KICK NOT KILL - IT'S A EURO THING

How soccer explains the world. click here
A lot of soccer-mad hype right now with the FIFA Confed-Cup, UEFA under-21 & the World Cup in South Africa for 2010. Flashback to the summer of 1998 where more than a million people converged on the Champs-Elysees to celebrate France's World Cup victory. It was the largest demonstration of public happiness in Paris since liberation from the Nazis in 1944. The significance of the event was something of a strange sight. It was just a sports win so how could it be compared to the end of occupation? But there it was for everyone to see : the same street in the same city, the same joy & the same outpouring of home pride last seen some 60+ years earlier. What to make of this? All over a game? Europe: 10 centuries of volatile history. One lone word is re-occuring - bloodshed. The violent, destructive slaughter of the innocent. Sure, European civilization has its glories but scarcely a month has gone by in the past 100yrs when one group of Europeans hasn't been intent in wiping out another group of Europeans. Country against country (Hundred Years War), alliance against alliance (Thirty Years War) & citizen against citizen (French Religious Wars). As for our own North American century of progress, advancement & enlightenment? We just need fill in the appropriate blanks. There has been one peace among the Euro powers since the end of WWII. By no stretch does it mean they like one another or carnage has ceased but it seems a way has been found to hate one another without resorting to a real warfare. This miracle goes by the name, soccer.

Legend has it the first reference to football stems from an incident in 1000 (or so) in which the British supposedly celebrated their victory over an invading Danish warrior by using his decaptitated head as a football. The story is sketchy but by the 1100's, England had football matches pitting entire towns against one another; 500 players on a side, a field up to several miles long, games lasting all day & no fixed rules. This mob football & mayhem were semi-organized brawls and rising injuries led King Edward II to ban the game in 1314. The first seeds of infamous Brit hooliganism spreading the disease had been born. Further bans were issued by Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV. These Kings were not only disturbed by the violence but that the sport cut into archery practice time & the kingdom wouldn't be militarily prepared in the event of invasion. By the late 17th century, archery waned among soldiers with the advent of gunpowder & football was now actively encouraged by Charles II. Standard rules were introduced in 1801 & after 1863, when present-day soccer rules were drawn up at Cambridge University, the game spread throughout Europe & the rest of the world. It has since become the most widely played & popular sport in history. Countries now wage their aggression on the soccer field with surrogate armies in shorts. It's supposed to be a game & it's supposed to be fun but an eerie memory of past antagonisms hovers over each match. Everytime a goal is scored, one hears an old echo of old victories & old defeats. Holland vs. Spain, England vs. France, Poland vs. Germany. Outside foreign competition also runs the same parallel on rivalry & jingoism is certainly alive (Israel, Iran). National team fans wave their country's flag & sing patriotic songs loudly. The Europeans have truly found a subsititute for war, even with the dark spectre of home & traveling troublemakers and rioting in the face of volatile political tensions (the Italian league banned fans from displaying anti-semitic & racist banners under penalty that their teams can be made to forfeit and the English Premier league has banned fans from stadiums after convictions for racial abuse). So there it is - conflict in confrontation. The great thing about the Euro presence of soccer and the World Cup evolving out of war is that we are able to count the casualties on the finger of a hand. A generation ago, we counted them in the millions.

"TO BE ENRAGED WITH A DUMB BRUTE THAT ACTED OUT OF BLIND INSTINCT IS BLASPHEMOUS"...

...So said Starbuck in 'Moby Dick'...
But in my opposition to organized religion, I'm beginning to wonder who's the fool. Christianity is a perfect example of service, worship & devotion as a tool of repression playing on fears n' weakness to manipulate & exploit gullibility all in the notion of faith. How many wars have been fought, tyrants bloodlusted & campaigns of annihilation occured as a result of invoking God in the name of divine right? The bible, church & spirituality in this context are all used as nothing but right wing agenda to preserve & maintain continuous staunch conservative/republican control; the ultimate goal to wield (abuse) power. Towing the party line is in tandom to institutionalizing oppression for as it stands, Christianity upholds racism, sexism, enslavement, homophobia, the rejection of science & any cultural nature to kill at will for convoluted purpose. Beware of such followers proclaiming unavailing true belief and becareful of those who declare & would destroy everything else as deemed wrong because you just may see what they selectively ignore - the perpetration of agenda at our expense. Evil always starts out subtle.






Orgasmatronic biblethumpers are a real pet peeve with me. And while we're on the subject of tools...
1.
Last night I stumbled into a Christian chatroom full of fascist pulpiteers of praise. At first I remained ghost just amused with all the nutjobs getting bent outta shape by shitdisturbers. When some brave heathens started talking about porn, it was time for this anonymous spectre to turn poltergeist. I put up an url devoted to naughty nuns & along with cheers from the fellow reprobates came the storm of protest as the mood changed mighty swift. Too funny. After about 45min. of hate directed against me (unsuccessfully masking itself as watered-down scripture) the sanctimonious congregation had had enough of my mischief and decided to tattle to administration where some head-honcho-Principal-type came in & kicked me out. That made me laugh. How surly, coarse & boorish of these primitve, erratic schizos. They haven't heard the last of me...

2.
And what do further sanctimonious defenders reveal in their arguments? That straight up, organized religion & it's dogshit of flailing dogma (both flagellation & flatulation at the same time) is a crock. Using the bible & pounding from the pulpit to feel morally superior to/over others; having seen tv stations n' ministries built to manipulate & bilk 80yr old grandma out of her social security cheque all to build God's bank; God fearing people killing other God fearing folk because they don't worship in reverence the same way - rape, burn, kill, cheat, steal, lie; condemning sex while bathed in the pleasure of perversion. Flaw & hypocrisy walks a fine line in the church. And what a blur decadence is with gays upsetting pious clergy. Who would have imagined the Archdiocese being an arch-enemy preaching to the stupid choir en masse? Binge on God, purge with ipecac. The holy-robed deserve to be rattled n' shaken to the root. (Lesbian nun porn is having one's pie & eating it too). Popes n' Priests be damned as we witness the assassaination of Jesus Christ by the cowardly robbing hordes. The son of Lord Jehovah dying for us today? Phfft, not before taking a bullet in the head first.

WHEN FOREVER COMES CRASHING

I was up at 3AM a short while ago & caught this movie called PI. I forgot how cool & unique this indie film was as it's been years since I first saw it. An original kinda sci-fi thriller of sorts about a troubled math genius named Max who is completely obsessed with numbers & trying to crack the code behind the ultimate challenge: the stock market. He barricades himself from the outside world, builds a super computer he names 'Euclid' to help in his calculations & pops pills galore to fight the pain of increasing chaotic thoughts. His computer eventually crashes & does so spitting out a 216 digit-long printout (an extension of the equation pi) that successfully contains highly valuable n' shocking dead-on predictions for the financial index. With the triumphant discovery, Max's mental state has drastically deteriorated and he's pursued by a sinister Wall Street firm intent on profit potential & a sect of Orthodox Jews who believe the code will reveal the true name of God. Stalked from both sides & unbeknownst to the parties is that Max has destroyed the printout in a fit of despair & the code is now only in his head - now mixed in with a disorienting, swirling wave of horror, hallucinations & paranoia. The overwhelming pressure causes him to flee as he feels plagued n' cursed with a knowledge that no human mind should bare. In all, this flick is a clever b&w assault on the senses about the war on & in the mindstate. Elaborate hand held photography, lightning fast editing, a throbby pounding d&b soundtrack & some unpredictable clever plot twists. On the surface, you'd think a movie about math would be quite boring as fuck but there are enough genuine avant-garde moments of delirium n' dementia that ultimately depict numbers being just as dangerous (if not more so) than any weapon in the wrong hands.

