wound down enough to write… in milwaukee in the midst of a lot of large buildings, some kind of bleak financial district… shows have been improving last night was minneapolis, nice to meet the local troops… ironically from the stage i could see a large illuminated billboard advertising brittney spears and blink 182 at some larger venue… seattle was a lot of fun as well… after much effort i finally got rid (or at least got around) the effects of some miserable virus type thing that kept changing my homepage to “blank”, blank being not even very interesting just some dumbass search thing… i thought i had more to say but dont… we have been watching modern chinese horror movies on the bus, a lot of ghost related stuff, but some really amazing things, i recommend ‘haunted office’ and one called ‘memories’, i dont think these things are available like at tower or virgin etc. one has to track them down, we got a bunch in san fran’s chinatown area… tonight is at some casino situation , i much prefer clubs and bar venues but we’ll see (cynthia sent me a link which i’ll pass along http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011015&s=johnson , a slightly radical but to me very viable overview of american foreign policy stupidity… we still are rushing towards some cliff or other… being in america right now, i forget that when we are out of the country one gets a very different view of whats going on, we’ve been here for a while now, it’ll be kind of enlightening to get over to europe later this summer and get a different perspective) so its nice to see everyone at the shows, dont hesitate to try and say hello, sometimes we are rushed and cant do too much by way of relating to people after shows, this leg of the tour has some really long ass drives in the bus so there is a tendency for us to head out quickly after playing… what?… nothing… thats about it… blank ness… aroooo… etc… thanx for the mail keep it coming

tour has kicked off, LA, the first show was a bit of a struggle, the band would have been happy with some warming up in less of a high profile venue, the transition to my new cool guitar is dramatic, im still working on it… but D seemed to have a good time and we were subject to favorable reports… best part was i got to talk with Gina Gershon for quite a while after the show..! she’s a gorgeous creature, and really sweet and down to earth, somehow more beautiful in person… also in attendance at the after ritual was Lemmie, I don’t know if its public record or not but I’ve know him for slightly longer than I have known Debbie, i met him when he was still in Hawk during my second trip to the UK, we had some mutual acquaintances and i have always remembered how friendly and gracious he was in spite of my being a civilian… i met DH within a month of returning to nick, sept 73… Rodney introduced us, he’s finally a little more well known as a result of the ‘Mayor’ movie and i saw him being greeted with “hi mayor” a couple of times… Rose McGowan, another doll, we heard Will Farrell, Mickey Bourke were about but didn’t see them, Roy Thomas Baker, Nancy Sinatra, also Tom Scott was a nice surprise (horns on rapture, the sax solo on the Taxi Driver soundtrack among others)…also there was a very well known actor/comedian who will remain anonymous here cause he was so trashed and stoned it was an achievement of some kind that he was able to stand… probably others that i didn’t see… the House Of Blues on sunset is quite the irony, here we have all these well heeled individuals paying to go to this place that’s done up to look like some trashed out southern shotgun shack, the kind of place that in the reality of its real situation people only attended by default cause they couldn’t afford better so i got a new guitar from Fender, its a strat that’s covered with black leather and is an attempt to reference the one i used in the old days, Bob Wall the guy who does the leather work for Jesse James’s bike company did the cover on the guitar… we went out to Fullerton to pick it up at the Fender plant and got the tour, Paul was worried that we would be ‘demystified’ by seeing the guts of the operation but actually there was something great about the operation, it had a hands on kind of feel even though it was on a grand scale… the weirdness is stuff like the insanely exact copy of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar, we met this guy John who is doing a series of 100 of them, said it took him about a week to do one… it has every nick and scratch and bit of rust copied exactly from a large color photo of the original, its really amazing in a crazy fan obsessive way, but even John the builder said that he thought it was sad that most of these guitars would just wind up hanging on walls rather than be played cause the one we tried was really a great instrument…(now that i ponder it a bit, the SRV guitar copy (as well as the line of ‘aged’ “relic” guitars that they make are a lot like the House of Blues joint, a brand new guitars that looks like beat up old ones with a lot of personality) so tonight is this Divas event and we are here in the heart of American madness in lass Vegas… the duet with