Pynchon in 2007!

Good riddance, year that was. You sucked ass. Except for the return of the mighty Thomas Pynchon, the inscrutable metatextualist. That ruled. Morphizm scribe Stacy Borah tells us why:

Against Pynchon's Day
"As a hallmark of satire, Pynchon's Against The Day doesn't stack up to his usual standard. But it is ultimately fun, held together as it is by the force of his personality. As with all his work, forcing yourself through the first three hundred pages on the first try pays off nicely, and you'll feel rewarded for having done so. And having read what Pynchon thinks of American expansionism and apocalypse, I can't wait to read how he bridges his own timeline between Mason & Dixon and V. I just hope I don't want to wait another decade to read it..." READ MORE

Getting lost in Pynchon's hyperreal matrix is always worth the long trek. Just make sure to bring some beer and Los Bros Marx.

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Sports 2006: The Year in Weird

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times -- in some other year. This year, it was the strangest of times. Dwayne Wade had the flash, but the Olympic pissing was deep, Tiger Woods wept and the St. Louis Cardinals won? The year was weird. Morphizm pal Amy Bass, who we call the Professor because she is, tackles it for us:

Sports in 2006
[by Amy Bass]
"There was also some serious perfection in 2006. Tiger Woods seemingly fell apart after losing his father, demonstrating definitively that he is, indeed, human. Jim Leyland led the Detroit Tigers through the playoff season with such grace and old-school charm. Alexander Ovechkin scored a goal that regardless of how many times I watch it I still don't understand. And the Mets (and I hate the Mets) had a golden moment when Endy Chavez leapt into the air to commit what many sportswriters considered to be grand theft larceny. And I'm sure someone did something amazing in NASCAR, but I don't care..." READ MORE

I was in many malls this holiday, and saw many stores called Zales. Kobe!

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Sharon Jones: The Dap Queen

In honor of the recent passing of James Brown, which Morphizm will get to in a separate piece, I offer you a story about another funk dynamo. Well, I didn't write it: Morphizm pal and delicious DJ Mo Herms did, and it's about the mighty Sharon Jones, a new-school funk hustler making the old-school sit up and take notice. Shake that groove thing, people, while you can:

The Dap Queen
[by Mo Herms]
"Sharon Jones calls herself 'the female James Brown,' and her performances are definitely exhaustive events: She dances (shoes off and on, depending) constantly, brings men up onstage to sass them mercilessly, interacts seamlessly with her band of finely dressed young men. Let's just say the show goes on. And on. And she loves it; it's evident in every hand-flip and hip-shake. And her audience vibes off her every move, all over the world..." READ MORE

Do you still feel good? I knew that you would.

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Fantasy Sports? Try Fantasy Congress.

Now, I can't speak for the particular experience of Fantasy Congress, but fantasy sports was always a blast when I was in the industry, so to speak. It kept me and my shit-talking friends knit tight together during the white-collar jackoffery of the dotcom boom.

But sports is lame compared to politics, and given the hilarious characters we've had populating the Congress during Bush's reign of astounding incompetence, the star power is there. Plus, Terrell Owens and Kobe Bryant don't have anything on riot acts like Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Duke Cunninngham and the rest. And that's not even getting into the lame tangle of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

And then there's learning how exactly your government and money works, all while pounding fools and taking names. Football, hoops and baseball may involve feats of stunninng physical achievement, but Congress defies reality itself. Knowledge is power, and power is knowledge. Ignorance is bliss? As the underrated film Art School Confidential put it, "That's so September 10th."

If you're interested in joining a league, sign up here. And bring your smartass teenagers into the game too. They might learn something worth learning. Which is what they haven't been learning lately, if you catch my circular drift.

The irony? This may someday replace fantasy sports. The stakes and payoffs are so much higher. It's not even funny.

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Top Quark is in the House!

While everyone is honoring Jesus by shopping their legs off, I'm kicking back and digging the deep science. Recently, a team of physicists led by UC Riverside's Ann Heinson caught a very rare glimpse of a top quark, one of the primordial building blocks of the universe. We're that much closer to the Big Bang, Jesus. Just like your mom. Read on:

Via Science Blog:
Team detects 'top quark,' a basic constituent of matter
"The heaviest known elementary particle, the top quark has the same mass as a gold atom and is one of the fundamental building blocks of nature. Understood to be an ingredient of the nuclear soup just after the Big Bang, today the top quark does not occur naturally but must be created experimentally in a high-energy particle accelerator, an instrument capable of recreating the conditions of the early universe.

'We’ve been looking for single top quarks for 12 years, and until now no one had seen them,' said Heinson, a research physicist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. 'The detection of single top quarks – we detected 62 in total – will allow us to study the properties of top quarks in ways not accessible before. We are now able to study how the top quark is produced and how it decays. Do these happen as theory says they should? Are new particles affecting what we see? We're now better positioned to answer such questions.'" READ MORE

I passed this information onto Morphizm IT badass and blogger The Riz, and he had this to say:

"Very cool. Notice that at the bottom, like with all these particle physics articles, they are wetting their pants in anticipation of using the Large Hadron Collider, which should be completed by this time next year. Expect to see lots of cool particle physics discoveries published in the 2nd half of 2008 once people have had some access to the machine. In particular, I like the bottom three potential uses:

-- Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?
-- What is the nature of the 96 percent of the universe's mass which is unaccounted for by current astronomical observations?
-- Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?"

Side question: if gravity's so damn weak, why don't we all have nano-rocket shoes yet? I wanna fly around like in Dragon Ball Z already!

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Bush Tries the Bribe

Bush can't accept that he blew it in Iraq and wants to throw more bodies at it by tempting military leaders with an overall increase in the size of the armed forces.

Think Progress: U.S. Military Officials: Bush Trying To Bribe Us To Support Iraq Escalation
Last night on NBC Nightly News, Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski said that many military officials are "suspicious" of President Bush's announcement that he plans to increase the size of the armed forces. They believe that "he's dangling that offer out there in an effort to buy the military support for the option to surge additional American troops into Iraq as if it's some kind of tradeoff." Miklaszewski added that military leaders are also still opposed to an increase in U.S. troops in Iraq, believing it would "be like throwing kerosene on a fire."
READ MORE

Worse, Bush was recently complaining that historians are already writing the history of his administration, while, as he put it, it is still has two years left. This shows that he doesn't realize that his freakin' presidency IS over.
-- FruhDog

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Bush Worried about U.S. Credibility. Still Could Give a Fuck About His Own.

Morphizm pal Steve from Berkeley -- aka FruCat aka Spiral Freshness aka OG Malaria Man -- checks in with a snippet on the president's continuing war on credibility, his and ours. Will someone wake Bush up? He's drooling on himself:

Somehow, the extent of Bush's fantasy world continues to amaze me. Through is actions, he seems to be the last person worried about the credibility of the United States.

