Billy Joel and the Art of Misguided Apologies

First things first. I’m not a Billy Joel basher. Yes he’s mainstream and old and kind of irrelevant but I’m not ashamed to say that as a kid in the 70s and 80s with two older sisters, at a time just before I seized my own musical tastes, I was absorbed into a lot of mainstream radio and vinyl play. Billy Joel was a staple and I still have genuinely fond emotional connections to a few tracks off Glass Houses and The Stranger. So sue me. I’ve always been proud of having a wide diverse range of musical favourites. There’s nothing more dull and dead-end than an exclusively cool, aloof love of indie shmindie rock.

That said, I tuned into GOLD 104 FM whilst in my car yesterday and there it was. WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE by Billy Joel. Wow. Where do I start? Bombastic production. Undergraduate half baked political lyrics. Diluted rap rhythms. Terrible attempts at rhymes for the sake of sticking to his goal of listing key cultural events in chronological order:

Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez ??????????

Oi Vay, Billy…

But let’s cut to the guts of the matter. That unforgettable problematic chorus. Let’s look at the mantra word for word:

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

It’s always important to understand a song in it’s historical context. 1989. Fall of the Berlin Wall. End of Reagan, start of Bush’s reign (daddy Bush). We’re looking at the end of a decade of continuous American international and local crimes including: Iran Contra, Grenada, Nicaragua… you can Google the rest.

What is Billy Joel’s chorus?

To me it smells like a blatant misguided apologist stance for the hideous manifest destiny world domination disorder of the good ole U S of A.

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning

OK so let’s say that you didn’t start the fire. But you sure as hell didn’t help by pouring another 400 million gallons of political kerosene on it now did you Billy??

No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Wrong! Now that we’ve tabled the fact that you helped fuel the fire, let’s not mince words about the fact that the only fighting you did wasn’t to put out the fire, but rather to provoke and sustain ongoing tensions in various geo-political strategic hotspots around the globe to sustain and expand the economic and political stronghold of the USA.

Oh Billy. 1989 was such a good opportunity for you to deliver a brilliant comeback album as did so many solo song-writing legends that same year: Lou Reed, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty. Hmmm come to think of it you actually didn’t need a comeback album by 1989. You’d had consistent success in the 80s. Well, there you go, there’s something to be said for where consistent success can lead you.

Love you Billy.

Kind of.

Lou Reed ; A Tribute That's Taken Me A Year To Write

Lou Reed was a motherfucker. But does that really matter? He was also single handedly responsible for inventing and inspiring an endless list of musical genres and sub genres and sub sub genres. Even the bad shit you hear today on the radio. The fake corporate rock we call ‘indie’, the pale imitators, the drech, all owes something to Lou Reed. He treated lovers, wives, friends, promoters, journalists, critics and audiences like absolute shit. And you know what? They all deserved it because Lou always told the truth. Except when he was lying.  

I first discovered Lou Reed at the perfect age for a teenage boy who’s on the verge of uncovering everything true and good and frightening about ‘real’ rock’n’roll. I was fifteen. My parents owned a newsagency. I worked there every Saturday. Across the road was Gaslight Records and it was on one of my many curious meanderings in there that I first encountered Lou Reed. ‘Rock and Roll Diary 1967-80’ was a double album put out by Arista Records in 1980. A few feet away was an album that I was constantly drawn to. The self titled ‘Banana album’ by the Velvet Underground. I made the connection immediately and a life long obsession was born. And I hadn’t even heard the music yet!

It didn’t matter. I knew without a doubt that I was going to have a meaningful connection. With the advice of the indie stoner who worked there whom I secretly dubbed ‘Drongo’, I purchased ‘Rock and Roll Diary’. Later that day, I had a date with my parents HMV stereo system and some headphones. I was a Lou Reed virgin. Mostly. I mean like every other kid my age I had audio echoes of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ still bouncing around my head from early childhood AM radio. But now I was to get the extended career of the man. I was soon to learn this was no insignificant one-hit-wonder. The double album was filled with Velvets tracks and Lou’s varied solo output. Some tracks were too difficult for me for a maiden voyage – tracks I would soon learn to love within a few years. But the album’s closing track was ‘Street Hassle’, the 11 minute, three part ‘song movie’  about well… a street hassle. Things weren’t quite the same after hearing this and I still can’t quite articulate its brilliance. One unique aspect of Street Hassle is the bluntness of its title. It resembles a newspaper headline rather than a song or album title and is a classic example of Lou’s direct and blatant creative expression. To further the mystique of this track, Bruce Springsteen delivers a deadpan southern drawl monologue in the third part – uncredited. Strange but utterly beautiful. I could have written ‘sublime’ then but I feel it’s an over-used term especially when writing about music.

