Ratified ...12:51 pm
The Iraqi people become the first Islamic people in the Middle East to adopt a constitution which guarantees democracy, and includes a passage like this:
Article (14): Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status.
… and a quick scan of the headlines on Google News tells us how the usual suspects are reacting.
Reuters: Sunni Leaders Reject Iraq Charter
BBC: Milestone Not Destination
Khaleej Times (UAE): Bombs hit Baghdad hotels; Sunni provinces vote no to charter
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The Senator from Minnesota ...11:36 am
British MP, and defender of dictators, George Galloway, “gave false and misleading testimony under oath to Senate sub-committe about his involvement in oil-for-food transactions,” according to this report by Senator Norm Coleman (R-Mn).
Specifically, evidence gathered by the Subcommittee reveals:
Galloway personally solicited and was granted eight oil allocations totaling 23 million barrels from the Hussein government from 1999 through 2003;
Galloway’s wife, Dr. Amineh Abu-Zayyad, received approximately $150,000 in connection with one allocation of oil;
Galloway’s political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, received at least $446,000 in connection with several allocations granted under the Oil-for-Food Program;
Illegal “surcharge” payments in excess of $1.6 million were paid to the Hussein regime in connection with the oil allocations granted to Galloway and the Mariam Appeal; and
Galloway knowingly made false or misleading statements under oath before the Subcommittee at its hearing on May 17, 2005.
The report is being furnished to the U.S. Department of Justice.
…
By the way, did you know that Senator Coleman helped a Swedish rock band with some visa trouble, when they wanted to come to Hibbing, Minnesota, for that town’s “Dylan Days” festival? He did, back in May of this year.
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Joyce Carol Oates ...11:08 am
It’s amazing how people can sometimes think so little before writing so much, and even more amazing when the person doing it is a professional author. From her essay, Dylan at 60, here’s Joyce Carol Oates:
“Dylan” was a self-chosen name in homage to the great, legendarily self-destructive Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, whose lush, lyric, over-the-top poetry presumably influenced many of Bob Dylan’s songs. At the time it might have seemed an act of extraordinary chutzpah for a Jewish kid from Duluth, Minnesota, named Bob Zimmerman to anoint himself with the poet’s internationally famous name; now, forty years later, Dylan is an American classic whose fame far surpasses that of his namesake, who seems to have entered an eclipse. And even admirers of Dylan Thomas must concede that the brash American Dylan has taken on a far wider range of subjects, idioms, and aesthetic styles than the poet.
I’d be interested in seeing Joyce’s list of Bob Dylan songs that appear to reflect a Dylan Thomas influence. It makes one think she’s never attentively read the work of either Dylan. And resurrecting that old canard about why he picked the name shows a notable thoughtlessness. Anyone thinking about this subject for more than 5 minutes would likely arrive at the truth - as also explained in Chronicles - he picked the name because it sounded good.
And she does no justice to the poet Thomas either with her inanely sloppy statement that he “seems to have entered an eclipse,” (pretty good to be doing anything at all, if you ask me, when you’ve been dead since 1953) and her utterly juvenile way of trying to say that Bob Dylan is qualitatively better than Thomas, because he has “taken on” more “subjects, idioms and asethetic styles.” You would think a writer would see the inherent weaknesses in comparing the work of other writers to each other in this way, but then, you would think, whereas she apparently does not.
Ms. Oates isn’t done with shameless ignorance, however.
Dylan has continued in his long, ambitious, ever-evolving public career, through permutations of the self that have left many of his original admirers behind, or unaffected. (Evangelical Christianity? Bob Dylan? Count me out.)
I think that Ms. Oates can consider herself counted out.
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Sunday, October 23, 2005
Sing While You Slave ...5:05 pm
And staying with the New York Post, this is just an outrage-of-the-day type thing to stir the blood: Tom Morello, of the “rock supergroup” Audioslave, is interviewed in today’s paper and is asked about a recent trip to Cuba.
Q: What surprised you about Cuba?
A: I think most Americans view Cuba as a hostile police state, which we did not find to be the case at all. To shed some light on it, we played a free show in front of 70,000 Cubans for 2 1/2 hours. It went on without a hitch, an arrest, an incidence of violence or any police interaction with the crowd. Everybody had a good time.
