Category Archives: Pop Culture

London 2009 – Day 23 – Art Omnibus in Bethnel Green

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Having waited until most of the galleries are actually open, I’ve returned to Bethnel Green yet again to see some of the cutting edge works on display in the bevy of galleries there. First, however, I took a little trip back to Fitzrovia to check out Approach W1.

There are two Approach galleries, E2, in Bethnel Green (over the Approach Pub) and W1, in Fitzrovia, just above Oxford Circus (E2 and W1 are postal codes). I am more interested in the works of Chris Brodahl than I am in the works on display at E2.



It was a nice show, but not so much of the work really did it for me. I guess I may not be the audience for this stuff. I do like the pieces above, they are evocative of the work of Francis Bacon or some of his contemporaries. Oh well, off to stroll Oxford Street a little bit (it’s a “no traffic day” so that is made easier) and maybe shop a bit.

I end up shopping more than I want as the tube is suddenly shut for an “emergency” so I have to wait that out before finally getting into the station and on my way to the East End.

Once there I stroll up Cambridge Heath road to a few galleries Anne Redmond had clued me into. First on the list is “Look! No hands”at ¢ell Project Space, This is a group show featuring Athanasios Argianas, Kim Coleman & Jeny Horgarth and Simon Faithfull. The first piece we encounter in the darkened first storey location off the main road and back a mew is Simon Faithfull’s 1996 work, “Going Nowhere.” This is a video loop running about 9 minutes (I believe) in which the cameraman starts a video camera which is looking into the distance across the Oxfordshire landscape. It is winter and we see a snow covered field reaching to the horizon, a tree line in the distance, and an army of clouds on the march above. Once the camera starts rolling, the cameraman crosses from behind the camera and into the shot. He trudges off over the horizon over about two minutes, and leaves the camera, and us by proxy, behind.

This is the core of Simon’s work, and really this show. It is about what happens after the artist has taken their hands off of the work, hence “Look! No hands.” as the title of the show would have it. At first my reaction to Going Nowhere was, Okay, that’s enough of that… I waited, however, and started to think about the act of the artist, he has faith in his equipment and his setup and once he has got the machine started, the art machine, he just leaves it go for a while. This si either an act of hubris or one of exploration. I think it is in fact a mixture. In a way it made me think back to my days of exhibit development in a science museum. I would spend years making an exhibit, thinking it up, collaborating on design, watch it get built, etc. Then a day would come and it would go out on the museum floor. Then I could only watch to see how well it did its job as the public interacted with it.

About this time a shape appeared on the horizon and roused me from my reverie as Faithfull approached the camera again and shut it off. I guess he went nowhere, but I was left to think.

The other two rooms in the exhibit were less complex, in many ways, from the first. Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth provide four works, “Connect, (Venetian Blinds)”, “Connect, (hair dye)”, “Sugar Paper” and “Museum Light” all from 2008. Of these I most liked Sugar Paper which was shot from above looking down on a table covered with coloured construction paper (sugar paper) and a pair of hands move that paper about. It is projected from above onto a similar table, also strewn with sugar paper, which makes for an unnerving viewing experience as disembodied hands reach out and move the paper about, or so it appears until you look closely and realize that the real paper is stationary whilst the projected images are moving.

Venetian Blinds and Museum Light both are experiments in projecting an image of an object onto that same object (much like Sugar Paper). Venetian Blinds is the more effective of these (or else I am just too literal minded) as the projected blinds are opened and shut you almost do a double take to see if the real blinds just changed.

Lastly, Athanasios Argianas’s A demonstration of one thing as many as a demonstration of many things as one (I was swept off of my feet) is a masterfully effective piece of art. A pylon build of metal truss work rises out of a plinth in the centre of the room. Across this truss-work are three strips of white material (poster board or foam core) each about 3″ by 18″ wide and at different angles to you, one closer on the right, one on the left, the third about even. A projector fills each strip with imagry of three women, one on each strip, (one on the right, one the left, one the middle) as they start into singing rounds of a simple song. The interaction between these different planes, different strips, different coloured filters…It is quite beautiful, and I staye and watched it for more than a couple of cycles through the roughly 2 minute loop.