ANNA-LIZED

(by Anna Nymity)
"Hiya me dairest of laddies, the maist bonnie o'the glen. Okay that was kind of Scots/Irish LOL. I was in Ireland almost 2 years ago. I was there on business really, or study. I focused on Celtic designs and especially those relating to women so I spent a fare share looking at relief work and carvings of old chapels in god knows where and sketching the hell out of the place. I became fascinated with the yonic symbols of early and late Celtic designs, like the "horseshoe" shape. I was in France for more time so also managed to do much work on the La Tene culture, both early and late. And I loved also visiting Switzerland, although I had a wonderful bout with lactos intollerance there LOL. But I was able again to sketch the hell out of and do rubbings of many designs to find a common sense of pattern related to female iconography there. As for Ireland though, I also was very interested in sussing out much of the Macha lore and the typologies of women glyphed and iconicized et al. My favorite by far was the Sheila-Na-Gig. Mostly witnessed in the 16th Century Old Irish Churches, her figure is haunting and a remnant of past holy site artifacts integrated into the Church, or is an Irish integration of the notion of death in rebirth through Mary, but made in the Irish fashion. What I love is again the idea of women being complex there. Women are not just virginal life givers but also life takers and the idea of God passing through a vagina shows the understanding of its revererance and a complete reversal to most of the phallic tendencies of humankind after the greco-roman hegemony. I'm of the opinion that the integrations of Chrstianity with hellenic ideology stripped away the importance of the gynocentric.

The idea that life is to be womblike (dependent, abject, weak, vulerable, caring, collaborative), similar to Kristeva's "chora", is what I see in the ideology of the Celts that was eviscerated through the Roman Church and resisted by the Irish. Even the Gallatians were giving Paul one hell of a time LOL. So I left my research concluding that women have a dynamism in meaning not just predicated on their ability to give life and nurture alone, but were relevant and central in how best to ellicit motive for living. Much of that is found in psycho sexual dynamics. The Greeks thought them vain, but perhaps another way of seeing it is that they enjoyed beauty, the body, and weren't ashamed of it. That to me is a sign of the matrifocal/gynocentric power that was a superstructure of the culture. I just love Ireland. I was granted permission to regard the stored Shielas in the Dublin Museum as well as regard many torcs and such. They have a gorgeous collection and I was gobsmacked by it all. I, as so many tourists did, spent time in the Temple Bar area; I had a rented apartment in a building just across the Liffey and could see the part of the city from my room. I shared the apartment with a friend. It was inexpensive, really, but I was a student and the subletters had mercy on us I think. Well and one of the women made a pass at me before we left I do wish I could live in Dublin. But it would be a difficult thing to lug my Mom all the way there and start new as so much of my research and practice is based on American sexual tendencies, especially California attitudes; it would be a tough acclimation I imagine, to start again in a culture that in many respects has a fair amount of misongyny in it. I've heard many Irish women writers speak about the abuses visited upon them and the need for so much institutional change. So that's my adventure summed up Have fun with it. If you want any part embellished or some such let me know."
xoxo,
Anna

MANIFESTO JUKEBOX

How swede it ain't. click here

Isn't it high time the bigwig idiots running the record labels get a clue? Downloading is NOT killing the music industry - outdated business models are. Blaming Myspace & Google (for buying YouTube) as copyright infringers owing millions is bullshit. Look at MTV having built its wealth on the backs of music for virtually nothing. What the fuck do these execs think made kids by all those Duran Duran & Culture Club albums back in the 80s in the first place? Dickheads. Remember Lars Ulrich wanting to draw up a list of 30,000 people - ALL of them Metallica fans(!) with the intention of having the Supreme Court prosecute them? Idiot. Just as bad as suing 12yr olds for sampling too many Britney songs online. It's assholes who behave as if the companies have a god-given right to maintain revenue alone while being immune to changes in technology & consumer behaviour. Unforseen external factors mean businesses have to adjust accordingly & those who bitch about changing tides are often those who get washed away. Dumb pricks. And Myspace (as much as I dislike it) and YouTube are not the enemies they've been made out to be as they are increasingly crucial outlets introducing newcomer listeners (potential customers) to product. Basically this is free advertising & unlike radio, excludes the middleman promoter as exposure to countless numbers is still achieved. Music is a unique product for its existence in the marketplace needn't depend on traditional modes of print & tv but instead through free public broadcasting of the product itself. Word of mouth is as powerful as ever as radio playlists become ever more restrictive & music-video channels give way to accessorized re-runs of teen-fare soapish drivel.

Labels such as Warner have a liscensing deal with YouTube allowing thousands of artist videos to be officially available & recent music conferences continue to have main speeches featuring talks on who needs the record companies when the internet has made it more possible for artists to survive. With growing support, the next step being not to endorse a montezied peer-to-peer service is completely illogical. And with the unlimited exchange of legal media over the web, royalties based on usage will still generate huge profits from fees & additional charges. Such implementations are already a go in China (anyone recall the population of that country as of late?) with plans for Canada next. Any other industry faced with the same troubles as the music biz -- falling sales, alienated consumer bases, thinner fan loyalty -- would step back in realizing that their item wasn't up to snuff. Solution? Improve. But what does the industry do? Threatens customers & websites with lawsuits while embracing an 'Idol' mentality of 'get rich quick' that sees companies dumping millions into promoting pablum artists with barely any long-term return. Much of the riches in the biz comes from repackaging & re-selling its own catalogue which certainly works when enduring heritage artists like the Beatles, Hendrix, Cash & Miles Davis can move greatest hits/compilations endlessly. The problem is labels are so steeped in a blockbuster mindset that fewer n' fewer long-term artists can keep that kind of money rolling in for decades to come. With more n' more lame-duck Idol/reality searches, the image & radio-ready singles are a given but if previous experiences of such past winners are anything to go by, look for the label to drop these dorks within 2yrs. And look for their cd to end up in dollar bins at any random 2nd hand store - a scenario far more likely than kids 20yrs from now set to purchase their box sets(!) Kids of tomorrow aren't going to be looking for their faves on top 40 radio or prime time tv talent contests with brand new, hand-picked fake dweeb hopefuls. They'll be on the internet downloading and instead of calling their lawyers, the retarded record company suits should pull their heads out from p their asses & update their flash software.