A week later, we played a free show in our hometown on Hollywood Boulevard, in front of 10,000 fans - part of it was shown on the “Jimmy Kimmel” show - for about 45 minutes. There were 30 arrests, a riot, police were beating kids down.
It was very ironic that Hollywood Boulevard would be a more autocratic police state than Havana. Yet, both events are documented on video, so we have the proof. You can see the police smackdown in the video for “Your Time Has Come.”
Q: Did you as a band intend to make a political statement with the show?
A: The trip was billed as a cultural exchange, [but] certainly there are political implications. There is no longer a rock ‘n’ roll embargo against Cuba. The second we hit the stage that was over.
It was such a tremendous relief to be in a place where you do not have to see a Starbucks on every corner, a Paris Hilton billboard looming overhead or a grinning, pasty Col. Sanders leering down in every minimall.
Aside from the occasional Che Guevara billboard and graffiti extolling how well-immunized the people of Cuba are, there was very little of what you’re so used to when you’re touring in other countries. Were those experiences political? Of course they were.
Nice, huh?
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It’s Time for Us to Quit ...4:53 pm
The New York Post has a story on the plans to make a film called “Factory Girl,” which purports to be the story of Edie Sedgwick, a young woman who was closely associated with Andy Warhol and died young of a drug overdose. Some months ago it was first reported that agents of Bob Dylan had threatened to sue the film makers, based on a script that purportedly portrayed a romantic relationship between Dylan and Sedgwick. The Post today says:
Bob Dylan reportedly threatened a lawsuit after reading the script.
In an early version obtained by the Post, Dylan, who, like Edie, lived at the Chelsea Hotel, serenades Edie from a fire escape with a bouquet of flowers in his mouth.
In one heated scene, they make love while “pleasure spasms take hold.” Dylan writes the song “Just Like a Woman” for her, and then drops her and marries aspiring model Sara Lowndes.
Sedgwick was said to have inspired much of Dylan’s work at that time - including the album title “Blonde on Blonde” and the song “Lay Lady Lay.”
But Dylan balked at the script’s version of events and sent screenwriter Captain Mauzner (”Wonderland”) back to his keyboard.
Trying to avert controversy, the filmmakers reshaped the love interest as a hybrid of different musicians Edie was linked to, including Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison. The part was given to Hayden Christensen.
Hmm. A hybrid of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison. That should be interesting.
Some members of Sedgwick’s family apparently continue to oppose what they feel is purely an exploitative film. It sure sounds like a big waste of time to yours truly. And, in another sense, I always find it boring when people talk about a particular Dylan song being about this or that “real” person. (I mean, other than when it’s clearly true, e.g., Joey is obviously about Joey Gallo. Though, on the other hand, is it, really? Well, that’s for some other time …) The idea of dragging down Just Like A Woman to being about any one particular woman in Dylan’s life just seems silly to me, and completely misses the poetry of the song.
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A Song on Sunday, Volume 4 ...3:31 pm
Today, someone who went to church (and depending on which church) may have heard the following readings from scripture:
Leviticus, Chapter 19, verse 4: “Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourselves: I am the Lord your God.” In another way: You must love God above all other things.
Leviticus, Chapter 19, verse 18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
Matthew, Chapter 22, verses 37-39: “And he said to him (the lawyer sent to test him) ‘You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The kind of love these Biblical passages talk about is not any kind of watered-down love. It’s not the kind of love the search for which is “no more than vanity.”
To love an unseen God with all of your heart, soul and mind; this is a love that is not easy to conceive, let alone maintain, and might well overwhelm a poor human vessel, who, in showing such love, could easily be considered insane by the standards of an earthly society.
And to love one’s neighbor as oneself; that duplicitous, faithless and treacherous neighbor on whom there is no depending, because you know his heart is as weak and desperate as the one which beats within your own breast - this is a kind of love that stretches human capacity to its limit, and, even if practiced, might make you seem more fit for psychological study than admiration, in this flawed world in which we live.
