the big A&E show was last night, i hope it was ok, it was pretty exhausting, lot of work but felt good, hopefully i didnt come off like too much of an idiot, im not sure that i really care though but all is vanity as the fella says, D got a bit strangeled by the smoke and squelched the first note of the first chorus of maria, later she growled at the director, im not sure if that got out on the air, for me that was kind of the only semi major mishap, when we do tv they frequently want to have smoke lingering in the air to enhance the mood of the lights and she really dislikes the effect it has on her throat, so they werent supposed to have it on but did… it took us a few songs to warm up and the top of the show may have been a bit stiff… all in all tho i enjoyed it, i of course would like to be on live tv more regularly… anyway i hope you who watched or will see it liked it and im grateful that we were able to do it, the A&E people were fantastic and accommodating to the max so thanx are very due to them if you liked the thing… so now earlyish morning in NYC in this crappy but expensive dump that is reminiscent of a college dorm more than an upscale hotel, the beds are more like cots and they sag big time, dirty beat up rooms etc, if it was just a little bit worse it would be cool, but its kind of in the middle… spending a lot of time in hotels is perhaps making me more critical… actually the dvd player and flat tv is cool so i shouldnt complain… speaking of, i gave you a bum steer in that two of the films id identified as chineese are actually korean, i lose face as they say, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Memories” are still two of the coolest movies i’ve seen in a long time, “Mr. V” is really fucking brutal and i wouldnt reccomend it for everyone but its just weirdly beautiful at the same time (“Ichi the Killer” is released in a US package, is a great one that can be found in tower or virgin)… now another one thats just amazing is “Volcano High”, again just fantastic by any standards, if this one doesnt come out in the US i’ll be flabbergasted…. sort of like matrix set in high school, funny great, very hip… we’ve been finding these movies in various chinatown areas, have hit toronto, SF and NYC so far, all one has to do is go to an asian dvd store and look for ghost and horror films, again im so impressed by whats coming out of the east with these things, its a whole genre and its got to break in the states pretty soon so if you want to get in on something really fresh do check it out what else… Akira and Barbara have been out with us for a few weeks, the baby thing is really great, she came to the rehersal for the show and seemed to be impressed by all of the lights and monitors and stuff, so far she hasnt really been at any of the concerts cause they are loud and we dont want to blow her ears out, at least not without her permission, she gets horribly cuter all the time everyone who writes is always so polite and nice that i get a sort of kick out of messages that say how screwed up i am, that i am a communist etc. problem is i am really quite concerned about what is happening to american culture, its easy to throw the ‘un-american’ lable around, the world is just too small now, i cant believe people are still thinking like this, that we can just cut ourselves off and live in some kind of island void… so who is really surprised by prisoners being abused, i thought that this stuff was a part of what war is all about, i watched bush apologising and the caption under him was “damage control”, everyone knows whats going on, that hes more pissed off about looking bad, losing face than he is about people being killed and beaten up… the whole ‘shock and outrage’ deal is just so much bullshit its stupid that they find it necessary to even get into it… war is about horrible things, no matter how much we may enjoy blowing things up in video games the reality is grim and part of the problem is the blurring thats going on, the merging of entertainment and news for example, more and more i hear these ‘action’ movie soundtracks under news events on tv, what is this saying if not that the event is somehow entertaining, not existing in the dull world of mundane reality… the ads for the army are like video games, its a bad thing, theres not going to be an army commercial with some guy all blown up screaming… ok ive gotta go… to be continued thanx everyone