Next. RRR FM. One of two great community radio stations here in Melbourne unhindered by commercial interference. ‘I Can’t Stand It’ by the Velvets is blasted out of my bedside Sony portable stereo. That day I buy the cassette ‘VU’, a lost unreleased album put out two decades later by Verve Records on which that song is the opening track. Within a few weeks I bought the famous ‘Banana album’ and the third VU record dubbed ‘The Folk Album’ – both discovered on Verve cassette in a discount bin at a mainstream record shop.

And then it happened. The love affair was elevated to the next level of intensity: ‘White Light White Heat’. To this day and from this day forth I will never be able to articulate in written or spoken word what happened to my brain and my guts and my soul when I first heard this record. There really is nothing to compare this record to and that’s how it will stay for however long people continue to appreciate modern music. Sure you could start listing the countless imitators and do it that way but what’s the point? This album stands alone and that’s where it will stay.

But I can’t say for example, that ‘White Light White Heat’ saved my life! A descriptor which I am able to attach to another of Lou Reed’s creations: the aforementioned Velvets ‘Folk Album’. It’s real title is ‘The Velvet Underground’ (self titled). I’m not a music reviewer so I’m not going to bore you with an attempt to summarise what this album sounds like. But picture this. A sixteen year old boy. Confused and frustrated by his own incapacity to deal with the internal invasion of emotions and hormone shifts. The unrequited love of a girl. A girl who indirectly expresses interest in him but he is still paralysed by his own inhibitions and fears and blows it by not reacting. A depressed state follows. It is the boy’s first experience with depression but will not be the last. In later years he will –

Alright hang on I guess I should quit hiding behind the third person narrative. Yes? Yes.

In later years I would re-define this debut depression as ‘an adolescent thing’ as it simply didn’t compare to the severity and crippling nature of my subsequent depressions through my twenties. But like all teenagers, I seeked refuge in music and the album that leaped out and begged me to select it was the Velvets ‘Folk album’. Technically it didn’t save my life. That’s me being over dramatic. I was nowhere near literally offing myself, just wallowing. One sleepless night I listened to this album on rotation for the entire night. No sleep. By the time ‘Beginning To See The Light’ came around for the umpteenth time, my droopy eyelids slammed open and I felt the song surging through my body. The music with it’s playful rollicking rhythm, and of course the lyric with its simple direct positive mantra had done their work. That day I got dressed, ate breakfast, got on the school bus and spent the entire day quietly and internally celebrating the fact that I was no longer feeling bleak.

At this point I guess I’m feeling a little guilty about calling a dead person a motherfucker. It’s pretty harsh. But I don’t think you’ll find a shortage of people who had dealings with Lou who would disagree. Then again I keep imagining Laurie Anderson reading this (yeah right, well in theory at least) and it makes me uncomfortable. She obviously wouldn’t classify Lou as an MF and she’s probably still in a relatively fresh grieving phase and the last thing she’d need to absorb is some nasty opening line to a so called tribute to her lover and life partner who she recently watched die.

The thing is, Lou was mostly a motherfucker to music journalists and critics. Since he died, I’ve watched and listened to dozens of interviews with the prickly easily irritated Lou. I feel like I’ve done good research and it sounds a little preposterous but I actually feel like I understand who Lou was. If not as a person, then at least as an artist. The reason Lou was so often hostile to interviewers is because they wanted something from him which he’d already given. Because so much of Lou’s early Velvets and solo work delved into the taboo worlds of drugs, S&M, homosexuality etc, interviewers for the next several decades wanted Lou to expand on these themes. But for Lou, he’d given all he could and expressed all he needed to in the work itself. He felt no need to elaborate and repeat himself. Music journalists would always try to work out how much of Lou’s work was about him. He never gave them the same answer twice and relished in the sport of fucking with their heads as he deemed their questions completely sub-standard. “You don’t stand a chance, you’re digging your own grave,” he says to a laconic Australian journalist who is trying way too hard to match Lou’s wit.

