Monday, May 23, 2011

Bob Dylan, Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Artist, and Now, May 24, 2011, Septuagenarian!

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Self-Portrait


Masculin Feminin by Jean-Luc Godard

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Arizona 2010

Bob Dylan in Prospect Park
Prospect Park, Brooklyn 2008



Photo by Eliot Landy, part of a wonderful sequence of photos taken
of Bob Dylan and his young family in Woodstock in 1968 here

Talkin' Bob Dylan at 70 - a nice spread in Time magazine here

Bob Dylan and his fans: Please crawl out my window (What does he owe his fans? Hint: Not much) here

On his claims of drug addiction ("more media b*llsh*t") here
(He also claimed in the same interview to have been a male prostitute -- and don't forget the carnival-sideshow stories here )

Not forever young but forever revered here

Dylan's Bar Mitzvah here

Ebony Hillbillies/Garland Jeffreys perform Dylan here

Legendary rocker's adherance to traditional music has kept him timeless and vital here

All day music, archival and live talk programming on Bob Dylan, including live and archival programming by
legendary free-form radio broadcaster Bob Fass, culminating in a live studio jame featuring Garland Jeffreys,
Guy Davis, Lenny Kaye, J D Daugherty, Electrajet, John Kruth, Sal Maida, Knox Chandler will be performing and the list is growing on WBAI Pacifica Radio here.

And of course the daily encyclopedia of news, events and musings occurring on Planet Bob - Expecting Rain here

Enjoy!

"Enhanced Interrogation" (aka Torture) After Bin Laden: "Memos and Testimonies from the 'War on Terror'

Director Doug Liman (Mr. and Mrs Smith; Bourne Identity; Jumper) will direct a performance on Tuesday, May 24 at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater that will use readings, performances, theater, documentary and other forms to provide what promises to be a powerful and penetrating analysis and interpretation of the impact of the post-9/11 "enhanced interrogation techniques" (AKA torture) program on both the humans who are subject to it and the humans who impose it.


Writers Russell Banks, Dahlia Lithwick, Peter Godwin, Rula Jebreal, Beth Gutcheon, Kati Marton, John Buffalo Mailer; Actors Dianne Wiest, Hayden Christensen, Aasif Manvi, Lili Taylor, Rachel Bilson, and other internationally acclaimed writers and artists will join former Guantánamo prosecutor Col. Morris Davis and former CIA interrogator Jack Rice to read from the detailed reports of numerous prisoners, government memos authorizing abusive techniques, and other documents detailing the scope and disastrous human cost of the U.S. torture program. Original videos of former Guantánamo detainees.  The event, which follows a similar event Liman, the ACLU, and PEN presented at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, is being filmed as part of a national documentary film project aimed at promoting accountability for torture.

Doug Liman: “By enlisting both influential cultural figures and ordinary Americans from all walks of life around the country to read these documents in public spaces, the Reckoning project sends the powerful message that accountability is not a political but a human question, one that bears on our national character."

“As the documents we are presenting make clear," Mr. Liman continues, "there is no longer any doubt that the United States repeatedly and systematically violated longstanding prohibitions on torture. It is also clear from the record, as we hear throughout this program, that many courageous men and women stood up against torture and abuse. We’re at a pivotal moment in history, and my hope is that America will honor these men and women and choose a path toward restoring this nation as a defender of human rights.”

DITHOB: Following the recent killing of Bin Laden, and the suggestions that these same physically and psychologically abusive interrogation techniques contributed to the gathering of intelligence that resulted in his location and killing, consideration of the impact of torture and enhanced interrogation on the soul of democracies seems more urgent than ever. In this era of terror, where do pragmatism and ethics meet?

For ticket information:

WHEN: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

WHERE: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
West 65th Street, upper level, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10023

TICKETS: $12 general public; $9 students; $8 seniors; $7 ACLU/PEN/FSLC members

More information and tickets: here

For more information, please visit PEN (Poets Essayists and Novelists) or American Civil Liberties Union

Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
  • Negropedia- Patrice Evans
  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
  • Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
  • Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
  • Day of the Oprichniks - Vladimir Sorokin
  • Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
  • First Civilizations
  • Oscar Wilde -Andre Maurois
  • The Beats - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • SDS - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • The Unfinished Animal - Theodore Roszak
  • Friends of Eddy Coyle
  • Brooklands -Emily Barton
  • Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
  • Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
  • Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
  • War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
  • Life in Ancient Greece
  • Time - Eva Hoffmann
  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
  • Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
  • Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
  • Landscape in Concrete - Jakov Lind - surreal
  • 'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
  • Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
  • How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
  • "Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
  • Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
  • Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
  • Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
  • Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
  • John Brown
  • Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
  • 7 Deadly Sins
  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
  • I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
  • Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
  • Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
  • The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
  • Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
  • Fassbinder
  • Indignation - Philip Roth
  • Rome
  • Let's Go Italy! 2008
  • Italian Phrases for Dummies
  • How to Pack
  • Violence - Slavoj Zizek
  • Dali: Painting & Film
  • The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
  • The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
  • Spook Country - William Gibson
  • A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
  • Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed
  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
  • The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
  • American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
  • Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
  • Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
  • 96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
  • Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
  • Together Through Life - B. Dylan
  • 100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
  • DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
  • Glassworks - Philip Glass
  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Dinah Washington - Best of..
  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo