thanx for all the new years and birthday greetings… Edinburgh was fun, you know we have played new years eve many times over the years maybe starting with central park in ’75 or so, i wonder if we’ve been working doing shows at least as many times as not… (you know it never dawned on any of us that the tide is high might be construed as politically incorrect in light of the flooding in asia but believe it or not i actually did get one message wherein someone complained… i would think that all things considered they might have thought of something more obvious to complain about… funny) then Lansing was also fun though more of a struggle, its gratifying that the audience cant read our minds, doing ‘one off’ shows without the benefit of momentum is very hard… i was pleasantly surprised about how lively the casino in Mich was, casinos can be pretty grim but the old ‘soaring eagle’ was kind of wild and crazy what? caught up on various films… i dont get to “the movies” much and usually see recent stuff in hotels and planes… i thought the US “Grudge” was really great i wasnt at all prepared to like it that much… i thought the actors in “open water” were so lousy that i couldnt get beyond their crummy performances… but mostly i was sooo fucking dissapointed about the dialog in the dubbed version of “HERO” which has become one of my favorite films… i would urge anyone who liked it after seeing in its tarantino release version to go and rent the chinese subtitled version… for example the big punchline in the film: broken sword tells nameless he will write some words in the sand that will convince him not to assasinate the king, right? remember? so ok in the chinese version he writes three words: “all under heaven”, in the american dubbed version he writes two: “our land” so as fucking usual we see the need to explain everything to US audiences, what a demystification! i just dont get it… besides that glaring difference i found a few other variations that seemed unnecessary and weird… i’d only seen the chinese version and watched the US one on the way back from Scotland… anyhow asian films are still pumping, house of flying daggers is pretty great even without the budget of hero… Takeshi Miike still continues to impress and amaze me, Gozu and Zebraman are amazing as is the earlier Deadly Outlaw Rekka actually i just watched ‘Rekka’ a few hours ago, what a great film! Miike is sort of like Scorcese but is somehow freer, more crazy and funny… some more stuff i didnt think too much of like “forgotten”… saw “blade3” in “the movies” HOW MISERABLE HORRIBLE FUCKING AWFUL STILL IS THE MISERABLE ADVERTISING THAT WE ARE SUBJECTED TO IN MOVIE THEATERS… that just continually blows my mind, what kind of nation of sheep have we become that we put up with this? i’m positive that if enough people bitched this trend would be stopped… but blade was pretty cool it was the best looking of the three and i really liked the presence of the various indie actors, Parker Posey was very fun and looked like she was having a great time with the role (thats what our friend Romy Ashby looks like, like the Posey vampire also) soo thanks again for all the messages… im really sorry about all of the requests for pictures and passes and such that i get that go unanswered but we just dont have any way to send stuff out now short of doing it all ourselves piece by piece… maybe sometime in the future… the best bet for getting pictures signed is to send your own blondie picture (that is picture that you want signed) to one of the gigs with an enclosed postage paid envelope to send it back in, we always deal with those, ok sooo happy new years to all and to all a good night… watch out for werewolves