Still one of my all time favorite music videos

I don't know why I needed the still.




-cjfer-

Keeping with the theatrical theme...

This is the monologue that made me want to write. This started it all. It's from a Sam Shepard play called Angel City. I'm not a huge fan of this guy's presentation, but it's still magic. I remember hearing this and thinking, "People can really write like that?". It blew me away, and still does.

Click To Play

-ccmas

Nice Guy? I don't give a shit.

-cjfer-

Stalker, Texas Stranger

-cjfer-

No Ewan McGreggor, Thank You

Video a day

I'm going to try to post a video a day. We'll see how long this lasts.

-cjfer

Ryan Sings the Hits

This is Ryan. He video tapes himself playing covers and then puts them on youtube.

Walk on the Ocean By Toad the Wet Sprocket.



I hope that I don't fall in love with you by Tom Waits



Ryan isn't bad. I just think what he does is really strange. I don't know why he does it.

-cjfer-

Turtle Kid

My favorite time of year

My favorite time of year is beginning. Actually it's about the time from the start of the US OPEN to HALLOWEEN. It's a great time for sports. You have the last Tennis grand slam, sometimes the ryder cup in golf, you have the MLB post season race, and the start to the NFL season. Later in October there's the start of the NHL and NBA seasons. It's like for some reason, life is returning to America. Everyone is returning home from their summer vacations, and the temperature is starting to get a little cooler. The days are getting a little shorter, and the earth, for us in the north, is tilting a little bit away from the sun. It's a time of change, of the transitory; ephemeral, and it's really the only time when there's any mystery or magic the air. It's a special time. It's back to school, back to work, back to life. There's a resurgence of human life, despite the beginning of the end of natural life (at least for another season). There's excitement as the summer ends, blurring into the autumn. It's a time when the METAPHYSICS OF NIGHT takes hold, and fills one with a spiritual tingle through the spine, when hairs on the back of one's neck stand on end. When time fleeting, when the sun sets, and when the air is magic. I can't wait.

-cjfer-

Put in In the Sauce

1. I feel like I needed to post something
2. I had this stuck in my head.
3. I hadn't come across it before recently

The First Planet 2 God Cast

-cjfer- Planet 2.0

Fake America

I like Brian Williams who hosts NBC's Nightly news. But he once said something that irked me. He said something to the effect of "I've been to South Carolina a few times. There's a lot of REAL AMERICANS there."

I'm from New England, home of fake Americans. New York City (not in New England, but freakishly close) probably has more fake Americans per Capita than anyone else. (Actually, New York City has the lowest population of Illegal Immigrants per Capita than any other city. That number is about 150, 000. When you have a city of 8 million people, you can Per Capita the Shit out of anyone.)

I don't have an accent, I don't live on a farm. I'm educated. I don't think I'm better than someone who has an accent, lives on a farm or isn't educated. Why does everyone think I think that? Why do we romanticize one and demon-ize the other? We'd all love to live it simple, but simple kind of passed us by a while ago.

-cjfer-

Planet 1, home of Fake America.

The Semantics of Politics

I was watching CSPAN today, because I'm a nerd and I have a lot of free time. Specifically, I was watching Barack Obama talk about his views on "the issues" in front of a large outdoor crowd in Iowa. Someone asked him about the issue of Gay Marriage. His response is one that I couldn't help but agree with. Just to put it out there, if I were any more liberal I'd be Pepper Labeija. His response was this: I think that same sex couples should be afforded the same civil rights as non-same sex couples. I support civil unions. Gay couples should be treated equally under the law (as heterosexual couples.) This is important for things like hospital visitation rights and transfer of property or personal assents. "Marriage", however, has connotations that aren't just civil, they're religious. [because of the separation of church and state] It's up to the individual denominations whether or not they want to allow gay couples to "Marry." The way he describes it, it's hard to find a quarrel with it. If Marriage is a wholly religious union, shouldn't it be left up to the religions themselves, and not up to law makers? The question then arrives, is marriage a wholly religious union? When a man and woman go to a courthouse to be legally joined, don't we colloquially call them married? We don't often refer to civil unions between men and women as civil unions. We call them Married. Don't we?

