An unknown source confided yesterday that Condoleezza Rice wears dreadlocks under her wig, and she been working with Rep. John Conyers to implement a massive reparations package in the works for 2006.
The source went on to report that she has been secretly writing weekly love letters to Mumia Abu-Jamal in prison since 1987.
You go, Ms. Rice!
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unveiled plans to annul the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, returning Tejas, California, Arizona, Nuevo Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and parts of Utah, to México by the year 2012.
The first phase will involve compulsory Spanish language education beginning with students entering first grade in fall of 2005. An extra $25 billion has been allocated for remedial classes for non-Hispanic students and students classified as "Pocho" through their NETA test score results.
California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger was not available for comment.
So I'm back in the USA, LA to be exact. I lost a bunch of money in Japan and spent the last two days improvising, to take care of a roof over my head. I wish I had a better story about how i lost the bread (21,000 yen or about $205 US) but I think it straight fell out of my pocket, unless I was pickpocketed, which is unlikely but possible. Ugh.
The first night (after Antibalas check out of our cushy Shibuya hotel) I went to Nagoya with our man Tetsuro and Amayo, and we sat in with Funk Syndicate, a Japanese blues-rock band. It was not my normal scene, but the people were so friendly and appreciative, and we had a ton of fun. We drove back to Tokyo and slept a few hours in the rental van outside the hotel, where we used our leftover breakfast coupons in the restaurant. (You thought I was kidding when I said I was hustling).
We caught up later in the morning with Tim Perry aka DJ Grinch, a Bay Area hip hop head who has been living and working in Tokyo for six years. He took us around Shibuya to some of the record stores and to a hot soba noodle shop in Musashi-Koyama where he lives. He shed some light on what it is like to be gaijin (foreigner) in Tokyo, and we tripped on all the "Engrish" we saw on the street signs (stay posted for my own photos). Later on, his lady cooked us up a delicious nabe sort of like a Japanese sancocho with veggies and seafood and noodles and broth.
Later that evening, I caught up with my homegirl Ai Shapiro who was just returning to Japan from NYC. She is a top notch masseuse, aikido whiz, folk singer and all around rebel. Unlike most people in Japan, she never went to school in her life and is one of the smartest, most astute people I know. We rode the train out to Keido? a suburb of Tokyo where we crashed with close friends from her hometown. I never slept so well in my life that night!
I dreamt I saw my friends Rico and Ernesto out in the ocean from my balcony, and somehow I went out to meet them in a hot air balloon. Interpretations?
The next morning we went for a walk and happened upon a beautiful hillside overlooking the city, and a Shinto shrine.
Now I'm out in West Hollywood for a minute, looking forward to meeting up with some dear friends and musical colleagues and trying to dodge the swinging batons of LA's finest.
I did a search for my great grandfather and namesake Adrian Bourcart and this is what came up.
"Ohaiyo gozaimasu" means good morning in Tokyo.
It's 5:36 AM and I'm wide awake here. I'm going to stay up and see the spectacle of Tokyo going to work.
While I am glad to be here, I feel remorseful that I won't be able to participate in any anti-inauguration activities in the US. Our concert here tonight in Tokyo, however, is titled Indictment Against... any many people here are happy to be share a space to speak out against the installation of Bush for four more years.
I was up at Fox News the other day accompanying my homeboy Ricardo Cortés to his appearance on the Cavuto show on Fox. The show was pre-empted by the Condoleezza Rice hearings, or rather, giving her several hours to bullshit and attack other countries to cover up the US foreign policy hypocrisy, so Rico didn't get a chance to be on the show. He was in good company, however, as we shared the green room with two other guests whose slots didn't air: Ben Stein, former Nixon speechwriter, actor (the teacher in "Bueller....Bueller....anyone"), and lower-middle-class-to-riches New York/worldwide real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran. I found both of them to be as friendly as they are filthy rich.
While we were sipping bad tea, waiting for Condi to wrap up (didn't happen--she went on to attack Venezuela as another potential threat), we got to chat about Ricardo's new book (and reason for his appearance on the show), It's Just a Plant, while Ben made covert joint-smoking gestures and asked Rico if he was "holding" some "chronic".
