Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising

Michael Moore's new movie has been released today. It has been made available to watch or download for free, the first full-length feature film of the kind, on www.slackeruprising.com. Here's the statement by Mr. Moore:

"I'm giving you my blanket permission to not only download it, but also to email it, burn it, and share it with anyone and everyone (in the U.S. and Canada only). I want you to use 'Slacker Uprising' in any way you see fit to help with the election or to do the work that you do in your community. You can show my film in your local theater, your high school classroom, your college auditorium, your church, union hall or community center. You can have your friends and neighbors over to the house for a viewing. You can broadcast it on TV, on cable access, on regular channels or on the web. It's completely free -- I don't want to see a dime from this. And if you want, you can charge admission or ask for a donation if it's to raise money for a candidate, a voter drive, or for any non-profit or educational purpose. In other words -- it's yours!"

I just finished watching it. It's about Moore's 2004 Slacker Uprising Tour during which he spoke at 62 key cities during the 2004 presidential campaign and tried to rally people to get out and vote. Sounds boring? It's not. There is plenty of comedy and music to liven it up. At many appearances Moore gave out Ramen noodles and clean underwear to any 'slacker' who registered and pledged to vote in the Nov. 2nd, 2004 election, and there are appearances by many familiar faces: Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Roseanne Barr, Tom Morello, R.E.M., and others, singing songs, and giving their opinion.

This movie is well worth the watch. It nearly brought tears to my eyes many times, and not because it is sad or depressing, but because of the compassion, love for humankind, and sincere desire for change that Moore and many of the everyday people who are interviewed show.

Take some time and watch this movie. For those of you who have preconceived notions about Michael Moore and what he is about, put those aside for an hour and a half and watch this movie, before judging. Say what you will about Moore (he most certainly is fat), he is fighting the good fight: for peace, for compassion, for justice, and for true democracy.

And, oh yeah, vote.

Kings of Leon: Only by the Night

So, Kings of Leon are releasing their fourth album on September 23rd.

Reading many Itunes reviews of the new singles "Crawl" and "Sex on Fire," as well as past reviews of the other three albums, I noticed that there seem to be two opposing camps in regards to how the Kings' albums have been received. The first are the people who absolutely loved Youth and Young Manhood, the first album, loved Aha Shake Heartbreak, the second, and then began to wonder if something terrible wasn't happening to one of their favorite bands on the third album, Because of the Times. These are the folks that will be ready to throw Only By the Night out the window of a moving vehicle about half way through.

The opposing side thinks that Kings of Leon are only getting better with each album. It is no surprise that this side is the majority, as the albums are progressively getting more commercial-friendly and M.O.R. (That's Middle Of the Road to non-Blur fans.)

I don't have to tell you that I subscribe to the former.

It turns out that Because of the Times was the bad omen it seemed to be. Only by the Night is more of the same. The music is monotonous. The lyrics are lacking in creativity. The amazing voice is the only sign that this is even the same band who formerly sang inventive songs about drugs, transvestites, and murder. Is this the same guy who once decried 'California waiting?' Now he sings trite lines about loosening his tie.

I don't want to be too hard though. It's hard to say what I would think of this album had I never heard of Kings of Leon before. I doubt it would take over my life the way Youth and Young Manhood did. I'm sure many people will like this album, and it does have its moments, so definitely check it out if you have the time. It's decent straight forward rock, if you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics. Don't expect anything too cutting edge though, they want to be arena rockers, and creativity never went far for that.

Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls

Well, when the internet starts working in my apartment properly I will post a picture of the cover of this 1842 Russian novel I just finished: Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol. . . alright, there.

The story is not as morbid as the title may lead one to believe. It is about a man, Chichikov, who is travelling across the Russian countryside trying to convince a variety of landowners to sell him their 'dead souls.' Serfdom was common practice in Russia until they were emancipated in 1861. The Russian equivalent of the word 'souls' was commonly used to designate serfs that were tied to the land. It's like, "Hey, how many souls does so-and-so have on his farm?" Chichikov's idea, an illegal one, is to attempt to buy up the serfs that have died within the past year who have not been taken off the census list. He hopes to buy them cheaply, really buying nothing but the written deed, and to mortgage them for a profit. Smart guy.

Really the focus of the novel is the variety of Russian landholders that Chichikov meets as he tries to carry out this plan, each one seems to personify a different vice. You have the lazy one, the cheat, the greedy one, the glutton, and so on; it is a satire on many different types of folk.

It's worth the read, about 400 pages. It's a classic in Russia. Gogol influenced many later writers, Dostoevsky especially. His style is enjoyable, different from your normal straight forward storytelling. It feels loose and lively. If you aren't interested in reading something so lengthy, I would recommend reading a few of Gogol's short stories. Some of the best known are: Diary of a Madman, The Nose, and The Overcoat. These are quite entertaining and can be read easily in one sitting. In The Nose, a man wakes one morning to discover a human nose in a loaf of bread. Why? He doesn't know. Another man suddenly discovers his own nose is missing. Why? Not sure. A talking nose appears at one point and explains it all. Ghosts, witches, a talking nose, all make for a fun ride/read. If you only have time for one though, check out The Overcoat. I won't give too much away, but it's well worth your time. A poor guy wants a new overcoat. Coats are important in Russia. Something happens to him. It's only thirty pages. You must have time for that. Read it, let me know what you think.

The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw, one hundred pages in this edition, is Henry James' best known novella. Ostensibly a ghost story, it tells the tale of a governess sent to a house to take care of two children. After being at the house for a few days she begins to see dead people that she believes are communicating with the children. It's pretty straight forward with a decent twist at the end. Check it out if you please.

I liked this story, but, having never read anything else by James, I was more impressed with James' unique style of prose. I look forward to reading another of his works. His most well known novels are: The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. He wrote many though.

His brother, William James, was also a famous intellectual. He was a well known American philosopher and psychologist who taught on a wide variety of subjects, from anatomy to philosophy and psychology, at Harvard, beginning in 1873. One of William's most widely acclaimed works is The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature, a psychological look at the various ways that people approach and are affected by religion. It is listed as No. 2 on the Modern Library's critics list of the top 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century, so, if you are in the mood for some nonfiction and are interested in taking a deeper look at religion, check this book out also.

The Idiot

Completed in 1868, The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is a novel about a "positively beautiful individual." This is what Dostoevsky set out to create in the character of Prince Myshkin, an idiot, so-called because he is such an innocent and kind person that he plays the fool within this Russian society full of liars, drunks, cheats, and murderers.

Myshkin, like Dostoevsky himself, is epileptic. His epileptic fits are preceded by moments of enlightenment/clarity, in which Myshkin is ultra-receptive to the beauty of the world. In Prince Myshkin, it has been said, Dostoevsky was trying to create a new "Russian Christ." In this Russian society, obsessed with money and murder, Myshkin stands out. He is routinely lied to, tricked, and taken advantage of. One of the themes of the novel is this: how can this perfectly good human being operate within such a corrupted society?

Although the main character is a modern day saint, Dostoevsky still packs the novel with all varieties of riff-raff, his speciality. Some of the best scenes in the book involve Rogozhin, Myshkin's foil. This character represents the opposite of Myshkin, evil. He hides under dark staircases to watch people pass. He sneaks into people's rooms, sits in the dark, stares at them while they are in bed, says not a word, and slinks out again.

The novel begins with Myshkin meeting Rogozhin on a train and ends with Myshkin and Rogozhin together again for one of the most jaw-dropping endings to a novel I have yet to read. Check it out. There are many wonderful scenes. It's well worth your time.

One Day as a Lion

Zach de la Rocha is back and, yes, still pissed off. Who could blame him though? One Day as a Lion is a five song EP. The band consists of De la and the former drummer for Mars Volta. It's pretty good, sounds a lot like Rage Against the Machine. If your a fan, I bet you will like it. And that's all I have to say about that.

Notes from Underground

The first of a few Dostoevsky novels that I will be talking about is Notes from Underground, 1864. If you have never read a book written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the famous Russian writer, consider your life incomplete. Thanks in large part to the works of Dostoevsky, Russia can boast to have produced some of the world's greatest works of fiction. The two biggest names being: Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina), and Dostoevsky, our topic of conversation.

Dostoevsky's novels are dark, stygian; no sunshine and lollipops here. This is a large part of what makes them so enjoyable. The characters all suffer from flaws, desires, disturbed thoughts, and dark secrets, some much darker than others. The unnamed narrator of Notes from Underground is no exception. This character is a man who has found it hard to participate normally in society, and who now spends a majority of his time in self-sequesterment, underground.

The novella (short novel, the book is only 130 pages, all the more reason to pick it up) is divided into two sections. The first section consists of the narrator's half-crazy, half-genius ramblings (there is pleasure in a toothache) about life, his life, the way people tend to look at life, and the errors he sees in the way people live and look at life. Some claim this to be the first "existentialist" novel. What does that mean? It's a way of looking at the world. Here's the American Heritage Dictionary's definition:

Existentialism - n. A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts

Makes sense. In the second section of the novella the narrator describes a few experiences that have strengthened his distaste for society. He tries to assert himself by planning to walk past an officer who had previously offended him, and to not give way at all when passing him. I'm sure you know what it feels like to be the one who moves out of the way first when someone is walking past you in close quarters, demasculating maybe. The narrator decides he is not going to move this time; he is not going to be the one to submit. He dwells on this and plans, attempts, fails, and tries again. As you can see, this character is not a nice person, and is definately neurotic. The way he explains himself, though, you can not help but empathize. The other events in the second section are him, with his old highschool buddies, whom he now hates, and who all feel basically the same way about him, and him befriending/tormenting a prostitute. These are more developed than the first, but you will have to read it yourself to find out what happens. It's good.