Via CNN: "I also don't believe most Americans want us just to get out now," he said. "A lot of Americans understand the consequences of retreat. Retreat would embolden radicals. It would hurt the credibility of the United States."

I think he is really worried about is his own credibility, which if he would only ask someone outside the White House, he would learn there is none left. Discuss.

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Stone's Throw Video Show

It won't be long until Morphizm launches its online show, but for now I'll just have to blog the good shit as it comes in rather than webcasting it. In that vein, take a peek at some of these badass Chrome Children videos from Dilla, Madvillain and the mighty Madlib that Stone's Throw inserted into my inbox. Spliff it!

Madlib: Take It Back


J Dilla: Nothing Like This


Madvillain: Monkey Suite


I fucking love indie-hop. The majors are sending me tired retreads fronting that same old tired gangsta shit that played out when Bush started killing thousands in the name of shock and awe. Message to newcomers: Street beefs aren't worth anyone's time anymore. The world is falling apart. Time to go widescreen, people.

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On Pot: I Rest My Case

The war on drugs is a fucking disaster, except for the law enforcement and prison industries, who make a pretty penny off its wrongheaded persecution of small-timers when white-collar cocks grift billions in wars we don't need using the bodies of those they would save from the horrors of marijuana. Can't we all agree on that?

But seriously, the LA Times rag actually has something worth reading, and it's all about the green. Both kinds:

Pot is called biggest cash crop
"For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it. A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops...." READ MORE

The best part of the piece is listening to the ass-backwards White House Office of National Drug Control Policy theorize why legalizing such a cash cow would be bad:

"Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, cited examples of foreign countries that have struggled with big crops used to produce cocaine and heroin. 'Coca is Colombia's largest cash crop and that hasn't worked out for them, and opium poppies are Afghanistan's largest crop, and that has worked out disastrously for them,' Riley said. 'I don't know why we would venture down that road.'"

Uh, first of all, we're talking about differentiating weed from heroin and coke, so kudos to Riley for linking the two back together again in attempt to keep the guilt-by-proximity criminalization streak alive. Bonus points also for being disingenuous about those particular markets, which are still going gangbusters, and refusing to explain why they haven't "worked out." And you thought you paid government officials to actually know and share specific information.

I've interviewed the ONDCP retards before, and the best evidence they had for why marijuana is dangerous is a story about three idiots who tried to save a friend who was overdosing on ecstasy by stuffing her mouth full of pot. Brilliance. That piece is infinitely more interesting -- and exhaustive, I might add -- than the LA Times mea culpa, if only because it lays bare the ONDCP's pathetic efforts to fight common sense.

But using the same tired cliche the LA Times uses, the genie is out of the bottle. Might as well legalize it, like Peter Tosh sang, so we can monetize it. Our economy sucks balls as it is anyway.

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Know Your Clusterfuck!

[Time to introduce another Morphblogger, who will be holding down some our politics for us. We call him Steve, and he's a Morphizm pal from the LBC to Berkeley. I have an avatar for him on the way. It involves alcohol and clocks. But I just had to include this Vanity Faire shot of Perle, the power-suited Darth.]

I feel so sorry for these guys. I mean, they actually trusted Bush to successfully carry-out their great idea. If only they had found someone smarter and more capable -- wait a minute -- if they had, then we wouldn't have invaded in the first place and the neocon dream would still be alive.

Iraq Neo Culpa
"Three years later, Perle and I meet again, at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October 2006, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in nearly two years, and Republicans are bracing for what will prove to be sweeping losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk I once knew. 'The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity,' Perle says, adding that total defeat—an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"—is not yet inevitable, but is becoming more likely. 'And then," he says, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating...'" READ MORE

Meanwhile, this guy needs to resign immediately.

Meet the new House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Silvestre Reyes
"Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East. We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism’s major players..." READ MORE

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The Physics of Iraq

Back again, this time with a new writer and what should be an obvious commentary. I say obvious, because anyone with half a brain and a half-hour could have figured out, billions of dollars and thousands of corpses ago, that this escapade in Iraq was utterly doomed to failure. That some complained but most rolled right over tells me that we are all to blame. Even Morphizm, and we've been warning about this type of shit since 2001 when The Decider took over the country. Literally.

In any case, this piece from Morphizm's newest contributor Robert Freeman on the physics of Iraq's invasion and eventual withdrawal is a potent dose of truth-telling, and we still could use more of that than anything these days, Democratic takeover or not:

The Gravitational Physics of a Settlement in Iraq
[by Robert Freeman]
"This unraveling of the Middle East is simply the final playing out of the same anti-colonialist dynamic that shook the world in the aftermath of World War II. Between 1945 and 1965, more than 100 nations threw off the mantle of western colonial domination in wars of national liberation. Of all the major regions of the world, only the Middle East remained subjugated. It is now peeling itself out of what, for the last 60 years, has been the American orbit. America's own empire will be irreparably harmed. It has long been based on control of the world's oil and, through oil, on the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Both of those props are rapidly failing and will soon be gone. Neither Bush's nor Baker's vision can halt the decline. Unfortunately, gravity is unkind to the impetuous. Just ask Icarus..." READ MORE

I can't wait until I no longer have to post any stories on Iraq. Or Iran. But I'll probably be dead when that time comes. And so will you.

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Weapon of Last Resort

Once again, Morphizm friends. Ross Levine checks in for a quick blast on Iran's recent Holocaust conference, Bush's continuing state of utter denial, and why we all need to think a bit more deeply about our so-called truths, especially those for which we do absolutely zero research in favor of just spouting off like we know what the fuck we're talking about. Fire it up:

Weapon of Last Resort
[by Ross Levine]
"If there were indeed evidence that his Iraq campaign was hurtling toward success, if the Holocaust deniers could indeed produce proof that six million people died of natural causes without any assistance from poison gas, perhaps we could understand their propensity to 'just say no.' But as it is, these deniers are more pathetic than prophetic...." READ MORE

For those of you who aren't familiar with Levine's satirical prose, take a look at his hilarious modest proposals regarding Social Security, immigration and, yes, fag burning. Those interested in his literary endeavors might enjoy his Guantanamo diary or his short story The Quagga. Fun stuff. Morphizm would be fucked without him.

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Tinker Bell, Pinochet And The Fairy Tale Miracle Of Chile

[Let's catch up with Greg Palast. His recent rant on the death of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is definitely worth a read. Especially since it calls bullshit on the so-called Miracle of Chile as a Pinochet product. Let's hallucinate together.]

Tinker Bell, Pinochet And The Fairy Tale Miracle Of Chile

Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Tinker Bell and General Augusto Pinochet had much in common.

All three performed magical good deeds. In the case of Pinochet, he was universally credited with the Miracle of Chile, the wildly successful experiment in free markets, privatization, de-regulation and union-free economic expansion whose laissez-faire seeds spread from Valparaiso to Virginia.

