson asked the director whether he felt any kinship with the sport. “I had been a skateboarder in the ’60s, which was a long time ago, but I didn’t think that it was so much different,” he said, adding that in 1978 he worked on a movie where he “met the skaters of that time.”

Van Sant’s comments were doubly illuminating. First, few things will so readily invite derision from a skater as the old timer who brags about how he used to rip. More tellingly, the 1978 picture to which he refers—a PG-rated vehicle for Tiger Beat pin-up Leif Garrett called Skateboard: The Movie (That Defies Gravity)—was one of Hollywood’s pioneering attempts to turn a fast buck off what was then an emerging subculture. In a presumably unwitting ironic twist, the plot concerns a combovered codger manipulating a trio of skaters for profit.


In the decades since, the fortunes of skateploitation cinema have intermittently risen and fallen, much like the inconsistent popularity of the sport itself. The 1980s were the golden years, yielding a pair of fishtail classics in Thrashin’ and Gleaming the Cube (starring Josh Brolin and Christian Slater, respectively). That era also gave us Robert Zemeckis’s nostalgic Back to the Future trilogy, which smoothed over skating’s punk edges by casting a lead, Michael J. Fox, better known for playing a Republican on TV. In Zemeckis’s vision of 2015, presented in Back to the Future II and III, children ride floating “hoverboards”—eliminating the possibility that skaters will do grinds, the set of tricks that tends to cause the most property damage.

Then studios lost interest in the genre in the early 1990s, when skating died out and went underground. The only skateploitation film of note to be released during the Clinton administration was the Van Sant-produced, Larry Clark-directed indie shocker, Kids (1995). As with Clark’s follow-up, Wassup Rockers (2005), Kids deserves credit for portraying its picked-off-the-streets skaters in their natural element—getting high, running their mouths, and above all studying skate videos.


Thirteen years after Kids, skateboarding’s popularity is at an all-time high, driven by hip-hop and by Tony Hawk, the veteran X-Games champion determined to extend his brand as indiscriminately as Martha Stewart and Oprah. Skateploitation, as a corollary effect, is also undergoing a renaissance. It is discernible in fashion (see the ubiquitous hoodie), the Avril Lavigne discography, and MTV’s Life of Ryan and Rob and Big—an odious pair of reality shows about pro skaters. Skateploitation is also apparent in Catherine Hardwicke’s critically acclaimed Lords of Dogtown (2005), a superfluous dramatization of Stacy Peralta’s 2001 documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys, the definitive account of 1970s Southern California surf style.

Paranoid Park stands out in the midst of this skateploitation revival, thanks to a unique sound design and arthouse cinematography (shot by Christopher Doyle, among others). And yet the slow motion effects so many reviewers have praised are largely an anomaly in the traditional skate video, where the difficulty of a trick cannot be appreciated unless it is seen in real time. More significantly, Paranoid Park’s eponymous “Westside” is built on a heap of juvenile delinquency clichés—which are all the more grating because they’re at odds with the true story behind the construction of Burnside, the downtown Portland skate mecca where these sequences were shot. (Skaters designed and illegally poured the concrete bowls themselves underneath a highway overpass, and eventually, when the success of the park helped spur an economic revival in the neighborhood, the city legitimized it.)


The joke is that with untold skate videos readily available on the internet—both home made and professional—skateploitation movies such as Paranoid Park are more obsolete than ever. As far as skaters are concerned—and as more cinephiles ought to be—skate videos have been rendering their mainstream imitators artistically unnecessary since the mid 1980s. That was when Peralta, the ex Z-Boy, began directing his Bones Brigade series. “I don’t feel like I came into my own until I was behind the scenes,” said Peralta, who saw the medium’s potential to make converts. “Kids that weren’t into skateboarding could actually see a video rather than a magazine and go, wow, so that’s how they do it.”

The Peralta oeuvre was as instructive about attitude as it was about the finer technical points. The Bones videos often began with skits in which Peralta himself would destroy a television after listening to yet another newscaster buffoon inaccurately characterize his sport. In 1987’s The Search for Animal Chin—Peralta’s masterpiece for its oft-imitated San Francisco hill bombing passage—the Bones Brigade parodically reenacts one of skateploitation’s most nonsensical scenes, cutting off the roof of a car with a jigsaw. “Now we’re just like the guys in Thrashin’,” one them says. “Real great.” Peralta is the undisputed O.G. practitioner of the first generation, but his videos relied too heavily on traditional elements such as plot and character. It took 1989’s seminal Rubbish Heap (recently reissued as part of a deluxe box set) to liberate the genre from these conventions.