Watch it here from 11m40s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sakfv07lE6Y

In more recent years, Lou occasionally managed to be interviewed by people he respected and the end result would be more satisfying and often more revealing. In an in-depth conversation with Anthony DeCurtis, Lou confirms my theory about not wanting to re-visit his themes in interviews: “I don’t like analyzing what I write... because I put it all in the songs… but I can’t explain them.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4V0faf94M

In recent years my close friend and rock and roll partner in crime brought Lou out live in concert twice. I had the chance to meet him but I declined. Why? Because I didn’t want to be just another shmuck fan boy. I wanted to meet Lou Reed only if and when he’d be interested in meeting me! Well. Yeah great. He’s gone now. I guess I’ll never get that chance. Regrets? None at all. Just sadness at the loss of the greatest motherfucker there ever was.

RIP Lou... 

Mainstream Magid vs Poetic Pinter

In light of my last post and the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, I have decided to re-print an article I wrote for the IAJV website (Independent Australian Jewish Voices). It was written back in 2009 but I feel it strongly conveys my thoughts and is totally fitting for today's Israeli-Palestinian debate in 2014 especially since the current tragic events in Gaza started to unfold.  

How fitting that the owner and publisher of the Australian Jewish News, Robert Magid, was responsible for the spiteful and obnoxious summary of the late Harold Pinter’s life (“The tragedy of Harold Pinter”, January 23, 2009) After reading it, it struck me that who better to pour out this predictable onslaught of ignorant and small minded mainstream paranoid Jewish garbage than the owner and publisher of the printed voice of mainstream mediocre narrow Australian Jewry.

How twisted and unfortunate though that someone so literarily challenged gets to print whatever he pleases about a true literary giant, and a dead one at that. One well buried who cannot even provide a retort. Although my guess is that Pinter would not have bothered authoring a retaliation to Magid if he was around. Pinter had much bigger fish to fry – like world leaders whom he felt were betraying all of us with their lies and unjustified wars.

Magid launches into one of the main staples of mainstream ignorant Jewish thinking. That all Jewish critics of Israel and America and other Western powers are totally biased, often with a suspiciously anti-Jewish agenda. Why? Because these critics do not denounce the violence, tyranny, and oppressive nature of these other nations. Magid writes: There was no mention of the Soviet Union’s enslavement of its population, or the genocides in Africa and Asia, or the medieval punishments meted out in Arab countries. Instead, all his (Pinter’s) vitriol was directed at the US. He described the country as “a bloodthirsty wild animal” and its administration as “a bunch of criminal lunatics”.

What Magid and the rest of the mainstream ignorant Jews (lets call them MIJs for short) love to set up is a manipulative unfounded argument that the attackers of Israel for example - are actually supporters of Israel’s enemies. The MIJs are constantly in uproar that when a suicide bombing or mortar attack on Jewish civilians occurs, there isn’t widespread condemnation and horror. They claim there is more condemnation when Israel is guilty of something unsavoury. Well here’s a newsflash as to why (if that is the case) that claim actually makes sense.

Israel should know better! Israel is a democracy! Israel was built from the ashes of the death camps in Europe! Israel’s military might outweighs the Palestinian’s arsenal by about a million to one! Israel is a so-called “civilised society”! (and this of course also holds true for the good old U S of A).

There’s less condemnation when a suicide bomber strikes because it is implicit in its very action that this is an abhorrent act of insane violence. Extremists commit extreme acts. We in the civilised world know and accept and understand that these acts are unacceptable and barbaric. These people are insanely committed to their cause and they have decades of humiliation and rage fuelling them.