But Cinderella’s pumpkin did not really turn into a coach. The Miracle of Chile, too, was just another fairy tale. The claim that General Pinochet begat an economic powerhouse was one of those utterances whose truth rested entirely on its repetition.

Chile could boast some economic success. But that was the work of Salvador Allende - who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death.

In 1973, the year General Pinochet brutally seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernization, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

In 1970, 20% of Chile’s population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year “President” Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward … into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile’s industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. The free-market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. Yet, with remarkable chutzpah, the mad scientists of Chicago declared success. In the US, President Ronald Reagan’s State Department issued a report concluding, “Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.” Milton Friedman himself coined the phrase, “The Miracle of Chile.” Friedman’s sidekick, economist Art Laffer, preened that Pinochet’s Chile was, “a showcase of what supply-side economics can do.”

It certainly was. More exactly, Chile was a showcase of de-regulation gone berserk.

The Chicago Boys persuaded the junta that removing restrictions on the nation’s banks would free them to attract foreign capital to fund industrial expansion.

Pinochet sold off the state banks - at a 40% discount from book value - and they quickly fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzat. From their captive banks, Vial and Cruzat siphoned cash to buy up manufacturers - then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting to get their piece of the state giveaways.

The bank’s reserves filled with hollow securities from connected enterprises. Pinochet let the good times roll for the speculators. He was persuaded that Governments should not hinder the logic of the market.

By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat “Grupos” defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions’ collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Reagan/Thatcher. New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation’s long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of - cover the children’s ears - a large dose of socialism.

To save the nation’s pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper.

For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, “Its absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.” Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation’s export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today’s Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende’s posthumous gift to his nation.

Agribusiness is the second locomotive of Chile’s economic growth. This also is a legacy of the Allende years. According to Professor Arturo Vasquez of Georgetown University, Washington DC, Allende’s land reform, the break-up of feudal estates (which Pinochet could not fully reverse), created a new class of productive tiller-owners, along with corporate and cooperative operators, who now bring in a stream of export earnings to rival copper. “In order to have an economic miracle,” says Dr. Vasquez, “maybe you need a socialist government first to commit agrarian reform."

So there we have it. Keynes and Marx, not Friedman, saved Chile.

But the myth of the free-market Miracle persists because it serves a quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez-faire dogma sprang successful and shining.

In 1998, the international finance Gang of Four - the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for Settlements - offered a $41.5 billion line of credit to Brazil. But before the agencies handed the drowning nation a life preserver, they demanded Brazil commit to swallow the economic medicine that nearly killed Chile. You know the list: fire-sale privatizations, flexible labor markets (i.e. union demolition) and deficit reduction through savage cuts in government services and social security.

In Sao Paulo, the public was assured these cruel measures would ultimately benefit the average Brazilian. What looked like financial colonialism was sold as the cure-all tested in Chile with miraculous results.

But that miracle was in fact a hoax, a fraud, a fairy tale in which everyone did not live happily ever after.

Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse. Signed copies are available for the holidays at www.palastinvestigativefund.org

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Goldman Sucks. You Swallow.

Here's the good news: Someone got a gripload of good financial news recently. The bad news is that it isn't you, unless you're either totally loaded or an employee or investment partner with Goldman Sachs.

That's right, the venerable banking behemoth's relationship with governments and business, especially of the family variety, has paid off so much that its $9.34 billion earnings in 2006 has broken the record for the highest single-year windfall in Wall Street history. Its fourth-quarter earnings alone were almost one hundred percent higher than the year before, and the whole cash grab, when averaged out per employee, tops off at an annual salary of $622,000. Now, doesn't that just make you feel like shit? Merry fucking Christmas, Goldman Sucks.

Of course, the NY Times report clickable above has you covered on that count, if this news is bringing you down. They take great pains to remind the hoi polloi that all that money will be injected back into the American economy, especially for the holidays. Good news, right? Yeah right:

"The bonuses at Goldman, the leading merger advisor in the industry, and elsewhere on Wall Street are expected to give the New York area’s economy a substantial boost, particularly in sales of high-end residential real estate, luxury cars and other pricey goods....Spouses and the high-end retailers that cater to them feel the effect of the bonus payment, said Faith H. Consolo, vice chair of Prudential Douglas Elliman, a commercial brokerage. 'The luxury market is very dramatically affected by bonuses,' Ms. Consolo said. 'We are talking furs, jewelry, apparel and beauty items like $250 jars of face cream. Anything that makes them look good or feel good.'"

In other words, if you're in the luxury market, this news just made your life a lot better. If you're anyone else, it didn't do anything for you but remind you how little the machinations of the global market have to do with your own bottom line, which is plunging by the minute in an economy full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

Take the Goldman Sachs bonus news, for example, and only on its face if you like: The rich just got richer, which means whatever they buy will help improve their own bottom line at the expense of a global majority that may never see a penny of it. A NYC-based investment powerhouse is about to unload millions into New York alone, which means that people who already own property there -- no small chunk of change -- are about to buy more, leaving others across the world, to say nothing of the Big Apple itself, out in the cold. And then there are the luxury items that power up our hyperreal consumer culture, whether they're Hummers, yachts or blood diamonds. Uh, I mean jewelry.

Throw in the fact that, according to a recent Baltimore Sun report, "the richest two percent of adults own more than half of the world's household wealth," and it seems clear that the average American, to say nothing of the average world citizen, has little to no influence in exchanges this size. Once you add the reality that the top one percent of Americans take 16 percent of the nation's income and hold 32 percent of its wealth, and the argument for middle-class and blue-collar America's solvency seems like the lunacy that it is.

And some will tell you that Goldman Sachs' windfall is good news for the American economy. Others, like the always readable doom prophet James Kunstler, will not only tell you that "the financial 'industry' decoupled from the US economy sometime in the past decade," but also that "Goldman Sachs was rumored to have driven the price of oil down for the election season by applying huge sums of money to twiddle the futures market." All of this while reminding us all that "the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, was CEO of Goldman Sachs until the middle of last summer."

So who's zooming who? To answer that, you need to understand the hyperreal futures market, in which Rush Limbaugh-sized bags of cash change hands for things yet to come. As the wiki puts it, "the social utility of futures markets is considered to be mainly in the transfer of risk," and risk, well, we have a shitload of that today. Wars, famines, genocides, and other ugly sides of global transactions definitely have an upside to them, especially if you're into, as are most of Goldman Sachs clients, mergers and acqusitions. Naomi Klein calls it disaster capitalism. I call it one of the only valuable exports America has left since it let its manufacturing base go the way of the dodo.

Which is why I always find it hilarious that average Americans continue to venture forth into the world trumpeting their citizenship -- in wars, in biz, in dick contests, in whatever -- while the very economic foundations of citizenship's success over the last century deteriorate more and more each day. What's in a word, indeed. Try this one: Multinational. Where in that term do you see a loyalty to the United States, an unshakeable preference for the dollar, a firmly entrenched citizenship? Nowhere, that's where. Multinationals, like Goldman Sachs which hosts offices everywhere from Bangalore to Paris, have their money invested across the world, not solely in your hood, school, or church. And as such, they're interested in making sure their bottom line is more important than any one country's. Including ours.

Where's the beef, you ask? Chew on this: While corporate earnings are off the charts ever since the Bush administration got into office, destroyed the country's surplus and mired us in Iraq, the dollar is sucking wind. After the fed's recent decision to leave interest rates intact, it fell even farther, and is now worth about half a London pound. And according to Alan Greenspan, it's going to only get worse, mostly because Greenspan thinks that the decline will come because of "growing signs that OPEC nations are shifting their assets out of the US dollar towards the euro and yen." Meanwhile, analysts cite a reality-check in the housing boom that's possessed everyone here over the last few years. Guess who manages all that housing boom cash, as rendered in mortgage loans that similarly skirt reality? You guessed it: Banks like Goldman Sachs.

But no matter how you slice it, it is painfully obvious that the United States are going to wake up and realize that their economy is in serious trouble, and that America is at the mercy of a world market that is quickly tiring of its currency, its poor education scores, its dumbshit foreign policy and pretty much everything else -- including, yes, its tolerance. Sure, our currency keeps the machine running for now, but that's just because we're the big dog with the big guns. Iran and China should take care of that within the next century, if global warming and its own particular economic scenarios don't do it first. And then where will we be?

Screwed, that's where. So swallow hard, average American. That giant sucking sound you hear is your own future, trading lower every day and running out of air while you sleep. Better wake up now and lessen the pain somehow. Or suffer the fate best described by Roy Batty in Blade Runner: "Wake up. Time to die."

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Green Lantern Co-Creator's Light is Dimmed

Sad news from DC Comics arrived in my inbox this morning: Artist Martin Nodell, co-creator of the Golden Age Green Lantern, passed away on December 9 at age 91. He kicked off the Green Lantern narrative with Alan Scott, the first of many Lanterns to come. (This pic of Alan Scott comes from the stunning Alex Ross.) More on Nodell's passing from DC Comics:

"'Marty was a gentle soul who got a renewed lease on life from discovering his fans after years away from comics,' says DC Comics President & Publisher Paul Levitz. 'He and Carrie delighted in the convention circuit, and we’ll miss both their warmth and laughter.'

Nodell began his comics career in the late 1930s, and first drew Green Lantern in 1940’s ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #16, working with writer/co-creator Bill Finger. The character proved popular enough to earn a solo title the following year. Nodell also illustrated the Green Lantern chapters for several Justice Society of America adventures in ALL STAR COMICS.

Nodell left DC Comics in the late 1940s to draw Captain America and other features for Timely before moving into advertising in 1950. Among other accomplishments, he is credited for creating the look of the Pillsbury Doughboy. Nodell returned to DC to draw Green Lantern on several occasions, including a page for GREEN LANTERN SECRET FILES in 2002."

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Nas, LA Times Agree: Hip-Hop is Dead

[Andy Hermann checks in once again from Blogger's Banquet with a rant on the so-called imminent demise of hip-hop, the most played-out marketing move the music genre has ever generated in hopes of avoiding the obvious: Most of it, like everything else, sucks ass.]

The Los Angeles Times published an article today joining a growing chorus of doomsayers, ready to declare that rap is dead. The impetus for this article? The fact that no rap acts were nominated in any of this year's major Grammy categories. Hmm... so, wait, by that criteria, does that mean that emo and dance-rock are dead, too? Thank God! Cuz those genres sucked big time.

Seriously, though, the LA Times does raise a valid point, even though they wrongheadedly cite the Grammys -- which remain totally irrelevant to any significant trends in popular music -- as evidence. The same article goes on to note that only one "rap" album (as opposed to "hip-hop" albums, which might arguably include crossover records like Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere that feature hip-hop beats but very little actual rapping) was among the year's 20 best-selling titles, and that was from T.I., who is hardly one of rap's giants, no matter how much he campaigns to become one (dropping subtle hints like calling his album King, for example). They even got an editor for hip-hop mag XXL to say, "Our problem now is finding enough albums that are worthy of being reviewed." Truly, dark times have befallen us, indeed.

Now, with perfect timing, we even have one of rap's elder statesmen, New York "Illmatic" legend Nas, releasing an album called Hip-Hop is Dead. Never mind that it's a hip-hop album -- Nas' point is that he's old-school and can do whatever the hell he wants, while today's younger generation of rappers have brought nothing new to the table. "It used to be fresh and original," he opined to the Times. "But that day is gone."

So is it true? Is hip-hop dead? Are you kidding me? Why are we even having this conversation?

It's true, none of this year's major hip-hop releases have performed up to expectations -- but guess what? None of the industry's blockbuster releases performed up to expectations in 2006. It was a crappy year across the board, the latest in a continuing downward slide as people buy fewer and fewer albums and turn their attention to downloading ringtones and -- let's face it -- swapping files illegally with their buddies. Relatively speaking, hip-hop did okay in 2006 -- it spawned #1 albums from T.I., Busta Rhymes, Juvenile, Jay-Z, The Game, Diddy, Ludacris. Even Rick freakin' Ross had a #1 album -- not on the strength of a hit single (he didn't have one) or a big rep (it was his debut album), but because he had a hit ringtone, "Hustlin'." I'm sorry, but any genre of music that can sell over a million ringtones, at two bucks a pop, of a song that stiffs at radio is a far cry from dead.

But commercial success aside, there were plenty of signs in 2006 that hip-hop is alive and well and just in need of a slight attitude adjustment if it hopes to follow in the footsteps of rock and survive into a healthy middle period. Veteran acts like The Roots and Clipse released solid, critically acclaimed albums; newcomers like Lupe Fiasco (a skateboarding black Muslim from Chicago) and Lady Sovereign (a wisecracking white chick from London) brought fresh ideas and sounds to the genre. Even OutKast's much-maligned Idlewild soundtrack was hardly the train wreck it was made out to be; it was scattershot, yes, but it was filled with interesting ideas, including several that actually worked (compressing 60 years of black American music into a single song on the Cab Calloway-inspired "Mighty O," for one thing).

So why all this talk of hip-hop being dead, or at the very least, stagnant? Because this year, most of rap's big guns were either silent (50 Cent, Eminem, Kanye) or putting out records that were varying degrees of crappy and/or commercially disappointing (Jay-Z, Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, the aforementioned OutKast). There also weren't any new big guns added to the genre this year -- arguably, there hasn't been a major new force in rap since Kanye West, and he's universally considered to be a fair-to-middling rapper at best, more widely acclaimed for his skills as a producer and egomaniacal grandstander (and yes, in hip-hop, that's a valuable talent) than as a true poet of the street, which is what all great rappers are, or aspire to be.