Eve is looking pretty great, that’s with the house band, Eve has written a new 16 bar rap that’s very clever, starts off with the rhythm of the basic Debbie rap and then goes off then there’s a duet with Joss Stone of one way with us, (apparently Debbie insisted that the band play,) she is very cute and her approach to melisma is more tasteful than a lot of what i hear… now honestly i have mixed feelings about this whole thing (as does DH i know) on one level its pretty straight and lame and the whole diva thing is sort of like celebrating the idea of throwing fits about your dressing room being the wrong color… on the other hand its nice to just be out there on TV… the people doing the show are very nice and as helpful as they can be, after initial tension we (the band) loosened up and the thing might actually be a fun event… i looked at a couple of ‘divas’ message threads and there’s a lot of mention of the possibility of DH and Cyndi singing together… aint going happen this time, it was never proposed to us at any rate… so yeah lass Vegas is the most forlorn awful fucking place in the universe, maybe im just projecting but everyone seems to be in a kind of half dead trance… walking around the casino downstairs, the old ladies zoned out feeding income (presumably) into the ‘loose slots’, its so sad its crazy, i keep thinking about all the images of the war that are coming back over airwaves, superimposing these explosions and burning vehicles onto the rows of cheerfully jingling machines (the proverbial ATM machine that you put your card into and get a note back that says “thank you for the money”) i keep wondering how this can be going on here at the same time as all the mayhem is happening in the rest of the world… who saw general so and so collapsing during the press briefing in Iraq the other day? im not surprised that i cant find anything about it now though I’ve done a bunch of searches… it was shown in conjunction with stories about the fatigue of the troops over there, that 20 thousand of them who are supposed to be coming back this week have been told they have to stay on for another 3-4 months… he was carried off the podium and the story was that ‘he had the flu’… was he really demonstrating his solidarity for the exhausted soldiers who’ve been there for over a year already? was he just fried in the same way? Bob Woodward’s book saying that 700 million in funds was diverted from Afghanistan to the build up for the Iraq invasion long before the official declaration of war, that bush asked the pentagon to start planning the invasion as early as nov. 2001, long before any of the info about the ‘weapons of mass etc’ was in… not much of a surprise really couldn’t the money that’s generated by the insanity of lass Vegas be put to better use? well got go to the dress rehearsal for tonight… see you all at the shows and such

im sitting here in LA watching this incredible bullshit of the war and 9-11 buck passing on CNN… things got quite hectic in NYC and i had to wait to get out of town to write… everytime things pick up i get more mail… im noticing that a lot of you are very in tune with what im thinking; sending stuff that ive noticed or been aware of in the world/media etc… for ex. the lady in mexico i think who did her own cesarian, that movie chasing buddah, many other items, however many things like the ufo sighting by the mars rover and of course the UK alien potato chips are things i missed so keep them coming… the first time around it took us two and a half albums before things broke in the US, maybe we’re gonna see a repeat of this pattern, (for those of you who dont know parallel lines was on the US charts for six months before HOG went to number one) so im cautiously optimistic at the beginning of this cycle… im told that i’ll be out of debt (oh you didnt know?) by next year at any rate (for those of you in left field who dabble in occult weirdness you might be familiar with the old magic square that goes: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS which includes the name of the idiot now testifying on tv about 9-11 who is no doubt a minion of the illuminatis anyway etc etc) so we were at the two satellite radio stations xm and sirius and im gonna try and hustle one of them into possibly giving me some airtime though im not exactly sure what for yet… i appreciate all of your efforts to get us on the air but im kind of afraid that radio as it is now is a lost cause (special thanx to scottie who says he was offering his romantic favors to dj’s in his area in exchange for playing goodboys) today we are going to go out to fender to pick up a new custom guitar they made for me… im pretty fried, woke up at like 4 am here, still on new york baby time, 6 am most days in nyc… what else… have been reading mishimas tetralogy “the sea of fertility” for the second time, i cant believe how much of it didnt sink in the first time around… its pretty dense stuff but fits in well with whats going on in the world now… whats sad is how little of his (mishimas) writing has been translated, as i understand it only a small percentage has been done… liked hellboy a lot, finally saw the last of the lord of the rings… um… about it for now im sure theres more but im only part awake

