brief word i saw the art thats up, its not the actual cover, just part of it… im now hearing that the record wont be released in the states until after the rest of the world, its not my fault, sorry… ” Amy ” was offended by my equating republicans with chimpanzees, though i dont mean to insult anyones beliefs i really have a hard time getting too serious about anything political, its all a bunch of nonsense; democrats, republicans, im sorry but to me its a cosmic joke that our lives are influenced by this antique system thats more akin to show biz, carnival than to actual human leadership, i just find it hard to believe that politicians are more concerned about the well being of the people than they are about getting elected… but lets not forget that i am a sixties hippie radical and that any of my views are tainted with the stain of pagan liberalism… also i absolutely am NOT interested in anyone trying to be like me, far from it, everyone should be as different from one another as possible thanks so much for all the baby encouragement, some of you actually wrote to the simpsons on our behalf, as far as i know theres no plan for us to be on the show so do keep it up, see, on one of the episodes homer said his e-mail address was chunkylover53@aol.com, which supposedly goes to one of the producers, keep trying love chris

we (the band) were in L.A. memorial day weekend shooting a video for the ‘good boys’ song with Jonas Akerlund who has directed the new film SPUN (check out http://www.spunthemovie.com/ very cool site) which DH has a supporting part in… i daresay this looks to be the best blondie video to date, hopefully it’ll get played more than once somewhere, anywhere, here, there, everywhere, etc etc etc speaking of movies the metaphor of matrix is so apt its absurd; everyone (especially in america) is living in a tank being fed a bunch of hypnotic hallucinatory bullshit that they are in love with, at the same time their essence and energy is being sucked out and used as food for some vast parasitic machine… the difference with reality and the film is that in the world here everybody kind of knows whats going on they just dont give a fuck and zion doesnt exist… the ultimate irony is that the matrix movie is part of what keeps everybody in their trance state even though its laying the scheme out in plain view and living color… i guess like the film it’ll take the ‘real world’ turning into a burned out graveyard with black sky before people decide to take action about changing their situation… on a more cheerful note i thought x-men2 was just terrific, in a way it was almost better than matrix, it was sooo much better than the first x-men and the first matrix was a hard act to follow even for itself i wish you guys would ask some questions that i could actually answer sometimes… for some reason ive gotten several things about the record not coming out in canada and ive got no idea where this kind of stuff comes from, once again: to the best of my knowledge the next blondie record will be out everywhere in sept-oct of 2003… if anything changes which it shouldnt i’ll put it here, tour dates are getting booked now and should include everywhere we’ve played in the past as well as perhaps some new areas, as far as i can tell touring will start in the summer and then pick up again in the fall, europe and the u.s. will be included in the touring schedule… i hope this general outline will answer some of the endless questions about this stuff… i saw in the new york times that chimpanzees were going to be included in the human race, as human(s) from now on, this was a small item and didnt say where or what this decision would affect, it was pretty vague actually, does that mean that some group like the republicans would be left out of the human race to make room for the chimps?… speaking of which the “goodboys” video has a monkey in it… some recommendations: theres a Jet Li movie called “Hero” thats really fantastic except for the score which is a total cop of crouching tiger (speaking of tigers there is also a tiger in the “goodboys” video) lately ive been even more into japanese and chinese films than in the past… an amazing chinese film is called “Fallen Angels” by director Wong Kar Wai, another by the same director is “Chunking Express” which has gotten more attention than “Angels” pretty great though i liked Fallen Angels a lot more… of course the japanese film “Audition” has been around for a while now is totally great though very heavy duty (definitely not for kids) the new film by the same director Takashi Miike “The Happiness of the Katakuris” is very crazy worth seeing, a very very amazing american (i think) movie called “Devils Playground” about rites of teenage passage into adulthood in the Amish community in the US, just amazing, who knew this stuff? last night finally saw “Mighty Wind” which was way better than i expected, i wish it was longer actually…lastly for now, i just came upon a really far out book by british author Martin Amis titled “Night Train”, im going for sure to check out some more of his stuff what else? rain, lizards, that swamp smell is kind of gross, the dogs go rolling around in the swamp and come in laden with the aroma which they rub on stuff, “swamphounds swamphounds” sung to the tune of the simpsons theme…speaking of the simpsons why the fuck havent we (blondie, debbie) ever been on their show… i suggest a write in campaign, start writing to homer directly at chunkylover53@aol.com all for now love chris