DREAMING FOR VENGEANCE

Every politician from here to the end of time is gonna be called a liar & a cheat. And for all of the promise & praise that Obama's popularity brings, why is it that his detractors seem to bring a special breed of idiocy? After 8yrs of George Dubya cowboyism-dyslexia-retardation, for pundits to say Obama is already one of the worst or most incompetent to come down the pipe??? Fuck them! Straight up, let's get WAY past the race-thing -- elections have clearly gotten to the point where we are not voting for who we like the most but instead who we dislike the least. The lesser of 2 evils argument has its merits but if Obama is the exception than what we are simply dealing with is just more rightwing masturbation & sourgrapes from people who can't get over their party losing. Yeah yeah, in time approval ratings will slide but don't all Presidents fall into being average at the very least? Yeah yeah, sooner than later the bashers will rain criticism but regardless of officials breaking platform pledges in their smear campaigns, no matter who we are, if we look deep enough & delude ourselves, we'll find a conspiracy anywhere, every time.

JUNE 6, 1944 (SEVERED HEAD OF STATE)

Another annual tv weekend marathon commemorating D-Day's 65 anniversary today. And as dwindling veterans pass, how very different the world would be right now had Operation Overlord been a disastrous failure because if there is one continuous existing myth about the invasion & its surrounding battles that needs to be properly dispelled, it's that of total victory being in the bag from the get go. 'The Longest Day' was by no stretch an immediate or definite surefire defeat of the enemy, right off the bat.


Thousands of Allied troops (as many as 150,000) have begun landing on the beaches of Normandy in northern France at the start of a major offensive against the Germans with thousands of paratroops & glider-borne troops having been also dropped behind enemy lines as the Allies are already said to have penetrated several miles inland. Known as 'Operation Overlord', the continental invasion of occupied Europe was also preceded by air attacks along the French coast with about 1300 British RAF planes involved in the first wave of assaults followed then by 1000 American bombers taking up the attack on further targets in the north. Prime Minister Winston Churchill has told MPs that 'Operation Neptune' - the codename for the Normandy landings cross-channel naval phase - is proceeding "in a thoroughly satisfactory manner on a scale far larger than anything there has been so far in the world." and has so far taken place with extremely little loss. The assault began shortly after midnight under the command of General Bernard Montgomery. Timing of the landings was crucial as the right weather, a full moon & proper tidal conditions were needed. They were originally scheduled to take place on May 1 - then postponed until June and put off again at the last minute for 24hrs because of bad weather but the delays allowed for time to gather more troops & equipment. Departing from England, an armada upwards of 4000 ships & several thousand smaller craft crossed the Channel. King George VI broadcast a message last night warning of the "supreme test" the Allies faced & he called on the nation to pray for the liberation of Western Europe from nazi control. The Allied naval commander, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, said the landings had taken the Germans completely by surprise as there were no enemy reconnaissance planes out and the opposition of coastal batteries was much less than expected & did not affect putting armies ashore. A statement broadcast from Berlin at midday however said the German troops were "nowhere taken by surprise" and claimed many parachute units were wiped out on landing or taken prisoner along with direct hits also scored on battleships & on landing craft from the "guns of the Atlantic Wall" - the German defensive positions. American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told a news conference the invasion did not mean the war was over saying "You don't just walk to Berlin & the sooner this country [USA] realizes that the better."

A total of 5 French beaches (and a floating harbour) were code-named & to keep the D-Day landings secret, a deception plan named 'Operation Fortitude' was mounted which led the Germans to believe the main target was infact the Pas-De-Calais, much farther east. One bizarre instance occured with Leonard Dawe: He was a school headmaster who revealed 7 top secret D-Day code-words in crosswords he compiled for The Daily Telegraph newspaper in May 1944. The odds of so many correct answers, so close together in a period of less than a month raised the suspicions of panicked security officials who felt such a harmful leak would completely jeopardize planning. When Dawe was investigated by MI-5, they concluded the crossword clues were nothing more than astonishing coincidence. (In later years it was revealed the solutions were infact learned from not-so-clandestine Canadian & American soldiers -- particularly friendly with the youngsters -- billeted near Dawe's school and therefore the highly sensitive & privileged information was infact quite common knowledge). When the landings finally began (aside from battling high seas, mist, landmines, burning vehicles & some elite infantry opposition pouring down heavy fire) there were only 14 of the 58 German divisions in France facing the Allied Expeditionary Forces but the outnumbered enemy (hampered at first by Hitler refusing immediate counterattacks and then hesitating to release nearby armored divisions which meant costly delays - and this was after he had taken a sedative & gave orders not to be awakened) eventually brought up reinforcements who provided such quick n' stiff resistance in some places as to put the success of the overall mission in serious doubt. Immensely central in helping to win the war, the invasion of Normandy was the largest amphibious assault in history ever launched. It involved 5 army divisions in the initial assault with over 7,000 ships having set sail in addition to 11,000 aircraft flying out.

In total 75,215 British & Canadian troops and 57,500 American troops were landed by sea on D-Day. Another 23,400 were landed by air. Contrary to the long-spoken claim of Montgomery (he, the egotistic perennial pain-in-the-ass of supreme commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower) that D-Day had come off as exactly planned, his boast was quite untrue as the invasion's introduction saw only a fraction of the vehicles & a quarter of its supplies get through from the start. This was further evidenced by the Allied failure to take Caen on the first day as scheduled. By the 2nd week of Jun however, the Allies had secured the Peninsula beyond Cherbourg but progress continued slowly as the Germans put up fierce resistance. The end of the campaign came with the destruction of the German 7th Army in the Falaise pocket in Aug & although the Allies had reached the German frontier by Sept, they decided to re-group during the winter because of the disastrous failure of 'Operation Market-Garden' -- the ill-fated (and at the time, largest airborne invasion ever) of Holland to capture key bridges and the Dec 'Battle of the Bulge'. Both setbacks ended Allied expectations of ending the war by Christmas 1944. The invasion of Germany only began in Jan 1945. The tenacity, heroism, bravey, courage & improvisation displayed by soldiers from the Allied countries on D-Day has served as inspiration for countless documentaries & several films, including 'D-Day, the Sixth of June' (1956), 'Ike - Countdown to D-Day' (2004) and most famously 'The Longest Day' (1962) and 'Saving Private Ryan' (1998). It was also depicted in the HBO mini-series 'Band of Brothers' (2001).

JUNE 5, 1989 (PHFFFFT, YOU & WHAT ARMY?)

What generated global support for serious positive reform, lives on to be remembered for its lasting legacy of tyranny stemming from imposed repression. And perhaps the most asked question: Whatever happened to this guy?