Rubbish Heap, made on what looks like the poorest quality VHS stock available, was directed by a then-unknown skate rat named Spike Jonze. Eschewing the egotistical personalities, glossy logos, new wave soundtracks, and narrative continuity that marked Peralta’s era, Jonze established the verité template on which most contemporary skateboard videos are based. As Kids would do five years later for the non-initiates, Rubbish Heap showed skaters being themselves—committing antics such as focusing their boards (breaking them in half by stomping on their middle). Rubbish Heap was also the first video to elevate the slam (the term for when a skater hits the ground after a failed maneuver), granting the spectacular wipeout as much respect as the gracefully executed trick, and thus paving the way for the Jackass movement.


Jonze has gone on to have an eccentric career in feature films with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and the upcoming Where The Wild Things Are (not to mention his role as a Gulf War soldier in Three Kings). But in the shadow of these big productions he has continued to set the artistic standard for skate videos with Goldfish (1994), Mouse (1997), Yeah Right! (2003) and Hot Chocolate (2004). As part owner of Crailtap, the company that sponsors the Girl/Chocolate/Lakai teams who star in his videos, Jonze has a simple formula for success. He combines stylish skating with an imaginative sense of humor, as in this clip from Yeah Right!, in which actor Owen Wilson pretends to be a lazy, trash-talking pro (when Wilson appears to land a noseblunt slide on a rail, it’s actually Eric Koston in a blond wig). Fully Flared (2007), Jonze’s most recent four-wheeled opus—co-directed with long-time collaborators Ty Evans and Cory Weincheque—is widely considered the sickest skate video in a decade because it shows guys doing flip-in/flip-out tricks, done at improbable speeds, that the average skater couldn’t handle stationary on flat ground. One reason that Kids remains the least egregious of all skateploitation pictures is that director Larry Clark recognizes the preeminence of this parallel genre, and he acknowledges Jonze’s place within it. In a lengthy scene halfway through Kids, the skaters smoke up around a small TV that’s playing Jonze’s and Karol Winthrop’s revolutionary Video Days (1991).

It is hardly a coincidence that Video Days opens with Mark Gonzales slamming from an epic staircase (“Gonz is the bomb,” you can hear Kids’ protagonist utter in the background). Clark understands that overcoming fear is essential to skateboarding. This isn’t a matter of machismo so much as physics. As Ben Davidson wrote more than thirty years ago in The Skateboard Book, “Cuts, bruises, broken teeth, and concussions aren’t a rarity, and unless you’re just going to cruise slowly up and down your block in straight lines, a casual attitude toward the sport is self-destructive.” It is understandable that in Paranoid Park, Van Sant’s teenager feels paralyzed by the things that scare him—girls, boys, his parents, better skaters. But, repeatedly, he can’t summon the courage to drop in at the skatepark and risk the pain and humiliation of slamming. In this way he’s a lot like his director—someone from the outside looking in.

Copyright 2006 Fanzine Media (www.thefanzine.com) - All Rights Reserved.

mandag 24. mars 2008

A Simple Equation

Snow + sore foot + national holidays = movie time


Two Books

Reading Pride and Prejudice made me thankful of several things:
1. The United States has no aristocracy
2. The British aristocracy are no longer powerful
3. Gender equality has progressed tremendously
4. Contemporary notions of manners and morality are not the same as those of Victorian England
5. My friends and family do not act in the same bat-shit-crazy way as the majority of the book's characters

Perhaps I would have liked it better had I not just read Vonnegut and The Color Purple. That creates a pretty steep hill to climb for anything pompous and asinine. BTW, please read The Color Purple if you haven't yet! It should be essential reading for every American!


Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs was also disappointing by being ideologically incoherent and a bit offensive without being very funny. He attempts to pass off all of his subjective tastes as objectively cool while arguing that anyone else who does the same is a clueless narcissistic hipster. Perhaps I could have handled that better if his favorite TV shows didn't include "Saved By the Bell" and MTV's "The Real World," if he didn't worship at the alter of Pamela Anderson, and if he would stop arguing that all soccer players are sissies. After reading this pop culture critic, I am no closer to understanding pop culture but I do loathe it (and him) a bit more.