i am finally able to announce, relate, distribute, etc. the following: tahhh dahhh!!!: the record is aptly titled “THE CURSE OF BLONDIE”… for a long time the title was “PHASM” but towards the end of everything debbie came up with the other which seemed oddly appropriate so thats it, (thanx for all your suggestions, maybe in the future we could have a thing where the fans pick a title for something)… record is gonna be released by SONY International in Europe, the UK, Japan, and Australia around Sept.-Oct. 2003 the first single is a thing called “GOODBOYS”, that should go to clubs and radio around mid july touring should start in the summer we’re at the “SUMMER SONIC FESTIVAL” in Osaka Japan on Aug.2 and in Tokyo on the 3rd. after that Australia ok? the ufo stuff is still going on, check: http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/1966/840/4 for further crazyness xxx chris

great bunch of messages from all thanx as per…a lot of questions and requests for info about the next recording… it is imminent and we’re getting an ‘official’ bunch of stuff together to put up hopefully not later than next week thatll tell some dates and release schedule… we’re gonna rehearse in june as it looks now, jimmy should be back and im gonna work in a replacement for me for shows i cant attend due to the baby situation… the baby thing is really quite amazing on all levels, for one its like right here in the room with us but still far away in its own dimension… barbara’s site is http://www.mysteriousmysteries.com/ related to that is some funny shit that i havent mentioned previously;;; i guess about three years ago barb went to an audition for a tv commercial which she of course landed… what it turned out to be was a spot for the sci-fi channel that came out really amazingly, what it purports to be is a home video of some girl (her) on a helicopter ride in new york on vacation seeing a flying saucer, ufo etc etc… the sci-fi channel had this thing called “happens” that was supposed to be stuff people sent in but was really just shot by them of course… barbs segment was the first and best one, is really great, it aired on the sci-fi channel a bunch of times when they first did it (i think shes got a quick-time version on her site, i looked for “world trade center ufo” on google and was amazed at what came up for ex: http://www.alcione.org/VIDEONY1/videony1.html has a version of the spot as well as a detailed analysis of it in spanish) its her on a ‘sightseeing’ ride in a helicopter, whats even more cosmic is that the ‘tour’ happens to be mainly of the world trade center, so theres barbara with her little camera being photographed from the back seat by her ‘husband’ or whatever when what do you know, a UFO starts zipping around the wtc, she points it out, exclaims, it kind of buzzes the copter then zooms off leaving a trail, the end… well not really the end cause this thing is still generating responses and is all over the fucking net… check out the sci-fi.com bulletin board: http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/1966?pnum=745 its a mind fuck the amount of ranting that has gone on in relation to this, one would think it was at least a little obvious to people that maybe it was a commercial ? it seems that the ones who are the most desperate to believe in something are also able to just bypass the basic unreality of the thing and go plunging ahead into arguing about its qualifications… anyhow theres some pretty funny stuff on the bulletin board there, barbara and i wrote a couple of messages early on but by now the thing has a life of its own, looking around just now im amused to see that it still is going on, questioned etc… what else? the other day we were out walking and here comes flappy (flapjack the dog) with a deers leg in his mouth, actually it looked quite a bit like his own large brown leg though i think he was aware of the difference… grooossssss, he’s a good guy though and dropped it when asked… as the season progresses the roads here are the resting places of too many splattered animals, kamikaze squirrels who dash madly around in front of the car as if tempting fate, on easter sun. we went to the mailbox only to find a big gray cat lying peacefully in the sun where he’d gotten hit and died, very sad i just couldnt leave him, he was obviously related to humans, even in death he gave off a vibe of interaction, so we put him in a box and gave him a nice funeral, put in a can of friskies and a collar for his trip to the other side…. he is risen… well maybe all for now, as usual thanx for the support love, chris

