The Mattoid have been touring to support a new ep. I contacted the label just now, as at this point I can’t figure out the price or how to order it, but hopefully these issues will sort themselves out soon enough. Meanwhile viva indie music video!

So two days ago I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
(my 3 word review=obsidian lyrical mastery), loaned from a friend and left with another. Then good ol Cadalai, who I haven’t heard from in a while, got in touch via email. I asked for info on another mutual friend to discuss the novel with, as I was certain he’d read it by now and I was sort of gushing with the desire to discuss. Then Cadalai called to further add (with sadistic glee): McCarthy would be interviewed later that day on Oprah’s show. *Cue Dave Chappell character voice: “WHAT?”* I was incredulous. The third interview the man has given in 40 years and it’s going to be on Oprah - daytime television mostly geared to a docile female audience. But I was free at 4 and you bet your last bullet I tuned in.

If you’re willing to deal with some password jive, you can see the interview through Oprah’s site. There is also some other interesting analysis of that book award winner available. Another blogger attempted to live journal the interview in real time and did a decent job, to give an impression for the curious. Be sure to scroll to June 5 when searching.



To me, the moments it became most obvious Big O didn’t really have a grasp of her subject were when she tried to throw “3 wives later” in his face, and her clear shock at his non-materialistic, anti-glammor stance - a given for anyone who’s taken the man’s work to heart. Any theories as to what else went on behind the scenes to green light this interview in this forum?
Mr. McCarthy was much as I expected to find him, with the exception of choosing this venue.

It’s the 18th anniversary of when “Tank Man” stood before the heavy metal during the seige following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, an extremely powerful image that brings to light not only the symbolic power of a single peaceful individual, but also the modern difference between how Google works in China vs. elsewhere in the world. Ah, the things we’ll do for market share. Frontline did a truely compelling episode on these events I urge everyone to see at some point.

I mean no disrespect to the friend involved in the following story, nor to the people of China either. I intend only to illustrate a point in how their logic works differently than my own: I actually stood in Tiananmen sq. in Jan ‘06 and tried to imagine those events that took place while I was still in high school. I asked my friend, over a decade younger than myself, what she thought about the events in the capital city at that time.

“I don’t know about these things. I’ve heard some things, but I don’t know what is true”, was her response. Keep in mind that from their view, westerners are people to not be entirely trusted. There is the lingering possibility that we are steeped in propaganda and capitalists eat their babies (possibly a metaphor that went awry…). I assured her the things did happen in the place where we stood, nearly 2 decades earlier. Keep in mind 90+% of Chinese nationals have never seen the image in this post, it made me think a lot about propaganda and control: perception trumps truth. Apply this line of thinking to your own culture.

So there in the Square is also Mao’s tomb which was really important to her that I see. I waited in line, actually was escorted to the head of the line by a power abusing official of some sort wanting a bribe, filed past the statue where the cultish devotees leave flowers, then saw the likeness of a human body in a crystal sarcophagus. Bizarre. But no bags nor cameras where allowed inside and so she waitied outside with my stuff while I toured.
Crossing a large road we headed into the Forbidden City, where there was no security check of any kind. When I pointed out the strangeness of this, she didn’t seem to see my point.
“But what if some crazy person where to bring a bomb into the Forbidden City?”
“We can always rebuild the Forbidden City”, she said. “But we have only one body of the chairman.”

Dr. Death did eight years for his belief in the right to die. They let him out on parole, though his tongue is clipped by the threat of going right back if he says the wrong thing. And apparently Hep C, which he contracted back in Vietnam from a blood transfusion, is a rather immediate clicking clock on the time he has left of earth anyway. After all, we are all clock watchers. What I did not know until I went snooping around just now is that he is also a painter.

maverick intellect, musician, drinker, thoughts on the afterlife, quirky phrases, and ‘punk rock’

 

 26. Medallion [62:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download