Watching • Punk Ghandi, Aragorn’s Pax Americana, Palin the White Witch

Bono is blogging about bureaucracy, manga comics, and celeb spooting, tag-teaming Jeffrey Sachs, beating world poverty and global injustice with a steel-chair on a blog for The Financial Times. At the same time ‘Lil Wayne is blogging about sports for ESPN. After a decade with the internet, the cognitive dissonance is there still there—especially in the viral video world. Celebrity columnists are not unusual, and ads always want to shock, but across the internet, the playing field has been levelled. Or maybe there was a pitch invasion. And as we invade the space, celebrities must do more to get noticed. And this stuff in these places just seems weird. A little equalizing, I guess.

Snoop D-O-DOUBLE-G, represent the Punjabi.” sings the title track for the film Singh is Kinng (the extra ‘n’ is there for superstitious reasons). It’s looks like a strange and wonderful film. And thanks to global culture, a waning tide does indeed sink all ships in a film taking its cues from Frank Kapra and, er, Jackie Chan.



So, who knew Sir Bin Kingsley, an Oscar Winning portrayer of Ghandi does a mean Minor Threat impression? The video—crowd an all—it’s not part of any huge campaign or stunt, it’s not a sketch, it’s not topical: the web has eyes that wants to see things like this, Sir Ben brings Shakespere to straight-edge, Mean Magazine get a bit of promotion at the end, fine by me.



Aragorn, son of Arathorn, House of Isildur? The rightful heir to the throne of Gondor! Your voice, Howard Zinn’s graphic-novel version of A People’s History of The United States. Wired. Though in a post-conflict, post-modern world, all we want to know is which character-class is going to persevere? Log in now! (Buy yourself a nice office chair; slight back-pain and RSI are the new trench-foot of the digitial-conflict world.)



You forget it was Aragoran, didn’t you! I knew you had it in you. It’s good isn’t it. As someone who’s never read A People’s History, it’s the sort of introduction that has benefitted from the name attached to it. I ordered it straight away.

We know, as Pat Buchanan has told us, that John McCain isn’t going to be a peace-time president: 100 years in Iraq, etc. But this is the Age of Men, not wizened Ork-Dwarves. To win it for Gondor Obama should really be focusing on the votes of the Shire folk. Mordor isn’t much of a battleground state in this age.



Now then, Sarah Palin The White Witch of the Hockey Arena is probably hiding in Narnia blaming Intelligent Warming for melting her ice palace, and disrupt hunting with/for polar bears. Oh no, silly me, there she is, on the Disney Channel—where she belongs.



Order is restored. —Mike Smith, Oct. 9, 2008

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Listening • Playing With Fire

The biggest music news from the past week has to be that ABKCO Music & Records, Inc., holder of the Rolling Stones’ publishing rights, is suing Lil Wayne and his label for copyright infringement for borrowing a chorus melody and title from the Stones’ hit “Play With Fire” for Wayne’s “Playing With Fire.” Most ironically, the Stones’ representatives chide Wayne’s song for using “explicit, sexist, and offensive language.” Though it most certainly does, bear in mind their clients are the people who brought us Cocksucker Blues. Get yourself an mp3—before the court orders you can’t listen to this song anymore. —Erik Bryan, Jul. 30, 2008

» Listen to “Playing With Fire” at Living in Stereo

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