lørdag 22. mars 2008

Berlin Pt. 2

To continue from the Kulturforum, I went shoe shopping. My last pair of shoes were literally falling apart. They'd had holes for a few months, but then the elastic laces broke on the left shoe and it was time. I checked out a few skateshops, but couldn't find a single pair that I really liked. They had to be usable as skateshoes but still nice enough for me to be able to wear to work, and I had to find them somewhat aesthetically pleasing. These seemingly simple requirements were more difficult to meet than I had imagined. I ended up at an Adidas store and settled for a one-size-too-small pair that I was a bit lukewarm about. This is why I hate shopping. I never find anything that I really like when I need it, never have money when I do find something I like, and nearly always end up regretting my purchase. And unfortunately, I do regret this purchase. The next day I came across some other stores with awesome shoes that I imagine would have fit me instead of causing the most painful blister of my life. This blister is covering half my pinky toe. I don't even know if I should refer to it as a single blister, as the original blister popped and a new one formed right on top. Last night I was in such pain that I couldn't walk or even think all that clearly. Today is a beautiful sunny day and I can't go out and enjoy it. Fuck.

So ANYWAY, after shoe shopping I spent a couple hours walking around Prenzlauer Berg. This neighborhood was clearly the current hotspot, there were hip boutiques, cafes, bars, and people everywhere. Later that night I ended up at a collectively run vegetarian cafe/bar in the neighborhood called Morgenroot. I had a couple beers and chilled out to the funky soul music they were piping through. This was one of the most awesome spots I've ever been too! It was a bit overwhelming, especially thinking about how perfect his place was for Cate.

On my last full day in town I began with a brunch buffet at Morenrot. The buffet cost 4 to 8 Euros and its up to the patron how much they want to pay "based on how rich they are." Well, I'm not much rich but I do love that place. The rest of the day I ended up doing more wandering around Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg. I also walked around Mitte's gallery district. Mitte was the hotspot in East Berlin in early nineties, but now seems a bit corporate and commercial. I did stop into a really cool gallery called Circleculture that was exhibiting some silk screen graphics by Sister Corita Kent. Longer post about her to come?

I ended up having a final dinner at Morena, a cozy spot in Kreuzberg, and later that night I went back to Bais for a couple more cheap drinks. And that was pretty much the trip! A few touristy things but mostly just walking around and enjoying Berlin's atmosphere or reading in one of its fine cafes or bars. And I did a fair amount of reading, too. I finished The Color Purple on the trip down, sped through Pride and Prejudice as quick as I could, and bought Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs at an English language second-hand bookshop.

When I got back to Oslo yesterday it had snowed about four inches, which is causing me a great deal of psychological pain. I saw flowers here three weeks ago! There should not be this much snow right now! Its going to take a while to melt, I bet, and I don't want to deal with all the ice again. Hana, my Slovakian roommate from last semester, moved back into our flat! She's back in town for about a month and a half and around the tail end of April Isi and Weibtke will visit. So that's fun.

So that's the update. By the time you read this there should be photos posted up on Flickr.

fredag 21. mars 2008

Berlin Recap Pt. 1

Unlike so much of this past month this has been a tremendous week, and there is so much I could write about. Chances are then that I will write about nothing. But until I fall into the pit of procrastination and lethargy I will try to communicate just a little bit (just a wee bit) through this interweb log.

A list of potential topics to be ignored at will:
-Berlin: The Trip, the City, the Art (not necessarily separable categories)
-Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
-Chuck Klosterman
-Raymond Pettibon
-Sister Corita Kent
-The pains of walking

I will begin with Berlin though I doubt I will post on the other topics after a trip recap. First of all: I am not actually a berliner bun. I do not even know what a berliner bun is, although I do know and enjoy a good cold bottle of berliner pilsner. In fact upon a (flight-)delayed arrival to my lodgings I visited the hostel bar for several pint, and. I realized it was St. Patrick's Day when my beer was green. Yes, I did my Irish roots shame by forgetting the event, but thankfully was able to celebrate properly: by drinking green beer.

The morning of my first full day I spent in Kreuzberg. In fact, I spent a big chunk of the weekend walking around Kreuzberg or relaxing in one of its cafes. This neighborhood was most famous back in the 70's and 80's, as it was then surrounded on three sides by the East. The demographic population of the neighborhood hasn't changed much even if specific residents have cycled out. Over the last thirty years the neighborhood has been dominated by Turkish immigrants, their children, and young radicals. Like much of Berlin, today Kreuzberg is also covered in graffiiti including many incredible building-sized pieces. Photos will be posted.

I took a detour out of the neighborhood to check out the East Side Gallery, which is the longest remaining stretch of "the Wall." Soon after the wall came down folks began painting on this stretch. Although it has been continually covered up by new pieces, recently some of those original works from nearly twenty years ago were restored.

