Tame Impala

The best band I've heard in a while. From Perth, but intergalactic. Yes, the vocals are like Beatles, the guitars are like Hendrix, but after that initial impression the songs are so good! I haven't listened to a single band nonstop for a week in over 10 years till now.

Blue Velvet and North Carolina

I posted here previously about Wilmington NC. This, while watching Twin Peaks during the same period, and knowing nothing of the David Lynch connection between the DVD series and Blue Velvet the movie, which was filmed in Wilmington. Note the owl in the window in my old post by clicking on the link embedded in the word Wilmington above. If you've seen Twin Peaks, you know what I mean.

As I watched this movie again recently, for the second time, I was really fascinated. Not only at how good it was, but with my memory of how much I hated it the first time I watched it, 8 or 9 years ago.

Blue Velvet, filmed in 1986, was made just a few years prior to the production of Twin Peaks, also filmed on location (the Town of Twin Peaks is fictional) in Washington state. Featuring many of the same actors, both are centered around Kyle MacLachlan, the lead investigator, slowly unraveling unsolved crimes and serving as David Lynch's doppelganger both in facial features but also as the vehicle for Lynch's imagination. In Blue Velvet the story begins with the discovery of a human ear, just as Twin Peaks begins with finding Laura Palmer's body on a rocky lakeside, right off the bat, right in the first chapter of the film. There are more than a handful of similarities between the two works which are obvious to those who have seen both. These elements serve as the David Lynch stamp as much as they serve the aura of the plot and footage.

The further slice of irony is that on the same evening I switched to watching Blue Velvet after trying to watch the 1981 Pink Floyd film The Wall, I used to love. Both movies probe madness and the darkest back rooms of the human mind, but Blue Velvet holds a counter balance, a parallel line of mystery through out the movie that The Wall lacks. I later watched the special features on The Wall DVD and was quite pleased and satisfied to hear a recent day Roger Waters himself say that it's a "...flawed film, not a single chuckle or smile..." I agree, though when I was 16 I didn't see it that way.

When Blue Velvet first came out, the large level of violence (for 1986) and other shock elements caused the movie a lot of negative reviews. I don't want to spoil the movie by adding too many details, and yes, I watched the BV Special Features as well, so many of my exo-film facts come from that.

The formula of the quirkiest of all American characters wrapped around, and eventually with, vice filled plots has served Lynch and his fans well, but is certainly not for all viewers. As an additional note: This film also showcases the talent of Dennis Hopper who recently died. Mostly known for his roll in Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet is an additional testament to his abilities. Unfortunately his difficulties with drugs and alcohol kept him back from what could have been as he fully admitted in a recent recast of an excellent interview Teri Gross had with Hopper on NPR, which by the way, didn't mention Blue Velvet.


The following, I took from my two trips to Wilmington. These shots weren't in my original Wilmington post, but now in light of the movie, are much more interesting.

This fountain, as seen in the film, is in the middle of an intersection and is indeed something to take a picture of, as I did, as Lynch did, but this drive-by shot is only interesting to me now because of it being in the movie, and recognizing as I watched the movie.

One of the famous film quotes, by Dennis Hopper, "...Heineken! Fuck that! Pabst Blue Ribbon!" occurs in this very doorway, only 25 years earlier. This I also discovered through watching special features in a chapter titled "Barbary Coast." Blue Velvet is officially "set" in nearby Lumberton, but shot in Wilmington.




This last one is from the movie.

Barbie In Iraq: Update

I previously reported on Barbie In Iraq, from Iraq, in my 09 April 09 post. Here is an update of sorts, from AKO.


U.S. Army Soldiers hand out hundreds of pink backpacks filled with school supplies and toys to students at a girl's school in Iraq, March 25, 2010. The Soldiers, assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division's Company C, 1st Battalion 38th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, delivered about 2,400 backpacks throughout the day. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Bryce Dubee (Photo by U.S. Army)

Attack On Global Energy Resources (1985)

GI Joe, a VHS tape from 1985. The plot, perhaps so rediculous then, 25 years later, not so cartoonish. The irony is obvious.