Pundits love to write off entire segments of our popular culture when they go for more than a year or two without producing a new savior -- just ask rock, which gets declared dead at least once every two or three years -- but I think in the case of hip-hop, there's a larger issue at work. For all its talk of seeking innovation or "taking it to another level," the truth is that hip-hop remains deeply mired in its own self-mythology and its own narrowly defined set of rules. Hip-hop has to be "hard," it has to be "from the streets"; it's about beats, not melody, about sampling and reconstituting music, not composing it from scratch. Above all, it has to be built around its vocal component, rapping, and the basic motifs to which all rappers return -- boasts, disses, clever analogies. Anything that strays too far from these conventions is immediately maligned as inauthentic. And if anything really kills hip-hop, it will be this obsession with "authenticity," however it's defined.

Think about it: Rock fans may argue over the validity of a given sub-genre, but rarely will they try to discredit any artist as even qualifying as "rock" in the first place (okay, James Blunt may be an exception). You may hate emo, but you would never say, "Fall Out Boy isn't a rock band." You may not like music that's not sung in English, but you wouldn't begrudge the Swedes their death metal, or the Mexicans their "roc en espanol." Rock 'n' roll has become a universal form of popular music with a hundred different sub-genres -- but those sub-genres all more or less happily co-exist with one another, and even keep one another's gene pools healthy by regularly cross-breeding (pop-punk, prog metal, blues-rock, etc., etc.).

In hip-hop, it's exactly the opposite. Fans gotta "represent" -- the "tru schoolers" hate that ghetto crunk shit, the "gangstas" think Kanye and his pastel sweaters aren't "street" enough. And everybody thinks anything produced outside the United States is phony to the core.

But if you deny all innovation -- if you dismiss every fresh perspective and every attempt to do something new as somehow "inauthentic" -- then of course, you'll eventually find yourself saying, as Nas does, "It used to be fresh and original.... But that day is gone." Because you'll spend your life walking around saying, as I hear from hardcore hip-hop fans all the time, "[fill in the blank] isn't real hip-hop."

But as far as I'm concerned... if k-os isn't real hip-hop; if Sage Francis isn't real hip-hop; if The Coup and Colossus and Lyrics Born and MF Doom and even Mos fuckin' Def and The muthafuckin' Roots aren't real hip-hop (and yes, I've heard it argued... because they play live instruments, see, and that ain't "authentic")... then yes, hip-hop is probably dead. Even if it starts winning Grammys and selling records again, it will eventually be a museum-piece, stuffed-and-mounted, lame imitation of its former self, like Chicago blues and big band jazz. Then it can start smug little preservation societies to keep its dying traditions alive, while the rest of the world moves on to reggaetronica or alt-klezmer or whatever the new trend is in 50 years. And if that's what the Nases of the world want, then I guess they can go right on proclaiming the death of hip-hop. But if you ask me, the reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.

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David Lynch: Abstract at Heart

I've been interviewing David Lynch on and off for the last several months for Wired and Morphizm, and the fruits of that labor should be out soon, in a variety of media. Details to come later, if only because they are continuall changing. But nevertheless, Lynch's new film INLAND EMPIRE is screening in New York now from what I hear, and it's weird at heart and crazy in the middle:

It's three hours long, shot entirely in digital film, which Lynch has commandeered as his preferred mode of the future. It has pissed off critics and perplexed them as well, as if they ever mattered when it came to his bizarro cinema of dreams and nightmares. I talk more about that in my old-school Morphizm review of the brilliant, destabilizing Mulholland Drive, but the gist is simple: Lynch's films emerge from his mind unfettered and celebrated. So arguing about what comes out of his mind is pointless. Either you care or you don't, and if you don't, go home or see something else. Here's a cool sequence from the immortal Eraserhead that should tell you what to think on that count:

Finally, the intersection of David Lynch and politics has been an equally weird one. He was a fan of Reagan during the '80s he more or less ruled -- even during the Dune mess -- but now has come out as a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, a horde whose numbers are rightly growing by the day. Hey, don't bitch: America has been riding that gravy train to do everything from invade Iraq to hijack your civil liberties. Suckers.

In any case, stay tuned for more David Lynch goods, as Morphizm should be swimming in them sooner rather than later. Just in time for the clusterfuck.

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ISG to America: Stay Half the Course

[It makes sense to pair together reports from Morphizm pal Greg Palast with the one below from Morphizm pal Matt Pascarella. After all, they work together! They also send out good news daily. Here's Palast's piece on Bush family crones, otherwise known as the Iraq Study Group.]

The Baker Boys: Stay Half the Course
[by Greg Palast]

They're kidding, right?

James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the "Iraq Study Group" have come up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.

Baker's Two Big Ideas are:

1. Stay half the course. Keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq is a disaster getting more disastrous. The Baker Boys' idea: cut the disaster in half -- leave 70,000 troops there.

But here's where dumb gets dumber: the Bakerites want to "embed" US forces in Iraqi Army units. Question one, Mr. Baker: What Iraqi Army? This so-called "army" is a rough confederation of Shia death squads. We can tell our troops to get "embedded" with them, but the Americans won't get much sleep.

2. "Engage" Iran. This is a good one. How can we get engaged when George Bush hasn't even asked them out for a date? What will induce the shy mullahs of Iran to accept our engagement proposal? Answer: The Bomb.

Let me explain. To get the Iranians to end their subsidizing the Mahdi Army and other Shia cut-throats, the Baker bunch suggest we let the permanent members of the UN Security Council -- plus, Germany -- decide the issue of Iran's nukes. Attaching Germany is the signal. These signers of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agree that Iran should be allowed a "peaceful" nuclear power program.

More... Now, I am absolutely wary of neo-con nuts who want to blow Iran to Kingdom-come over its nuclear ambitions. But that doesn't mean we should kid ourselves. Iran has zero need of "peaceful" nuclear-generated electricity. It has the second-largest untapped reserve of natural gas on the planet, a clean, safe, cheap source of power. There's only one reason for a "nuclear" program, and it's not to light Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bedside lamp.

Here's the problem with Baker's weird combo of embedding our boys with Iraq's scary army while sucking up to the Iranians: it won't work. The mayhem will continue, with Americans in the middle, because the Baker brigade dares not mention two words: "Saudi" and "Arabia."

Saudi Arabia is the elephant in the room (camel in the tent?) that can't be acknowledged -- and the reason Baker is so desperately anxious to sell America on keeping half our soldiers in harm's way.

James III wants to seduce or bully Iran into stopping their funding of the murderous Shia militias. But the Shias only shifted into mass killing mode in response to the murder spree by Sunni "insurgents."

Where do the Sunnis get their money for mayhem? According to a seething memo by the National Security Agency (November 8, 2006), the Saudis control the, "public or private funding provided to the insurgents or death squads." Nice.

