post: cold war of rock, ufo’s etc i urge someone out there to write a screenplay wherein Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes dictator of the united states, perhaps he’s rushed into office after his run as governor due to an invasion of alien space arab terrorists who come from some oil-rich desert planet, singlehandedly he crushes and mangles the evil hordes of slimy turbaned creatures all the while dressed in a smart but tasteful Armani suit cause after all he is the president… anyway the idea is to get Arnold to play himself… i think he’s much better suited to be a dictator than a president… (i recently heard that both hitler and idi amin each had only one testicle, this as a prerequisite for dictatorship could easily be checked in the case of prospective candidates) in other news we (the band) have just returned from a cheerful grind of media attention in Europe… all in all i have come away feeling very positive about the future of the whole thing, that maybe blondie is something beyond being one of the worlds biggest cult bands… the record has been well received by all the people we’ve talked to who heard it and those were mostly journalists and radio people i had a lot of revelations about the world of popular music after spending hours and hours discussing the same stuff with the press at large and the band members… let me see if i can remember some of this shit… wellll i think that the people who are into brittany and american i-dull and all of that stuff are not the people who are deep into music, i think that the ones who buy 15-20 cd’s a year as opposed to those who buy 100 cd’s a year are the ones who are into the superficial trends of music… unfortunatly the masses of people are the ones who in their sheepish following shape the trends of popular culture… i could swear that the dumbing down of the masses and the mainstreamization of popular music is a planned thing… “absurd!! paranoid conspiracy nut thou!!!” but all agree that the days of music as an anti-establishment force are over, that if one can hear heavy rock on a sneaker commercial thats as good or better than the stuff thats on the radio then why bother paying attention, its all become just a soundtrack, backing track for modern life always droning on without any uniqueness… i kept quoting Karl Marx who said something like ‘the way to undermine the bourgeoisies is to co-opt the avant garde’, that means that the way to control the masses is to make any new outstanding idea part of the system of control… in the UK they’ve been eating this ‘pop-idol’ garbage even longer than here, how anti-punk is this bunch of straight old farts telling these tearful young people that they suck or are good… wouldnt it be fantastic if the next time they had a ‘casting call’ for one of these shows nobody showed the fuck up!! one night in a hotel i was watching the brit version of ‘american idol’ (that or porno movies) as they laughingly played the clips of the ‘abject failures’ the people who they considered the worst, bottom etc etc and it struck me that some of these nuts with their quriky personal styles and weirdness were of course WAY better than the bland dull people who were the ‘winners’… and any way where the fuck does competition enter into art, i’ve always been very against the “spirit of competition” that chews its way through society… (years ago i saw a film on life in the rain forests of the amazon; there the older kid is happy to show his skills to the younger, the idea of holding back, competing is not in the vocabulary) the white stripes and the strokes, the white stripes and the strokes, over and over were these guys referred to in our discussions, do they represent a real breaking away from bland mass produced rock or are they just more cult stuff that will be followed up by cleaner more acceptable versions of what they do… this is all an odd very subtle struggle now, its perhaps the ‘cold war’ of rock, not as defined as it was in the days before MTV as the fellow says: “the enemy is us” what else have i got… ok, rather than going away my wife Barbara’s ufo tv spot that was done for SCI-FI TV here is still pulling in comment and e-mails… the main reason being that the thing was shot using the world trade center in new york as a location… now we’ve gotten to a place in the culture wherein my denial of the ‘reality’ of the thing will undoubtedly convince various people of its viability but even though i personally wish that indeed it had been evil aliens who destroyed the trade center, the blame is unfortunately a lot closer to home and the now famous tv spot is just that: a tv spot with a fake photoshop (or whatever) ufo etc etc etc so once again the sci-fi tv spot with the ufo at the world trade center is not a ‘real’ film of a ‘real’ ufo, barbara is the person in the helicopter but she was just pointing at empty sky and the ufo images were put in later, neither she nor i have had any alien encounters, been abducted by space. or other aliens, and we are currently not hanging out with any space aliens and to the best of my knowledge have nevr met any creatures from outer space, have never been on a flying saucer etc etc etc i had some more stuff i wanted to write but i cant remember at the moment… oh one thing is for those of you who read books (the things in book stores) i have been a fan of one Martin Amis of late, he is a pretty complicated writer but i suspect that his books are enjoyable on many levels, any way i really recommend one called “Times Arrow” which simply is the story of a persons life in reverse, a bit like “memento” the film, its much more though, now im into his “London Fields” which is very funny and clever i suggest any of you who indulge in literary pursuits check this stuff out… all for now, rehearsals start soon for the next part of the touring, keep the comments coming in, thank you all as usual love chris