(RANT ALERT)
After walking back through Kreuzberg a bit I visited my second tourist spot: Checkpoint Charlie. Perhaps because I was too young for the fall of the soviet empire to affect me too much I find visiting a place like Checkpoint Charlie today to be a bit absurd. This is not to disparage history as I'm very interested in the human condition under Communism and I was, after all, a Poli Sci major. It just seems silly to me that visiting a place like Checkpoint Charlie is supposed to be profound or educational or anything other than a packaged photo op for tourists.

Perhaps what I am speaking of here goes to the root of why we travel and become tourists and the changing practices of my own travel experience. While I still visit a few museums or tourist spots if I come across them, when I travel now I am more interested in recognizing the distinct vibe of the place. Or maybe this is false as I usually end up in areas that can be summed up by two groups: immigrants and young radicals. Within our liberal democratic world order, no one should be faulted for pursuing what interests them (outside of interests that damage others, of course). While I find enjoyment relaxing in many cafes of East Berlin, others would find that a waste of time while the Zoological Gardens are available.

Still, I cannot escape the absurdity of a Checkpoint Charlie. Perhaps because the only enjoyment I imagine coming out of it relates to having a photo taken where everybody else has had their photo taken. It is proof of travel, proof that you could afford the time and money to be a tourist in Berlin. If Checkpoint Charlie represents the Cold War's tension between absolutism and democracy, then it is quite clear which system won. We had our eyes to the guns, ears to the tanks, and minds to the missiles, but our hearts are owned by consumption. Historically the system that provides the most goods at the cheapest prices wins. Is that wrong? Perhaps not, but it is fundamentally destructive of our relationships to ourselves, each other, our fellow living beings, and the Earth. Oh yeah, and its most likely simply unsustainable.

At Checkpoint Charlie I wasn't sure what was most representative of America: the stars and stripes, the unknown solider, or the fifty foot advertisement for Chanel. I do know that the greater symbol of our existence is the dominance of that advertisement over a bunch of photo happy tourists and my ranting about it on a low-readership blog.
(RANT OVER)

So ANYWAY, that evening I ended up at a crusty punk bar called Bais. It was described to me thusly: "Nonsense people discuss no-nonsense politics (or maybe the other way around)." I got into a confusing conversation with a local who complained about all the rich kids with rich granddaddies who had gentrified the East. He also spoke about visiting NYC soon after the wall came down to go into the music industry. He was shocked to discover that in meetings people wanted to get down to business. He also said some memorable things about fighting fascism, the Radical possibilities of emerging technology, and how Turkish immigrants, in addition to having absolutely nothing to teach Germans, really live in the middle ages. The description I received of the bar was accurate.

I began the second full day out and about in Berlin by walking from my hostel on the eastern edge of Mitte to Museumsinsel. I strolled down Unter Den Linden and passed through Brandenburg Gate. I visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is superbly done and has been seared into my memory. I then continued my journey through Potsdamer Platz (still not to my liking) to the Neue Nationalgallerie for an retrospective exhibition of major trends within modern & contemporary art, or at least those trends/artists the museum deemed important enough to make purchases of. The exhibition was mostly of artists I was familiar with and all the explanatory texts were in German so after an hour I went to the nearby Kulturforum. While there I had my eye caught by Richard Pettibon's work, but I hope to write about that some other time.

Right now I'm going to have to quit this recap as I'm tired and dealing with a surprising amount of pain. You will hear more from me before this is over.

onsdag 19. mars 2008

I am a berliner bun.

Whoop whoop!

I'm in Berlin and you're not. In fact, if you're reading this then you haven't even been in Germany today unless your name is Tory or I have secret readers among my German friends.

I like Berlin and you should too. It is incredible! I will write more about this diamond of a city when my tour is over. For now, know that I am exploring to hearts content and feets tired. And I'm taking in some of those pesky tourist sites I missed on my visit two years ago with Anne.

I will have many photos, though most of them will be of things on the street that have captured my attention rather than the regular slide show full of poor imitations of postcards.

mandag 17. mars 2008

Dear Readers

Dear Readers,

It is my pleasure to have the opportunity to write to you today as a representative of J.L. Phil Rooney, esq. You have been carefully selected as the handful of people who give enough of a damn to read his blog. For this time only, you will be able to read a limited account of his adventures over the weekend comprising March 15th through 17th in the year of someone's lord, 2008.