Baker wants us to bribe or blackmail Iran into stopping one side in Iraq's uncivil war, the Shia. Yet we close our eyes to the Saudis acting as a piggy bank for the other side, the Sunni berserkers. (The House of Saud follows Wahabi Islam, a harsh, fundamentalist sect of Sunnism.)

Why is Baker, ordinarily such a tough guy, so coy with the Saudis? Baker Botts, the law firm he founded, became a wealthy powerhouse by representing Saudi Arabia. But don't worry, the Iraq Study Group is balanced by Democrats including Vernon Jordan of the law firm of Akin, Gump which represents … Saudi royals.

Of course, the connections between Baker, the Bush Family and the Saudis go way beyond a few legal bills. (See, "The Best Little Legal Whorehouse in Texas" from my book Armed Madhouse.

Baker is more than aware that, two weeks ago, Dick Cheney dropped his Thanksgiving turkey to fly to Riyadh at the demand of the Saudis for a dressing down by King Abdullah. The Saudis have made it clear that they will crank up their payments to warriors in Iraq to protect their Sunni brothers if America pulls out our troops.

King Abdullah's wish is Cheney's command -- and Baker's too. The Saudis want 70,000 US troops baby-sitting the Shia killers in Iraq's Army -- and so we will stay.

What gives King Abdullah the power to ghost-write the Iraq Study Group recommendations? It's not because the Saudis sell us broccoli.

And therein lies the danger. Behind the fratricidal fracas in Iraq is something even more dangerous than bullets in Baghdad: a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia to control Iraq's place in OPEC, the oil cartel. What is painted by Baker's Iraq Study Group as an ancient local clash between Shia and Sunni over the Kingdom of God, is, in fact, a remote control proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the Kingdom of Oil.

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Impeachment For Pussies

[Morphizm pal Matt Pascarella checks in with a report on the pursuit of justice, otherwise known as impeaching George W. Bush. Stop crying: He deserves it. Period. Too bad only Cynthia McKinney -- who is set to file Articles of Impeachment against Bush, Cheney and Rice as a parting shot to a government that did its best to ignore and ostracize her -- cares.]

Congresswoman McKinney Files Articles of Impeachment
[By Matt Pascarella]

On Monday, gathering in a conference room in Washington D.C., Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and her advisors worked on a draft copy of the articles of impeachment against President Bush.

At the heart of the charges contained in McKinney’s articles of impeachment, is the allegation that President Bush has not upheld the oath of presidential office and is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article I states that President Bush has failed to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Specifically cited in this article is the charge that Bush has manipulated intelligence and lied to justify war: “George Walker Bush … in preparing the invasion of Iraq, did withhold intelligence from the Congress, by refusing to provide Congress with the full intelligence picture that he was being given, by redacting information … and actively manipulating the intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons programs by pressuring the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.”

This manipulation of intelligence was done, the charge continues, “with the intent to misinform the people and their representatives in Congress in order to gain their support for invading Iraq, denying both the people and their representatives in Congress the right to make an informed choice.”

Article II, “Abuse of office and of executive privilege,” states that President Bush has disregarded his oath of office by “obstructing and hindering the work of Congressional investigative bodies and by seeking to expand the scope of the powers of his office.” The President has “failed to take responsibility for, investigate or discipline those responsible for an ongoing pattern of negligence, incompetence and malfeasance to the detriment of the American people.”

This article continues by indicting Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in their actions to manipulate or “fix” intelligence and mislead the public about Iraq’s weapons programs. Ultimately, this article calls not only for Bush’s impeachment and removal from office but also asks the same actions to be taken against Cheney and Rice.

Article III states that President Bush has failed to “ensure the laws are faithfully executed” and that he has “violated the letter and spirit of laws and rules of criminal procedure used by civilian and military courts, and has violated or ignored regulatory codes and practices that carry out the law.”

Specifically, McKinney cites illegal domestic spying as a result of failing to obtain warrants thereby subverting congress and the judiciary in the process: “… by circumventing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts established by Congress, whose express purpose is to check such abuses of executive power, provoking the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to file a complaint and another judge to resign in protest, the said program having been subsequently ruled illegal; he has also concealed the existence of this unlawful program of spying on American citizens from the people and all but a few of their representatives in Congress, even resorting to outright public deceit.”

The article continues by citing public statements Bush has made that were blatantly contradictory to his policy and actions regarding domestic spying.

While the staff was editing the document, one advisor told me, “As we sat down and worked on this, a pattern became very clear … a pattern to specifically undermine the constitution and establish a unitary presidency.”

The charges addressed in McKinney’s resolution are nothing revelatory or new. Rather, they are issues which have been in the public eye for quite some time and have increasingly been covered in the media over the last year.

Despite winning the congressional majority, the Democrats have yet to put forth a plan to investigate what have become somewhat ubiquitous allegations.

Speaker-elect, Representative Pelosi, dismissed any possibility of impeachment, saying it is “off the table” and that it is “a waste of time … making them lameducks is good enough for me.” Although, in the November election, 60% of the voters in her own district cast ballots in favor of Proposition J, a measure calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

In 2005 Representative John Conyers sponsored a resolution, HR 365, to create a special committee to investigate allegations against the Bush Administration – a move that would likely lead to the discovery of impeachable offenses. This resolution was passed to the House Committee on Rules and was never brought up for a vote.

At that time it was widely believed that if the Democrats took control of congress, Conyers would reintroduce the resolution as would have subpoena power if selected as leader of the House Judiciary Committee.

A few days after the Democrats won control Conyers echoed Pelosi’s statement saying, “I am in total agreement with her on this issue … impeachment is off the table.” Last week a spokesperson from Conyers office said that the resolution would not be reintroduced and that the Representative had no intention to pursue the matter.

Will other members of congress support the action Congresswoman McKinney has brought forth?

At the table in what could be considered her impeachment “war room” the question is brought up a number of times.

Mike, an advisor to McKinney, mentions, “Conyers was supposed to have investigations. They were chomping at the bit 6 months ago to do subpoenas.”

McKinney quietly replies, “Now they say they aren’t even going to issue subpoenas.”

Looking up from her papers she takes a deep breath, “I’m going in alone on this one because now it is all about them playing majority politics.”

This is McKinney’s last week as a member of congress and this act, to impeach the president, is the final resolution she will enter into the Congressional record.

For those who know anything about Cynthia McKinney it may come as no surprise that she would file this resolution as her parting gift to Congress.

McKinney is no stranger to being attacked by the media and has been isolated from her own party.

From her inquiries into election fraud in 2000 to her calls for a transparent and thorough investigation into 9-11, not to mention the widely covered run-in she had with the Capitol Hill Police, the congresswoman is aware that this resolution will likely be ignored and that she will be ruthlessly attacked upon its filing.