Needing An Oil Change?

I feel sick watching the news. I have been a news junkie in times past but I can't stomach the images, and the rhetoric that have been the product of newscasts in recent months. The humorless irony of those who preach a political "federal hands off" perspective now, without batting an eye, up in arms because the feds aren't acting fast enough to jump in and clean up a corporate mess is enough to make me doubt there is anything at all real about the theory of common sense. There are drill baby drill folks out there that would have objected with all their hearts to the government regulating this industry and/or requiring the very same safeguards that would have prevented this disaster - now - turning on a dime, requesting to have their cake and eat it too, and blaming Barack Obama's administration for not "doing enough."

The contradiction is apparent, and even more apparent is the fact that this is a bigger disaster than anything any foreign terrorist has ever inflicted on the USA. Yet we will continue to lube, gas, and fuel up - because we have to. We are in the words of George W. Bush, "...addicted." No kidding. The gulf coasts of 4 + states, and the east coast of North America will soon be ruined and the raw spilled petroleum sludge will destroy life and lifestyle alike, and there's nothing we can do about it except continue to drill for more...

...because we have to, we need it, like a junkie in Trainspotting, looking past the dead baby on the floor and requsting another hit. Too dramatic? Not really.

Or do we NEED it? What will it take to make the earth's society look at itself and see we need to find something better than petroleum, the petro-dollar and drilling for more and more oil - when it comes to energy? There's such a lucrative machine so dug in, and deeply in place, that will not likely budge. We have gone to war over it, and now blood spills for oil again, as it is proving to be the real weapon of mass destruction. The highest price is not at the pump.

Si, Como No?

Photos from my recent trip to Flagler Beach - where I grew up.

Beach House

I'm In Love. With what - not sure, but sure of something akin while listening to Beach House.

HWY 301: Wide Open Road

An old video by the Triffids, a little known Australian group that surfaced in the early eighties and whose vocalist seems to have absorbed an obvious Brian Ferry M.O.

Also some recent photography of Highway 301 which runs through my hometown in Florida and up through North Carolina. These were taken in early May after my trip home, as I came back to Bragg as the sun went down. The video and pics seemed to go well together as a blog.


A singlewide and my shadow.

A red truck that reminds me of Leo in the early nineties series Twin Peaks.

Truck trailers.

The impressionistic solid center/outer smear effect in most of these pictures I discovered while in Iraq, taking shots of the landscape from the back seat of a speeding humvee. I pick a subject in the center and try to hold a point, moving the camera on an imaginary axis as I go by. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, this is one that worked well, a house and van along 301.

White house and white wild flowers on the lawn.

Distant fixture, swirling fields.

Yardsale

Powerline

Mile 33

Dog in the driveway.

A near empty BP station.

An All American Amber Field.

EFMB Fort Bragg

EFMB is an army abbreviation for Expert Field Medical Badge. It's a competition available to soldiers of all ranks in medical occupations. At this competition, in Ft. Bragg, ranks from Private through Major were in attendance. I did well on the written test and felt pretty confident about testing on "the lanes," but missed the mark on the land navigation test, something I haven't done since basic training, 3.5 years ago, and is done with army, methods, maps, compass and protractor. The Test Lanes are much as it sounds. Soldiers progress along a path, in this case, the North Carolina forests of Bragg, and demonstrate skills and competence in various tasks, medical and military alike. The photos are of the train up and course orientation in fairly casual situations. The actual testing went unphotographed and involved a far more serious scene and stressful scenarios.


I enjoyed the experience, and look forward to my next attempt, perhaps in August. Doing things like this competition, and other forms of non-deployment training and and self development have been unavailable till coming to Fort Bragg. The first three years of my army career were spent in Basic/AIT, then assignment to a line unit - a military police unit that had the development of medics low in its priorities. Then there was 15 months in Iraq. Now I'm working at Womack Army Medical Center and I've had time to sharpen my skill set in clinical and field environments.