Criticism and condemnation of Israel, when they do commit uncivilised acts, is something that might hopefully one day have a positive outcome because they should bloody well know better. A dog that has been well trained and has been given love and support can be expected to behave well. A dog that has been kicked and abused and humiliated from the day it was born can be expected to be nothing but damaged, angry and probably untrainable.

So when someone like Harold Pinter was constantly on the attack of Israel or America or Britain, it is precisely because these are the powers that supposedly uphold the ideals of democratic thought and action. Pinter just couldn’t bear the hypocrisy of these powers claiming one thing yet perpetrating another. There’s nothing enlightening or groundbreaking about criticizing a fascist regime for executing or torturing it’s people. Not that they shouldn’t be condemned. But it’s a whole other league when the terrorism is stemming from the halls of democratic parliaments.

Probably Magid’s lowest point is his cheap shot at Pinter’s difficult relationship with his son who refused to talk to his father after Pinter left his first wife (the boy’s mother) for another woman. After re-telling Pinter’s disgust at the thuggish behaviour of some young Israeli soldiers at Palestinian check points, he follows with: “Pinter’s readiness to describe these kids as “thugs” perhaps tells more about his total estrangement from his own son – with whom he had not spoken for 12 years.” I rest my case, an absolute low point. Yet nothing too surprising when we remind ourselves that the author of the article is no literary giant.

Magid attacks Pinter for suppressing his Jewish roots and only outing himself in latter years to critique Israel along with other Jewish thinkers when he joined Independent Jewish Voices in Britain.

Quite frankly as a Jewish person in various creative fields who grew up in Caulfield and went to a Jewish day school, I can totally relate to someone like Pinter who wanted to expand his horizons as much as possible beyond an introverted insular Jewish existence in post WW2 Hackney. Not to mention that his Jewish identity transformed into a completely secular one forged in part by the attacks he suffered (as did so many of his Jewish friends) from Hackney fascist gangs of that era.

What better cause than the Israel Palestine conflict for Pinter to re-enter the Jewish dialogue? Would Magid prefer that he stayed silent? Oh. Right. I get it. Yes, he would.

After reading an interrogation scene from his much misunderstood play The Birthday Party, Pinter recently provided a rare "explanation" of his work. He "wanted to say that Goldberg and McCann represented the forces in society who wanted to snuff out dissent, to stifle Stanley's voice, to silence him."

The AJN could easily stage their own version with Robert Magid as Goldberg – the sinister bullying Jew trying to snuff out the dead and buried dissenter Harold Pinter.

Oh wait. They’ve already done it. Or printed it at least.

THE LATEST ATTACK ON GAZA AND WHY I DON’T HATE MYSELF

I’m not a ‘self hating Jew’, I just hate (more like pity) my fellow brethren and sisters who continue to follow a blind path of pro-Israel dogmatic untruths. But worse than that is the unavoidable feeling that many of my fellow Jews believe that a Jewish life is quite simply worth more than a Palestinian life. I just cannot subscribe to this way of thinking. This must be underlying their unequivocal belief that Israel’s actions are always justifiable no matter what and that the Palestinians are getting what they deserve as they are pummeled and bombarded by Israeli air and ground forces.Am I speaking of all Jews? No. I will label them MAINSTREAM JEWS as I feel this accurately describes their social and cultural position as well as referring to their endless source of limited news and information – the mainstream press.

If it’s true that our beliefs are guided by what information we choose to absorb, this explains much about why mainstream Jews believe what they believe. But there’s also a deeper wound which strikes at the heart of this. So much of the mainstream Jewish slant on Israel is tied up with the murder of six million of our grandfathers and grandmothers. The idea that never again can we allow ourselves to be the victims.

But here’s a news flash, I’m the son of two Holocaust survivors who met as teenagers and fell in love whilst they were prisoners in a concentration camp. All four of my grandparents were murdered by the Nazis (and countless other relatives). I spent my primary and secondary school years at a Jewish school where the history books taught us a very particular version of the history of the state of Israel. In the decades since, I have opened up to be informed by other perspectives of this history and now I cannot turn back. If I (with my family history) can open up to seeing this conflict differently, any mainstream Jew can too. They just have to WANT to and for some reason that seems to be a mighty large leap. It helps too that my motivation to seek out alternate perspectives and sources of information is deeply rooted in a humane outlook rather than a perverted hierarchy of human life and a stale, outdated moral high ground.