Okay Cell, on to monikabobinska gallery, just down the block. I needn’t have waited for them to open to see the installation piece by Sinta Tantra, for it is the paint job on the building itself. Interesting, but not really my cup of tea. Oh well. On to Vyner street and a whole bevy of galleries which dot the landscape. (Interesting sign seen on one building, “This is not a gallery!”)

Vyner Street is a few blocks of old factory and warehouse building backing on the eastern branch of the Regents Canal. There are small galleries all along the street. I stopped into all of them I could find, and as not all of them had handouts or cards, I am doubtless going to miss some.

First was Rene So at Kate MacGarry, a collection of bulbous busts which reminded me more of Pop-Art chess pieces than anything:


Again, not my style, but what the hell.

Then I crossed the street to Breaking New at Five Hundred Dollars an artist supported gallery conceived from the first to have a limited life of just a few months. This group showing consists of many artists. I will call attention to Aliki Braine for Forest (parts I – III):

forest

And Tessa Farmer for A Prize Catch (series):

aprizecatch-doormouse

There is other stuff you may like, so check out the website.

VINEspace gallery feature Your face, your race, the way you talk…I kiss you, you’re beautiful I want you to talk modern photography by Neil Drabble, Sean Fader and Oskar Slowinski. Of these easily Sean Fader’s work has the most impact on me. Neil Drabble offers us Roy, a documentary study taking place over an 8 year period and focusing almost exclusively on his subject, Roy, coming of age. It is interesting, but doesn’t really inspire any thing stronger in me. Oskar Slowinski offers us some intriguing candid street shots, but again nothing too special to me. Sean Faber, on the other hand, offers us this:



Here he is digitally manipulating images to show us him in other forms (or skins) or him in the ultimate act of narcissism. Quite effective, I thought.

Don Joint Waldameer and Chuck Webster at FRED were nice, Joint certainly a masterful collage artist, but neither grabbed me.


The Götz Füsser Studios is showing paintings by Bryan J Robinson. His small watercolours got my attention, but his featured big works seemed like someone had gutted Keith Harring over a canvas and framed the results:


Nettie Horn gallery features The Hidden Land with Gwenaël Bélanger, Daniel Firman, Ori Gersht and Lori Hersberger. Upon entering the gallery you are instantly confronted by Le Faux Mouvement (2008) by Bélanger, and it is truly stunning both in scale and for its captured moment:

The other works are quite eye catching as well. Ori Gersht’s series Falling Bird is a stunning use of photography to mount an exploration behind a classic still life by Chardin. Originally a short film shot with high definition, high speed cameras, Gersht captures the plunge of a pheasant into a dark pool of fluid, next to some grapes arranged on a shelf above the water. It is quite a series.


I am going to speed through the rest of this because this post is already too long and I want to save some space for the highlight of my trip.

A quick mention is due Alex Echo Arts who opens up his working studio on Saturdays for inquisitive (and no doubt acquisitive) art fans. I liked his complex collage work as well as his experimentation with incorporating words into his works. Check his website (link above) to see what I mean.

Dialogue at Vyner Street offers up Remnants of our past by Gerard Mannix Flynn. This installation piece features hundreds of rifle stocks and thousands of rounds of spent ammunition to try to teach us a little bit about the emotional costs of entanglements, but more importantly of disentanglements. He is referring, specifically, to the disarmament process following the Good Friday agreements which brought “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland to an end. Again, check the website (link above) to see for yourself. The thousands of rounds of ammunition scattered about on the exhibit floor made this the most interesting tactile experience of the day.

Lastly some °art, host the Signature Photography Awards 2009 show. This annual awards series honours some of DegreeArt’s crop of graduating or recently graduated student artists. I am a big fan of young artists, and fully endorse Degree’s stated mission, “Invest in the artists of the future.” There is much for these young artists to be proud of. I will bring special note to A Dream from the Posted series by Natalie Tkachuk, from the 2007 class of University College, Falmouth. Here is that piece:

Natalie Tkachuk - A Dream

Natalie Tkachuk - A Dream

This features wartime letters from Frank to Maude, and in each in the series Natalie has carefully folded the letters within the envelopes so that particular lines from them are visible through the open slit of the envelope. In this the top one says, “…a long past. I was so disappointed as I woke up to find it was only a dream.” And the bottom one reads, “I suppose I will just have to wait.”