The Bible, then, talks about this difficult kind of love. A pure, hoping, believing kind of love. Love that’s overwhelming in its potential and overwhelming in its strength. Love that is of God and not of this world. Love that can challenge the equilibrium of a fallen creation, and can fill a poor human being with a longing for a Lord who might seem forever out of reach. It’s a kind of love that can save you, and maybe in some sense make you a little crazy. A love that can cure all your ills, and maybe in another sense make you feel sick.
Here, for a little while, is an mp3 sample of Dylan, from March 16th, 2000, in Santa Cruz, California … performing Love Sick.
(See also Ronnie Keohane’s Time Out Of Mind With New Eyes)
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Aalborg, 10/22/2005 ...8:46 am
Set list from Pagel’s site:
1. Maggie’s Farm
2. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (Bob on harp)
3. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob on harp)
4. Lay, Lady, Lay
5. Cold Irons Bound
6. The Times They Are A-Changin’
7. High Water (For Charley Patton) (Donny on banjo)
8. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
9. Ballad Of Hollis Brown (acoustic) (Donny on banjo)
10. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
11. Boots Of Spanish Leather (Donny on violin)
12. Down Along The Cove
13. Positively 4th Street
14. Highway 61 Revisited(encore)
15. Like A Rolling Stone
16. All Along The Watchtower
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Saturday, October 22, 2005
Talking New York ...1:25 pm
It’s a story that both is and isn’t news (and that itself is a sign of the times): The New York City Fire Department is preparing for a nuclear attack.
“It’s the training we do that’ll make the difference between who gets saved and who doesn’t get saved,” (Chief Joseph) Pfeifer said at the Council on Foreign Relations on E.68thSt.
The FDNY is particularly concerned about terrorists developing a crude nuclear bomb and detonating it among the skyscrapers in lower Manhattan.
Such an attack would likely result in nearly 225,000 casualties, Pfeifer said.
…
“If an improvised nuclear device goes off … it will be horrific, but we can survive,” said Pfeifer.
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Friday, October 21, 2005
Gothenberg, 10/21/2005 ...9:39 pm
Set list of tonight’s gig in Sweden, from Pagel:
1. Maggie’s Farm
2. Tell Me That It Isn’t True
3. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
4. Lay, Lady, Lay
5. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
6. Just Like A Woman
7. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
8. Cry A While
9. Make You Feel My Love
10. Highway 61 Revisited
11. Love Sick
12. I Don’t Believe You
(She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
13. Desolation Row
14. Summer Days(encore)
15. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
16. All Along The Watchtower
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Harriet and Me ...3:49 pm
So, back here when I was wondering why so many people were doing GOOGLE searches for “harriet miers and bob dylan,” I decided to e-mail Harriet at her blog. After all, who better to ask about any possible association between the first woman president of the State Bar of Texas and the artist who brought us Street Legal than the actual SCOTUS nominee herself?
She finally responded, but has cleverly side-stepped the whole Dylan question by, well, er, side-stepping it. She says (and I copy and paste), “Sorry it took me so long to right back, I was really busy…of-course now I’m even busier with my do-over but I’m PROCRASTINATING!!” She thanks me for defending her and promises a mention in her Blog Roll. Thanks, Harriet!
I must say that my sympathy for Harriet has only increased since glancing over the 57 page questionnaire she had to fill out for the Judiciary Committee (hosted in pdf form at NRO here). I mean, dig this (and the following is not a parody):
NOMINEE FOR THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
GENERAL (PUBLIC)
1. Name: Full name (include any former names used).
Harriet Ellan Miers
2. Position: State the position for which you have been nominated.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
3. Address: List current office address. If state of residence differs from your place of employment, please list the state where you currently reside.
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20502
I currently reside in Virginia, but also maintain a home in Texas.