20yrs ago today, "He" singlehandedly & quietly produced one of the most iconic & defining images of courage in the 20th century... As China had been rumbling with dissent, in Apr 1989, the death of former communist party head, Hu Yoabang who supported democratic reforms, roused some 100,000 students to gather at Beijing's most symbolic rallying point, Tiananmen Square, in commemoration of him & to voice their discontent with the authorative ruling body. The students demanded to meet with Premier Li Peng hoping to express and push for more-lenient & improved conditions. The government refused leading to a general boycott of universities across the country. By May 1989, liberal demonstrations calling for an end to widespread corruption became more regular having grown into mass protests eager for change & led by students. Tacit support from intellectuals, urban workers & ordinary citizens from all walks of life joined to swell the numbers supplying food, water & money and weeks of inconclusive marches saw up to a million people settle in the Square. The goodwill soon soured & after hardline government elders of the communist party dismissed 1000 hunger strikers as 'upstart bourgeois lackeys of capitalism' and declared martial law, they ordered in the troops to clear out all they deemed as defiant troublemakers & reclaim the Square. By Jun 2, the intervention caused both sides to resort to violence and confrontation inevitably resulted in brutal crackdown (the state's long-representative physical substitute for intolerance) & impending massacre. Although most students left the Square voluntarily, casualties mounted with many having tried to avoid the bloodbath that came nonetheless and countless times, rickshaw drivers selflessly entered firing lines in no-man's land to pick up the wounded & get them to hospitals which were quickly being overwhelmed with injured. In the surrounding streets, soldiers moving in from several directions randomly shot into jampacked unarmed crowds keeping up their withering semi-automatic fire as many helpless people had no chance of escape & military vehicles rolled over bodies. Shocked & frantic students fought back where they could but the unsympathetic Chinese Army (PLA) brutally overpowered them to seize control. Amid the panic, confusion, shooting & suppression, terrified people could be heard shouting "fascists stop killing" and "down with the government".

As the demonstrations were originally sparked by the death of Yaobang, they were also to coincide with a visit to the capital by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev but after 7 weeks of Tiananmen Square being occupied, a failed imposed curfew & refusal to move until their democratic demands were met, several failed attempts to persuade & warn the protestors to leave (despite repeated assurances from politicians that no violence would erupt) had finally resulted in worst case scenario. The greatest challenge to communist China since the 1949 revolution was over. The ferocious clampdown on 'social chaos' was seen as deplorable & brought world condemnation against statesman Deng Xiaoping, personally believed to have ordered the Army's deployment as a way of shoring up his leadership. Under the cover of night, a rebellion had been crushed & with bedlam continuing in the nearby streets, reports would emerge of troops in their violent confrontation, searching the main Beijing university campus for ringleaders, beating & killing those suspected of co-ordinating the protests. Thousands more would be arrested & jailed. The exact death toll remains a state secret (and it's unlikely a precise number will ever be given) but victim organizations list 1100 known dead and while the soldiers won the battle, they equally & clearly lost the moral war. A lone brave man of iron will standing resolute & blocking a path of extreme aggression to fearlessly stare point blank down a cannon muzzle (for 30 minutes) proved it. 'Tank Man' remained unmoving straight infront of the column until he raised his arm to extend a flower as a gauntlet of peace. When he was quickly whisked away, speculation n' suspicion rapidly arose as to whether his extractors were friends, fellow anonymous protesting students or undercover Chinese agents. Regardless, we had collectively held our breath watching an unbelievable (even sinister) scene that depending on point of view, derived all its power from either being a grand gesture of pacification or a moment of desperate madness to stop insanity itself.

CANDLES ON THE CALENDAR & ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE - NOW MAKE A WISH

Weird thing about birthdays - today being mine: I don't really feel any older than I did 15yrs previous, inpsite of things obviously being different. And the sentiment persists. Other people seem to make more of a big deal about aging than I do so I guess it's about their perspective on maturing. On a whole, this hang-up about getting older in life probably says more about society & our view on change. A few days after the birthday, I ran into an old friend who asked me if I STILL listen to heavy music & she was quite surprised when I told her 'hell yes' like somehow I should have given up on this indulgence long ago. So now I'm looking at birthdays from a music point-of-view -- it's not surprising to see an attitude in place of 'x amount of time requiring one to be put out to pasture'. While some things need to come to proper end, the idea of outside consignment which says it's time for personal involvement in our preferences (whether through action or appreciation) to diminish & be put to rest is straight-up bullshit & yet let's admit, subject to hypocrisy (how many times do we criticize anything that has grown tiresome from having run its due course)? The bigger picture seems to ask what happens when pissed off *gasp* placates into mellow? Is the ultimate example parenthood & responsible familial duty? Looks like that really is growing up but does a mortgage, good job, wife n' kids preclude you from a part of your life that you grew up with & shaped you? Should we dismiss & abandon because of OTHER people's perceptions? Fuck no. And yet I understand 2 opposing sentiments which seem to be indicative of reaching middle age but birthday or not, I've never gotten into the mindset of reaching a number that signifies 'it's over'. Age is but a piece of cake - another slice gone by & more every year whether we like it or not. Certainly nothing wrong with celebrating but frankly I can do without the sense of being rushed as a result of an existing notion of 'getting up in years' - too much fuss. (But hey, 'and many more', as the saying goes).

ADVOCATE OR ADVERSARY, DEVIL MUSIC DO YOUR THING

The pre-occupation & paranoia of witches and satanic panic during the Medieval Renaissance Europe of the 15th century found Lucifer anywhere - even between the notes of music. Sources forbid certain intervals such as the tritone aka 'diabolicus in musica' which lent a certain sense of anticipation or suspense allegedly allowing for the embrace of demonic grip which ultimately had to be avoided in sacred composition. As the era was very in tune with mysticism and the social/political/religious and moral facets of life divided beween good & evil, music was no exception; dancing & instrumentals were banned and major scales in classical were discouraged as they were considered too lustful/sexual. The tritone (being traced back as early as the 9th century) has 3 notes in which the 3 tones from start to finish are 6 semitones apart thus '666', the number of the beast. Concert halls decked-out with outsized instruments & huge symphony orchestras were the "heavy" of their day because of the sheer force of transgressive power chords to literally shake the walls. By the time Blues & Heavy Metal musicians began using & lengthening the tritone, they often still simulated the sounds of sorrow or fear from the connotations that have existed from the long historical prohibition born of fright by temptation of damnation; an invocation to sin imbued through a dark power. This evolvement stems from a vast reservoir & repertoire of expression accentuated by the dexterity of speed & fluency. The technical 'borrowing' from classical is found in the intricate arpeggios, complex linear scaling & the operatic scope in vocals. In time, came the challenging projection of theatrics & some applied dramatics (primordial/gut-instinctive/animalistic growls, larnyx-shredding, diminishment, crescendo, electrified distortion). Satan may still haunt some modern music (and be responsible for some virtuosos) but if he is indeed the piper to be paid with the price being the immortal soul in exchange for a body of work to be forever hailed as a crucible (hello Robert Johnson), then as appreciating, agreeing & accompanying fans (accessories) - as listeners in league with the players - we've already sealed our fate in this entrancement to gladly burn in eternal hellfire. Hahaha.

