I don't wanna be a poet / Cuz I don't wanna blow it

This guy is the real deal.


Lyrics:
Everywhere you look these days,
It's bound toe around
It's in the air, it's in our food
It's trampled in the ground
Down the block and near your house,
A reactor near your town
Geiger counters round-the-world
Record the deadly sound

Do it left do it right
Do the Radiation Shuffle,
Do it with all your might
Flap your arms we do the dance of death
The Radiation Shuffle to your dying breath

Babies drinking it casually
With their mothers' milk
Dumped in Oceans stupidly
The fishermen pays the bill
Fallout's just another name
For nothin' left to lose
Just wait until the alcoholics find
It's even in their booze

Do it left do it right
Do the Radiation Shuffle,
Do it with all your might
Flap your arms we do the dance of death
The Radiation Shuffle to your dying breath

Everywhere you look these days,
It's bound toe around
It's in the air, it's in our food
It's trampled in the ground
Down the block and near your house,
A reactor near your town
Just wait until the alcoholics find
It's even in their booze

Do it left do it right
Do the Radiation Shuffle,
Do it with all your might
Flap your arms we do the dance of death
The Radiation Shuffle to your dying breath

Not only does Robert Berger rock the shit out of the keys and look almost painfully awesome, he makes his own wine when he's not simply looking awesome (although I'm sure he looks awesome when he's making wine).

Also - he did not write the lyrics to this song.

Great Characters in History: Omar Little

Unlike movies, where the narrow constraints of plot and length occasionally enable a single actor to dominate and carry the story, television series depend more heavily on the contributions of the supporting cast to facilitate plot development and sustain viewer interest over an extended series (years rather than hours).

Viewed as an allegory for the increasingly transparent political and economic processes in the information age, HBO's The Wire clearly presents the motives and actions of all its characters for viewer scrutiny. Rife with carefully examined subplots from elected officials down to the homeless informants and teenage dealers on the Baltimore streets, The Wire's dramatic tension is derived not from curious speculation (like in labrynthine plotted shows such as Lost, where nothing is simple or clear) but from the grim anticipation of knowing exactly what is happening.

This blunt and forthright form of storytelling is perhaps best exemplified in the story arc of shotgun toting stickup boy Omar Little (Michael K. Williams). Loosely based on the real exploits of Baltimore stickup boy Donnie Andrews and others , Omar, elegant and charismatic, robs drug dealers. While he does occasionally let some of his profits slip back to the needy in his community, he's no Robin Hood and banks most of what he takes, viewing his work as a profession like any other. In one memorable scene he is excoriated by a self righteous defense attorney for preying on the misguided and disadvantaged youth who work in the Baltimore drug trade; Omar narrows his eyes and retorts "Just like you, man. I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase."

Omar might not harbor any romantic illusions about his role in society, but he exhibits a strong sense of the unwritten rules that govern his work and that of his drug dealing colleagues. When angry dealers murder and brutally disfigure his lover Brandon early in the series, Omar takes the excessive nature of the crime personally and he escalates the focus and intensity of his own work. By turns sensitive and unapologetically violent, he has an affection for Greek mythology, whistling "Farmer in the Dell," frequent and emphatic use of the phrase "true indeed," and unlike nearly every other character on the show, never cusses.

Does humor belong in music?

The straight-out-of-the-still essence of probably the most important art form of the last century:

Performance, Androgyny, Orgasm, Death

David Bowie is perhaps most well known for his ability to genre-hop, but to me what is actually most interesting about him is his discernible, but not entirely explicable, continuity. Like Dylan, people constantly try to peg him as this, that, or neither, but in reality, he's an entertainer, and any other insights into who lurks behind the curtain are doomed to fabrication (as is your own life). This does not, however, nullify or erase the fact that these men are devastatingly insightful, both possessing a terrific grasp of irony as well as a grand capacity for manipulation (albeit benign enough).

The following clip is from the 1973 D.A. Pennebaker documentary Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars. Essentially a very straightforward concert video (as straightforward as the final show on one of the most legendary tours ever can be), Ziggy is a nice counterpoint to Dont Look Back, which shows a rambunctious Dylan alternately reveling in and tiring of being under the lens constantly. Bowie, on the other hand, very calmly sits smoking backstage as his make-up artist meticulously puts on his face. Just about the only quip we get from a placid and focused Bowie is a sharp "You're just a girl, what do you know about make-up," directed at someone named Angie who very briefly appears backstage. Indeed, there is a chanteuse-like calm and gravity to Bowie (the '70s?) in this film that contrasts well with the wit, anxiety, and "boyish impetuosity" (what movie!?) we see Dylan (the '60s?) constantly exuding in Dont Look Back mostly off- and backstage.

Other expository points:

• Both men look great with a cigarette.
• Bowie wrote a song about Dylan in 1971. Dylan never reciprocated (unless "Ballad Of A Thin Man" somehow proves that Dylan is as sagacious [and bitter] as he sometimes seems).
• Dylan's given name was Robert Allen Zimmerman. Bowie's given name was David Robert Jones. Both men (obviously) changed their last names, however Bowie didn't change his until 1966, one year before his first record was to be released on Decca, the reason being he did not want to be mixed up with the Monkee.
  

SO, this clip is of Bowie performing an English version of Jacques Brel's "La Mort," or as Bowie re-named it, "My Death." Bowie was fond of covering the songs of his peers (1973's raucous Pin-Ups is all covers), but the only one that charted was his jaunty version of the Jagger/Richards song, "Let's Spend The Night Together," which appears on Aladdin Sane (released the same fucking year). THIS cover, however, I think is his most captivating, not simply as a song or cover, but as a performance. And considering the fact that he subsequently announces that night, to the surprise of his band, that it would be the last show they would ever play, it takes on new meaning.



Final point: Performers always like to leave certain lyrics to the audience. Not only does it bring performer and audience together, but it strokes the performer's ego like a lubricated fist or finger. That being said, I think both realities are intensified here at the close of the song, when the audience claims to be that bitch in front of the door behind which lies his death. Just saying.