Another piece which really struck me was Hammered (no pun intended).

hammered

Catherine Dwyer Harvey - Hammered

This homage to the classic pin-up photograph effectively addresses the power imbalance implicit in those, while having a sense of humour about it. Contrast this to those dreadfully cold and violent images by Helmut Newton I wrote about the other day. The young Catherine Dwyer Harvey is a clear winner in that competition, and she won the Singled Out Portraiture Finalist in this competition, as well. Keep you eye out for her work.

Do yourself a favour and check out °art website (link above), you will not be disappointed at the huge range of works and artists they offer.

At last finished I took a stroll through part of Victoria Park and then back on the tube. I saw this upstairs from a shop on Montmarch Street and though it looked interesting.

Ta!

London 2009 – Day 20 – In Other News, Pt. II

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There are a lot of little things that I keep meaning to mention, so today I will try to catch up.

First off, however, I need to comment on Havana Rakatan, the dance programme presented by Sadler’s Wells tonight at the Peacock Theatre. Ooh La La!

I have learnt that Sadler’s Wells do not disappoint, and tonight was no exception. Last year I saw Insane in the Brain and Tango Por Dos, and both were exceptional. Now, when I see an advert for a Sadler’s Wells production I just add it to my list and don’t worry myself about whether it will be a worthy investment.

So, tonight’s performance, ending Saturday, features the top Cuban Son band Turquino, and a crew of about 20 dancers representing the cream of the crop in Cuban dance. Every style of Cuban dance is represented in this show: Salsa, Mambo, Rumba, Flamenco, classic folkloric, Bolero, Cha-Cha-Cha, etc.

A crowd favourite was when, following a bracing ensemble number, just the men are left on stage wearing an assortment of tops and tie-up trousers. They all face the audience and strip off their tops. The women in the audience went nuts and we all cheered. Then they started to loosen the ties on their trousers, the whole audience gasped, and many started a deafening cheer.

Just then a female Flamenco dancer started in from stage right, all taught angles, quivering curves, a costume as red as if a vat of lip gloss had been dumped on her (and as figure hugging, too) and a severe glint in her eye. As she moved across the stage in that staccato fashion unique to Flamenco, the men preened, then shrugged and then, resigned, simply picked up their kit and slunk off the stage.

The moment was precious, and the audience was but putty in their hands after that.

The show nearly broke my heart when the band started into Guantanamera, that most Cuban of all songs. I cannot help myself, whenever I hear this song I am transported to a little Mexican restaurant I visited many, many years ago with X and her mum N. N loved Cuba, and when the mariachi’s band came by X asked if they could play it. They launched into a serviceable rendition, an N started to cry for her love of Cuba. It was a touching, and to me eternally precious, moment, and now whenever I hear that song I start to tear up at my love for N and for her love of Cuba. Oh what a tangled web…

The show ended with the entire audience brought to their feet and trying to dance along with the crew on stage. My seat mate, Carolina, (a Polish immigrant, by way of Australia) a salsa dancer, put me to shame as I just did the white-guy-shuffle and tried to keep in time.

So, the other news… I have already reported twice on the little constitutional crisis brewing over here. Well, it would be one if the Brits really had a constitution like the US does. At the root of the current mess are two separate scandals, which are coming to fruition simultaneously. The first is the peerage “laws for pay” scandal. This actually dates back to my last visit here, in early spring of 2008. In this one, members of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of parliament (think Senate) were found to be dispensing favours for money – aka taking bribes. Two peers have been found guilty, finally, and have had their privileges suspended pending further action. This is remarkable in that it hasn’t happened in over 300 years, dating back to the era of Britain’s civil war (yes, they had one too).

The second is the continuing Exes scandal, in which members of the House of Commons (MPs) have been exposed as having exploited rules which allow them to recoup various expenses associated with maintaining multiple households so as to attend parliament. This has now claimed several members of all the major parties, including senior aides and ministers, and has lead to calls for wholesale reform of the entire electoral system. Yesterday it took its biggest toll, the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Though widely expected, and called for, this act, again for the first time in more than 300 years, has set the entire government, majority and opposition alike, on their arse and made them think about just how quickly they are racing towards the abyss of writing themselves out of governance and into history.

There is a lot of talking about cooler heads prevailing and the like, but coming down the tracks like a dual locomotive are the 4 June county and EU elections. The electorate are fuming and they are ready to elect anyone who is not currently in power. This could potentially send a bunch of fascistic “England for the English” folk, like the British National Party (we’ll pay you to just move back home and leave us alone) into Whitehall. No one bargained for this.

Meanwhile the Germans and French, in the person of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, have already issued warnings that if the Conservatives (Tories) or isolationists are elected they may need to restrict England from having a say on EU policy going forward.

This is, as my dad used to say, a right bloody mess.

On a lighter note. I noticed something in Mayfair the other day. You know those ridiculously gorgeous models in the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues? If you go to the Mayfair outlet of A&F those very same models are there in person, wearing virtually nothing, and ready to greet you at the door and hand you a shopping basket. I kid you not.

Marks and Spenser, known affectionately around here as either M&S or Marks & Sparks, celebrate their 125th anniversary this year, and so for three days, starting today, put 30 items on sale for a penny a piece, in recognition of their start as a penny shop (“Don’t ask the price, its a pence” was an early slogan). People started to line up at the flagship Oxford Street, Marble Arch location at 5 this morning and M&S handed out tea and coffee to those in line, along with cards listing the available products and little pencils so they could check up to five that they wanted.

Twiggy was there as Mistress of Ceremonies and has been all over the telly promoting it for the past week or so. At least we get to see a lot of Twiggy, whom fate and time have treated quite well indeed.

Bank Holiday, again! When Pawn first got here, nearly three weeks ago, England launched into a three day weekend, triggered by a bank holiday. In the US such a term evokes memories of the Great Depression, when “Bank Holiday” was a euphemism for a bank failure, wherein the government would shutter a bank for a few days while they sorted the books and then reopened the bank under national control. We have seen this happen with alarming regularity in the past year or so, but the FDIC, who handle such things, have gotten quite good at doing the whole thing over a weekend, so no one’s any the wiser.

Anyway, Bank Holiday weekends mean a few things. First off, sales, lots of sales. Two, everyone tries to leave London for the hinterlands, beaches of Brighton, etc. Third, half the underground goes under repair at once, and you cannot get anywhere you want. Fourth, the weather sucks. The forecasts are always rosy, but the actual weather always seems to suck. We’ll see if this time is any different.

The next item on today’s gazette, STRIKE! The RMT union have struck the Victoria line for a 24 hour stoppage from tonight at 9:00 pm. This is due to a little incident a couple of months ago wherein a train operator mistakenly opened the doors on the wrong side of the coaches of a Victoria Line train. The union pointed out that this line lacks the safety devices which prevent such a mistake on the other lines, but Transport for London (TfL) sacked the driver nonetheless. Thus the strike.

For me this means I may not get to see Cirxus up at Arcola Theatre’s new experimental Studio K space. Arcola are up in Dalston, in Hackney, and the only good way to get there from here is via the Victoria. I meant to go there tonight, but couldn’t risk being stranded with no way home. Thus my choice to attend Sadler’s Wells show. Tomorrow may work, but if the strike does continue for the full 24 hours it will be a no-go to get to Hackney. Bank Holiday means massive trains works, so that means the whole weekend is bullocks. >Sigh<

In other news of the day, I treked east to Bethnel Green again today, hoping to check out some more galleries there. Oops! Must learn to check the fine print more carefully. Most of these galleries are only open by appointment or on Friday and Saturday. Okay, add that to the list for the weekend.

Tomorrow L shows up from Wisconsin to visit her brother. We’ll hang out some, too. So look forward to more reports of someone getting annoyed at me for walking fast or refusing to hail cabs or other such indignities. I am hard to cope with, which just adds to your reading delight.

Two final notes: I pinched an office chair from a rubbish skip the other day, an office block across the street is under rehab and they had a half dozen chairs out to the curb.

My favourite Gay-Bollywood-After-School-Special, Nina’s Heavenly Delights is on BBC One right now. Ah, joy!

Ta!

London 2009 – Day 17 – Pawn’s Fortune

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As I strolled into Petticoat Lane Market today I was approached by a well dressed man wearing a cobalt blue turban and a dark brown suit.  He wore a full, thick, lush beard, and had penetrating brown eyes.  He bore them into mine, and said:

You are a very lucky man
Next month will be very good for you
You will become famous in your field
You are a mastermind
You have one story in your head
Write the book.