R.I.P. Marilyn Chambers.
The porn legend is best remembered for creating a sensation when she starred in the classic 1972 x-rated movie, Behind the Green Door. Born Marilyn Ann Briggs in Rhode Island & raised in Connecticut, the youngest of 3 children, she wanted to pursue a career in modelling but was discouraged by her father who cited the brutal competition. She began her onscreen career with a bit part in the 1970 Barbara Streisand film, The Owl and the Pussycat by which time, a move to California resulted in topless model work & exotic dancing. After leaving Los Angeles for San Francisco, she then appeared as the Ivory Snow detergent model (the woman holding the baby). After failing to find work in theatre & dance groups, Chambers soon saw an advertisement for a casting call but upon the audition, found it was for a porno film and when she was about to leave, the producers Artie & Jim Mitchell noticed her resemblance to actress Cybill Shepherd and agreed a wholesome blond actress was needed for the film. When filming (for what was Behind the Green Door) concluded, she informed the brothers that she was "the Ivory Snow Girl" and the Mitchell duo informed the media to capitalize on her early innocence. The film prompted a run on detergent boxes and while ticket & product sales spiked, the advertising industry was scandalized to which she was dropped by an embarrased Procter & Gamble after her double life was exposed. The film itself was among the first ever in American feature-length hardcore to include inter-racial sex, a taboo that shocked the industry & viewing public. Now a bonafide starlet (with the help of Deep Throat & The Devil in Miss Jones ushering in the porno chic era), Chambers sought crossover success in mainstream movies & in 1977 starred in Canadian director David Cronenberg’s R-rated low-budget horror movie, Rabid. After writing an autobiography, releasing a disco single, doing the talk-show circuit & adorning dozens of adult magazine covers, in 1980 she starred in Insatiable, which was the top-selling adult video in the U.S. from 1980-82. Still hoping to launch a legit acting career, it never materialized as non-porn roles were highly elusive. Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein (now California senator) was on an anti-smut vendetta to clean up the strip club scene in the city (she had also been notoriously virulent in trying to shut down punk rock) & in Feb 1985, Chambers was arrested to widespread publicity while giving a nude performance at a club owned by the Mitchells (the O'Farrell Theatre). The vice squad charged her with committing a lewd act in a public place & soliciting prostitution. She was released on $2000 bail & the charges were later dropped. She eventually left the porn biz because of the increasing fear of AIDS. Her return to porn however was launched in 1999 & by the 2000's, she had appeared in a handful of some indie films. She first entered politics in the 2004 presidential election, running for VP on the quasi-libertarian Personal Choice Party ticket where she received 946 votes. In the 2008 presidential election, she again was a PCP running mate but this time as an alternate to a primary Boston Tea Party candidate. Sadly, Chambers was discovered dead in her Los Angeles mobile home by her 17yr old daughter, McKenna. Documents identified her as Marilyn Ann Taylor and the Coroner's autopsy revealed that she died of a cerebral hemorrhage & aneurysm related to heart disease. Although vicodin & anti-depressant medication were found in her bloodstream, it was ruled not enough to cause death. Marilyn Chambers was 56.
Nearly every adult film Chambers made following the Ivory Snow revelation featured a cameo of her with the detergent box & the scandal was said to have led to the formation of a 'Marilyn Chambers clause' in all modelling contracts that stipulated one can never have previously posed topless or nude in any adult film or magazine. While she originally balked at performing in 'Behind the Green Door', she decided to take a chance saying the fantasy element of the story turned her on and agreed under the condition of receiving a hefty salary & 10% of the film's gross. She also insisted that each actor get tested for venereal disease. The Mitchells eventually relented. In 1974, she appeared in some dinner theater & later a Neil Simon play, both in Las Vegas. She was given the keys to the city by the Mayor. Later she starred in a short-lived off-Broadway musical revue which was soon banned from all the casinos due to its full-frontal nudity. David Cronenberg had stated that he wanted to cast Sissy Spacek in the lead for 'Rabid' (coming off her massive success with 'Carrie') but the studio vetoed his choice proclaiming Spacek wrong because of her accent. The idea of casting Chambers came from producer Ivan Reitman who heard that she was looking for a mainstream role & felt that it would be easier to market the film in different territories if the well-known porn star portrayed the main character. Cronenberg was impressed with Chambers' hard work & further stated he hadn't seen her porn movie prior to casting her. Inspite of acclaim that came from 'Rabid', she had good reason to be disillusioned by Hollywood throughtout the 1970's: the oppurtunity to star alongside Rip Torn in 'City Blues' as a young hooker defended by a seedy lawyer seemed promising as director Nicholas Ray (after simply meeting her) likened Chambers to be able to handle anything just like a young Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis(!) but the project never came to fruition in large part due to Ray's alcohol & drug abuse... When she was brought in to talk to Jack Nicholson & Art Garfunkel for a role in 'Goin' South', she claimed both men apparently only wanted to bum cocaine from her & grilled her for sordid details about her porn work. Angered at their disrespect & immaturity, she stormed out of the interview... And when she was set to appear opposite George C. Scott in 'Hardcore', the casting director took one look at her saying she was too wholesome to be a porn queen. Years later, Chambers said she found the cliche of what they were looking for (an orange-haired, gum-chewing, stiletto-heeled, purse-swinging bimbo) dumb n' ridiculous... In her personal life, she was married 3 times: First to a street musician. Then to porn production manager Chuck Traynor (the highly controversial ex-husband of Linda Lovelace whom right up to his death by heart attack in Jul 2002 - just 3 months after Lovelace's fatal car accident death in Apr - had long been accused of virtually holding her prisoner to physical abuse & mental torture) who also became her manager. The couple were married for 10yrs & years after their split, Chambers never brought any allegations of abuse against Traynor. Her last marriage produced her daughter. By the 1980's, Chambers even had a brief stint as the lead singer of a country&western band named Haywire. When arrested in 1985, her attorney claimed that she was used as a pawn in a struggle over control & adult businesses as the arrest came 3 days before a Board of Supervisors were to vote on a proposed ordinance to eliminate police permits for adult bookstores & theaters. In the wake of her arrest however, the Board stripped police of their power to license the city's adult theaters. (She was arrested again at a strip club in Cleveland under similar charges & this time held in jail until she was freed on a $1,000 bond). In 2000, Charlie Sheen & Emilio Estevez starred as the Mitchells in the cable television bio-pic 'Rated X', about the brothers' film & strip-club career. Actress Tracy Hutson played Chambers. In a 2004 interview with the Montreal Gazette, Chambers said: "I thought the Ivory Snow & Green Door celebrity would be a positive stepping stone to other positive endeavors but the paradox was that as a result of Green Door, Hollywood instead blackballed me. The movie became a very high-grossing film but to a lot of people, it was still a dirty movie. For me to do anything else as an actress was totally out of the question. I became known as a porno star & that type of labeling really hurt me. It hurt my chances of doing anything else. I would have loved to move on but I’ve been stigmatized & it’s something that’s very difficult to get out of. My advice to somebody who wants to go into adult films is absolutely not! It's heart-breaking. It leaves you kind of empty. So have a day job & don't quit it". Upon the death of Marilyn Chambers, Behind the Green Door is repeatedly ranked within the top 3 of Top 10 All Time Best Porn Movie Ever lists. She was recently voted #6 on the list of Top 50 Porn Stars of All Time by AVN - the adult industry's top trade journal. Amusingly, critics still debate whether she was really having orgasms in her Green Dooor scenes or just acting. She stated in one early interview that they were real but denied it in another interview many years later.

