WBOR

You're listening to WBOR Lite FM, where we play the safest, most insipid reggae this side of Kingston. Up next, “Red, Red Wine” by UB40...

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"Superstars of Asian ladyboy scene invite you to the backstage for some fun."

I suspect that the term "backstage" is some sort of euphemism.

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"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.” - George F. Will

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Up next on WBOR Lite FM, some music to do some light house cleaning, or, perhaps, get an early start on preparing those taxes. But first, a check of local traffic conditions...

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We are interested in shock - in convulsion. We are obsessed with the failed attempt at producing objects with a vertiginous obscenity attached to them; in being purely gratuitous and rejecting critical worth. But even more, we are interested in how even the most abject object is recuperated to 'use value'. We are interested in the redemptive value of transgression, and how morality is squeezed from sin. We fantasize about producing things with zero cultural value, to produce aesthetic inertia - a series of works of art to be consumed and then forgotten.

I find it terribly funny that the Chapman Brothers (Jake & Dinos), those English rabble-rousers of the modern art scene, have desecrated prints of Goya's Disasters of War by drawing clown faces all over them. The official title of such subversive acts against the establishment? Well, Insult to Injury, of course.

And speaking of the Chapman Brothers, somebody needs to get me their book, Unholy Libel, for Christmas.

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This is WBOR Lite FM, where we play the music most suited for hibiscus planting. Or needlework. Yeah, needlework. Ah, how relaxing. And now, a ballad from America's princess of lite-pop, Celine Dion in duet with Whitney Houston...

disney world is highly disturbing...

Let Us Go Then, You and I... No, Really, We Gotta Go

Poems by myself and Mr. Rivera are now appearing on the Smyles & Fish Poetron.

I am wrongly identified as a "Spanish Diplomat" (everyone knows I serve at the pleasure of the Queen of Portugal). Mr. Rivera is identified as someone who can't keep a secret (true--don't tell him the combination to the wall safe... SERIOUSLY, DON'T TELL HIM!).

Mr. Rivera is also the author of a review now posted in the Editors' Journal at The One Three Eight.

Does anyone at all read this except for ourselves and our significant others?

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Movie Movie

No Country for Old Men is an excellent Western Noir, and quite faithful to Cormac McCarthy's grim vision. I was thinking about it in terms of the classic Western tropes and realized that it's basically Shane, except for the fact that Shane never shows up. Then I realized that Javier Bardem's stone cold killer is Shane, walking into the sunset with a broken arm, a force that even the universe cannot kill. Kudos to the Coen Brothers--this makes up for their utterly misguided remake of The Ladykillers.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a crackerjack example of the crime-gone-wrong genre, but the real reason to see it is for its painful delineation of a family that lost its way long ago. Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is stunning, but then his character is the crux of the whole tragedy: a man who, as he puts it to his drug dealer at the Trump Tower (!), "doesn't add up," and who doesn't understand why this is so. Kudos to Sidney Lumet, who can knock this sort of ball out of the park at 83.

The Darjeeling Limited is another fine example of Wes Anderson's sensibility, and even with its flaws (it becomes fairly pedestrian after the bravua funeral/flashback sequence) is pretty enjoyable. If for no other reason, Anderson should continue to make films for the soundtracks they inspire.

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Rocky Rococo, at Your Cervix...

Never trust a man in a fez.