I thanked him and walked on, a little bewildered but feeling generally compliant.

London 2009 – Day 16 – In Other News

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Today was a work day, but I started out with a delightful breakfast from yesterday’s marketplace acquisitions. Yum yum! After work I settled in for dinner and then to catch up on some news you may not have heard about.

First off, as I mentioned a few days ago, England is gripped with the Exes Scandal. This refers not to ex-spouses, but to expenses. In particular MPs allowance expenses. Members of Parliament are supposed to domicile in the constituencies, but really need to keep an abode in London in order to attend Parliament. Back in the 1970s, MPs earned a relative pittance, and so adopted an expense reimbursement system which would pay rent or mortgage offsets against a secondary residence, as well as allow for maintenance and upkeep of those.

The idea was that if you hail from Bath, and needed to pay for an expensive London flat so as to attend Parliament, the taxpayers should help pay for that. Over the years, however, this privilege has evolved into a massive slush fund.

Well, the scandal has dragged on for 9 days now. The Telegraph, a reliably Tory paper have been serving up little bits of the story in daily doses for over a week now. So far there have been at least three MPs, cabinet ministers or aides who have resigned, and several are under investigation by one or another law enforcement group.

We haven’t heard the last of this, yet. Elections loom just three weeks from now…

Next up in the news is a little scandal of large proportions. I’m speaking, of course, of what is locally dubbed the “Tempest in a D cup,” the Marks and Spenser Bra pricing debacle. A while back, Marks and Sparks decided that since bras larger than D cup require more material and more expensive architecture they should carry a £2 premium. The ensuing outcry was just too much for M&S to ignore, and last week they finally caved. “We Boobed” declared the full page ads which ran in all the papers, in front of an amply filled bra.

In order to make amends, M&S, who celebrate their 150th anniversary next week, will for three days sell 20 products ranging from ties to bags, scarves, make up and others for pennies (reflecting their start as a penny retailer). I plan to be there, at the Oxford Street flagship store, when it all starts on Wednesday morning, with celebrities and big bras in attendance.

Lastly, tonight is the Eurovision Song contest final. England is more hopeful than ever as this year’s entry is Jade, a protégée of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. She has been all over the press these past weeks, and the best thing to come from tonight’s show is that this phenomenon will hopefully end quickly in the wake of a final decision.

If you’re not familiar with Eurovision, it is a contest to find the best of the banal. The songs which compete are almost all of the monumental anthem class, at which Lord Webber so excels. You would think that this would make Jade, whom Lord Webber will accompany on piano for tonight’s performance, a shoo-in. Not so fast. Eurovision has complex rules, entirely new this year after last year’s winners, Russia, were chose with huge advantage from almost all former Soviet bloc countries. Up till this year the voting was entirely by the public, with each country’s citizens intelligible to vote for their entrant. Now, given last year’s scandal, half the weighted vote will come from industry insiders.

The Russians, as last year’s winners, are hosting tonight’s event. They have spared no expense, reportedly spending upwards of $30 million to stage the event in the 30,000 seat stadium built for the 1980 Olympics. They claim that fully 30% of all LED screens in existence are being used in this production. From what I have seen so far, they’re right about that. The staging is lavishly over the top.

I cannot watch this at my local, as I hate this type of music, and could be counted on to say the wrong thing at the wrong time in a public house. So, I will suffer at home, and silently root for Jade, and her ilk, to fail in favour of some more palatable sounds from some other country. The French entry is singing now, and I like her. Sounds like Marianne Faithful might if she were French… of course, “everyone hates the French,” as the morning papers reminded us all. This audience, from the sound of the applause, didn’t read those stories.

Ta!

London 2009 – Day 13 – The Frontline

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Yesterday was a slow day by any measure. X left to return to the US and I took some time to relax, read, and generally just be lazy. I did sojourn down to Leicester Square to procure a ticket to see The Frontline , by Ché Walker, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre down in Southwark, a recreation of original Globe Theatre, and a pretty good one at that.

Lucky for me I had a seat in dress circle (first balcony) and sheltered, as the Globe is open roofed, and the hoi polloi stand up in the courtyard and their only recourse in case of rain (like the light mist at curtain time) is rain coats or ponchos, anyone opening a bumbershoot will be roundly booed, or worse.

