EVENT # 265: HAVE FUN, WILL TRAVEL

[Farewell, My Lovelies. See you on the 18th. Use the break to read the back issues; they were good, too...RA]

Some Change

Some change is needed, but I don't know how it will come about. Driving home from work this evening, I witnessed a scene that was senseless and cruel and left me feeling impotent because I could do nothing about it.

A group of young brothers -- the youngest was probably ten, the oldest fourteen at best -- were walking up the streets approaching an older man, also Black he was probably in his fifties, walking down. The tallest and oldest said something to the others then, as they walked past the older man, turned on slapped the man on the back, startling him and making him stumble forward. He turned shaking and angry.

"Why you say my Mama yo!" the tallest boy shouted, backing away quickly. The other children laughed and started to run around the corner. The tall boy followed... More


POWERSSOUND:

Hombres Prove Fascinating

Let's start off this week's appraisals with the latest from Los Hombres Calientes, which is entitled "Vol. 3 New Congo Square." Los Hombres continues to produce music that pays tribute to its origins by performing some of the most involving Latin music to be heard today. Irvin Mayfield plays his trumpet with an excitement and verve that's matched by only a few players on the instrument today.

Mayfield and Bill Summers have combined to head a band which doesn't restrict itself to what one would expect, given the band's name. There's plenty of music with a south-of-the-border feel. But there's much more to be heard during the 79-minute CD. .. More


DAY ONE:

On Addiction

At the height of tension between Washington and Beijing, Hong Kong University published a fascinating piece of research on the rates of propensity to addiction based on race. Top of the league came the Chinese at over 30%, with the Caucasians at around 10% and blacks at 2%. My first thought was to wonder what the conversion rate was from propensity to actuality and then to wonder how many addicts there were on the Chinese side in the negotiations over the spy plane and the captive American military personnel. As the leading addiction in China is to gambling that was far from an idle thought. I recalled the famous story of Spassky losing at chess to a nine-year-old novice simply because the child was utterly beyond prediction. Of course the child only won once but a gambler never is thinking of the next game, nor even the next move, but one. Would any of the Beijing negotiators gamble quixotically, throwing all the careful calculations of the US State Department?.. More



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The Trouble with Men

"Papou, what are you thinking about today?" his grandson, now grown, a father himself, asked of the bent old man sitting in the faded pink wooden chair in the deep shade under the old, gnarled fig tree.

"Yia-yia. I'm thinking of my wife, your grandmother, God rest her soul," he smiled toothlessly, nodding his head and looking up, with sightless eyes, to the cloudless summer-blue sky.

"And what thoughts of her do you have of Yia-yia, Papou?", the grandson, who was named after this old man, asked, sitting on the low, white plaster wall around the garden, feeling the stone coolness under his hands... More

COMING (On or Around) May 18th

WEBCAST UPDATE: Those of you interested in WebCasts asked that we give you more. If you like streaming concerts, we've found a few good ones for you at the Rolling Stone site. Click there to see and hear the likes of B.B. King, Zap Mama, Bauhaus, Blondie, Everclear, Joe Jackson and more! Enjoy.

Don't forget to check our

For at least a decade the media has advocated the belief that we are all artists each and every one of us. So now there is this influx of people who feel compelled to play the part of Artiste, but aren't willing to subject themselves to the grind of artistry (that is, actually creating something from nothing). They move into "artist's lofts" and discuss with others the interesting "creative projects" that they are "working on."...More


RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT: : Our "friends" on the Right have, over the years, assembled a whole group of Whipping Boys which they gleefully trot out when outlining -- to those unfortunates among us who (it is presumed)cannot think for themselves -- their ideas. These Whipping Boys are trotted out to demonstrate how conservative prescriptions will cure the cultural and moral illness of the nation -- whatever nation -- and restore backbone to the body politic. (The presumption here being that the body politic actually had backbone in some mythical by-gone Golden Age which none of the prescriptors can quite put a date or time on.) Among these now-familiar Whipping Boys are The Social Welfare State (which, the argument goes, creates a cycle of laziness and illegitimate births,) High Taxes (which penalize the rich unfairly and sap ones in-born spirit of innovation and entrepreneurialism,) Immigration (which allows people unlike "us" to bleed the national wealth and mongrelize the culture,) and Big Government (which is by its very nature inefficient, corrupt, and sinister, and from which all the foregoing evils must naturally flow.) Let's take a look ar these straw arguments for what they are, shall we?... "Whipping Boys" ROD AMIS More

RDR 05.04.01: THOMAS HART says living in America is all about TV and that TV hurts the poor. "Krystal in the Backyard with a Poker"

RDR 05.01.01: RAHEEM is back with a lamentation. "Dumb America"

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