you know i think all of you who said they are going to think about geepie have had some positive effect, she is definitely less lethargic, stitches out on wed. also letterman is wed. i think maybe geepie could have them taken out on his show… im quite gratified to see that ‘dawn of the dead’ has bumped ‘passion’ out of the number one spot… what the fuck does that tell you… and speaking of fuck, yes its just unfucking canny what is happening, lenny died for eddie murphies sins for gods sakes… lenny bruce and francis farmer are the great american stories/tragedies… theres an horrific book about francis called ‘shadowland’ that i recommend to any of you who want to get even more pissed off at the american justice/celebrity system than you already might be… there were two awful hollywood crap films made about her one with jessica lange and the other a tv movie with jamie lee curtis (i think not really sure someone like that though)…. i understand that the author of shadowland wouldnt allow the book to be used as a basis for either of those productions much to his credit… im not gonna get into it if youre interested i suspect there is a lot of info on her out there… as to lenny i’d always been a fan but about seven years or so i happened to read “ladies and gentleman lenny bruce” by albert goldman which for all of its luridness still was a nice bit of nostalgia/picture of the time… if id been a few years older i would have caught his act, as it is i find myself listening to the recordings a great deal… i saw some show about contemporary comedian bill hicks who was being compared to lenny and was surprised how much the boat was missed, this guy (he died of cancer, was censored off letterman etc) though funny was bitter and sarcastic which i dont get from bruce, its amazing how moral and straight ahead he remained even in the face of all the nonsense he was subjected to… punchline being his new york obscenity conviction being over turned by… i dont know, the mayor or the governor just a few months ago… anyway both of these guys were literally crucified for… for what? you tell me… lots of reasons, there are probably lots more but those two are it for me… so now we are headed back to the stone age of censorship… but its sooo fucking wacky now its on the level of kids in the playground just throwing out arbitrary rules that they make up as they go along… i cant even bother giving examples of how hypocritical the fucking system is, its just absolutly insane out there right now with a capital I… i cant bear watching tv, i only watch the simpsons the odd wrestling match, curb your enthusiasm a drop of ‘news’, films and thats it…mcluhan said ‘tv is a wasteland’ back in the sixties or such, HA! ha ha, ha ha ha on a lighter note i saw the most amazing old crappy movie: MANIAC i think there are about two other movies with that title but this is an old black and white one with some guy named bill woods, should have won an oscar, just amazing!! some of you may recall a car insurance commercial with an old clip of a dude tearing his hair out yelling “AGONY! AGONY!”, well thats from maniac, one of numerous over the top performances by just wackos from i guess the late 30’s early 40’s… i got a great set of 50 old movies on twelve dvd’s for 30 bucks and it was in them, a great deal, i just looked, its from something called treeline and theres a website: treelinefilms.com worth checking out if you’re into this stuff (among the films are various classics: atom age vampire, night of the liv. dead, metropolis, hse. on haunted hill, many others there that was a public service announcement

its been a while, the baby deal is a major commitment, lots of work, i am consistantly astonished at the amount of energy she expends doing nothing, its amazing she just boogies and gyrates for hours on end, now crawls and grabs stuff so the nailing down process will commence soon… on a terribly sad note Geepie my favorite cat had some cysts removed and the vet says that the biopsy is bad news, she presumably has kitty cancer, she is Benjamins sister and the mother of Corpie and Squidly, so we would appreciate any prayers and or positive visualizations for her well being, (she is an all black cat) she seems ok now maybe she’ll be ok after all i am looking forward to shows and some tour madness, letterman is upcoming next week and dates are filling in several comments about age requirements for the shows, yes totally fucked and i dont know what to do about it and i dont think there is actually anything that i could do as its all about local rules and crap relating to individual places, doesnt have anything to do with the band, but the next time somebody is gonna complain about my citing the ‘old days’ , sixties etc as ‘better’ remember that all of this kind of government interference is a recent development… for any of you who havent noticed ‘things’ are getting really just absurd out in the ‘real world’… if bush gets back in i think the excrement may hit the proverbial rotating device… i keep thinking that the only way for things to change now is going to