from Ouspensky again: “…art which does not reveal mysteries, which does not lead to the sphere of the Unknown, does not yield new knowledge, is a parody of art, and still more often it is not even a parody, but simply a commerce or an industry.” and dude wrote that in like 1915 or so… wonder what he’d think of the current state of affairs ol’ P. D. Ouspensky is pretty dense stuff, it takes me quite a while to get through one of his books but i’d heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to try and stretch their brain a bit, i find that studying his writing has the effect of making me think less about the dumbass side effects of what goes on in the world and more about the basic human condition, about why the human race seems to only be able to ‘rise downward’ as it were… theres a great film playing on cable tv these days entitled i think “grass” or such, is the history of marijuana ‘reform’ and legislation in the US… beyond the questions of drug use what i got out of it is just the general way terror media tactics have always been used here to influence popular opinion, it never fails to amaze… apparently there was a period following the civil war where morphine, heroin, cocaine and various related heavy ass stuff was readily available to the american public in the form of “remedies” for this and that… interestingly, a great deal of this use was the province of the middle rather than lower classes since they were the strata of society who could afford doctors… just when the problems and dangers of addiction were about to come into focus suddenly along comes the ‘horrors of the killer weed’ etc etc completely diluting and adding a layer of insane bullshit to the whole subject… i’ve always thought that the post WW2 generation had none but the fuzziest information available to them about drug use, the results being that me and a lot of others who came up in the sixties were a lot less cautious than perhaps they should have… and of course this relates to the way so much is dealt with here, young people who have to cut through layers of lies and misinformation arent going to bother to question etc etc thanx again for the baby related encouragement and advice it really is much appreciated… the american deal seems to be almost done so we should have an actual release date for the next record pretty soon, (while working on the thing for so fucking long i of course wondered if it was any good but having been away from hearing it and being confronted with the finished thing i think its really fantastic, one of the best ones etc etc) great electrical storm here last night, first one this season… i got a great letter, i quote: “but, cHRIST, aren’t you a little old to be cranking out kids?? I’ll never understand you Hollywood types…” …i love it,… yeah, like i was just saying to ben and j-lo the other day “well the baby isnt born yet but at least its got a good agent…” all 4 now love chris

thanx everyone for the comments, you all are really great… today its sunny here and reading all of your baby stories and congratulatory remarks have made me feel all is right with the world for the moment… last night was one of the first that included the choir of frogs and cricket things all carrying on out in the woods around the house… the baby has a name but ill wait till it shows up… thus far the biggest drawback (aside from barbs dismay over the loss of girlish figure) will be us not being at burning man this year which would have been four in a row.. somehow having the baby either delivered or present at age three weeks in the desert doesnt seem like a good idea… one thing i think about a lot is if i should just ax the fucking tv to bits before the kid ever gets to see it in all its horror… im really sure america would be a much better place without television…its just beyond the beyond whats taken for granted here… what the hell is going to happen to the goddamn human race at the rate things are going, am i totally crazy or is just everything getting more mediocre by the second?… its really hard to get a kind of free personal insight into what is really happening in the world, i just keep getting pulled back into the idea that things were ‘better’ more sophisticated when i was growing up, that there was more influence among the young people beyond just buying power, it felt like things were less factionalized and broken up into the myriad of special interest groups that are out now, it feels like theres been a deliberate and successful attempt to take any power away from young people…it feels like america is turning back to the stoneage sensibilities of the nineteenfiftys…everyone knows its ‘dangerous’ to criticize the establishment, to be unpatriotic… the nauseating conservative ‘family’ walt disney values that everyone worked so hard to shake off are back in full swing… spirituality is a lost cause and the miserable radio is at an all time low. i cant believe the crap that i hear, the goddamn ‘classic’ rock stations playing the same twenty songs over and over again ahhhhh!!! rant rant !!!!! everybody do something before its too late!!!! anyway as soon as the baby comes im gonna take it to germany and hang it over a balcony ha ha only kidding dont worry actually im in a good mood love chris

