Truth Like The Dark

In a slightly less serious musical friend vein, check this:

I was consulted on the design of the vacuum cleaner based robot in said video. In the sense that Steve Aruni (whose real last name I know) called me and asked “how do I build a music playing robot”, and I told him “fuck if I know”.

Steve Aruni performs in London’s Tubular Transport venues with said robot. I like the boys new stuff. Check out “I never knew…” (NSFW) on his site.

James A. Floyd (the younger, largely-non-psychopathic one) is my oldest friend and former songwriting partner (listen to our marginal work of yesterday with Crop Circles). He’s re-used the name of one of our most ancient bands together for a fine new musical adventure.

The Billy Sunday Band (named for the baseball hero cum fire-and-brimstone preacher) has a new song “To Be Strong” that has appeared on old Neil Young’s Living With War Today website.

Give it a listen, especially if you fancy the sort of stuff I often post here.

Official date and time, from MovieWeb

Derren Brown Project (Title TBD; New Series - Premieres July 25, 2007 @ 10 PM) - This July, SCI FI Channel will introduce America to mentalist Derren Brown, the British sensation described as “part James Bond, part Yoda.” With numerous top-rated series and specials to his credit, Derren has astounded UK television audiences causing them to conclude that he knows your mind better than you do. SCI FI’s original U.S. produced version of the Derren Brown Project (official title TBD) will consist of 6 jaw-dropping 1-hour episodes that must be seen to be believed. Andrew O’Conner and Michael Vine will serve as executive producers for Objective Productions.

The British press has called him “mind-blowing,” “fascinating” and “a warlock.” He doesn’t claim to be a mind reader, though he can seemingly predict and control human behavior. He describes his craft as a mixture of suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship. Whatever you choose to call it, his unparalleled gift is a powerful and provocative form of entertainment.

Friday night:
1) Freud (gallery/bar in a grotty basement that makes fantastic cocktails)
2) Mon Plaseur (oldest existing French restaurant in London)
3) Saw the completely inexplicable Tiger Lillies:

4) Went to faux goth bar Garlic & Shots, and tormented others with, well, shots with garlic.

Great night out.

It’s official: my buddy Derren Brown’s show hits The SciFi Channel in the Fall!

Since my pal Derren Brown is unlikely to blow his own horn, I’ll blow it for him (oh, sir!).

He’s won an Olivier (which is the British Tony)!

My friend Dave Hoch (inventor of Hokey Spokes) has teamed up with Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s fame) to add a computerized EL-wire light display system to Ben’s family of motorized pigs, which illustrate the relative size of the military, education, and world health/AIDS budgets. All is service of Ben’s TrueMajority project.

A couple more pics here.

My old friend at tired fools, linking his (rather disturbing) suicide obsession with his bad-science obsession, has blogged a study that says country music may

nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work.

Something makes me think that this is correlation, not causality. I bet that you could discover a correlation between income and musical tastes, and income and suicide. Country often tells true stories of (mostly white) working class people at the edge of American society. And I’d bet big money such people have a naturally looser hold on the mortal coil than Brad and Becky SUV living in their midtown brownstone.

Country music could be correlated to tornado damage too, I’ll bet. But you’d better have a look at the build quality of house trailers before saying that George and Hank are behind GOP Weather Control.

If LA is America’s cosmetic face,
Washington its devious brain,
New York its jaded heart,
Boston its detached intellect,
Chicago its coursing gut,
then New Orleans,
New Orleans is its naughty package.

All things ecstatic and filthy pass
through the bottom,
the secret purpose where unexpected
germs and gametes are mixing still.

Kneed, we’ve feebly grasped
at our potent, exposed delicacy,
fragrant and stripped
of the shadowy mesh
that so titillated tourists.

For really poetic words of NOLA,
listen to (the sadly defeated-sounding) Andrea Codrescu,
or try on this past work of his:

Tourists come to New Orleans to get drunk, to get weird, and to get laid. They also come to eat and, some of them say, to dance and hear le jazz. They get that. And plenty more. Sometimes they get rolled and killed. Sometimes they get arrested for running a red light and put in jail with theives and killers. You can’t ask for anything better in America. To get all those thrills separately you’d have to go to Belfast, to Bangkok, to Haiti, to Paris, and you’d still have to come to New Orleans for the music.

There are downright secret moments of my life that are intimately tied
to New Orleans. There are images in my mind that are the most personal
I can imagine, and I’d not soil them by sharing.

But I’ve seen the sunset over the volcano rim at Santorini, and stood
on the newest land on earth on The Big Island of Hawaii. I’ve wandered
the streets of Paris many times, and stayed in a 5 star Ian Schlaeger
hotel with a woman I loved. I’ve sat in the ruins of Agamemnon’s
throne room, and sat at a plastic table and had homemade calderada in
a Madeira beach cafe. I’ve had a wonderful meal in a randomly selected
family restaurant in Rome (complete with yelling relatives in the
kitchen), and I drank regularly in the pub where Daniel Defoe
met the model for Robinson Crusoe. I’ve dined at Martin’s in
Edinburgh, where Martin himself tells you the names of the cows that
produced the cheese platter.

In other words, I’ve been around. I’ve never been to the orient, but I
can speak of the West.

And there is no place, no place in the West that is like New Orleans.
It uniquely reflects the best and worst things of America, and
humanity itself.

I can’t say it well. But I’ll share one memory, one that I think is
public enough to share. I remember sitting in the Super Dome (of all
the tacky places), at a Tulane graduation. As an academic, I’ve been
to more graduations than I can remember. They don’t generally move me
much.

But when a woman got up and sang “Do You Know What It Means to Miss
New Orleans?”, everyone cried, and everyone understood something about
one another’s hearts: the love for that amazing place, for that amazing
concentration of humanity.