Can we please legalize it already?
Pa'lante Rico. Pa'lante Venezuela.
Time to watch Tokyo wake up.
Ohaiyo gozaimasu.
We drove and drove, from the Narita airport to Shibuya, first through very tidy highways through industrial zones.
Then things got denser and denser, and the highway climbed to 8 stories high, winding through city blocks and sky scrapers, then burrowing deep into the ground like the Big Dig, the underground expressway maze underneath the city of Boston. We finally got to Shibuya, covered with neon, intersections jammed with pedestrians, shops and apartment blocks stuffed together and rising into the sky.
The hotel is a fancy business hotel and we are just getting cozy with a cup of tea and free internet.
Today, I woke up, ate granola, went up to Williamsburg and gave my friend a flute, waited for the subway, bought a Japanese phrasebook and a pair of pants.
Meanwhile in Iraq...
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On Alternet I came across an interview with Aidan Delgado a conscientious objector who served at the Abu Ghraib prison and other sites, and has returned to the US. He mentioned a website called Iraq Veterans Against the War.
The only way we can end the war is by connecting and supporting the veterans who are returning, and giving them space and support to tell their stories. This first hand information is the only thing strong enough to sway public opinions.
Those of us (like myself) who only know war in the abstract sense have very little credibility to those in power and those who still support the war because we have been on the outside.
These soldiers have seen with their own eyes injustices and atrocities that can bring the US war machine to its knees if, we can help them get their stories out to the media and directly to our communities. Please give them all the support you can.
It is not our place to judge them. We have all done things that we're not proud of, and I can't begin to imagine what good-hearted soldiers have done at the insistence of their superiors and peers. We need to let the soldiers know that we are happy that they are alive, and use our imaginations to find a healthy place for them back in society where they can heal and use their abilities in a more positive way.
salaam alaikum
The little record that Adrian Quesada and I made is getting play on KUT FM. Go figure.
We are working on the next record, hoping to have something in your ears before we move into Taurus.
I have found myself with a few free hours in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a neighborhood where I used to live for five years, from 1995-2000, and on-and-off in short stints since then.
It has changed immeasurably since I first came here in the fall of 1994, and everyone who has been here has there own stories to tell, from the Puerto Rican and Dominicans and Chassidic Jews of the Southside to the Italians of the other side of the BQE by the Lorimer St. subway, to the Polish of North Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and all the other characters who lived among them before Williamsburg became a locus of first art and music to the inevitable gentrification and speculation that follows such a flash of spontaneity and brilliance.
And inevitably, it ends of choking and displacing the very elements that give birth to its creativity.
Memories
Rollerblading up and down Wythe and Kent to the Domsey Clothing by the pound warehouse. Bicyling and dodging feral dogs on Kent by the Navy yard exit.
People parking their cars and having picnics on the (now-collapsed) pier at the Kent Ave. waterfront.
Living in a small Italian house and walking up the stairs to hear an at 8 year old hiss "nigger" at my dearest friend through the chained door.
Fellow teachers at El Puente Academy having to move far away from the school because they couldn't afford to live close by anymore.
El Puente's battles for environmental Justice as increasing numbers of neighborhood youth contracted asthma every year.
Bars pop up, seemingly once a month, three years in a row.
Bands I remembered like TV on the Radio, Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, Antibalas appear on MTV and at Festivals all over the world. And when I see them, they're all still broke and struggling.
The orchestras of flying birds, appearing at dusk and swinging symphonies over 5th floor walkups at dusk. Did they dance like this when there were trees standing here?
Skinny hookers, still hustling on Metropolitan and Driggs, on Wythe and Kent, after all these years.
Shanty towns and squatter settlements that would pop up amidst the rubble and weed trees and abandoned buildings along the waterfront. It was the urban frontier.
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It's 2005, almost 10 years since I first lived here. I am sitting outside at the Lucky Cat, now starting to feel the cold after about 25 minutes of typing, body shivering from a cup of coffee three hours ago.