On March 15th my employer awoke in mid-morning. He made pancakes and began reading Kurt Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions. In the recent past he had finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic work, The Brothers Karamazov. He thoroughly agrees with the French philosopher Albert Camus's statement that Dostoevsky is "the great prophet of the 20th-century." Even more thoroughly does he agree with the statement, "It is a damn good thing and a relief to finish a long-ass book you've been reading for over a month." Unfortunately it is not known to whom to attribute this declaration, thus it remains anonymous.

My employer also enjoyed reading the aforementioned Breakfast. He found it was a short, easy and pleasurable read. Nonetheless it was difficult to comprehend that it was one of his father's favorite books, or so his uncle David had once wrote him. He is currently going through the emotionally difficult (and rewarding) process of reading Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

This weekend held more pleasures than those found in texts. Mr. Rooney had the opportunity of Friday evening to join his friend Charloette and several of her associates for an evening of drinking and dancing. The evening included a small party, the club known as The Villa, and a what is known in Norway as a nachspiel.

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying the fine sunny and warm weather that enveloped the Oslo metropolitan area. This enjoyment including what he would refer to as "chillin'" on the porch of his flat as well as trips into downtown Oslo to perform creative acts on a plank with wheels, also known as a skateboard. He was assailed by grannies and security, a pattern that within his experiences is fairly common.

As of this writing, he is hastily preparing for a trip to Berlin. Unfortunately, he is unable to write to you further at this time as he must "Hurry the fuck up."

Regards,
XXXX*


*Name withheld for legal reasons

fredag 14. mars 2008

Women Are Heroes Project




From Médecins Sans Frontières and the artist JR. Learn more here.

onsdag 12. mars 2008

Blog Archives

After midnight looking through old blog archives. "PHIL," the plaque read, "MONSTER."

A couple things stand out:
-My writing was more interesting.
-Possibly influenced by my life being more interesting. Seriously, my life from 2006 is looking pretty sweet right about now. Like hella better.
-Over the Top is still a ridiculous movie. And this song (AND VIDEO!) is too much. It is...over the top!

mandag 10. mars 2008

Jens

Mo asked a question about Jens Lekman, so I thought I'd post this up. I've been listening to some "Night falls over Kortedella" while I've been here, I think I heard of him on some hipster music blog. Some of his songs are a bit too disco-pop-ish for me. But the song "Opposite of Hallelujua" is just great. It was cool to go to Malmo and see tram cars that ran to Kortedella. If he crosses the border I'll definitely try to see him.
Here he is a solo & acoustic. Very strongly reminiscent of Andrew Bird. Or maybe its just the whistling.


This is the ABBA influence:


This video is pretty fun.

søndag 9. mars 2008

Sunday Boring Sunday


If you have followed the presidential primaries for even 15 seconds then you should read this article. That's my kind of analysis: cutting through all the b.s.

Its been a pretty slow weekend in these here parts. I was supposed to go out to Skien (a city about 2 hours away) to chill with Char and her husband and hear his band, but it fell through. It also caused me to miss a rally for International Women's Day :(

Anyway, today I went to Bar Boca for some joe and then I checked out the Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern Art. Its a privately owned art museum that is free to the public, and it is much better than its state-owned rival. The Fearnely had an exhibit showcasing new trends in Norwegian contemporary. I approved.

Because of the slowness I also had the opportunity to watch a couple flicks. I watched Robert Altman's classic, MASH, revisited Indiana Jones with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and got around to the Twin Peaks prequel movie, Fire Walk With Me. It was nice to see the Twin Peaks gang back together but I don't recommend it unless you've seen the entire series and are dying for more.

lørdag 8. mars 2008

More youtubery



Sorry for all the videos, but this could not be any cooler and must be shared.

fredag 7. mars 2008

Making the rounds at the ISS

Show time in Minnesota's smoke-easies
Associated Press
Friday March 7 2008
guardian.co.uk


All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars.

A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume and pronouncing them "actors".

The customers are playing along, merrily puffing away and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.

The state health department is threatening to bring the curtain down on these sham productions. But for now, it's on with the show.

At The Rock, a hard rock and heavy-metal bar in suburban St Paul, the "actors" during "theatre night" do little more than sit around, drink, smoke and listen to the earsplitting music.

"They're playing themselves before October 1. You know, before there was a smoking ban," the bar's owner, Brian Bauman, explained. Shaping the words in the air with his hands, like a producer envisioning the marquee, he said: "We call the production, Before the Ban!"