be the result of something extreme, i just keep seeing people as being so complacent, how can the masses of people just sit back and watch the education system turn to absolute shit and not do anything about it, everyone is so into this system of excess that it just blows my mind… all the hooting and hollering about mel gibsons movie is on the same level as the war, its presented as basically the same degree of importance, the stupid oscars are as important as the united nations i probably have mentioned in the past my idea that in the 1930’s the economic depression caused the growth of escapist media, hollywood had its big boom in the sixties and seventies when there was emphasis on people participating in life to a greater degree hollywood declined and the quality of films was up… now in the midst of a spritual depression of great magnitude we see the biggest boom yet in escapist media probably ever and the election just strikes me as complete bullshit i just cant buy it… i cant help wondering if we might be better off if bush wins and the resulting totalitarianism pushes the masses into action rather than things just dragging along like this the culture slowly eroding…im not advocating revolution or anarchy here just more involvement, humans in general are odd creatures who will complain endlessly without actually making attempts to change their discomfort, animals that are uncomfortable just try to change their situation (except perhaps for dogs who as a result of their contact with humans sit around unmoving while being beat over the head) so here i am complaining, yes i know… well we’ll see what happens next, certainly its an inter esting period… meanwhile i have been writing more, avoiding television, havent been working on music beyond playing guitar but i keep intending to get some stuff going in the studio… at least the laptop here is ok i’ll keep updating from the road… thanx for the messages, this last batch contained a lot of stuff about current events which is why i wrote the above stuff, there are so many topics of madness right now i am at a loss to discuss specific events hence the general outline

a message from steven: ” must say that I’m a little confused these days with the whole push to make Blondie successful…I can’t help but think that we are after a kind of success for Blondie that the band is no longer interested in…I think they may be on to a different stage of their careers at this point where it really is more about the music, the art and getting out there and playing live. Blondie as band and Chris and Deborah in particular have consistently made decisions that go against the grain and from a marketing standpoint would seem to hurt sales. So I have to conclude that ultimately sales are not that important to them.” this makes me a little crazy for numerous reasons… it really strikes home, its the same stuff im always conflicted about… questions of personal happiness, obligations to others, money versus commerce, if its important to reach more people in the first place… steven does get the fact that blondie going “against the grain” is a big part of its appeal but its certainly not any effort to “hurt sales”… if i had enough money to lets say produce a full blown film project or get a record label going… the problem is of course the way ‘the system’ is today, just the concept of ‘marketing’ in regards to art is a really miserable state of affairs that i wish i didnt have to deal with… i dont think that competition has any place in art, the idea of holding up and comparing the expressions of two people just feels wrong to me, but we are in this period of lists and american idol competitive clone mentality and this is all just producing art that is less and less individual… so indeed i am often torn about the struggle involved with having commercial success (i think the nature of this success has changed so dramatically over the last 30-40 years)… but i think its important for us to stress our individuality and im committed to keep on working in the system at the same time trying to change it… so actually yes i would love to have a “hit record” but at the same time i might be more appreciative of our fan support and loyal followers what else… we have some tv spots coming up… hopefully the record will do ok here in the states… things are picking up

on the flight back from monte carlo i was amazed by a particularly weird bit of propaganda/historical re-writing that was made available along with the movies (i finally got to see the last matrix which didnt suck as bad as i’d been warned… i love agent smith he should have a sit-com) anyway a half hour ‘discovery’ segment was devoted to the most bizzare condemnation of john kennedy (the 35th president of the u.s.) the jist being that jfk, besides being a rabid sex fiend, was so loaded on steroids, pain killers, and speed that he was completely off his rocker and that not only did he endanger america (not exactly stated outright) but he put “the office of the president in jeopardy” which sounds good but is fairly meaningless when one thinks about it… any how my paranoia was just like immediately stirred to new and greater