FEBRUARY 29, 1929 (NO LOVE LOST IN BEING THIRSTY & MISERABLE)

80yrs ago today, the most infamous underworld murders known as the 'St. Valentine's Day Massacre' had it roots 10yrs earlier... At midnight on Jan 16, 1919 (after a century of zealously romanticized temperance work by clergymen, women's groups, reformed boozers & single issue lobbyists all pushing for 'dry' with a complete ban seeming the logical next step), Prohibition - in the form of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution - was passed with the intent to ban the sale/consumption/manufacture/production/transportation of alcohol for intoxicating beverage purposes. The real government power however that became the stricter law of the land for the country & thus enforced Prohibition was named the 'Volstead Act' after the Minnesota rep. (Andrew Volstead) who introduced it in Congress where it passed on Oct 28, 1919. It officially took effect on Jan 16, 1920 making the 5th largest industry in the USA now illegal.
1. At the time of ratification, more than half the states in America were already dry & authorities rushed through state laws covering a whole range of socially progressive reforms. Women identified the role of liquor in domestic & child abuse, the police knew of alcohol's contribution to crime and industrialists blamed drink for low productivity & safety issues. WWI had made sobriety look patriotic because many breweries had German origins & by war's end, various interest groups had forged such an influential popular temperance movement that no politician could ignore it even if he wanted to.

Almost immediately with Prohibition, bootleggers began big business operations thus fuelling a criminal underclass empire that quickly swelled to further incorporate and dominate the twin vices of gambling & prostitution. Clever oppurtunists in their routine flouting made money while even more shrewd kingpins amassed fortunes. Unregulated speakeasies opened up in the thousands & millions of defiant n' everyday Americans by mereley drinking, contemptuously broke the law. Small time goons fought each other to gain control of liquor distribution and hoodlums in the expanding trade in the cities where mostly immigrants or immigrant sons filled with big ambitions & little to lose. In no time at all, increasing violence erupted but it was the deepening concern about widespread graft, lawlessness & seemingly open warfare in the streets of Chicago that made that city synonymous with murder n' mayhem for a generation.
2. Drinking went openly underground into the speakeasies supplied by increasingly well-armed gangs & bootleggers, rum-runners & beer barons who stopped at nothing to fuel the colossal demand for a drink. Whether manufactured or home-made, certified champagne or blindness-inducing 'mountain dew' (impure bathtub gin was so dangerous that 50,000 Americans died in 7yrs from its poor quality and it was said that when one potential customer sent such a sample of moonshine for laboratory analysis, the returned chemist's report read: "Your horse has diabetes(!)", rich n' poor alike shared in the euphoric glamor of illicit drink as well as the rampant violence of the armed gangs' ruthless economy. Every shot of whiskey embedded corruption deeper at city, county, state & federal level - rotting the very fabric of society.

Chicago crime boss Johnny Torrio capitalized right away from Prohibition. In 1919 after learning of an attempt on his life, he sent for 20yr old Alphonse Capone to be his bodyguard & the 2 men later arranged for the May 1920 murder of Diamond Jim Colosimo to take over his empire after the boss expressed his disinterest with the oppurtunities in illicit booze. Torrio presided over an unlikely federation of neighborhood gang leaders coming from nearly every ethnic group: Former altar boy, safecracker & sometime florist Charles 'Dion' O'Banion ran the Northside Irish crew who specialized in smuggling booze down from Canada. The Sicilian Genna brothers on the near-westside had stills insalled in dozens of private homes that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And Polish Joe Saltis of the Southwestside was said to be the first gangster to settle his business disputes with a tommy gun. Torrio had promised that everyone would prosper as long as they agreed to stay out of each other's territory & refrain from hijacking one another's product. Anyone violating the rules could expect to be targeted & in 1921 they all signed on to become charter members of what came to be called the 'Chicago Outfit' which had the enthusiastic support of the redfaced n' shameless and permanently on-the-take, long-time Republican Mayor, Big Bill Thompson. Thompson (who was as corrupt as the day was long) made sure there would be little to fear from the law & the Chief of Police himself admitted that 60 percent of his officers were involved in bootlegging. In Aug 1922, chief enforcer & brothel owner Al Capone - was arrested for drunkenly brandishing a gun after a traffic accident. The charges were dropped (in what would become a long systematic pattern of 'beat the rap' fixings) but the Brooklyn transplant had produced his first newspaper headline (a flaw for media attention that many would consider his fatal undoing contributing to his eventual downfall nearly a decade later).

By Spring 1923, the era's good times were just getting underway & Torrio's syndicate was grossing $1 million a month. Capone got 25 percent of the profits and when a Democratic reformer was elected Mayor, the 2 moved their headquarters to a hotel in the working-class Republican-maintained suburb of Cicero. In Apr 1924, armed thugs kept compliance by terrorizing voters at the polls & knocking the candidate for town clerk senseless. At one point when shots were exchanged with Sheriff's deputies, Capone's brother Frank was riddled with bullets & killed. Later when the president of a village board dared tell a reporter that he was thinking of acting more independently, Capone himself hurled the man down the steps of City Hall. Tampering with legitimate bureaucracy alongside the daily protection rackets of extortion was proving fruitful but still, in vying to take overall charge of bootlegging, Torrio & Capone were just getting started. That May, O'Banion, ever-worried & mistrustful of the Italians conspiring against the Irish, arranged a doublecross. When he learned the police were planning to raid his biggest illegal brewery, he kept the information to himself and told Torrio & Capone he wanted out of the business and was willing to sell it to them for $500,000. When Torrio arrived to take possession, waiting police descended and arrested him & a number of his men. Cheated out of the money, a furious Capone remarked, "O'Banion's head got away from his hat." A few months later in Nov as the Irishman was working in his flower shop, 2 gunmen (John Scalise & Albert Anselmi) shot him dead - shaking his hand in a hard clasp while pumping 6 bullets into him. Capone denied any conncection & sent a huge bouquet to the funeral while O'Banion's henchmen, Earl 'Hymie' Weiss & George 'Bugs' Moran (born Adelard Cunin) swore & plotted vengenace. The Chicago Beer Wars had begun. When someone shot up Capone's car, he ordered a new 7-ton bulletproof Cadillac. In Jan 1925, Weiss & Moran shot Torrio as he returned from shopping with his wife. He was hit 5 times & as he lay on the ground, Moran stood over him saying, "This is for Deanie O'Banion, you dago bastard." When he pulled the trigger aimed at Torrio's head, the chamber was empty. Torrio lay near death for a week & 30 armed men sent by Capone stood guard outside the hospital. He survived but in Feb, was sentenced to 9 months in prison for bootlegging and on his release he decided soon afterwards he had enough, announced his retirement & left for New York handing over the empire to his trusty lieutenant saying: "It's all yours, Al. Me? I'm quitting. It's Europe for me.". Up until that point, he & Capone had both been making an income of more than $50 million annually but now, Capone having inherited all of Torrio's Chicago operations, moved to consolidate his hold in the lucrative bootlegging business. While in his meteoric rise n' quest seeking more power, shakeups occured in the hierarchy and wild fighting rivalries led to more sensational shootouts & bombings. He was now suddenly in the spotlight with a growing penchant for seeing his name n' picture in the papers (to which he was undoubtedly popular) & the telephone directory had him listed as an antiques dealer.