The plot of The Frontline is the life in the direct vicinity of an underground station somewhere in the East End of London:

There is an underground strip club; a couple of food vendors, one selling hot dogs and the other selling Korma, locked in friendly competition; a religious group; a handful of drugs dealers, and various other habitués of the area. We watch them all interact and most of the time the beautifully sculpted dialogue is taking place on two, three or four levels at once. A drug dealer is taunting his rival while a stripper is teasing her bouncer while a evangelist is converting a sinner while the hot dog vendor is berating the Afghani vendor. That we can make any sense out of this at all is testament to the skillful direction of Matthew Dunster and the cast’s remarkable sense of timing.

I loved this show. It handled many of the same issues that English People Very Nice did, but with more humour, grace and effect. It did not aspire to the full throated assault on English bigotry that show did, but it still handled the subject deftly, as in a scene in the first act where a black stripper and a white drugs kingpin get into a debate about British society and who has a right to claim priority.

A rolicking good night at the theatre, and a show I would love to see transition to film or video. One interesting thing overheard at interval; one usher to another “This one gent just left, said he was only two days off the plane from the States and couldn’t understand a word of it!”

While the promotional materials all warned about rough language and subject matter, none of them warned about the thick cockney accents and sometimes impenetrable language. But the script is so masterful, so well written, so peppered with intelligent, sophisticated, vocabulary stretching words and turns of phrase that Shakespeare’s own theatre was certainly a well deserved home for this production. Ché Walker has brilliantly earned the right to put his characters on Shakespeare’s stage.

London 2009 – Day 9 – Camden Rocks

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Last year there was a large fire in the Camden Lock area of Camden Town. Every Saturday the open spaces of Camden Town come alive for market day, there are tens of thousands of people shopping, market stalls pop up everywhere, Inverness Market, Camden Market, etc. Camden Lock is the largest of these shopping districts, and the loss of about 12 square blocks (by US standards) was a remarkable blow to the local economy. The day I went there last year, 15 February, was the first day that the unscathed portions of the market had reopened, and this is how things looked:

Camden Lock Feb. 2008

smaller-cimg0004a

smaller-cimg0002a

Today marked the official opening of the rebuilt Camden Lock, and thanks to X’s sharp eyes and even sharper wits, we were early there (after first venturing down to Leicester Square to score 2 in stalls for Duet for One tonight at the Vaudeville Theatre). Here are some shots from the new Camden Lock:

You can find all of today’s photos here for comparison to last year’s.

The market was so alive! It was remarkable, all of this energy coming from the crowd. We walked all around, stopped in at all sorts of vendors. I bought a punch of well photographed shots of Banksy graffiti from one stall. X was thrilled to discover, as we passed Proud Camden, a gallery and performance space in the heart of the Lock, that they had up Withnail and me, an exhibit of Murray Close photographs taken on the set of Withnail and I, her favourite film of all time. Twelve hours later we left the gallery and continued our walk…okay a wee bit of exaggeration.

X is proud to report that we somehow managed to escape with nary a piercing nor a tattoo. Still trying to figure out how we worked that miracle. We grabbed some noodles and fled the crowds (like a human car wash, constantly pressing in on one) across the street. It struck me suddenly that where we were standing was last year a no-man’s land of construction barricades and works. Just down the way was the Hawley Arms, a favourite hangout for artists and their mates, like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. This is what it looked like last year:

And this is what it looks like now:

Notice the second floor? This was a remarkable rebuild, and as soon as we finished our noodles we were glad to go inside and give them some “welcome back” business. Polished off our cocktails, checked out the loo where so many of our fave stars have both pissed and passed out pissed, and then went to head home.

Not so fast. First there was the small matter of the marching band and the Camden Town Crier to contend with:

Such perfect timing that we emerged from the pub just in time to hear the marching band playing, wait for it… California Dreaming! What a hoot, just wish I would have fired up the video recorder option on my phone to capture it all for you to hear. Then, when that song was done, the town crier (the chap in red) made a pronouncement about the eminence of the occasion and bearing well wishes from the Queen(!) to which all and sundry exclaimed “God save the Queen!” and went back to their shopping, graffiti, piercing and tattooing. We went to the tube and back home again.