4. Birthplace: State date and place of birth.August 10, 1945
Dallas, Texas
5. Marital Status: (include maiden name of wife, or husband’s name). List spouse’s occupation, employer’s name and business address(es). Please, also indicate the number of dependent children.Single
6. Education: List in reverse chronological order, with most recent first, each college, law school, and any other institutions of higher education attended and indicate for each the dates of attendance, whether a degree was received, and the date each degree was received.Southern Methodist University School of Law, 1967-1970, JD, May 24, 1970
Southern Methodist University, 1963-1967, BS in Mathematics, May 21, 1967
7. Employment Record: List in reverse chronological order, listing most recent first, all governmental agencies, business or professional corporations, companies, firms, or other enterprises, partnerships, institutions and organizations, non-profit or otherwise, with which you have been affiliated as an officer, director, partner, proprietor, elected official or employee since graduation from college, whether or not you received payment for your services. Include the name and address of the employer and job title or job description, or the name and address of the institution or organization and your title and responsibilities, where appropriate.
… etc!!
It gives me the vaguely sick feeling I’ve always had when looking at a job application. You would think, having reached the stage in life where the President of the United States nominates you to be on the Supreme Court, that you would not have to jump through the same kinds of mundane hoops as someone applying for a job at Krispy Kreme. I mean, really. And when did the “advice and consent” of the U.S. Senate come to mean this level of intrusion and scrutiny?
A long time ago, huh?
And just to add insult to it all, every peremptory demand for voluminous documentation made of Harriet by the senators includes this addendum: “Please provide four (4) copies of X,” as in:
Please also provide four (4) copies of any resolutions on which you voted, the corresponding votes and minutes, as well as any speeches or statements you made with regard to policy decisions or positions taken by the association, committee or conference that you participated in. “Participation” includes, but is not limited to, membership in any working group of any such association, committee or conference which produced a report, memorandum or policy statement even where you did not contribute to it.
What - the senators aren’t equipped with photocopiers, and hordes of interns who know how to use them? Doesn’t Harriet have enough to worry about just finding all this stuff in whatever shoebox it might be stuffed in, without having to pull out all the staples and paperclips and run off four copies of it all for Specter, Leahy and friends?
I don’t know. Whatever ambition I had to be on the Supreme Court has been severely tempered by getting this close-up view of the nominating process.
In all seriousness, things are not looking great for Harriet Miers, and perhaps that is for good reason … or perhaps not. It’s very hard for one’s skin not to crawl when Senator Specter (R - PA) and Senator Leahy (D - VT) are preening and complimenting one another on their own reasonableness and depth of legal knowledge while piling on against Bush’s nominee. While I’ve been queasy about the nomination from the start, I’ve continued hoping people like Hugh Hewitt are right, and so I’ll certainly be pleased if, when the confirmation hearings actually begin, Harriet hits it out of the park. A point to remember is that a major part of Bush’s rationale for nominating her is that she has never been a judge, but instead is someone who has lived in the “real” world. Yet, much of the current criticism centers on the fact that she is not displaying the qualities of a constitutional scholar. Well, to revert to Harriet Miers Blog!!-speak for a minute: duh!!
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Karlstadt, 10/20/05 ...1:05 pm
Set list from the Dylan Pool (Pagel’s site seems to be down, and Expecting Rain seems to be having technical trouble too):
1. Maggies Farm
2. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
3. Watching the River Flow
4. Lay Lady Lay
5. Down Along the Cove
6. Girl of the North Country
7. Highway 61 Revisited
8. Trying To Get To Heaven
9. Cold Irons Bound
10. Stuck Inside of Mobile
11. If Dogs Run Free
12. Down In the Flood
13. Mr Tambourine Man
14. Summer Days
15. Like A Rolling Stone
16. All Along the Watchtower
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Thursday, October 20, 2005
North Country Blues ...2:33 pm
So there is that film out, called North Country, from the soundtrack to which comes Dylan’s new song Tell Ol’ Bill. I have no opinion about the film, because I haven’t seen it. The Duluth News Tribune has a story about how the makers found Dylan’s music to be a perfect fit for their movie. Other Dylan songs that are used include Sweetheart Like You, Lay Lady Lay and Girl of the North Country.