By Summer 1926 (with the mutually fond appetite from the press making him an international celebrity), Capone had become notoriously famous particularly in being blamed for the murder of a Chicago State Attorney. The publicity from the death sparked outrage & in private, Capone's triggermen hadn't meant to hit the prosecutor but instead, the gangsters who had been walking next to him (the criminals were infact friends who had gone to school with the lawyer). Capone was never charged & the uneasy peace that had been carefully negotiated by his mentor Torrio with the various ethnic gangs (from another deal 3yrs previous) hadn't lasted very long (always wavering & always shattering) as the large profits made from hijacking each others liquor shipments proved much too tempting. In Sept, Weiss & Moran led a deadly convoy of 11 Sedans driving slowly past Capone's Hawthorne Inn hotel headquarters & brazenly spraying the building with over a thousand rounds. Capone lay unhurt & miraculously no one was killed (although several innocent bystanders were hit & parked cars damaged) but a week later in Oct, Weiss was machinegunned to death outside a downtown Cathedral with 3 of his underlings wounded. Again, no one was arrested and by the end of 1926, 76 gangsters had been shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death. 54 more would die in 1927. The Chief of Police told a reporter that while he didn't want to encourage the business, it was good that the gangsters were killing each other off as it saved the cops the trouble. Meanwhile jurors, judges & prosecutors had been bought, mobsters refused to talk, intimidated witnesses developed 'Chicago amnesia' & none of the murderers was ever sent to jail. A literary digest described the city as "murder galore & crime unpunished" and one Senator demanded that President Calvin Coolidge withdraw US Marines from Nicaragua & send them to Chicago. When New York gangster Charles 'Lucky' Luciano visited the city, he pronounced it "A real goddamned crazy place. Nobody's safe in the street." With most of his enemies dead or driven out of town, Capone tired of the daily shooting & called for a truce. Everything seemed to be going his way and his old ally ex-Mayor Thompson decided to run again, promising an end to police raids which he said only seemed to affect thirsty working people & leave the bigshots untouched. Capone gave the politico an estimated $250,000 to run his campaign which he won by a landslide. 'Scarface' himself continued to be an addictive hound for media (which most gangsters shunned & cleverly avoided like the plague) always trying to lighten his image by giving interviews & holding press conferences to present himself as not the bad guy but instead a Robin Hood-type benefactor giving the citizens the light pleasures they wanted. Readers couldn't get enough of him (albeit in a complicated relationship) & in the process of self-elevation to remove the tag of supervillain, he became one of the best known Americans on earth. By 1928 and with diversification, he nonetheless with a prophetic eerieness now cautioned everyone against investing in the booming stockmarket which he said was a racket. Perhaps the most naive thing about Capone was his ability to believe in a false illusion that he could be a family man, a gangster & kill people when he had to and think he could come out of it all with a positivity of pulling it off with untouchable respectability...

On Feb 14, 1929, Capone was vacationing at his Miami villa. Back in Chicago, the truce he had tried to impose on the city's bootlegging gangs had collapsed yet again. Chief enemy no. 1 was Moran who loathed Capone & loved saying so to the newspapermen by calling him a beast & a behemoth who was lower than a snake's belly because he dealt in flesh. In the city that morning - according to one of many contradictory stories - Moran received a phone call from a nameless hijacker who had a big stolen shipment of whiskey for sale. Moran told the caller to drive it to the SMC Cartage Company warehouse garage where he'd be met at 10:30AM by 7 of Moran's men waiting to collect & contrary to common belief, the devious plan was to lure Moran & perhaps 2 or 3 of his lieutenants to bump them off - not wipe out the entire gang. (Some academics state the stolen shipment set-up is untrue & was simply a guess made by a federal officer who was later fired). Moran himself was late because he had stopped for a haircut (his delay being a twist of fate that spared him what would have been certain execution to which another 3 of his men who were on their way also luckily avoided detection/death). At the appointed time of arrival, 4 men drove up in a Cadillac Sedan (some witnesses claiming they saw what looked like a police car & others saying more than one vehicle arrived) & hurried into the garage. 2 wore police uniforms & the other 2 were dressed in suits, ties, overcoats & hats. All carried shotguns or tommy guns. They lined the 7 men up against the wall & coldly opened fire. The scene of carnage was gruesome as the 7 were ripped apart in the volley. Witnesses saw the 2 fake cops lead the 2 plainclothemen out of the garage with their hands up at gunpoint & driven away; a sly ruse allowing for all to escape under the guise of apprehension/arrest. One victim (Frank Gusenberg) was still alive after the killers left & was rushed to hospital shortly after the real police arrived at the scene. When he was stabilized by doctors & questioned by the authorities asking who shot him, the mortally wounded man replied, "I'm not gonna talk. Nobody shot me" despite the 14 bullets pumped into him. Refusing to utter a word revealing the identities of the shooters, he died 3hrs later. The only real survivor was infact an alarmed German Shepherd tied to a truck whose uncontrollable barking was heard by 2 women in a boarding house across the street - one of whom sensed something was wrong. She sent a roomer over to the garage to see what was upsetting the dog & upon the horrible discovery, ran out sickened at the sight. Inspite of Capone being in Florida, he was instantly suspected of being the mastermind ordering the hit (if for no other reason than having the clout to do so). No one was ever arrested or charged and to this day - amidst many theories - the real perpetrators are unknown and even with the widely believed speculation of being responsible, it was never proven that Capone was involved. The killers got away clean and Moran managed to hold onto his territory in what was left of his gang but continued to feud bitterly with Capone to which he remarked of the deaths, "Only Capone kills like that" while Capone commented, "The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran."
3. For decades historians have speculated on a dizzying array of suspects: members of Detroit's Purple gang & St. Louis' Egan's Rats - both of whom had ties to the Capone organization and were said to have played a large role, Fred ' Killer' Burke, John Scalise & Albert Anselmi, 'Machinegun' Jack McGurn, Byron Bolton, Fred Goetz, Gus Winkeler, Bob Carey, Raymond Nugent and Claude Maddox to name a few. Having been gradually squeezed out of Chicago after the end of Prohibition (incapable of business adaption to survive) and his power declining in the 1930's, Bugs Moran experienced an abrupt downturn, reverted to his earlier life and resumed committing common crimes like mail fraud & robbery. By the 1940s (his power gone with a further loss in the murder of his close ally, Joe Aiello), only 17 years after being one of the richest gangsters in Chicago, he was almost penniless. In Jul 1946, he was arrested in Ohio for robbing a bank messenger of $10,000 - a paltry sum compared to his lifestyle during the bootlegging era. He was convicted & sentenced to 10yrs in the state penitentiary. Shortly after his release, he was again arrested for an earlier bank raid & received another 10yrs this time in Leavenworth. Only a matter of days after arriving behind bars (most of which was spent in the prison hospital), Moran died of lung cancer on February 25, 1957. He was estimated to be worth about $100 at his death & received a pauper's burial in the prison cemetery.