Everything is in motion, all around us. Yet in some spaces, vortices are created which make time, change, creation, move at much faster paces. It has been intense living in this one, and preparing to move on to another. I am curious to see how things will match up in ten years.
To be continued.
Death touches all of us at some time or another. Sometimes it's people far away, in another country, another state, another neighborhood. As the deaths of the tsunami seemed further and further away, becoming images on the cover of the New York Post or pixels on a computer screen, someone I know, someone that touched my heart, is now gone.
Fran Czabator, a longtime friend of my mother's family, died of a heart attack yesterday. Just like people were crushed instantly by the tsunami, travelling at the speed of an airplane, I was told that Fran dropped dead suddenly in his kitchen.
I spoke to my uncle and to my mom today, and they were both dealing with the pain of death in diffferent ways. My uncle, healthy, fit, young, energetic, was crushed as we spoke over the phone, the conversation stretching thin over long sorrowful silences and deep breaths. My mom, fighting cancer for the third time in 6 years, was shocked, but a lot calmer.
I just found out a few hours ago, and immediately remembered the last time I saw him. We were in his kitchen eating a huge pot of beans that he had proudly cooked, from scratch, with tortillas (not from scratch!) while his massive friendly dog (and adopted child) Gandhi humbly and eagerly waited for scraps.
He lit a joint and passed it a to my mother. He had helped her many times cope with the pain of chemotherapy and radiation. Sometimes she would spend the night on an Aerobed on his living room floor after coming up for chemo in Philadelphia. I spent the night there, too, waking up to eggs vegetable stir fry, toast, strong coffee, funny stories, mad ideas, and trivia, wild speculation and knowing predictions.
So Fran, before I go to sleep, accept my offering to you, one who I cherish as family, a puff of smoke into the air that you now inhabit...some sage to clear your path on your spirits way to your next destination, and some mary jane, to lift your spirits higher and higher.
After the storm comes the peace...in these times we have seen many storms already...those who seek peace must be ready to manifest and maintain it.
Blessings and love to everyone in 2005...
I, like billions of people in the world am deeply saddened by the effects of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. We are donating money from our Antibalas performance in the next week, and Cal Earth, the institute where I studied Superadobe architecture has the following help to offer:
December 28, 2004
PRESS RELEASE
SELF-HELP EMERGENCY SHELTER FOR
ASIAN EARTHQUAKE/TSUNAMI DISASTER
Cal-Earth Institute is ready to immediately offer its help to Families, International, Governmental and Non-governmental organizations in the Asian Tsunami disaster region for emergency shelters.
Basic materials needed are on-site earth, sandbags, barbed wire, and human labor.
It will contribute its technology using the following methods:
1) Provide Distance Learning via live internet connection instructing the construction of the emergency shelters directly to relief organizations in the disaster area. A local internet connection and standard software are required.
2) Provide free training at Cal-Earth Institute in intensive hands-on workshops to persons coming from the countries disaster regions, or from the United States who are scheduled to go to the disaster areas to teach and supervise the construction of shelters. The training is based on Cal-Earth's existing educational materials.
This emergency shelter technology can be used for the reconstruction of both permanent housing as well as other buildings and infrastructures.
Cal-Earth Institute is a non-profit educational and research organization in Hesperia, California. The Superadobe emergency shelter technology, which has been designed and developed by architect Nader Khalili and his associates at Cal-Earth Institute, has been built and successfully tested for California's strict building codes. It is patented in the U.S. and overseas but is now offered freely to those in need in the disaster region.
The shelters and technology have been visited and endorsed by the United Nations emergency response in 2001, and recently given the 2004 Aga Khan award for architecture for Sandbag Shelters (for photos and video clip see this link) .
For more information see Cal Earth Website , the Photo gallery, News articles, Khalili's message, and Emergency Shelter sections.
CONTACT: Iliona Outram
Tel: (760) 244-0614
Fax: (760) 244-2201
Email: calearth@aol.com
Website: www.calearth.org