“What do you think they are going to do to me this time?” she asks her staff. Everyone uncomfortably shifts in their seats and after no answer comes McKinney explains, “We have to do this because this is simply the right thing to do. The American people do want to hold this man and his office accountable for the crimes they have committed and if no member of congress is willing to do it, than I will.”

It is questionable as to how effective this move could be in gaining support because of her reputation as a firebrand congresswoman and because, ultimately, she is on her way out of office.

The Congresswoman and her staff realize this but hope that by filing the articles of impeachment it will, at the very least, open up a discussion on whether or not President Bush and key members of his administration have committed impeachable offenses and whether our officials should be held to account.

“My duty as a member of Congress is merely to uphold and preserve the constitution and to represent the will of my constituency. Ultimately, it isn’t up to me or any other member of congress – it is up to the American people to decide."

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Why I Love AOL

I am in a foul mood today, so expect everything I post today to skew grumpy as fuck. See, for those of you who don't know, the freelance game is a soul-sucking one, as you're living from assignment to assignment. It's just like the artist game, except it's the refuge of writers rather than guitarists, painters or actors. Well, it can be that, but for guitarists, painters and actors who suck. So they write. Like I do.

When you do that, you're dealing with so many fingers in so many pies that you begin to undergo what Baudrillard termed, talking of something else, the "vertigo of interpretation." So many fingers in so many pies, and all you want to do is get the thing written, get paid and get laid. And then have a baby.

So a warning to you budding professional scribes out there: Get ready to become a better psychologist and a worse writer. If you want to make it, that is. In this lifetime, anyway.

Now to AOL, who I write for monthly. They pay crap and have fired me twice as an editor, but have retained me for writing purely. Which works for me, as I get to spiel on some stuff I hate and some stuff I love. When the two come together, it can be funny. Which is why, even though they have taxed my patience and loyalty to no end, I still love AOL for letting me get away with stuff like this:

Christina Aguilera
"As part of Disney's pop-tart factory, Aguilera came of age via a tune for the 'Mulan' soundtrack, and it wasn't long until she was losing 'Star Search' (no lie) and churning out unit-movers like her self-titled debut and its hyper-horny follow-up, 'Stripped.' Going 'Dirrty' coincided with Aguilera taking charge of her career, and since then she's married a music exec (she's smart, too!), brought back the image ghost of Marilyn Monroe, and let the immortal DJ Premier show her the light on the recent 'Back to Basics'..." READ MORE

Let that be another warning to you budding scribes: Sometimes, you are going to have to write for money about something you could care less about because you know it will be a distant memory tomorrow. Make it yours, however you can. You're already compromised from the start anyway. It's called original sin. Fun!

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MorphSalon: Boogie's Mean Streets

Back again, suckers. Sorry for the delay, as the baby is almost here and shit is absolutely insane. The parents in the house know what I'm talking about, and those on the way to becoming parents better get ready. Hell comes soon.

Speaking of hell, I'm back in Salon for a short stint with a new piece on the photographer Boogie, whose monograph It's All Good is both harrowing and eye-popping. Literally, in the case of one shot. Parents might want to turn the kids away from this, unless they aren't afraid of truth:

Mean Streets: An Interview with Boogie
[By Scott Thill]
America's unending war on poverty and drugs has been about as successful as its unending war on terror, mainly because its enemies are abstractions. Meanwhile, the real worlds (not the ones you see on MTV) of drug and thug culture have been left to wither, like its victims and champions, beneath a glossy simulacrum.

Few are those souls who seek to document and transmit the routinized pain and addiction of these worlds -- worlds filled with everything but Cristal Champagne, Hummers and supermodels. Rather, they are the scenes of unending wars whose only victory is another fix; once each fix is achieved the whole process starts over again like a nightmarish rerun. So it should come as no surprise that those who journey into the hearts of darkness that pump lifeblood into these circular hells might know their way around a war zone..." READ MORE

Feel free to read and rant, as usual. Feedback loops are always appreciated. More to come later, as I gear up for the return of Jesus. Or whatever.

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Nike+iPod+Disco=The Workout of the Future?

Andy Hermann of Artist Direct's Blogger's Banquet checks in once again, this time with a spiel on the once-unholy union of Nike and LCD Soundsystem. These days, it's hard to cross a street without being run over by someone taking money from Nike, but more on that next post. -- ST

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With his recording-studio pallor and less-than-athletic physique, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy makes an unlikely shill for Nike. But that didn't stop him from jumping at the chance to write a "runner's soundtrack" to help the "Just Do It" sportswear company promote its new Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows runners to track things like time, distance and calories burned on their iPod Nano. All you have to do is get yourself a pair of "Nike+"-enabled sneakers, which transmit the data to your iPod, which you can then download to the nikeplus.com website for easy tracking. You can even compare your stats against other runners and add a little friendly competition into the equation. For anyone who likes tracking their workout progress but doesn't like being confined to the gym, it's a pretty nifty setup.

Murphy's workout-length composition, helpfully entitled "45:33" (yes, it's 45 minutes and 33 seconds long), is available as an exclusive iTunes download, buried in a section called "Nike Sport Music." It plays more like a continuously mixed LCD album than a single, 45-minute track, with plenty of plenty of peaks and valleys amidst Murphy's trademark, densely orchestrated washes of old-school synths, percussion and cowbell -- always more cowbell.

And yes, it's meant to be listened to while running, though how many runners actually listen to this sort of nouveau disco stuff is anybody's guess. However, I can attest from personal experience that "45:33" can also be enjoyed while driving, dancing, typing, and copping a mild buzz on substances I can't mention here. It's 100% couch-potato friendly -- although it lacks anything as witty and immediately ear-catching as "Daft Punk is Playing at My House."

Regardless of the quality of the music, Murphy doing a project for Nike obviously raises the spectre of "sellout" -- especially since LCD Soundsystem is a hipster standard-bearer thanks to knowingly jaded songs like "Losing My Edge," while Nike is, well, Nike. But in explaining why he chose to do the project, Murphy makes a valid point: "This appealed to me because it was so anathematic to what you're typically asked to do as an artist: make easily digestible lumps of music for albums, or the radio, or whatever. I'd been thinking of the records I love in which people made one 'song' that took up the entire LP and realizing that releasing something like this would otherwise be a virtually impossibility for me."

So whatever you might think of Nike, give them points for paying an artist like LCD Soundsystem -- whose music hardly screams "commercial sellout" -- to do something that most record labels wouldn't touch: create a 45-minute song.

This is the second "Nike+ Original Run" piece that Nike has commissioned; the first was a 45-minute continuous mix of original tracks and remixes from The Crystal Method. It will be interesting to watch the Nike experiment and see if it inspires other companies to commission similar original or exclusive pieces from other artists -- and maybe in other genres besides electronica. An exclusive hip-hop mix to go with those Pioneer subwoofers you just installed in your trunk? A John Tesh "namaste mix" to go with your new Hugger Mugger yoga mat? A set of driving tunes pre-installed in the in-dash iPod of your new Cadillac? With CD sales continuing their downward slide, record companies and recording artists are going to be increasingly eager to try new things to get their music out there.

