The Concert for Bangladesh v. Cream at Albert Hall
 I watched both of these DVDs the other day. One was recorded in 1971 and the other this past May. The Concert for Bangladesh, except for the parts with Norah Jones' dad, was amazing. George was never much of a showman, but he and the band kicked ass, especially Leon Russell, whom I'd never seen before.
Cream at Royal Albert Hall was a disappointment, except for Ginger Baker's 15-minute drum solo in 'Toad'. The band sounded like it was underwater, and there was no real power in the playing.
The Bangladesh concert, on the other hand, sounded immediate and personal. George also has a great set of teeth. It's sad that he's gone, because he could do The Concert for Baja Fresh.
Death in Italy
 Both Vincent Schiavelli and Argentina Brunetti passed away in Italy last week. Schiavelli showed up as one of the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and as Mr. Vargas the biology teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The big reveal at the end of that movie was that the biology teacher had a hot wife. The wife was played by Lana Clarkson, who 20-odd years later would be killed, with the suspicion falling on Phil Spector.
Argentina Brunetti didn't do too much in It's A Wonderful Life except cross herself as Mr. Martini's wife. I think she also did a little goat wrangling. We are sad about their passing.
That millions of people were watching Brunetti take a loaf of bread from Donna Reed the night she died might mean something. I am reluctant to say that, as I watched the Martini homecoming scene on Dec. 22, I thought, "I wonder if the Martinis are still alive?"
I guess the most horrifying thing is that, when I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the first time ten years ago, I took one look at Lana Clarkson while 'Let It Be' was playing in the background and I thought, "She looks like someone the producer of this album might want to murder."
 "...squaredancing in my mind."
Return to Bimblemann
 Today I not-reluctantly accepted an interesting position with AOL/Time-Warner. I haven't had an AOL address in ten years. Luckily the position won't involve me installing cable or cleaning up Turner fewmets. My first goal is to have them buy me out for my domain name so that I don't compete with them for traffic. My cost will be $7 billion.
Wisdom's sodden pearls
 I gave a talk on being a playwright and theatre artiste to drama students at Placentia's El Dorado high school yesterday.
Among the questions they asked were:
"What do you do if you can't come up with ideas?"
Me: Summon the darkness within.
"What do you do when the thing you write disappoints you when you see it onstage?"
Me: Kill all involved.
"What was the most famous thing you've ever written?"
Me: I would be kicked out of here if I told you.
All the teens were very nice. It gives me hope for a future in which I will have to depend on them for my healthcare.
I saved this panda
 I watched a little bit of the National Zoo's Pandacam this morning. I kept trying to explain that I was eavesdropping for the panda's own protection and that I was saving American lives.
Tai Shan kept looking at me incredulously, but kept on eating.
'Twas too much money killed the beast
 Wow. What a disappointing movie Peter Jackson's King Kong is. It seems like a production with less cash at its disposal would have known what to cut. Instead, the movie is so bloated that the few wonderful sequences - a tyrannosaurus battle, for one - sink in the fat like The One Ring in Orodruin's lava.
Both Kong and Naomi Watts are superb, but there are at least three main characters who don't need to be there at all. Adrien Brody is one of them. And the CGI is spotty throughout the movie, like bad neighborhoods coming up every few blocks.
One of our party, a viking-looking guy, sobbed. So did the baby of a very irresponsible couple in the Cineramadome this weekend.
"Would you keep that chicken quiet?" I hissed. But I was not the only person this movie failed to affect.
If I have only two dollars to feed my family and my choices are a nice garden salad or a box of Twinkies, I will pick the salad. Peter Jackson had over $200 million and he got the salad, the Twinkies, some Ding Dongs, some of those little pies, some Mr. Pibb, a little milk, some licorice, a sausage platter, a bag of cane sugar, a pony, Adrien Brody, a bottle of maple syrup, and your mother.
I understand that Howard Shore's score was ditched just before the movie was delivered, to be replaced by a last-minute (and it showed) effort by James Newton Howard. But there was Shore conducting the orchestra in one of the scenes on Broadway. Thoughtless ideas like that populate this movie.