happy easter and pagan associations everyone… was just reading how Ouspensky says that the Christ passion, the events of the crucifixion etc. were like unto a kind of living version of the ancient Greek and Egyptian “Mystery” plays wherein the god died and was re-born, the difference being that of course with Jesus and friends the event was ‘played out’ in reality, and not on a stage with actors, im just getting up to the part where he addresses who he thinks the “director” was… ***************** TAH DAH!!! ***************** as some of you are by now aware Barbara and myself are having an actual baby in july (mostly her)… this has been going on for a while now and is kind of in the home stretch… i think its time to announce etc as the arrival will curtail some of my band activities during the summer and early fall, word is coming of our getting to australia and japan and i dont think im going to be able to get to australia this time much as i love it there, i just couldnt be away from Barb and baby for this period for more than a few days, the japanese dates are just 2or3 in early aug. and i think ill be able to do those if it only means being away for five days or so… thats just the way everything has come down and im trying not to be conflicted, [[as i might have mentioned our dear friend and mentor VALI MYERS died recently in Melbourne Australia and though i was lucky enough to have spoken to her a few times while she was in the hospital (“well love, I’m fine except for dying…” actual quote) i hadnt seen her too much for the last number of years and though im looking forward to getting a little closer to who she was with and where she wound up its gonna have to wait for now… VALI was one of the most extraordinary people alive in the 20th century and the fact that she wasnt more well known is part of her whole mystique, a long story id just suggest that anyone interested look around on google or whatever, theres a lot of stuff http://geekgirl.com.au/geekgirl/009dogs/vali.html is a quick look, seems to be a lot of things available about her]] so the baby situation has of course quickly educated us to the insanity that surrounds baby production in the united states… this is the usual kind of madness that one encounters when dealing with the american medical establishment, familiar territory, so we have one in four births done as what is cheerfully referred to as a c-section which kind of downplays the major surgery aspect, it seems that women are encouraged to take epidural anesthetics which produce all kinds of complications; prolonging labor, reducing fetal heartrates etc etc… that like many other aspects of life in america, childbirth is treated like some kind of crisis situation that needs to be ‘taken over’ by someone other than the one having the experience… i was gonna write actually about related topics, about how i feel things are different now from when i grew up and if they really are or if its just my own perception… but ill save that we dont need anything for the baby ( oh yeah Barb had ultrascans and we werent disinclined to find out the babys gender but it just wouldnt let us see… i did get to see lips and yawning which was amazing, and a little face pressed up against “the glass” as it looked, the scan looks through the skin of the babys head as well as the stomach wall so one sees layers of eyes and skull, it looks like a cheerful little alien) i mean anyone that can afford it can make large cash donations of course, but if you cant afford more than 10 or twenty thousand then i must insist that you stick to just sending good wishes for the baby to come through ok… beyond that…. oh another story is about these two crazy fucking dogs that we got… i hadnt mentioned it earlier cause i was waiting to ‘announce’ about the baby which the dog story relates to somewhat; barb of course always drawn to animals, we were walking in the west village around the time of the last NY area shows and she lured me into a pet store to “just look” at dogs… the window of course filled with crawling squirming cute puppies… she asked the people if they had any older dogs and the girl said ‘yes we have these that are too big for the window’ and proceeded to bring up a little white manic dog, an american eskimo, which proceeded to run frantically around the store… so maybe we should actually get it cause flapjack would like to have a playmate, the cats dont play with him etc… but wait… it seems this little dog has spent its entire life with another little white dog, so here comes another larger little white dog much less crazy…so theyre discounted cause they are bigger than little and cute like the ones in the window, and we wonder how the hell anyone would have ever seen them without asking and how weird it is that after a certain time they get ‘kicked downstairs’ into the cages in the basement etc etc, and we couldnt seperate them cause they are a total team and kind of single personality between the two of them… now these guys totally missed getting any kind of complete training during their important formative puppy (pupa) months and as a result are fairly wacked… also theyd been stuck in a cage most of the time… we were staying at the chelsea hotel at the time (see DEE DEE RAMONE “Chelsea Horror Hotel”) and so the dogs came back there with us and the VERY NEXT DAY we found out that Barbara was having a baby (was pregnant)… one day she was in a little room with them and she heard a tinkling sound coming from under the bed and it was the littler dog playing with a used crack pipe… so the dogs are named Sydny and Nubis… all winter long we suffered through the horrors of dented doggy training and constantly fluctuated as to give them away/kill them etc but they have finally settled down to a respectable kind of life style and now we have three dogs and six cats and almost a baby… (actually the dog door saved us, the biggest problem was that sydny and nubis would start barking furiously at six in the morning every day and would have to be let out manually,) ok thats the dog story ill try to be writing more regularly love to all chris