Oddly, of-course, one song that they don’t use - and which doesn’t get mentioned in the article either - is North Country Blues, from The Times They Are A-Changin’
However, the woman in this case is not a miner herself (as is the character portrayed by Charlize Theron in the film), but is married to one, and we see the story of the town’s decline through her weary eyes. It’s really a wonderful song, and one that always tends to surprise me when I put that album on. It’s a good example of Dylan taking a topic that someone else would make into only a political diatribe (”the capitalist oppressors raping the land and discarding the workers”) and instead weaving an intimate poem that - more than anything else - shines its light on human nature itself.
I lived by the window
As he talked to himself,
This silence of tongues it was building.
Then one morning’s wake,
The bed it was bare,
And I’s left alone with three children.
The summer is gone,
The ground’s turning cold,
The stores one by one they’re a-foldin’.
My children will go
As soon as they grow.
Well, there ain’t nothing here now to hold them.
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Dolly Dagger ...9:35 am
Parton Reconsiders Dylan Tribute Album After Snub. So goes the meatball-sized story on ContactMusic.com.
Parton approached Dylan and asked him to duet with her on his folk anthem for her new album THOSE WERE THE DAYS, but the rock star became the only big name collaborator who turned her down.
Parton says, “To be fair, I didn’t actually speak to him personally. I’d sent a message to him because I wanted him to say at least one line on Blowin’ In The Wind.
“I got the message back that he didn’t want to do it, so I got (country group) NICKEL CREEK… to sing on it, so, in a way, it worked out better.
“I was going to do a whole album of his (songs) and I was going to call it DOLLY DOES DYLAN. Now I’m having second thoughts.”
Mind you, she did get Yusuf Islam to strum guitar on his own Where Do The Children Play. One wonders about the logistics of that: after all, “Cat” is on a terror watch list that prevents him from flying to the United States, is he not? (Due most likely to allegations of his support for Hamas terrorists.)
Anyhow, I like Dolly quite a bit, but if this story is a fair representation of her point of view, she really ought to think twice. Presumably she was considering recording an album of Dylan songs because of the quality of those songs - not because she thinks Dylan is such a nice guy. How logical is it to decide not to do it just because he didn’t choose to perform on her new album? Imagine Frank Sinatra saying: “I’ve Got You Under My Skin is a great song, Cole, but if you’re not going to sing it with me, I’m gonna have to take a pass.”
Well, doubtless there are holes in that comparison … but they’re probably nothing compared to the holes in Dolly’s head. God bless her.
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Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Too Bright a Light ...9:59 pm
RWB quakes before the power of television. Combine it with Google and you have an unstoppable beast. The hits continue to flood in based on the words “Dylan,” “Volvo,” and “commercial.” Since that subject is decidedly off the front-page, I feel obliged to direct those visitors to click here.
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Things Have Changed ...9:37 pm
Regarding the trial of Saddam: it’s difficult to gauge from this distance what it all means. That is, what is this process going to do for the people of Iraq? Wouldn’t it be better if he’d been shot in his “spider-hole?” The mainstream media would have us believe that the trial is going to cause divides and inspire more violence and make Bush’s quagmire even deeper. Well, one could do a lot worse than read what’s being said about it by an Iraqi blogger:
Everyone could find a reason to immediately execute a criminal who never let his victims say a word to defend themselves “let’s execute him and get over this” sentiments like this were said while we watched the proceedings which were rather boring and sluggish for the first half of the session.
…
Anyhow, the prosecutor began reading the facts and figures about what happened in Dijail. The defendants went silent but Saddam objected on some details and then prosecutor said “Do you want me to show the film where you said and did that?” Saddam stopped talking and the prosecutor asked the court to allow showing the film, we don’t know if it was played there as transmission was paused for a while.
As the prosecution went deeper into details and facts, the way we viewed the trial began to change and those among us who were demanding a bullet in Saddam’s head now seemed pleased with the proceedings “I don’t think I want to see that bullet now, I want to see justice take place as it should be”.
We were watching an example of justice in the new Iraq, a place where no one should be denied his rights, not even Saddam.…
We’re drawing the outlines of a change not only for Iraq but also for the entire region and I can feel that today we have presented a unique model of justice because in spite of the cruelty of the criminal tyrant and in spite of the size of the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people, we still want to build a state of law that looks nothing like the one the tyrant wanted to create.
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