But the preview for Mission: Impossible 3 looked good. Those Scientologists know how to spend their money.
The pleasure of its company
 So some jobs fell through this month, which is sad, but other work has appeared, which is great. In the interim, I made sure to update my resume, a document that is more like a tapestry hanging in a polytheist cathedral, full of competing heresies that amount to one glorious worldview. (Then the cathedral is burned down.)
A representative from Berlitz called me this morning and noted with enthusiasm my teaching resume. She was French. "Oh, it eez notheeng," I said. She liked the populations I'd taught and the subjects, and was gracious about my having worked for the competition. She proceeded to tell me how I could get a job teaching anywhere with Berlitz on my resume.
"I don't mean to be rude, but my resume shows that I can already."
She told me that she was glad I had other employment because most people teach at Berlitz for fun.
Don't get me wrong; I love the work I do, and need to enjoy my work, but when people emphasize how fun something is before they mention salary, I get suspicious.
"Uh - "
After a little period of overtalking, in which she touted small class sizes, interesting students, the steep financial expense to the students for such small classes and individual attention, and Berlitz' 138-year history, I asked if her professors were volunteers.
"Non," she said, "the teachers make $11.33 an hour."
"So it seems the only people benefiting from the expense of the course is the students," I said, many-a-true-word-hath-been-spoke-in-jest-style.
"People really do this for the fun of it," she repeated. "Plus, after one year, you will get a free course, and a discount on the materials." She then said something about an unpaid 40-hour orientation course in Beverly Hills during which I would be offered a discount on parking.
"I know a parking lot there," she said. "This is a a teep."
Normally I don't let unsatisfying conversations go so far, but I was thinking about a job I applied for at MTV several years ago when I arrived in Los Angeles. I turned it down because I couldn't believe they were paying people so little.
"In the end," the hiring manager said, "you get to say that you worked at MTV."
I did work at MTV later, and then two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. Coincidence? Probably. But how did the 9/11 hijackers learn English?
I was very polite to the Berlitz lady, and said that I couldn't afford an unpaid week of work in which I'd still need to get all my other work done. I should have said something about indentured servitude, but I don't speak French very well.
 The city fathers of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian home town, Graz, have decided to rename the Schwarzenegger Stadium in protest of the governor's refusal to stop Tuesday's execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.
A similar thing happened to me when the city of Lowell took my name off the Northern Canal when it caught me wearing synthetic fabrics rather than water-powered loom textiles.
It's tough to be out of favor with one's birthplace. Strangely enough, Lowell renamed its library after me because I didn't protest Tookie's execution.
 What's up this week at the Church of Scientology? Glad you asked (though my auditor told me you would).
Keep this Saturday CLEAR for the opening of the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum, heralded by Xenu as the only museum with a colon in it. Stargazers will learn that the careers of Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland were destroyed by psychiatric influence (and heroin and, perhaps, the Mafia). Fact-hounds will thrill to learn that every 75 seconds another innocent is incarcerated by roving bands of psychiatrists. People who love fantastic statistics will blow an engram to find that violent crime has increased 147 percent with psychiatry in the criminal justice system. Somewhere. Between some time and another one.
The museum is located at 6616 Sunset Blvd. on Scientology Row.
If one visits the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights (founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and beloved psychiatry debunker Thomas Szasz), one can also acquire a Human Rights Investigator Kit, so that people like you can document psychiatric abuses in your town!!!! !!!! !!!
Kong, pt. I
 Because I feel very wasteful doing non-work-related things, and because of my horrible poverty, a poverty that causes me to stare, blank-eyed, at Sally Struthers while Africanized bees nibble cornmeal crusted on my lips, I have not gone out to see a movie since May.
This Sunday I will see King Kong at the Cineramadome and I am slowly edging up my expectations.
Since December doesn't bring snow out here, my only gauge of the season over the past few years has been highly-anticipated movie releases. I felt a certain Francis Fukuyama End of History vibe when The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars ended, as if I could never look forward to a movie again, unless it was my own.