Ta!

WOC 2009 – Day 6 – Carrie Nations Reborn?

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I went to a big shin-dig at the Wynn casino tonight.  It is day six of the 2009 edition of World Of Concrete, and my sponsor had a thank you dinner for their dealers.  Wonderful feast, open bar, good cheer.  The band was one which has played these events many times over the years.  A couple of horns, drums, guitar, keyboards and a pair of vivacious female singers.  One of them looked strikingly like Dolly Martin (nee Read) widow of the late Dick Martin (think Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in) and star of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls(BVD), the fantastic 1970 Russ Meyer film.

Dolly has a very distinctive face, and this gal had that same smile, crescent-moon eyes and high cheekbones (along with slatherings of mascara).

Dolly Read

Dolly Read

Seeing her made me think of the lovely Theresa Duncan, who turned me onto the Carrie Nations and BVD a couple of years back, while we were discussing a particularly brazen act of suicide which I was trying to write about; or, more accurately was trying to get Theresa to write about, having given up on it myself.  She compared the suicide in my historical record with the attempted suicide of the band’s manager in BVD and that prompted me to rent and watch the film.  I became an instant fan of Russ Meyer.

Sixty days later Theresa committed suicide, a week later her lover, Jeremy Blake, followed her.

So, a lovely young woman singing made me sad tonight, through a series of connections completely beyond her control.  So ends day 6.

My American Story

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Ballot Box

28th. February 1953

Dear Professor Lederberg,

Dr. Clive Spicer, who recently spent some time under you, has informed me that there might be a vacancy in your department for a graduate English student.

Such a project interests me very much and I would, if it is still open, like to offer myself as a possible candidate. Would you be so ‘kind as to let me have some further details  about it?

A. Bernstein

—

Thus began my American Story.

In 1953 my father bridled under the strains of life in post-war England. He had trained for a career in medicine, but after years as a corpsman during the Battle of Britain he had seen too much death. He had administered last rights in muted voice too many times and for too many faiths to ever face a career of dealing with patients, so he settled for research and teaching.

The post-war years had already taken him around the formerly occupied countries of Europe to help rebuild the medical establishment and treat the distressingly high rates of fevers and infections. He was released from service in 1948 after service as Emergency Lieutenant, War Substantive Captain, Substantive Captain, and finally mustered out in 1959 as Captain, the rank he carried to his death. The rank he would much rather never had taken.

My father, to put it direct, was eager, no fast, to get out of Britain and her post-war shock of austerity and deprivation. He had suffered already too much of that. Many tales are told of the Brits steadfastness and stolidness, in the face of Hitler’s unending siege, and indeed my father had witnessed his own home being destroyed by a V2 “buzz-bomb” and the virtually complete destruction of his country’s financial system. He wanted out, and NOW. He was tired of the straight jacket that England had become for him. He wanted the dream, the dream that had motivated so many emigrants from so many countries who flocked to the United States in those years.

I am having a little difficulty at present with the Bank of England in trying to arrange for the transfer of some of my Sterling assets to the U.S. I think that they will agree but time is running rather short…

The British were loath to let their citizen’s hard assets leave their shores. Indeed my mother, in 1977, fully 14 years after his emigration, had to fight to get the last of his bank notes released.
But I digress. Dad did get out, and he came to America, and met my mother in that lab in Madison, and they wed in December of 1954 and moved back to England when my father’s visa expired in 1955. They started a family, bought a modest semi-detached home, and finally, in 1963, moved back to the United States when he got a position at Marquette University.

On June 20, 1968, one day after his 46th birthday (I have just turned 46, so this is significant to me), and just two weeks after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, my father received his naturalization papers from this United States, his United States – He was a Citizen of these United States! He celebrated the fourth of July that year with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

He voted that November 4th for Hubert Humphrey. A Labour Party regular all his life in England he could not have done otherwise.

My own political awakening, born in 1968 when my parents hosted Students for McCarthy, came into its fullness in 1972 with the campaign of George McGovern. I was young, only 10 years old on election night, but I was a dedicated foot-soldier for McGovern, having distributed thousands of pieces of literature for him in some of the toughest wards of the city.

I still remember that election night, sitting in the local McGovern headquarters on Oakland Ave. and watching the polls come in.

