BLAST: The Year of Fear

OK, let up a bit. Everyone has to submit a year-end review of some sort every December, and Morphizm is no exception. See, it's a way of enforcing closure on a series of months most of us would rather forget. Even if we were laughing -- or crying, depending on what danger zone you call home -- hysterically the entire time. Without ado, Morphizm's Swiftian badass Ross Levine lays it down:

2005: The Year of Pharaisical Thinking
Here's hoping your next year is better than the last one. Bottoms up, suckers! See you in 2006.

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BLAST: Chung on Flux, Brokeback the Favorite, Festival of Folk

Coming up on Christmas with a quickness, so I must be accordingly speedy with the blast, my friends. But don't sweat it; we'll be back right after all the unwrapping to rant some more before the year is up. For now, Morphizm is proud to present an extensive interview with an animator who's as controversial as he is successful:

Expanding the Possibilities: Interview With Peter Chung
Peter Chung is not your average sci-fi figure. First, he cuts a studied philosophical chunk out of whatever he happens to be interrogating at the time, be it the AI-human interculture in The Animatrix (via his seriously underrated short "Matriculated"), Alexander the Great's Reign, or his touchstone work, Aeon Flux, now a full-blown Hollywood effort. Second, as he shows in this interview (a portion of which appeared in the November issue of WIRED), he's honest about making the compromises an artist has to make to get his work out to the people. But finally, he's an animation loyalist, and interested in experiencing -- and making -- slipstream art that defies convention... MORE

Festival! (DVD)
Murray Lerner almost won an Oscar for this earnest portrait of folk music's finest talents converging on remote Rhode Island for the Newport Folk Festival from 1963-1965. For those who may not remember yesteryear's heresies, that includes the year Dylan went electric with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band... MORE

Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain gets its point across too: The men are anguished, yes, and the mighty Wyoming landscape reflects their efforts to be together, to stay apart, to resist expectations and to succumb. Most often, however, they embody the persistence of their pain... MORE

OK, that's it for now. Must hit the road in search of family and relaxation, if only for a couple of days. Then it's time to wrap up 2005, before moving on to what is shaping up to be an astounding 2006. Stay tuned, and stay up.

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BLAST: Kong is King, Woodward Still a Jackass

Happy Friday, suckers! Checking in with a quickness, as I must get to more pressing matters, like buying presents for people who probably don't deserve them and writing paid articles about people who probably don't deserve the press. But that's the grind, as Bob Woodward, the one-time journo hero behind Watergate, found out recently. Welcome to the machine! Speaking of machines, let's start the blast with Peter Jackson's latest FX clusterfuck:

King Kong (2005)
A couple of brief, idyllic intervals (gazing on a sunset from atop Skull Mountain, sliding playfully on a lake in Central Park) only underline the impossibility of their romance, as they are violently interrupted. Ann's decision to take up with the Kong against his assailants is less a considered choice than a kind of reverie, an effort to reclaim her own sense of delight, to stave off the evils of the Depression, show business, and ambition. "Good things never last," she tells Denham when she meets him. If he's the embodiment of her fear, Kong is the last stand against it. It's Ann and Kong's romance that drives the film and at least addresses the complex race dynamics. At once sensational and heartrending, it's an intimacy that can't last... MORE

Caught With a Woody!
Bob Woodward once was the paragon of journalism. But that all changed once this fake transcript came to light... MORE

Safe and Warm
What's most pressing at any moment is a gesture or glance. Syriana is built on fine performances and difficult positions, a mature, provocative look at global machinations by small-minded men... MORE

Disturbances: Only One
All of which serves as a humorous reminder of the Order of Things. Some appetites carry a heavy price. So you prioritize. Step back from the rabid consumption and reassess what is necessary and what is simply a matter of desire.... MORE

OK, that's all for now, virtual pen pals. Check in on Monday when Morphizm unveils a new slew of articles, interviews and reviews. The next year is shaping up to be a big one for us, so stick around. It's only going to get stranger.

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Richard Pryor, 1940-2005

Bracing honesty and sacrificial victims are needed now more than ever. Pryor was both, as well as the funniest black comedian to ever grace a stage or screen. He was also one of the most underrated actors of his generation, as one viewing of the searing drama Blue Collar or the hilarious Which Way is Up? will prove. Pryor was never afraid to sift through the stunning material of his personal life and show what was left to audiences far and wide, knowing, as all true artists do, that you ain't shit unless you walk the walk.

But I'm at a loss for words to encapsulate what Pryor meant to the jacked-up world he has left behind, to say nothing of the sadness I feel knowing that his life ended at 65. So young, with so much still to do. For now, I'll give way to the Village Voice's Greg Tate, who eulogizes Pryor more substantially than I ever could.

For now, I'll add Pryor's name to the list of fallen angels who know the devil's territory better than anyone. Here's hoping he's adding some quality, gut-busting dark matter to the thermodynamic soup of the universe. We could use it.

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BLAST: Torture Amnesia, Victory in Iraq and Devendra as Dylan

Once again, true believers. Morphizm is back on a regular publishing schedule and destroying your idols as usual. This time around, No Logo superjourno and Morphizm contributor Naomi Klein drops in to interrogate -- pun intended -- the Western addiction to torture, James Kunstler smacks down Baghdad and Bush, and Jeff Pearce bows at the altar of Banhart. Let's roll:

Never Before! The Amnesiac Torture Debate
It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George W. Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City. It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture." MORE

Victory?
Victory in any conventional sense that Americans understand is out of the question, and the President's use of it is his biggest blunder since the "Mission Accomplished" stunt of 2003. The Iraq elections may succeed in establishing a legitimate government -- but then what? Will it govern for a month and a half and fall apart? MORE

Analyzing Crow
Devendra Banhart is the new millennium's childlike folk prophet. And on his latest effort Cripple Crow, he's not afraid to look war in the eye and wonder why. MORE

OK, that's it until...tomorrow? New content is making its way onto Morphizm with a quickness, while Aggregate plans on keeping you abreast of the headlines that hacks like CNN, MSNBC and Fox are too lame to announce. Until then, remember that the holidays are all about those around you. Including the ones you want to bomb to smithereens.

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Blast: Catching Up With Morphizm

Hell again, my friends, and no, that's not a typo. The combination of colds and holidays has kept Morphizm scattered, but we're pulling together nicely, thanks. Here's a healthy dose of what we've been up to lately, as well as glimpse of what's to come. Without ado:

We Are Not Moving Forward: An Interview with Dalek
Sometimes there is literally too much on the radar to be able to separate the bullshit from that which is singular and true. Dalek falls into the latter category. A multicultural, self-aware hybrid of industrial noise and hard-hitting hip-hop, they are far from the norm. And so it is with pride that Morphizm unveils its newly renovated Whatcha Missed section with a collective whose latest effort Absence channels Derrida and Run-DMC with equal investment and skill: MORE

RL Burnside 1926-2005
Over the course of his career Burnside not only shared a stage with the legendary Lightin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, but also with the Beastie Boys and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. His catalogue ranges from a sensational session of solo acoustic blues recorded in his living room circa '68, to the beat-heavy remix "Shuck Dub" which had scored the uneasy ending to an episode of the Sopranos three decades later. Burnside then, was the view from the crossroads; blues music's past and path ahead, as well as the payoff from its dirty midnight dealings with the devil: MORE

Should We Stay or Should We Go?
Neither Jack Murtha, the congressman who set the cable news networks afire this weekend, or Frank Rich, the lead dog on the New York Times Sunday op-ed page, mentioned the word oil once. I only mention it myself because it would be nice if we could have a coherent public discussion about staying or going in Iraq, and you can't do that without talking about the oil of the Middle East: MORE

Democracy's Dark Side
California is a place where actors turn virtual wars into real ones. It's also a place where they die failures: MORE

No Exit, No Return
Just because Sam Fuller's Street of No Return came out as the '90s broke doesn't mean it lacks punch. Quite the opposite: MORE

OK, that's it for now. Morphizm is getting updated almost daily with new content, media and treats, so log on and dig in. And don't forget to keep checking the blog for the latest updates and summary other rants. It's alive almost every day, whereas the Morphizm portal must wait for me to code, edit and upload the love before you can soak in it.

Tune in soon for interviews with Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung, DJ Spooky and Rob Swift on the state of turntablism in the War on Terror, and much more. For now, I need to drink some Q and dream of sleep.

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Aggregate: December 2, 2005

Those new to Morphizm may not yet realize how much we disparage and lampoon religion and all of its addled followers, but what else would you expect? After all, the world has given up on Santa Claus, unicorns, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Bigfoot and so many more human-invented fantasies in the past, but still can't yet manage dispensing with a millennia-old belief in a white dude with sandals creating everything in the universe in a few days? Cmon, people. Wake the fuck up.

Anyway, we never miss an opportunity to rip the Christian, Muslim, and other faith-based tools who continually make our lives harder by inserting their own laughable dogmas into them. And today's Aggregate is no different. Let's blaspheme!

Atheists Exchange Porn for Bibles
"Atheist Agenda, an atheist group at U Texas San Antonio, staged a Porno for Bibles event, where they gave free pornography to people who traded in religious scripture..." MORE HERE

Xtian Dolt Scott Stapp Cries. Others Laugh.
"He was telling us how he'd been to a show of ours in Florida, where he got up on stage, and that he was so thankful that we didn't kick him off," says the singer. "He was saying, 'You had no idea that you guys being so cool to me would inspire me to start a band, and for me to sell 30 million records, win a Grammy, VMAs, Billboard Awards . . .' He just went on and on, like some drunk guy who wouldn't shut the fuck up, while we just wanted to watch the game..." MORE HERE

In other news, ICANN is shelving the .xxx domain, robbing us of a veritable red-light district on the internet. Uh, have they been paying attention? Porn is the only thing that makes money on the net. Meanwhile, Halliburton is screwing us out of more money (what else is new?), and the Gulf of Tonkin scam that started the whole Vietnam War is outed as (what else is new?) a scam. Add to that nonsense the fact that a new Bush policy will help thousands of companies get out of reporting details of their toxic dumping, and that Diebold, who just yesterday were ordered out of North Carolina because they wouldn't open their voting machine code to regulators, have now been allowed to stay put, and you have one seriously fucked up country. Only in America!

Makes me want to curl up and read Mike Ward's film analysis. The dude is just sublime, as is his take on the mythology of none other than dog-star Benji. Brilliance.

Until next time.

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Aggregate: December 1, 2005

Welcome, Morphizm nuts, to "Aggregate," our new roundup of news you can assimilate into your paranoid yet informed matrix and follow its conclusions to your holy hell. Or reading pleasure, you decide. I plan on ushering in a truncated version onto the Morphizm portal by the end of the year, but I have to pay the bills first. Mommy needs a brand new G4, punks!

Here's a mashup of happenings that ought to make you laugh or cry, depending on what drug you took this morning. Paxil fans might want to peep the incoming Ice Age, while normal caffeine and nicotine diehards will enjoy Pope Ratz condeming limbo kids to hell. Myself? I like the idea of seeing The Dick in Judgment at Nuremburg. Let's begin:

Dick Cheney the War Criminal? What Else is New?
"Vice-president Dick Cheney's burden on the Bush administration grew heavier yesterday after a former senior US state department official said he could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, singled out Mr Cheney in a wide-ranging political assault on the BBC's Today programme...." MORE HERE

Pope Joey Intervenes on God's Behalf. Again.
"According to Italian media reports on Tuesday, an international theological commission will advise Pope Benedict to eliminate the teaching about limbo from the Catholic catechism. The Catholic Church teaches that babies who die before they can be baptised go to limbo, whose name comes from the Latin for "border" or "edge", because they deserve neither heaven nor hell..." MORE HERE

You Made The New Ice Age Happen. Now Suck It Up.
"The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream..." MORE HERE

Diebold Chumps, Tucks Tail, Blames Microsoft, Runs.
"Diebold would rather lose all of its voting machine business in North Carolina than open its source code to state election officials as required by law, the Associated Press reports. Due to irregularities in the 2004 election traced to touch screen terminals, North Carolina has taken the very reasonable precaution of requiring vendors of electronic voting gizmos to place all of the source code in escrow. Diebold has objected to the possibility of criminal sanctions if they fail to comply, and argued for an exemption before Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell. The judge declined to issue an exemption, and Diebold has concluded that it has no choice but withdraw from the state..." MORE HERE

Clinton Changes Mind on Withdrawal. No One Cares.
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her strongest statement on the war in Iraq since visiting the country in 2003, yesterday defended her vote to authorize military action but harshly criticized President Bush's leadership and called for a plan to begin withdrawing troops next year..." MORE HERE

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