Not everyone, of course, is enchanted by Jagger’s business smarts. There are those who see the Stones’ transformation into a brand as an affront to the very spirit of rock ’n’ roll, a betrayal of the lawless, piratical impulse that once made them great. Such romantics are inclined to question whether a song like “Street Fighting Man”(“Hey! Said my name is called disturbance/I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the king, I’ll rail at all his servants”) can still be plausibly sung by an elderly knight who does sponsorship and licensing deals with Microsoft and Sprint.
These "romantics" just need to perceive the romanticism of capitalism. Capitalism could say "my name is called disturbance" — creative destruction and all — don't you think? By the way, Mick Jagger studied at the London School of Economics.
Speaking of romance, Jagger addresses the subject of marriage:
“I don’t really subscribe to a completely normal view of what relationships should be... I have a bit more of a bohemian view. To be honest, I don’t really think much of marriage. I’m not saying it’s not a wonderful thing and people shouldn’t do it, but it’s not for me. And not for quite a few other people too, it would appear... I just think it’s perhaps not quite what it’s cracked up to be. I know it’s an elaborate fantasy.”
We're already in Boulder, so it's only about 800 more miles — beautiful, scenic miles. Meade's toying with the idea of us going. It would be great blogging.
Searchlight is Harry Reid's little home town, so getting thousands of anti-Reidites to go there is pretty prankish. It got me thinking about those Philadelphia flash mobs that have been in the news these last few days:
[H]undreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property....
“It was like a tsunami of kids,” said Seth Kaufman, 20, a pizza deliveryman at Olympia II Pizza & Restaurant on South Street. He lifted his shirt to show gashes along his back and arm. He also had bruises on his forehead he said were from kicks and punches he suffered while trying to keep a rowdy crowd from entering the shop, where a fight was already under way.
“By the time you could hear them yelling, they were flooding the streets and the stores and the sidewalks,” Mr. Kaufman said.....
Most of the teenagers who have taken part in them are black and from poor neighborhoods. Most of the areas hit have been predominantly white business districts.
In the flash mob on Saturday, groups of teenagers were chanting “black boys” and “burn the city,” bystanders said....
[T]he mobs started as a kind of playful social experiment meant to encourage spontaneity and big gatherings to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could.
“It’s terrible that these Philly mobs have turned violent,” he said.
Tea Partiers need to maintain a strong culture of peaceful friendliness. Please don't rampage through the city. And don't chant anything racial this time. Just kidding. I don't believe anything racial was ever chanted by the Tea Partiers. But Tea Partiers do chant. They chanted "Kill the Bill," last weekend, and a crowd chanting anything with a violent word — like "kill" — is going to upset some people. Their opponents are keen to portray them as violently angry. Remember how a group of people from outside the neighborhood looks to the people who live and work there and keep the Conservative Woodstock true to the original Woodstock idea of peace and love.
No, we weren't. We were just eating sushi at a sidewalk table across from the theater, and these ladies — who were very enthusiastic about seeing the movie — asked us to take their picture. This isn't the picture M. took. That's in their camera. This is the picture I took after M. made the request:
(And they said yes to taking the picture and putting it up on line.)
Now, that seems to answer the question. I was just reading about it, talking about it, and when I stop to write about it, I realize I don't know the title anymore. It slipped right out of my head.
I look back to that LA Times review that got me started writing this post and sent me over to YouTube to find "Jokes With Guitar":
The soft center of the film and its unlikely protagonist is Elliot, a 34-year-old New York City interior designer still wearing polyester and polos played by Demetri Martin, probably best known for his very funny observational stand-up (check out "Jokes With Guitar" on YouTube.
So, come on, walk beside me, down to YouTube — set your soul free, life is for learning, etc. etc.:
To put a fine point on it, Elliot's a classic '60s head case and theoretically a perfect prism through which to view the Woodstock phenomenon. That the character is based on Elliot Tiber and his book, "Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life," who more by chance than initiative snagged the festival at the last minute after nearby Wallkill, N.Y., turned the concert promoters down, gives the film an organic feel.
Oh, it's "Taking Woodstock." "Taking"? Why "taking"? Is that "taking" in the sense of military or sexual conquest or is this "taking," meaning ingestion, like taking LSD, and Elliot takes the drug we call "Woodstock" and gets we-are-stardust-we-are-golden high. Well, Ang Lee carried over the title Tiber put on his book.
I'm not going to reject the movie because I don't like the title. My point is simply that I couldn't remember the title, and if I can't remember the title, then I think my soul — which, I'll have you know, is already set free — resists seeing this recreation of Woodstock.
Since I could watch the great documentary "Woodstock" and see film of the actual people and bands of Woodstock, do I really want to endure the spectacle of young actors of today pretending to be those people? Possible answers to that question:
1. Yes, it would be interesting if only to look for the slippage between the actual event and how it is now imagined, by people who always knew Woodstock as a myth from the past.
2. Yes, because most of the story is Elliot's personal adventure, and it merges with the big historical event in ways that are specific to his story and, of course, not depicted in the documentary footage.
3. No, because I cringe even at the thought of today's actor kids pretending to be enthralled by what it was annoying enough to see the kids tormented by the awful things that happened in 1969 going all mushy about.
4. No, because the movie isn't getting that good of reviews, I've been avoiding Ang Lee movies since "The Ice Storm" in 1997 (which was also about a young man trying to find himself), and I still haven't seen "Inglourious Basterds."
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