If Jews can find a way to defend and justify the intentional bombing of  hospitals and UN schools/shelters in Gaza then I’m losing faith rapidly in any hope whatsoever for a rational humane perspective to emerge. And it only solidifies my earlier theory that there is some twisted notion of Jewish lives being more valuable than Palestinian ones.And no, that doesn’t mean I’m justifying Hamas sending rockets into Israel. Why would I attack one group for intentionally bombing a hospital but support another for indiscriminately trying to kill civilians!?


Murder is murder. War crimes are war crimes. It’s incredible how mainstream Jews cry out that the media has an anti IsraeI bias when in reality, the Palestinian voice is barely represented at all. Just watch this if you need some clarification:
http://youtu.be/JS9nah3cpU8?list=UUzuqE7-t13O4NIDYJfakrhw


I pray for the truth, the detailed truth to become headlines in the mainstream press. Pathetically though, I really doubt even that would change the thinking of the mainstream Jews. They’d probably claim it was just more anti-Israel bias. I have more faith in the Israeli government changing its thinking than the stubborn, blind made-up minds of mainstream Jews.

Triple M’s Hot Mainstream Mediocre Blandfest Breakfast Billbored

I have driven past this poster for Melbourne’s most mediocre radio anti-personalities many times. I’ve sometimes walked past this billboard. I’m now going to attempt to dissect in writing, why it is that this particular array of image and text makes me think murderous thoughts.

Where to start?

Every single detail and nuance of this poster aggravates me to my core.

First there’s the name of the show: Hot Breakfast. I can’t exactly articulate why or how but these two words effectively sum up the essence of mainstream Aussie media culture. It’s a lazy title. It’s a banal title. There is no attempt at making a clever or witty word play. It’s just straight forward and fucking dull. They couldn’t just call it ‘Breakfast’ because that would come across as plain daft. So the genius PR team added the word ‘Hot’ and there you have it – an icon is born. It means nothing. Who the hell eats hot breakfasts anyway? What working schmuck who has to rush off to his/her meaningless job has time for a hot breakfast these days when the ‘9 to 5’ existence has eroded to the ‘8 to 6’ slog.

Then there’s Eddie. I love to hate Eddie. He is the Gold Standard of Aussie Mediocrity – and possibly the Gold Logie too. The fact that he’s wearing a suit and tie offends and amuses me all at once. He reminds me of the countless Aussie bozo blokes who don suits come Monday morning and head off to their middle to lower management admin or IT or marketing jobs. Aussie beer guzzling, coke snorting (if they can afford it), BBQ loving, footy worshipping dipshits who look ill fitted in a suit but have to wear one to slot into the corporate culture they’ve embraced, the very same culture that will slowly sap them of their already luke warm witless personalities.

Why the suit Eddie? Is it because you need to perpetually represent the great Aussie deadshit who came good by becoming a small scale media mogul and footy club president through hard yards in the talentless world of commercial sports broadcasting? Don’t be offended by me and my bitter resentment. For every 1 of me there are a 1,000 brain dead TV overdosed Aussies who adore you and equate you with true success. You are perfectly safe.   

     

And then there’s Mick Malloy. I don’t even know who the third guy is so he’ll escape my poison pen this time. Molloy! I once believed you had talent and there was some hope for you. But alas you have jumped into bed with the ‘Lord of Lackluster’, the suited bogan media mogul with no personality whatsoever. You have made your choice and now you are committed to the archives of mass produced billboards and on your head stone it will read Mick Molloy – One Too Many Shit Hot Breakfasts.

Actually it’s the combination of all these elements thrown together in the stiff choreography of this billboard poster that culminates in a perfect product of mainstream dreck (that’s Yidish for garbage or something of poor quality). Three unfunny mediocre Aussie blokes. One in a suit. One with a big nose. And one utterly formless everyman whose look is so common that you’d need to put his image on loop mode to recall it. All staring blankly out at the world inviting us to come and join them for their HOT BREAKFAST.