So what's in a name? It seems like there's a lot of arguing over THE NAME OF THE THING. Not the thing itself. I can't speak with any real authority here, but don't most people agree that people should be afforded equal protection under the law? Is the name more, less, or equally as important as the thing (in this case being equal rights)? Anyone thinking Shakespeare at this point? What's in a name? Etc? If two people are civil-y unionized, can't they refer to themselves as being married? Is anyone really going to stop them? "oh, sorry, we're not 'married.' We're Civilly Union-ed-ed....Civilly Unionized? We get along, and we're together."

"We're married"
"I feel sorry for you"

'Cause let's face it, marriage is a good party spoiled.

So, what are we talking about? Semantics, the way we talk about the world, describe things, and define the real. Another thought. We have two issues - Pro-life, and Pro-choice. These two positions are characterized as being binary opposites. Are they? Wouldn't it seem that the opposite of Pro-life is Pro-death? Wouldn't it seem that the opposite of Pro-choice is Pro-no choice? If these weren't the set words for which to talk about this issue, would we maybe talk about it different? Again, I'm not an authority on this, but I think if given the options, people would be for life and against death. I think they would also be for choice, and against the lack of choice. I don't think anyone's cheering for death. Even us liberals.

There's no such thing as political parties. They're just names we use, but they don't really even describe anything accurately. Republicans, conservatives, seem to be for a smaller government and less government involvement in people's lives. Is it then odd to regulate something like abortion which involves direct contact with someone's person? Same with the death penalty and regulating life and death? There's something about government regulation and deregulation in there...

The phone rang, this blog is done.

-cjfer-

(planet 1 for now)

A.O. Scott on Berman and Antonioni

Click to read here

"Our Age is Retrospective. We must enjoy an original relation..."
-Emerson

The Greengrass Identity

Last Night I saw "The Bourne Ultimatum" and, well, I should have seen Sunshine. What I didn't like about "The Bourne Supremacy" is the same thing I didn't like about "The Bourne Ultimatum." The action, and story are interesting and Matt Damon is great in the role. I think. The problem is that it's so overly shaky-cam than I can't actually see what's happening. I can't tell. That was a cool fight - I think. And it's not just the fighting, it's everything. I've never seen someone so dramatically brush their teeth before. It's also interesting, isn't it, to root for an action character you know nothing about. I guess by the third movie, we've see it all done before. Or rather, I should say, we didn't really see it before.

It's not to say that there's no "there there." Because there is something there. There's something about the confusion of the modern world, about there not being "good" or "bad" guys, and about having a fractured identity in a world of ever increasing communication. The more we use machines to mediate our personal communication, the more we fracture our identities. Cjfer, Ferry140, or Prince of Space, or whichever avatar you want to put on me, is not exactly the same as chris ferrantino. They're just screennames. The third movie also has a bit of a notion of what is right, what is wrong, and how do we know. My problem isn't with these points, which I think are valid and interesting, my problem is that they're ancillary to a nonstop pace with is visually mucky. They're good ideas that never get fleshed out. The movie never slows down or lets us catch up with it. These movies have good ideas in them and it's almost as if the filmmaker thinks that if he slows down, we'll be bored because we'll be forced to "think." Oh Damn.

That said, I think that Paul Greengrass, the director of the last two Bourne films, actually knows what he's doing, sort of. I just don't think it works for me. Greengrass seems to make films that are "artless." Normally, this would be an insult, but I don't mean Artless as meaning "without art" I mean it as "without Artifice." Greengrass's 2006 film, United 93, is not a good film, it's a great film. The lack of artifice serves that film so well. You couldn't make that film look like a normal hollywood film. The Bourne movies, I'm not so sure about. So what do you think? One wants to avoid artifice, or what is artificial, right? But yet, we love movies that have "art" in them.

-cjfer-

What was the term? "Building on what Chris said..."

I think the newsman mentality gets back to something about our society. Men were different then. They were tougher, more interested in the story. They were artists, not craftsmen. Our society seemed to value the individual more, and we were less litigious. I'm not entirely sure we that we don't want to fight anymore, I just don't know that we know how to, or what we want to go after.

Because on Planet 2, Image is everything, here's a little clip of Hannity and Colmes from FOX NEWS. Guess which one is the Republican and guess which one is the Democrat. (I'll give you a hint, the Democrat looks like he's been dead for 3000 years). You could cut glass on Sean Hannity's Chiseled Conservative Jaw. That's America. Democrats aren't American, they're weak, frail, and look like Skeletor. Seriously, the only way we could fair and balance that scale is to have a man's man like Tom Seleck on the other side. Now that's news I would watch. At least it wouldn't be faking it. There's no discourse in the news. It comes down to who can do more bench presses.

