HISTORY, BLOODY HISTORY

Dan sends in the following culled from Reuters...

New York's legendary rock club CBGB, which helped launch everybody from Blondie to the Ramones, faces closure if it does not resolve a dispute over unpaid rent with the homeless charity that owns the building. Club owner Hilly Kristal said the dispute dated from 2001, when the landlord presented a $300,000 bill for unpaid rent. Though most of that has now been repaid, the club was handed another bill earlier this year for $76,000 which CBGB has not paid. The club's lease comes to an end in August and talks on renewal are stalled.
"The real thing is they don't want me back," Kristal said, adding that there had been a series of disagreements over renovations and building certificates in recent years.
CBGB, which stands for "country, bluegrass and blues" even though it is most famous for punk music, rents its downtown space from the Bowery Residents' Committee -- a non-profit organization that runs a homeless shelter above the premises.
"I am not going to subsidize CBGB at the expense of homeless people," Muzzy Rosenblatt, executive director for the organization, was quoted as saying in The New York Times.
MTV's Web site quoted him as saying CBGB had not met its obligations on safety.
The Committee wants to double the rent and negotiations over a new lease have ground to a halt amid legal wrangling that will result in a court hearing later this month.
Kristal, who founded the club in 1973, converting what had been a Hell's Angels hangout into one of the most famous venues for live music in the city, said he would fight closure of what he called a New York City institution.
"We've established something here. ... This is a kind of symbol of helping young musicians and new artists," he said, recalling early gigs by the likes of Pearl Jam.
"I think we do a nice thing for a lot of people; maybe it's not quite as wonderful as helping the homeless but it has its benefits," Kristal said.
Rosenblatt could be immediately reached for comment

I don’t really know what I think about all this. I played CB’s a bunch of times, mainly with Tijuana Bible, but entropy inevitably sets in, and everything ages and everything changes, (so do what you think you should do.) Out here in LA, the legendary Barney’s Beanery went the preservation route and now we have something that looks like a theme park concept of a biker bar and has nothing to do with the saloon where everyone from Errol Flynn to Jim Morrison used to behave badly. Hilly does, however, need a joint over which to preside.

SMILE WHEN YOU SAY THAT, DAKOTA KID

Over on the comments board, the Dakota Kid is all of aflutter about the Walking Eagle joke sent in by johnette. To cut a tirade short, I’ve just enumerated a few points which put me at odds with the Kid, and can only echo some girl’s comment “thank god for borg’s brain”. You better read the actual comments first, though, or you won’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.

1: “Just because someone thinks she or he is being funny does not mean it is entirely advisable to say and write anything you want anytime you want.” Well, as a matter of fact, I would strongly advise it. “To say and write (and post and publish) anything you want anytime you want” is my profession. Of course, it can get you beaten, stoned, jailed, burnt at the stake, and denied employment. A number of the above have happened or almost happened to me down the years, but that goes with the territory.

2: The function of Doc40 is never ever to “convince mainstream voters to change horses”. I gave that a half-hearted try last year. Hell, I was even civil to Ann Coulter. But no more, Kid. Fuck ‘em, and the horse they rode in on. The “less discerning minds and innocent victims” have had decades, if not centuries, to figure it out, as have the brutal, the transcendently greedy and willfully ignorant. They still refuse to get it.

3: “If you knew anything about out "red brothers"...”– Which “brothers” are those, Dakota? The guys from AIM I knew back in the day? The mad BC bud runners? My friend Gayle? The Manhattan high steel construction workers who used to hang out in a bar near Bloomingdales in the 1980s?. The windwalkers just over the psychedelic horizon? Shall we dispense with patronizing Victorian missionary-speak?

4: “...you'd know that, although they have a truly superb sense of humor, they would never use an obscenity like 'shit'.” Give me a break. Excremental humor is common to all known cultures. It’s the very first infantile comedy topic. And some of those guys in the bar by Bloomies had no sense of humor at all.

5: “Indigenous people have suffered tremendously for a long, long time.” Fucking A right we have! Take my Anglo-Irish ancestors. (Please.) They spent 700 years oppressing and slaughtering each other. And when weren’t doing that, they enlisted in the bloody British army and were shipped off to oppress Indians in India, Africans in Africa, and sell opium to the Chinese. Was it Brecht who said “war is a bayonet with a worker at each end?”

6: Some of my best friends are the “intelligentsia of Hollywood screenwriters.” So watch it.

7: “Currently Wyoming is attempting to drill on public, sacred land. I trust you have already contacted the Bureau of Mines?” Fuck the Bureau of Mines. We asked the North Koreans for a ten megaton airburst.

8: While being aware that James Stewart was politically to the right of Strom Thurmond, that still does not prevent me from enjoying Harvey. Movies are our modern folklore, goddamn it. Indeed, I even recorded a version of the theme to “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” as a homage to Lee Marvin. It’s on the recently released Japanese version of The Deviants Dr. Crow.
(Two more and we’d have a 10 point program.)

The secret word is Misguided

AND
And I have a bit on censorship in this week’s LA Citybeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1783&IssueNum=92

WALKING EAGLE
Send by johnette
Invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation last weekend in Arizona, President Bush spoke for almost an hour of his future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living.
Though vague on the details of his plan, he appeared enthusiastic about his ideas for helping his "red brothers."
At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented the President with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name -- 'Walking Eagle'.
As the President departed waving to the crowd in his motorcade, a news reporter asked the group of chiefs how they came to select the new name given to the President.
They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.

The secret word is Forked

TOMMY VANCE RIP (see comments)

SPONGEBOB, SPONGBIB

I make errors, I freely admit it. I put it down to a racing mind and a tendency to read what I intended to write and not what’s on the page. My slips, however, are nothing compared to those who spring to the defense of that idiot James Dobson of the morality website Focus On Family, and his theory that Spongebob Squarepants is a fifth column for the Homosexual Agenda. These lines are from mail sent to MSNBC after Keith Olbermann had ridiculed the theory...

"I think Jesus said it best when he said, Get behind the Satan."

"Your prejudism is definately showing."

"I am writing to express my opposition to the SPONGE BOB ’TYPE VALUES THAT ARE TRYING TO BE TAUGHT in education today."

"It came up a long time ago that Spongebob was gay. It is a theory not a fact. It is a general belief among society that Spongebob is gay."

"Our family is deeply concerned by your callous remarks about Dr. Dobson. I believe him to be correct in his assumption of homosexual references in the show. We have watched this cartoon for years and recently, it has appeared to us to be more homosexual in nature. There’s several episodes where I just sat there and thought, this is really, really weird. I couldn’t get over the gay undertones."

"I knew when I herd your reports about Spong Bob… I needed to ivestigate further… and sure enough you not only left out the most important part of the story, but that misrepresented Dr. J. Dobson. I feel that we need to protect the inocence of children. And I feel that right as a parent is being taken away by Homosexuals who slip there docterin in on the sly…"

But best of all, the truly presidential... Stupid Intellegenece."

And, while we ask ourselves if the illiterate should be permitted opinions (or would they just keep coal in them?) kaymo sends a link to a neat compendium of really advanced paranoia, kinda like Lyndon LaRouche meets the Rapture or, as the ever-splendid kaymo puts it. "Do you ever find yourself singing "The madman draws circles, up and down the block,....." etc. when you're reading one of these rants?
http://www.redmoonrising.com/AmericanBabylon/ABindex.htm

And, from HCB, is another angle on the fatal inanity that may yet kill us all...
http://thewvsr.com/gargoyle.htm

The secret word is Palsy