heights… this supposed piece of “journalism” stopped just short of saying that we are all better off as a result of his being ‘eliminated’… that khrushchev brought the world back from the brink of nuclear disaster that jfk had dragged it close to… i could only wonder what the fuck was going on… is there some new bit of assasination info about to be dragged out that this was intending to neutralize, (a fantastic claim that the program made was that because he was wearing a back brace on the assasination day he was held upright where he might have been thrown forward by “the first shot” and been saved, this one i hadnt heard before) is it a complete elimination of democratic credibility by the republicans prior to the election… are we about to be subjected to another subtle re-write of history that will feature jfk’s remains being removed (just like lenins from red square) from arlington and the eternal flame on his tomb being squelched…or just simply in ten years are we gonna get the news that “well, we just had to shoot him it was for the good of the nation”… i’d always been aware of all of the stuff surrounding jfk but this is the first time i’d seen it all put together like this, obviously for ‘effect’… in rebuttal i think the main point is certainly that jfk’s assasination had a much more profound negative effect on the countries well being than his reckless behavior ever did, also i dont really think he was ‘out of control’, i’m not a doctor but i’m very familiar with the effects of drug abuse and i never saw any indication of instability in him, his speeches were all very together, by comparison various ‘modern’ politicians are inconsistent and rambling in their deliveries and this is just a given, we are used to bush coming off like a crazy man and no one suggests that he is in anything but a ‘normal’ state of consciousness (coincidentally last night i saw the ‘sam wise’ hobbit actor on bill maher and he said “i was at the white house, i looked into his eyes and i have no doubt that he believes what he is saying” pretty fucking funny; idi amin believed in himself as well)…lastly of course the show made no mention of nixons megalomaniacal antics, well of course that wasnt the point but there were and are much bigger fruitcakes out there than poor old jfk so just damn weird is all… (maybe some one saw this thing?) the monte carlo gig was pretty weird as well, (coming back airport security was way up as a result i presume of the moscow subway bombing, i hope you all realise that moscow is not the sticks, its a big urban modern city, this shit is very close) i really had completely forgotten that the show was a promo event for an erectile dysfunction product, which was odd enough, at least at the ‘press conference’ debbie announced that our motivations for doing it were to have the contact with jose carerras and getting paid “a lot of money”… but the drug company people were very nice and i guess it was all a big success… monte carlo though really beautiful is not ‘my cup of tea’ so to speak and as usual i kept wanting to start carrying on about the “blood of the workers” fueling the local decadence… there was a really nice new model ferrari parked in front of the hotel, it looked like an f-16 (plane) and no doubt sells for upwards of 500 grand… as far as i could tell there isn’t much to do there that doesnt involve large sums of money, i didnt see any punks or other fringe types but mostly i just caught up on sleep… the cause of the lack of sleep (the babee) has figured out how to travel by rolling… i have been doing some recording of her mezzo soprano voice and her first album should be out next year some time (“my career was over by the time i was three and a half…”) to be continued…( i think im gonna stop signing this stuff)

i dont have time today for a long spiel…(thats from the yiddish pronounced “shpeel”, in old show-biz parlance it meant ‘bit’ or sort of discussion, often with comic overtones, official def is “A lengthy or extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade”…there, educational material as well) just wanted to say that i’ve gotten so many really fantastic comments regarding the current affairs of humanity that i am quite moved and encouraged, i think i’ve suddenly got a lot of response from people who dont usually write which is also great… someone, “M”m i think reminded me that dennis hopper or somesuch luminary said that “I have a feeling the 90’s are gonna make the 60’s look like the 50’s..” i forgot about how right on that is… i want to reference more of what people said… will have to wait till next week one thing i did think of was that if EVER there was gonna be a faked moon or mars landing now is the fucking time, i mean how tempting is that.. give five million to (spiel)berg to do the CGI and pocket the rest of the 30 trillion…. chris

im glad to see some of you were inspired, stirred up by my complaints about current conditions etc… (for starters of course i’m 100% behind getting the human race into space, i’m just pissed by the administrations blatant attempt to capture votes by making a big deal ‘announcement’ on the eve of the next election) so i got a letter from Brian that i quote from here, he says that he 