Hopefully this has piqued your interest in this short novel. It is a quick read and pays off ten to twenty-fold. You will want to reread it for the rest of your life.

More Dostoevsky to come. . .

Labor Day

O.K., I'm back, after the protracted Labor Day weekend. It was a good one, spent having fun, playing Wii, watching Flight of the Conchords for the fortieth time, playing more Wii, playing Apples to Apples, eating copious amounts of Mexican food, watching Spartacus and Chinatown, reading The Idiot, a little drinking, and basically just having fun with my wife, my sister, and my brother-in-law.
The theme album for the weekend was most definately the new Fleet Foxes album. It has now taken over all my listening time. I really liked this album right off the bat when I got it a month or more ago, but I hadn't fully absorbed it until now; now I love it and listen to it everyday. It has fantastic harmonies, melodies, voices, sounds like a modern day CSNY, a little bit. The album has a very rustic, pastoral sound; you can hear the beards throughout. It sounds like the outdoors, grass, trees, rivers, nature, you know, I'm sure you remember it from when you were little. The Renaissance painting, Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder graces the cover and does a good job of representing the album's feel. Do yourself a favor and listen to it. So far one of the best albums of the year; one of my favorites of all time.

More Roman Quotes

Seneca, born around 8 B.C., is shown here in this Italian painting from 1684, dying. He was ordered by the Roman emperor Nero to kill himself. Seneca died a slow death; he bled himself. This is what is happening in this painting: Seneca is speaking his last words of wisdom as the blood is slowly draining from the open veins in his legs and arms. Notice the vessel under his leg collecting the blood, and the scribes writing down this famous philosopher's last words. This was a long slow death: after the bleeding didn't seem to be working, Seneca attempted to die by poisoning himself, this didn't work either. He eventually died after placing himself in a hot pool of water in order to open the veins and help encourage the flow of blood. It is written that he finally died from the steam off the water.

You can tell by the look on Seneca's face that he is not a philosopher to be worried much by his imminent death. He appears to be more concerned with getting his point across. Seneca died according to his own stoic philosophy, which taught controlling your emotions. Look into it if you are interested. In the meantime here's a few Senecan quotes:

"All art is but imitation of nature."
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."

Everyone knows that, but pay special attention to these:

"A great fortune is a great slavery."
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."

And my favorite:

"It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing."

True, right?

Sir Thomas More's Utopia

Sir Thomas More finished writing Utopia in 1516, nearly 500 years ago. The word utopia derives its origin from this work. A utopia is an ideal society, and this is what More attempts to describe: an imagined perfect society.

This is another short but pithy read that I would highly recommend. Be warned: it's a depressing return trip from Utopia back to today's society. Here's some of my favorite parts:

"For instance, the Utopians fail to understand why anyone should be so fascinated by the dull gleam of a tiny bit of stone, when he has all the stars in the sky to look at - or how anyone can be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woollen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep."

"But what puzzles and disgusts the Utopians even more is the idiotic way some people have of practically worshipping a rich man, not because they owe him money or are otherwise in his power, but simply because he's rich - although they know perfectly well that he's far too mean to let a single penny come their way, so long as he's alive to stop it."

"And now, what about those people who accumulate superfluous wealth, for no better purpose than to enjoy looking at it? Is their pleasure a real one, or merely a form of delusion?"

"What, they ask, is the good of a treaty? Aren't all human beings natural allies already? And if a person's prepared to ignore a fundamental bond like that, is he likely to pay much attention to a mere form of words?"

"For, according to the Utopians, it's quite unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code which is too long for an ordinary person to read right through, or too difficult for him to understand."

"They think no one should be regarded as an enemy who hasn't done you any harm. Human nature constitutes a treaty in itself, and human beings are far more effectively united by kindness than by contracts, by feelings than by words."

"Finally, let me tell you about their religious ideas. There are several different religions on the island, and indeed in each town. . .However, the vast majority take the much more sensible view that there is a single divine power, unknown, eternal, infinite, inexplicable, and quite beyond the grasp of the human mind, diffused throughout this universe of ours, not as a physical substance, but as an active force."

"Nobody owns anything, but everyone is rich - for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?"

"In fact, when I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, I can't, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing society. They think up all sorts of tricks and dodges, first for keeping safe their ill-gotten gains, and then for exploiting the poor by buying their labour as cheaply as possible."

Wow!! Sound familiar? 500 years ago was not that long ago really.

Sorry for any typos. Oh yeah, and The Shins mention Sir Thomas More on the song "So Says I" on the Chutes Too Narrow album. Here's the line:

"Cause this is nothing like we'd ever dreamt/Tell Sir Thomas More we got another failed attempt/Cause if it makes them money they might just give you life this time"

It's a good song, Utopia is a great piece of writing, check 'em out. . .The two of you who might read this.