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Stone's Throw Holiday!

Way back when XLR8R asked me to interview Egon of the Los Angeles indie-hop label Stone's Throw about their place of bizness -- including the smoke-filled, basement bomb shelter that Madlib commandeered to lay his spliffed-out genius down on wax and disc -- they had yet to become the highly recognized name that they are today.

But anyone who knew anything about hip-hop and turntablism could tell they were on their way, populated as they were with diehard musicians, rhymers and funk revivalists. Sure enough, a few team-ups with animation powerhouse Adult Swim and several acclaimed efforts from Madlib and more later, they are on everyone's lips.

Just in time for their tenth anniversary, which you can celebrate by picking up a compilation built just for that noble pursuit. It's called Stone's Throw: Ten Years, simply enough, and is clickable on the right. Why it says import is anyone's guess, as they are right here in LA. But Amazon is in charge of my store, so if you think it sucks, tell them.

Meanwhile, those of you who know Stone's Throw back and forth can dig into this holiday mix assembled by none other than Throw honcho Peanut Butter Wolf. It's a riot and available more ways than one. Click below for the one you like:

iTunes
Podcast
Streaming MP3

Drink deep, muthafuckas!

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Finally. Some Election Reform.

In the spirit of opensourcing the MorphBlog further, I reintroduce Morphizm IT wiz and overall culture vulture The Riz, and his terrorized panda avatar, to you all. He checks in on the current clusterfuck over votejacking, which hasn't gone anywhere.

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The NIST is finally copping to the fact that electronic voting machines are "more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code", and that "potentially, a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."

As InternetNews puts it, "there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with."

About damn time they admitted to the obvious! I sense long-silenced elements inside the NIST starting to flex their muscles.

According to BradBlog, "It is important to note that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the group that oversees the formulation of the Voting Systems Standards. They host the Technical Guidelines Developement Committee for the Election Assistance Commission. This report should have a lot of power in shaping what happens in DC with legislation....Paper trails on touch-screen machines (versus paper ballots as used with optical-scan or hand-counted systems) are not an adequate solution to the nation's — or even Florida 13's — current voting dysfunction, NIST agrees that paper trails don't cut it...Many former advocates of VVPAT, including John Gideon, executive director of VotersUnite, now favor requiring that all votes be recorded on paper ballots...DREs are unacceptable as voting devices and … the addition of a VVPAT on a DRE is only a placebo to make some voters feel more comfortable."

Now if the Dems can combine this momentum with their upcoming attempts to:

1) require paper ballots with receipts, preferably something like Oregon's Vote-by-mail-for-all system
2) abolish the draconian disenfranchisement rules that may have prevented as many as 5 million poorer Dem-leaning voters from voting
3) investigate fraud, hopefully extending to vote-defrauding election officials and not just corporate financing

...then we may finally be on to something. By some accounts, the Dems really would have won this election by a count of 61-39 percent (as opposed to the official ~53-47); they also won the 2000 and 2004 prez elections by smaller margins, hence why the GOP cheating tactics overcame them. These changes have to happen before the next election or the GOP will win by virtue of their "Karl Rove math" (otherwise known as stealing 5-10 percent of the vote through various means).

Maybe the NIST 9/11-conspiracy-refuting page is next up for a sea-change? I'm guessing that one may take awhile, at least until Bush is out of office. Regardless, he's going to need a lot more than $500 million to whitewash his legacy.

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Design:E2 Calls It a Comeback

News in from our friends at kontentreal, the fine film org that brought PBS and the rest of us the compelling series design:e2. More details from my pal Midori up in the Bay Area, helping keep me honest since 1990:

"For those of you who have not caught the six part series, design:e2 that kontentreal produced for PBS....it's re-airing on Channel 9 KQED beginning next Wednesday. Please set your DVRs, VCRs or, for those oldschoolers, mark your calendars for a date with the TV:

12/13 (Wed.) GREEN APPLE 11pm
12/13 (Wed.) GREEN FOR ALL 11pm
12/20 (Wed.) GREEN MACHINE 11pm
12/20 (Wed.) GRAY to GREEN 11:30pm
12/27 (Wed.) CHINA: FROM RED TO GREEN? 11pm
12/27 (Wed.) DEEPER SHADES OF GREEN 11:30pm

...AND you can now order it on DVD-- it's one of PBS' bestsellers this year!"

I miss Midori. She's cool.

Anyway, I've written about these righteous greens before, especially here on Morphizm. Word is that a new series may be on tap, and given that the last one had Brad Pitt handling narration, you know the new series is going to make your brain and heart hurt as much as the first one did. Tune in, sign on, change everything.

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Monster Hospital

Sorry I have been gone, for those of you keeping time. The blogcycle is an hour-based, if not nanosecond-based reality, and I'm still a real-time guy. I like to leave towns, hit roads and birth children. So far, only one, and she's been a trip, and she's not even here yet. Wait, I got lost.

Anyway, the world is a bizarre tangle of protectionism, opensourcing and warfare. I leave it to Canadian rockers Metric to explain the mess through their aptly named hellblazer "Monster Hospital"

Monster Hospital, can you please release me?
You hold my hands down, I've been bad.
I fought the war but the war won.
I fought the war but the war won't stop for the love of God.

Good stuff, and rock like you wouldn't believe. The video is pure horrorcore, with a dynamo up front. And that dynamo is Emily Haines, who is currently rolling solo in support of her release of the same variety named Knives Don't Have Your Back. It's much more measured, meditative than her bruising Metric work, but still engaging and still Emily Haines. That's about the only way I can describe her these days. Postmodern circularity at its finest. Tour dates are here, as is the vid for her Knives track "Doctor Blind"


01/04/07 Montreal @ Outremont Theatre
01/05/07 Ottawa @ Bronson Centre
01/06/07 Toronto @ The Danforth Music Hall
01/07/07 Philadelphia @ First Unitarian Church
01/08/07 Boston @ Paradise
01/09/07 NYC @ Hiro Ballroom
01/10/07 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Room
01/11/07 Detroit @ Magic Bag
01/12/07 Chicago @ Lakeshore Theater
01/13/07 Minneapolis @ The Varsirty
01/14/07 Winnipeg @ Garrick Theatre
01/15/07 Saskatoon @ TBC
01/16/07 Calgary @ The Grand Theatre
01/17/07 Edmonton @ The Citadel Theatre
01/18/07 Vancouver @ Commodore Ballroom
01/19/07 Portland @ Douglas Fir
01/20/07 Seattle @ Crocodile Café
01/22/07 San Francisco @ GAMH
01/23/07 LA @ El Rey

Oh, Canada. Can't wait to visit you again.

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