greetings all after my hiatus ive finally gotten back on line (more or less) in our new place here, i just went thru the last hundred or so messages from you all… the record will most certainly be out for the summer. its finally wrapped and “in the can” as they say and i for one really like it, Steve Thompson who produced Korn and a shitload of other current stuff came in to do a few more songs and mix and master and we’re indebted to him for doing a great job… Jimmy is around, hasnt ‘left the band’ most likely will be on the next bunch of shows, but its up to him to discuss his own stuff so im gonna leave it at that for now as usual thanx for all the nice comments, thanx to all the people who write regularly, Rob, Luciana, Claudia, etc etc my computer is completely fucked right now so im gonna keep this brief ive got a lot going on personally but as far as this all is concerned, again i really do like the new record and we may be out with some shows before it comes out as to current events i was watching the war the other day and noticed that underneath the press conference with a bunch of military dudes (resembling a camouflage fashion show) were basketball scores… at the time it just seemed like “well ok, yeah” but later i realised how totally fucking insane the whole thing is, why im not emotionally reacting to any of this, because like everyone else ive been completely desensitized by everything coming at me on the same level, news is entertainment is reality tv is all a bunch of bullshit… more later chris

internet place in brooklyn is straight out of Wm. Gibson, complete with dirty floors flickering neon and host of odd characters… returned from U.K. yesterday rush hour… as things progress i realize how hard it is to differentiate one show from another, was thinking that if something fell on my head during the set i might then be able to make a distinction, as it is though, the actual music parts of the separate events are all blurred together… what i remember is the cute girls, sometimes boys in the crowd, the streets of whatever city we’re in, sometimes what the backstage area looks like etc etc, that stuff… cause people ask me what i thought of such and such a concert and on the whole the answer is that i dont really know, some are better than others as a result of various intangibles the last show in London at wembley was good for me… (by the way i still dont have an internet account up and running which is why im in this place with my yahoo account…id had this hotmail account for years but of course as {with all good sleazy corporate entities} i tried to log on recently and discovered that since i hadnt used it in 30 days they expected me to pay for what was formerly a free service… yahoo seems to still be free) it was of course great to be back in the U.K. and briefly in Ireland, Scotland…i’d gotten a lot of e-mails from you all questioning the wisdom of us going out with INXS everyone being too polite to just say it was a fucked idea but i got the drift…i dont really know anything about those guys except that the singer managed to do himself in weirdly and naturally you were all right about it being an odd bill at best… they seemed like nice enough guys… the tour involved long blocks of down time, often after arriving at the venue for a sound check we’d have six hours of mind numbing blank space to fill… for whatever selfdestructive lack of foresight i didnt bring anything to do except for a ‘game boy “advance” ‘ on which i battled snails and tomatoes before advancing on to forks and evil cupcakes, this all in a game called “bomber man max” or some such, initially i had no aptitude for this whatsoever but after discovering that my approach had been all wrong (that i didnt have to blow up all the snails after all) i became appropriately obsessed… also there was a copy of grand theft auto 3 on the bus which was good for various moments of violent expression (ive gotten a copy of the new one ‘vice city’ which is more an extension of GTA3 than a new game, its got ‘atomic’ and i think ‘call me’ init as well as Debbies voice as a taxi dispatcher…seems they made so much fucking money with GTA3 that they could afford a whole bunch of big names as voices including Ray Liotta as the lead voice etc etc…{speaking of celebrities i was really plucked to meet Juliette Lewis when we were in L.A. the last time, its funny how one can get a sense of how people are from seeing them act, she’s one of the few people ive met who i could honestly say i was a fan of without being merely