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