“cannot read another sad commentary by you! Use your position to enlighten,  not show us that you too, have lost all hope. What’s the fucking point? … We want you to be happy. We want you to be safe in the knowledge that no matter how negative the world around you can get, the world of supporters that YOU have, *that are ALSO part of this world*, are here for you…”
this is in a way what i am most worried about in making statements about politics, current affairs etc… one of the reasons i for one have left this kind of stuff out of the music/lyrics over the years… so firstly i am the most optimistic motherfucker in the universe, brian has badly misconstrued my perspective… for me personally im verry happy etc etc BUT we have reached a crunch time in our civilization and the world of tv and music and related is in as much jeopardy as the rest of our so called freedoms… simply, people in their forties and fifties like myself who have been watching the world have a basic observational advantage over people in their twenties and thirties (in the past when i’ve said something like this i’ve gotten comments about how the sixties were only about wearing tie dyed t shirts and that i’m stuck being a hippie etc etc) i’m not at all attempting to take a superior or know it all position here its just soo frustrating seeing the way things are changing in America… having seen all of these different realities come and go in my lifetime is just amazing… you guys have got to believe me, one of the ways the system is getting over on you is by making you indifferent, so that your reaction is to want to ‘escape’ from ‘depressing’ subjects… one of the things that we are constantly discussing in interviews all over the world is how the world of popular music has lost its ability to ferment, cause social change, how the world youth culture which used to have an anti-establishment position and used to be a force for change has been co-opted into just another layer of consumerism… just thirty years ago most of the big corporations that bloated the airwaves with advertising were plain shit scared to have their products represented by contemporary music and celebrities… products were never advertised as ‘extreme’ or connected to slogans or ideas that emerged from the underground… there were two worlds in america: the safe world of family and walt disney and the dangerous world of teenage wildness and rock and roll… so what happened? well the establishment got the message with the success of things like mtv and like in the days of the roman empire the ‘enemies of the state’ were absorbed into the great over culture… when i was growing up rolling stone magazine was a radical far out informative piece of work that actually did for a while represent the counter culture… so look where thats wound up with the full page salem cigarette ads and awful boy bands being promoted as the ‘future of rock’… now think what things are gonna be like in another twenty years if things continue the way they are going now… in his letter brian complains that he doesnt feel as carefree and wild as he used to when he listens to blondie, that he has “to rely on past experiences to conjure up that excitement.” he suggests that his reading that i “dont care” might in part be responsible for his lack of enthusiasm… well of course i care about music and performing etc but what i wrote last time means exactly what it says that in the face of what is happening in the world, entertainment and escaping doesnt feel right and i think that his inability to get back to how he used to feel when listening to music has a great deal to do with what music means to us now… we turn on the tv and hear music advertising mcdonald death burgers that is as good or better than some of the stuff on the horrible limited radio… rock and roll is no longer special, dangerous or mysterious, its a background drone for our lives as consumers… its safe… of course youre not gonna feel the same excitement… actually i’ve thought quite a bit about writing in this vein, about going to ‘the next level’ as it were and discussing this stuff in a ‘fan’ environment, but i just wouldnt feel true to myself by ignoring how i feel and just playing the part of rock and roll dude who only lives for ‘the music’… i’m sorry but that is just false and corny and i guess there are people in bands who live only in the bubble environment of their musical selves but ‘it aint me babe’ as the fella says… what im saying then is that blondie will continue and we will continue doing and living for and with music but i’m urging you out there to get involved with the world now and dont try to avoid the ‘depressing’ stuff out there cause its sure as shit isnt going away… i’ll continue to write about stuff that happens on the road and tell stories, but everything in the world is connected big time and i just have to deal with it… for a quick way to get involved a bit more check out ‘adbusters’ magazine and site… dont be isolated try and connect with each other in contexts beyond being fans, everyone can do something now to keep us all free love, to be continued chris