polite, had seen a lot of her work etc etc, she was so sweet and good natured and down to earth i was really knocked out, i havent had an encounter like that in ages. sooo many of ones heroes turn out to be disappointing when one finally meets them} so yeah a lot of time spent on the bus crashing virtual cars and murdering innocent bystanders) the U.K. is going the route of the USA in as much as the western economy is creating more fancy ass little cafes and galleries everywhere one looks…the last time we were over about 5 tears ago some of the now thriving areas were still uninhabited… Manchester was a real surprise and pleasure, we got a quick glimpse of the pumping youth culture as we walked around one afternoon, i wish i could spend more time there sometime, it reminds me of here in Williamsburg Brooklyn a great deal… im gonna wrap for now ive got a lot more stuff in my head that id like to put down here and hopefully ill have an account up in a week or so (all i can get where i am now is a satellite hookup or a dial-up ugh.) do keep writing i havent checked my mail from the site here for a while and expect to have to spend a day reading… oh yeah the one last thing for now is that i think it was Louis B. who gave me the “switchblade kitty” cd, anyway i really loved it especially the version of ‘my heart will go on’ , a huge improvement over celine thing, and we wound up playing the whole thing before we went on at some of the UK gigs and the sound guy Dave told me that quite a few people had approached him asking what it was… so switchblade kitty there is hope keep up the good work…. as for everyone else thanks all of you who said hello over there and i should be back here pretty soon love CHRIS

the period since returning to nyc has been quite hectic mostly due to my relocating out of new york city proper… simply, i’m moving from a large dark dirty expensive space in the city to an even larger clean light cheaper space in the country…with trees recently i reread “Neuromancer” and was surprised to note how much stuff from Matrix was lifted from it: “His vision crawled with ghost hieroglyphs, translucent lines of symbols arranging themselves…He looked at the backs of his hands saw faint neon molecules crawling beneath the skin”…reminiscent of the green streams of readout in the movie, beyond that the book features a Rasta spacestation called “Zion cluster” and numerous other items that wind up referenced in Matrix… required reading… if anyone was confused by american foreign policy objectives i hope you’ve all got it figured out by now, really simple: take over the world… not to forget that theres a presidential election coming up again in ’04 and being in the middle of a war should assure bush another term, changing horses “in mid stream” and all that… im halfway through Chuck Palahniuk’s latest book “Lullaby” (guy who wrote ‘Fight Club’ , ‘Invisible Monsters’, others) he makes some very cutting observations about the new american decadence, i can also recommend that… i got a few e-mails to the effect of “gee putting out another greatest hits cd sure smacks of wanting to make money” yes! thats absolutely correct! (deeper though, lets not forget that blondie is no longer on emi and they’re gonna put these things out anyway and tempted though i might be to tell them to just keep my share i think i might somehow regret that decision)… i just heard the atomic kitty version of tide is high which is weird that that kind of britney spears programmed sound has evolved into an actual genre, i hope John Holt has made some bucks off of it… not much else is afoot now, packing stuff includes uncovering various forgotten items both great and horrific, old photos and memorabilia; a couple of old pictures of james dean that id forgotten about, posters, autographs, but the fucking miserable moths ate my Tibetan rug even though it had been wrapped in plastic to prevent their access (the moths only eat good stuff, have no appetite for polyester or other synthetics) i’ll be glad to leave them in the city… i dont know when i’ll get on again probably not too far forward, got to get the cable modem up and running in the trees oh, i remembered one thing; what if someone had a program or site where anyone could submit a 3 dimensional rendering of their environment, inside their house, around their neighborhood etc etc etc the goal being to have a computer map of the entire world that would be like a game envirronment, would eventually enable one to travel around the entire planet from their home computer, people could constantly be adding details like a rusty tin can on a sidewalk, a picture on a wall, then the whole world would be filled in in HTML or whatever and you could walk from san francisco to atlanta on the computer all the while going into buildings and rooms and around corners and down alleys etc etc… this led me to think about the time coming when people will be able to brain link with the computer and what if thousands, millions of people could all do it simultaneously making for a huge mechanical hive mind… maybe it would be better than television though somebody would no doubt try to put commercials out there stay out of trouble chris