The smoking ban, passed by the legislature last year, allows actors to light up in character during theatrical performances as long as patrons are notified in advance.

About 30 bars in Minnesota have been exploiting the loophole by staging the faux theatre productions and pronouncing cigarettes props, according to an anti-smoking group.

"It's too bad they didn't put as much effort into protecting their employees from smoking," grumbled Jeanne Weigum, executive director of the Association for Nonsmokers.

The health department this week vowed to begin cracking down on theatre nights with fines as high as $10,000 (£5,000).

"The law was enacted to protect Minnesotans from the serious health effects of secondhand smoke," the Minnesota health commissioner, Sanne Magnan, said. "It is time for the curtain to fall on these theatrics." 

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008

onsdag 5. mars 2008

Epic



Things have been kinda weird here lately, like a bizarro world. Its funny how I've gotten so used to a routine that when things deviate a bit it throws off my mental state completely. Most of the strange stuff has been class scheduling related. But it has also gotten cold again, and today it snowed! I was so happy about the spring too!

I am also very excited about my trip to Berlin in two weeks. I'm ever more pumped after seeing an article up on the NY Times on the city's graffiti.

I'm also finally working on making another music mix. In December I threw together a couple of epic three hour mixes for Cate's arrival, but I haven't touched the Itunes playlists since then.

tirsdag 4. mars 2008

For The Record

I love this band!!!


We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!

On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the western shore.

Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
How soft your fields so green, can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war. We are your overlords.

On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the western shore.

So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing.


Leaves are falling all around, It's time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, I'm much obliged for such a pleasant stay.
But now it's time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it's headed my way.
Sometimes I grow so tired, but I know I've got one thing I got to do...

[Chorus]
Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song.
I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl, on my way.
I've been this way ten years to the day, Ramble On,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.

Got no time to for spreadin' roots, The time has come to be gone.
And to' our health we drank a thousand times, it's time to Ramble On.

[Chorus]

Mine's a tale that can't be told, my freedom I hold dear.
How years ago in days of old, when magic filled the air.
T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair.
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her, her, her....yeah.

[Chorus]

Gonna ramble on, sing my song. Gotta keep-a-searchin' for my baby...
Gonna work my way, round the world. I can't stop this feelin' in my heart
Gotta keep searchin' for my baby. I can't find my bluebird!


And as an extra goodie the above poster was designed by Mr. Shepard Fairey, whose work I've posted up here before.

mandag 3. mars 2008

Blind Opportunity

Less than three months left folks! Is it too soon for the countdown to begin? Cate and I have already talked about what we're gonna do when I get back. A Sunday evening grill out is in the plans so mark those calendars!

I'm feeling good here! Been out skateboarding again, just cruisin the city and feeling out different spots I've seen over the past year. I tried to go up to a miniramp near another student village, but the ramp was still iced over. Yikes!

I was completely broke over the weekend, but I still managed a few drinks and a few smokes with the help of some friends. Friday night I kicked it with the roommates Jan and Ulla, as well as a few of Jan's friends from out of town. Saturday night went to Knut Erik's for some homemade wine and a couple games of chess. I used to play chess a fair amount when I was a kid, but its been a few years since I played even semi-regularly. So I was quite pleased and surprised when I actually won a game. yahoo

Over the weekend I also watched an excellent polish film, Blind Chance. It was originally made in 1981, but censorship delayed its widespread release until 1986. It presents three scenarios of the same young medical student, all depending on the circumstances around catching a train to Warsaw. If he catches the train he becomes a Communist party member. The second scenario has him missing the train, then getting into a scuffle with a police officer. During his subsequent jail time he becomes connected with the dissident movement. In the final scenario he misses the train, and returns to his studies and his girlfriend who he soon marries. He becomes a successful doctor who is apolitical. The film was shot beautifully and the acting is excellent. I highly recommend this flick!

We are planning on showing it in class next week. I was initially reluctant actually. It creates an excellent picture of Poland under communism in the late 1970's-early 1980's, but I was worried that the random chance of the main character's vocation would rob our students of a sense of agency over their own lives and their own ability to create change. Still this was precisely representative of life in Poland during that period, and it could be a perfect reminder of the opportunities our students have in their own lives. It was under that reasoning that I'm quite excited for the class to watch it.

But that is next week! Right now we are covering Norwegian political parties and institutions and the Norwegian relationship with the EU. This afternoon we visited Stortinget for a guided tour and discussion. Stortinget literally translates as "The Big Thing," but is also known as the parliament. Oh those Norwegians...they are so cute and silly.