Give me cold porridge any day. 

BILL HICKS: Uncompromised

As much as I love Bill Hicks and his timeless acidic ingenious stand-up routines, I now have the urge to find his grave site, exhume the remains, bring him back to life and then blow his brains out with a 9mm Uzi. He’d approve of course, it was a weapon he often mentioned in his rants.

I’ve just spent the last few days watching the latest documentary on Hicks. It’s called AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story. It’s a great watch. 

Until this film, I knew Hicks was a genius comic and a comic genius. I knew it was a tragedy that he died so young. He had so much to give the world blah blah. I knew all that.

What I didn’t know was the personal stuff. And as his personal life unfolds alongside the work itself, there is this inevitable point where you just turn off the DVD player and take a deep breath and realize that Hicks was possibly the most uncompromising artist of the twentieth century… who had something important to say… and who was a decent generous human being to top it off!

If you have a hunch that you’re living a compromised life, watch this film. It’ll convince you wholeheartedly… that you’re living a compromised life.

I loved Hicks. But now…??? He’s made me look at myself even more than I already do. And trust me, there’s already a level of over saturated self-analysis going on here.

OK so it was my choice to watch a compelling and lovingly made biography on someone who at 14 had the balls to sneak out and go perform stand-up comedy at an adult open-mic comedy club in downtown Houston (with his best buddy).

At 14, I snuck out with a friend and saw a late screening of David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME at an art house cinema across town. Okay if I’m going to be totally honest, I didn’t technically ‘sneak out’ at all. I was up front with my parents (ie. I begged them). They permitted me and my friend to go, as long as we were chaperoned by two older (17 year old) boys.

At 18, Bill Hicks said goodbye to his family and trekked out to LA to see if he could make it as a comic. His parents were sad to see him go but they didn’t stop him and they didn’t give him any guilt trip about it.

At 18, I trekked off to university on a daily basis to do a course I despised and didn’t even comprehend. Most of my friends spent that year away on an overseas adventure. I willingly chose to NOT expand my horizons and do a course I knew was inherently wrong resulting in a slow but effective systematic destroying of my soul. My decision was based on fear and guilt. Simple.

The list could go on but I’d have to refer to my Hicks bio (Agent of Evolution by his friend Kevin Booth) and Google and the documentary to work out exactly what Hicks did at what age because I’m a stickler for accuracy. I don’t have the patience to do that.

Yeah I know, I know. Hicks had a troubled rocky life. Alcoholism, drugs etc. Sure so what? Should that make me feel better, that he wasn’t perfect? Who the hell is? He got through all that anyway and it made him an even better person and a better comic. And then at 31 he gets the big cancer diagnosis that fucked everything.

The now infamous omission of Hicks’ appearance on Letterman’s then fresh Late Show on CBS in 1993 became a seriously fucked up episode in Hicks’ life and career. He was genuinely shocked at how the corporate powers had shut him down to protect their interest$. (Or was it the producers or was it Dave himself??) He wasn’t just shocked but hurt. Even from the man whose stand-up routines had so often brought these types of hypocrisies to light. No he wasn’t naïve to this sort of thing, but hell, was he shocked when they pulled it on him, and in such a harsh way. You might say that CBS was uncompromising in their own way from their perspective.

Hicks was very disturbed by the Letterman fiasco and spent a lot of time discussing it in interviews and re-producing the omitted routine during his live sets at clubs. Kind of like how Lenny Bruce became obsessed and consumed with his obscenity trials and making them part of his performances. Actually that comparison is a tad wonky. Bruce sadly became banal and boring in his obsessive courtroom transcript detailing – Hicks NEVER got boring.

Letterman invited Hick’s mother on to his show in 2009 in a bizarre type of symbolic-apology-gesture re the way Hicks was treated back in 1993. As Letterman explains that he was solely responsible for what occurred and that it was an error in judgment mostly due to his own insecurity, the studio audience laughs as though he’s joking. It’s really weird viewing. I can’t decide how genuine or not Letterman is being. It’s a hard call. Some cynics suggest it was quite calculated to ride the wave of Hicks’ popularity resurgence… maybe. Decide for yourself and don’t forget to watch all 3 clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUbB_D-dYp8

(part 1 of 3) 

There are levels of compromise. Hicks was just one of those pure freakish talents that set a benchmark and NOBODY has been able to reach it since. He was offered a spate of product endorsement deals as his fame grew. He declined all of them.