I never read the Narnia books, because I'm a Buddhist, and Harry Potter for me has never adequately recovered from the first two movie adaptations, despite Azkaban's noble effort.
So Kong will be one of the less-than-handful of movies I've seen away from home this year, joining Million Dollar Baby and Revenge of the Sith. (Oh, and Pirates).
I hope it's good.
 Jan Hall, the father of my brother in-law, Thomas, was just awarded 25 percent of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. He didn't get to hang out with Harold Pinter, who won the Literature prize the same evening, because they belong to different gangs.
He was awarded the medal by King Gustav, and earlier gave a speech with the aid of a PowerBook. While the lecture did not leave me on the edge of my seat, it did reaffirm my belief that physicists and scientists in general are safe to roam our streets and shouldn't be persecuted by the government.
At one point the audience laughed for no discernible reason. I like to think that he slipped a note to his Swedish translator to say, "my in-laws are all morons."
We are very proud of him.
Tucci denied clemency
 "I guess this will be Stanley's Big Night," Schwarzenegger quipped.
You won't take nothing with you but your soul. Think!
 I was walking to school with Scott Motard (d. 2003) when he told me John Lennon had died. I remember looking at my feet moving through the snow. My older brothers had been big Beatles fans, and so was I. I'd even absorbed some anti-Yoko, anti-Linda sentiment. I remember, at 10, saying with authority: "Yoko broke up the Beatles."
While I can't dispute Paul McCartney's genius, unfortunately neither can he. In order of preference, the Beatles for me were always John, George, Ringo, and Paul. But I am a realistic Beatles fan, and therefore it rankles me to admit that some of John's songs were really, really bad.
Beatles and solo Beatles songs I can't stand:
1. Hello Goodbye - Paul could write great lyrics, but detractors only need to point to this song to argue otherwise
2. And I Love Her - If I can do the percussion part, you know it's a bad song
3. (Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmastime - see #1
4. Cold Turkey - John in too-earnest mode
5. Oh! Yoko! - "I never never never never never wanna let you go."
6. Old Brown Shoe - There was a reason George was kept from contributing songs
7. That Means A Lot - they were 16 when they did this one, so it doesn't count
8. The Ballad of John And Yoko - hubris
9. No More Lonely Nights (dance remix) - vomit
10. Give Peace A Chance - about as bad as "We Are the World"
11. Dr. Robert - most songs about drug dealers are similarly narcissistic
12. Blue Jay Way - worst Beatles song ever
(tie)
13. Revolution #9 - worst Beatles song ever
The sad thing is that the Beatles were so big that they were allowed to some abysmal songs. Nobody would have let The Who get away with "Revolution #9". That's why no one says, "I love Led Zeppelin but they had a couple of really bad songs."
 On the fortieth anniversary of the end of Vatican II, Pope Benedict XVI announced that leading a virtuous life need not be boring.
"There emerges in us the suspicion that the person who doesn't sin at all is basically a boring person," he said. "... that something is lacking in his life."
The Pope then executed a quadruple somersault through descending rings of fire from the roof of St . Peter's Basilica to the square hundreds of feet below, dismounting unscathed and proceeding to moonwalk across the length of the courtyard through thousands of astonished pilgrims. As the Vatican City Guard executed flawless pop-locking moves to the beats of DJ Arimathea and the Flying Nuns aerialist convent flew overhead, the pontiff said, "See?"
 This is so weird!
My mother used to tell me to go to Hell. I was eight. I hadn't even electrocuted anyone or removed them from their presidency.
Damn.
I was robbed.
The Smog Cutter: It was all yellow
 Last night I went to a bar on Virgil Avenue called the Smog Cutter. My companion, Los Angeles troubador Boom Sandfly, informed me that this bar had been featured in the montage of Bukowskian dives at the beginning of Barfly.
There was a homeless guy guarding the curtain that served as a door and the room inside was being run by three drunk and hilarious Asian ladies, who halfheartedly sang Bread songs to incite the crowd to use the karaoke machine.
The karaoke machine was by the wall, and it was the kind that superimposed the lyrics on soft-focus videos more or less connected with the song. I wondered how much karaoke actors make.