Truth in Numbers, Numbers Lost Truth

When did the news media fail us? Integrity has given way to ratings, and ratings have become truth. While this has been said millions of times, I just wanted to say it here (this being a media based venture, why not, right?) More and more I wonder where the truth went, or more specifically, when did we as a public stop caring?

I blame 24 hour news, but there is more that I miss.

I miss when there was this adventurer mentality to the evening news. People would go out and chase the story down. There was risk. People would get beaten, abused, shouted at, and sometimes killed. But the story would get out there. These were hard stories that impacted people's lives. Dan Rather once spent a night in a jail cell because he wanted to try heroin in a controlled manner to gain perspective on a story. Four or five journalists were shot dead whilst investigating Jonestown. Hell, we even have reporters getting killed in Iraq trying to get the story...whatever story they're chasing.

Thanks to ratings we never hear these hard stories. They're too depressing. We hear harsh things from people who've never left the studio, from pretty boys and girls sitting in chairs. These are the acoustic folk singers to the previous generations Led Zepplin. It's watered down and really, really weak. There's no experience there. They aren't the sages from an older time who've seen it all. They're just some dudes in suits.

The reason I love Mike Doughty is that when he sings about drugs, you can feel the pain and love in his voice. You know that he wants to shoot up, but he knows that he can never go back. That's what's missing from the news today. There is no love or passion or pain. That doesn't get viewers. We get manufactured outrage, but it just comes off as silly and uninteresting. These are the Anderson Coopers and the Nancy Graces and the Bill O'Reilly-s. They're terrible, inauthentic and trite. But people love them.

Someday the media will grow some balls. Or someday we'll start to care again. Either or. There is news out there, and people are telling their stories. It's just become a lot harder to find the ones that matter.



-ccmas
reporting from planet 2

Video from Mike Doughty's Blog - though, not made by Doughty

I found this this particularly Planet 2. I thought this was a really interesting video, and it occurs to me that not everyone reads Mike Doughty's Blog. I found it there. As he explains, it's a video of people masturbating, but shot from the shoulders up. It's called "the Beautiful Agony" and I think it's really interesting, as Mr. Doughty does, as performance art - not as porn. There's something very beautiful, honest, and particularly in the moment about the people's faces.




To read the Doughty blog, click here. He explains more about the video and it's origins.

-cjfer-

Interesting NY Times article about our Japanese Friends

Click HERE to read about Japanese couples who fly to Europe for a Western style wedding. It's weird because it's not a legal marriage, it's just a fun thing to do, apparently.

-cjfer-

Boom goes the planet 2 show

This is an old video, but I just saw it yesterday.




A Warning about drinking too much.



I thought this was well done - the fact that they're Australian makes it more Planet 2 than it would have otherwise be. Ahh, Irony.

The Planet 2 Show: Reunited/Explained

Wow. I never thought Chris would blog here. It totally gives me a renewed sense of interest in this blog. Now, all we need are readers/viewers. How the hell he posted the videos, I'll never know, but it very much impresses me. I've wanted Chris to blog for a long time, and I'm so glad that he did. I'm also glad he Planet 2'd it, as I haven't been able to.

For anyone wondering. Planet 2 is the world of video, or rather, and more appropriately, the moving image. Planet 1 is the world of text. Spoken word, like radio, sadly doesn't get a planet - it's just in a dual orbit around both planets. Feel free to disagree with that. For a long time, (roughly 1450, with the invention of movable type by Johannas Guttenberg, until the 1970's) humans only lived on Planet 1, which, might include radio. It wasn't until the shift into Post-Modernity, was it March or May or 1972? I forget the exact date - that we started the long colonization and terra-forming process of life on Planet 2. The hegemonic control of Planet 1 was over. Interestingly, and un-ironically, the only formats that we've been able to host a Planet 2 show was radio, and now the blogasphere. Man, that Radio Show was fun. Rest assured that if we had a TV SHOW called THE PLANET 2 SHOW, it would like it was produced in a basement on a local access channel somewhere in the deepest darkest part of the 80's. We'd show Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson videos.

Hopefully Chris will continue to update this blog from time to time, hopefully people will continue to read/view the blog. I'll post with my thoughts on life in California and the continuing weirdness of the world around me/us/you. But I didn't want to speak for you.

Huzzah! The planet 2 show is re-untied!

-cjfer-