Check this out if you want to hear his take on celebrity endorsements (in particular his old supporter Jay Leno):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti73SgrLadU&feature=fvwrel

What to do?

Find your truth and live by it. Fully. Ah ha! Easy to write in a blog. Easy to say in conversation. But easy to do?

It’s obvious that Hicks is confronting to those he critiqued. But it’s even more interesting to realize that he’s possibly more confronting to those who agree with what he’s saying. Through his saying, he was DOING. By listening to his words, laughing and agreeing that he was a genius……. Is that enough? Is that all we’re meant to do?  

I loved Hicks. Now I love him even more.

RR

Ken Branagh Does Heydrich

I recently hired a DVD called Conspiracy starring Ken Branagh and Stan Tucci portraying two of the Third Reich’s most notoriously efficient high ranking mass murderers – Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann.

It was a film I’d been hanging out to see for ages to re-visit and feed my ever dormant and lurking Nazi/Holocaust obsession. Truth be told, out of all the Nazi henchmen celebs I’d have to say that these two hideous creatures have occupied my obsessive thoughts the most. Eichmann for his banal office like efficiency and bureacratic obedience in his pursuit to do the best job he could (in sending as many Jews to their deaths in the most expedient way possible) and Heydrich - well that obsessive strand started when I was about 14 and caught a movie on TV called Operation Daybreak about the assassination of Heydrich by British trained Czech nationals.

Tucci as Eichmann is reasonably compelling. He portrays him as an eager and nervous subordinate trying his best to host a meeting now notoriously known as the Wannsee Conference (to be hosted by Heydrich) of 15 top Nazis to discuss the best methods in carrying out Hitler’s ultimate goal – the physical elimination of European Jewry (actually I really hate the word Jewry – it sounds way too much like jewellery and only adds to the over exaggerated myth that all Jews are wealthy and that we control the world).

Branagh as Heydrich is something else entirely. The film (like the Wannsee Conference itself was for Heydrich) is a total vehicle for Branagh and he truly is beyond compelling for every single moment of his performance. The trouble with the portrayal of Heydrich through the decades (he has been portrayed in a number of feature films and mini series) is that the real guy was a genuinely frightening looking Aryan freak. This monster’s face was an exaggerated distorted re-working of the ideal tall blonde Germanic Teutonic Knight that Hitler claimed as the ultimate (super)human. Cheek bones high but actually that little bit TOO HIGH. Classic Hitler Youth blonde hair-do so wonderfully imitated and revived by many an 80s new wave or new romantic band. Beady slanty eyes. If cruelty and coldness can be embodied in a face, RH is your man. And so no actor has ever been able to genuinely resemble this uniquely scary poonim (look it up – it’s Yiddish). So here’s the problem. Branagh portrays the coldness and the ruthlessness accutely well, but because he is a relatively good looking man, the ‘charming’ moments (where Heydrich mixes his coldness with some diplomatic interactions requiring a polite and/or witty exchange) are just too charming. This murderous freak is just too damn likeable in several moments thanks to that cheeky Branagh smirk. Now I’m not saying that that the film would be better or worse had the budget allowed for a bit of serious makeup on Ken’s head and I’m not even one of those bio-pic purists where I think the actor MUST resemble their subject – but it was hard and a bit of a guilty twisted pleasure watching this film and partly getting satisfaction and a buzz from Branagh’s compelling charming portrayal.

Of course after the DVD there was good old faithful Google IMAGE SEARCH to remind me how utterly unlikely it was that this murderous c_nt was charming or likeable on any level.

Then again he did have a wife and kids. Apparently the wife wrote a book called Life with a War Criminal and often defended her husband’s reputation in the German press long after the fucker had been dead and buried. Hmmm – a new obsession brewing perhaps…