I watched Donna Summer's version of "MacArthur Park". The two actors were dancing around in a city park, smearing cake all over each other.
A quick Google search yielded several websites of performers who had done karaoke video acting as well as its companion in dignity, infomercial acting (let me clarify: if I were to be offered an infomercial for the Jagermeister tap machine or if Ronnie James Dio needed help making karaoke versions of his catalog, I would jump at the chance because I believe in those products).
Anyway, one of the proprietresses came up to me and we had the following conversation:
Her: My head come up to your hip. You very tall.
Me: Yes. Can I take a picture of you and your sisters?
Her: Who my sisters?
Me: The other ladies behind the bar.
Her: All white man think Asian look the same.
Me: That's not true. You were all yelling, and I thought you were -
Her: We not all yellow!
Me: I said "yelling".
Her: They speak bad. They say "Ang Lee", I say "Angry". I am angry.
Me: Please don't be angry.
I met a woman who had been in a New York band called "Jailbait" in the 80's. Her band had just missed the $100K prize on "Star Search", she said, because the other band suddenly started moonwalking. She said Ed McMahon (birthplace: Lowell, MA) was very kind. I also met the owner of a residence hotel/hostel called The Vibe (it doesn't look like the pictures - havng been to parties there, I think it looks more like the type of place I'd rent if I wanted to drink myself to death while watching cable), where an acquaintance of mine had just had his motorcycle destroyed by the roommate of a guy who is on "Deadwood" all the time.
Anyway, we had great fun. Since I realized I can't go back to Boston this Christmas, I have been to a lot of bars. I suppose that's just a coincidence.
Baby, it's date rape outside
 Now that it's getting nippier (in some places) and we are in the Christmas season, the Frank Loesser-penned Johnny Mercer/Margaret Whiting duet (since covered by many others) "Baby, It's Cold Outside" returns to underscore the fact that date rape is not something invented by the brothers of Tau Kappa Epsilon in 1984.
The song tells the story of a man trying to persuade his date to stay "a little longer", using as a ruse the low temperature outside.
The woman begins by saying "I really can't stay" and later says, flat out, "No!" but her partner is adamant and lubricious, plying her with drinks and cigarettes. He lies to her, physically intimidates her by getting ever closer, manipulates her by alluding to his death and, more to the point, worries aloud about his pride suffering a blow.
Louis Armstrong's duet with Ella Fitzgerald only emphasized that date rape is color blind, and Bobby Caldwell's version with Vanessa Williams further illuminated the fact that date rape is truly an interracial, international problem that takes no heed of class. Ms. Williams' fall from grace in the Miss America pageant probably made Caldwell think she was damaged and therefore accessible.
Joe Tex' "I Gotcha" is another big roofie song, but that one's good all year.
This car climbed Mt. Washington
 Mt. Washington is a neighborhood of Los Angeles that is four miles down the street from me, but to which I rarely go, unless I plan to get lost. There are 35-degree angled, switchbacked roads, roaming packs of dogs, buildings on stilts, lots of trees, uncharacteristic houses, once a pig, and a sense of separation from the city.
Mt. Washington isn't a neighborhood people make movies about, Dr. Dre or Tom Petty lyricized about, or Raymonds Carver or Chandler, Walter Mosely, or Joan Didion wrote about.
Me and you and the Odinic underground
 I was talking to the youngster who's designing my new business cards. He's about 25. I explained the concept of Mavervorl, the thousand-headed goat and he responded by saying he was getting into Norse mythology after reading Lords of Chaos, about black metal bands in Scandinavia.
Then he said: "one guy, Burzum aka Count Grishnak aka Varg Vikerness, is still in prison for burning something like 30 churches and murdering his Mayhem bandmate Euronymous."
I was like: What?
I thought I was a Spaniard listening to Portuguese for the first time.
"Lords of Chaos is a non-fiction book chronicling the rise of the Black metal and the satanic/heathen/odinic underground. Fucking incredible," he said.
What I don't know would collapse a freight train.
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