I must digress here for a moment. Many of my friends these days know that I always watch the polls come in. For many reasons this is a remnant of that first election night I witnessed. I implicitly trust the democratic system, but I equally implicitly distrust the physical manifestation of that system.

My father came to the McGovern office at 8:00 to collect me and take me home. The next day was a school day and I could not be allowed to stay up all night. I was reluctant to go, to say the least, but I did.

In the car, on the way home, I looked at my dad and asked if he had voted. “Yes,” he said. ” Who for?” I demanded. He paused. “Nixon,” he said. “How could you do that, Dad?!? You know how hard we all worked on the McGovern campaign. How could you?”

“For once in my life,” he said, “I wanted to vote for a winner.”

We never spoke of this again.

—

In the summer of 1974 we were camping in Indiana when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency of the United States of America. The first ever to do so. My mother couldn’t wait to call her brother John who had been a big organizer for Nixon in his home state of Virginia. I just had to sidle on up to my dad and …

… and say nothing. I wanted to ask him how he thought about his winner now, but I knew how he felt, and he didn’t need his snot-nosed kid to rub it in.

—

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen sing “Born in the USA” on the Hi-Fi right now. I can always appreciate that song even if I cannot identify with it. I was not born here, but this is my country as surely as it was my father’s, or my maternal grandfather’s – a seventh generation American.

Much has been made this year of early voting, and I have endured innumerable entreaties to vote early myself. I have done this in previous elections, but I shall not, will not, this year. This Tuesday, November 4th, marks the 40th anniversary of my father’s first vote as a naturalized American citizen. On that day I will cast my own ballot, proudly, for another son of an immigrant. And I will smile at my father’s memory, for I know that he would have voted the same way – for a winner.

Present Foot…Load Weapon…Ready, Aim, Fire

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Every four years, like clockwork, the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party comes out of the woodwork with one or another idea which is sure to polarize the electorate against them, driving vast tracts of voters into the waiting embrace of the right, and ensuring another insufferable term of Republican leadership. I know, I am a member of the far-left fringe. But, I can see this for what it is; a bad idea with the potential to screw the party out of yet another opportunity to lead.

“The vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government’s business,” Frank said during a Capitol Hill news conference. “I don’t think it is the government’s business to tell you how to spend your leisure time.”
Legislators aim to snuff out penalties for pot use – CNN.com

Four years ago it was Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, who just couldn’t wait for the law to catch up to his ambition, and almost single-handedly started the stampede towards same-sex marriage in California. This time it’s Barney Frank and marijuana. Jeez!

Must we? How does this do anything but help the right? Barack Obama will have to choose between endorsing the move, giving a potentially powerful wedge to McCain, or opposing it, further disenchanting a sizable chunk of the youth vote who are already disillusioned by his rightward tack on FISA and other recent changes (be they real or perceived).

Why did Frank have to bring this up now? What possible purpose is served when he knows, and he must know, that it will not possibly pass his own house, hell even his own caucus, let alone get to the president’s desk.

Yikes what poor legislative reasoning he has. Must have an old pot debt to clear.

Do us a favor Barney, go back to reading the New Yorker.

And your point is…?

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Pawn was visiting western Wisconsin this past weekend, and read this bizarre missive in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a response to an article about same sex marriage. I am still not sure exactly what the writer, one Charles Charnstrom, of Watertown, was trying to get at:

Whenever objection is raised to GLBT issues or same-sex marriage, name calling is invoked, usually either “hate-filled” or “homophobic.” I am against same-sex marriage and I am not homophobic or hate-filled.

Civilization is fragile and marriage is hard. Living with a person of the opposite sex is much more difficult than living with someone of the same sex. If same-sex couples are granted the same benefits as married couples, people will cease to get married and have kids.

Proof can be found in other Western countries. Babies are not being born from Japan to Italy. Russia even made a national holiday for workers to stay home and procreate.
Letters to the editor for Sunday, June 29

Last time I checked, neither Japan, Italy or Russia permitted same sex marriage, so he can’t possibly mean that those countries were lead to extreme measures due to such a move. If I read it correctly, the only reason men and women marry is because it helps to compensate for the onerous duty of living together and having sex. At least I think that’s what he’s trying to say.

Hmm….