The slaughter became a rallying point in which people finally said enough is enough and that something serious had to be done to stop criminal impunity. The gangster slayings while marking the climax of the Beer Wars, stirred a frenzied media storm with front page headlines & uncensored pictures splashed across the country. Federal authorities were motivated to redouble their efforts & bear full weight to take kill-crazy triggerhappy thugs off the streets. In the immediate months ahead, worried mobsters who knew all too well that violence was way out of hand & bad for business held a 3-day unprecedented summit in May 1929 in Atlantic City, NJ organized by Torrio & Meyer Lansky from New York. Eastern bosses from Boston, Philadelphia & Kansas City also attended the conclave (as did Capone & Luciano) and together they all agreed to build a national organized crime syndicate. In the sit down, they used the Federal Reserve Bank's goegraphical grid to figure out what/where their city zones n' districts would be and not only did a new common ground say they couldn't kill each other but they learned how to prosper. A blueprint for the years ahead had been laid which would decide ultimately how to control money & men, divide turf, co-operate and settle n' end disputes if any interference became problematic. Prohibition was the finishing, college & graduate school for the future families of American crime... After the massacre, business thrived for Capone and he seemed unstoppable. New President Herbert Hoover tasked his Secretary of the Treasury with once n' for all putting Capone behind bars for good - one way or another...
4. Johnny Torrio's presence at the meeting was a brief resurfacing as he was recognized as still having importance & influence. He was highly respected as an elder statesman. In Apr 1931, he was arrested for income tax evasion & sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison. He was paroled in 1941 & died of a heart attack in Apr 1957 while sitting in a barber's chair waiting for a haircut. The media didn't find out about his death until 3 weeks after his burial.

With the end of the jazz age 1920's, Capone's annual personal income was said to be $100 million (a sum normally reserved for captains of industry). By 1930 with the hard times of the Great Depression just beginning, Capone was at the top of his game. With the competition eliminated, he continued to move into new ventures taking over labor unions, chauffers, soda peddlers, furniture/appliance dealers, plumbers, movie projectionists, movers, city workers & kosher poultry butchers. He even toyed with moving into the dairy business as more people drank milk than booze. Seeing that the mark-up would be higher, he said, Honest to God, we've been in the wrong racket right along." For all the admiration, many viewed his excessive wealth as obscene while millions suffered dreadfully. Under the new IRS income tax laws, even illegal undeclared income was deemed taxable & surprisingly, many criminals did infact file tax returns - except Capone. He kept no books or bank accounts, owned no property besides a Florida home in his wife's name, did everything in cash & seemed to pay out almost as much as he took in. In Jun 1931 (after an investigation originally launched by legendary Prohibition agent Eliot Ness), Capone was indicted on 22 counts of income tax evasion for not declaring $215,000 due on back taxes (which for him was most certainly peanuts). He originally pleaded guilty believing he could bargain his way out but when the Judge refused to make a deal, he changed his plea to not guilty still believing he had an ace up his sleeve. However, at the last moment of the beginning of his trial, his bribed jury was exposed & switched. After all the gun, bootlegging & murder charges through the years that couldn't stick, In Oct, after a 10-day trial, he was found guilty on 5 of the 22 charges & sentenced with the stiffest penalty ever given to a tax evader -- an $80,000 fine & 11yrs in a federal prison. His myth of invincibility at last shattered, he was taken straight to Cook County jail to serve his 1st year for jury tampering. He began his proper incarceration in May 1932 when he was moved to the US Penitentiary in Atlanta. Even with Capone put away & the first real seed of his influence being stamped out, the flow of liquor into Chicago never even slowed & chief enforcer Frank Nitti was hailed as having taken over the leadership of Capone's organization which flourished under Nitti.
5. In Aug 1934, Al Capone was transfered to Alcatraz (his last year spent in a hospital ward because of untreated syphilis from sleeping with prostitutes as a youth). His final transfer was to San Pedro's Terminal Island to serve a one year misdemeanor sentence. He was released from prison in Nov 1939 as a result of good behaviour & work credits, having served a total of only 6 and a half years behind bars. His worst days behind him & his mind ravaged by dementia (and still issuing orders to get Moran), he also ranted with paranoia about communists & foreigners to which a 1946 psychiatric evaluation determined he had the mental capability of a 12yr old child. He died in Miami on Jan 25, 1947 from cardiac arrest just 4 days after suffering a stroke & contracting pneumonia. It is believed Capone ordered the deaths of approximately 500 men with 1000 more dying in the turf & beer wars. The SMC warehouse was demolished 30 yrs later in 1977 & the site is now a car park for a nursing home.

The one-time optimism of Prohibition's first brief n' scant progressions had been massively reconsidered. Already shifting views into the edict as unsuccessful experiment eventually become one of dismal failure - largely stemming from the corruption of both the political machine & law enforcement through strongarmed tactics and the network of bribery, payoffs n' shakedowns; unintentional exponential growth in racketeering and most definitely from the immense & towering hypocrisy of foolishly attempting to legislate morality by absurdly telling people how to live their lives. Ultimately doomed, the disastrous 18th Amendment rapidly lost popular support and was repealed (the first & only ever in the Constitution) on Dec 5, 1933 as the passage of the 21st Amendment. In part, the casualty ironically brought on by the 'dry' extremists who did themselves in because of unwillingness to bend with modifications therefore extinguishing necessary moderate support. To the relief of a great many, 'wet' could now safely refer to spilt beer as opposed to bloodshed.
6. Having cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in the process, Prohibition had politely welcomed the impending criminalization of the majority of American adults, instigating the biggest & most violent crime wave in the country's history. The vice that Americans condemned in principle was condoned as part of their social culture & as always, the USA enshrined morality in legislation but couldn't reconcile it to individual behaviour. An economic model had been created for modern America: whatever you want, take it - if necessary, by force. 90yrs after it's introduction, the mores, style & language remain fundamental to the country's (and therefore global) culture even among those who try to resist all 3. Each decade adds a new twist but fashion, literature, music & films still draw on Prohibition as the great American behavioural archetype.

NOVEMBER 18, 1978 (PREACHING TO THE CHOIR: THE HORROR, THE HORROR)

30yrs ago today, Grape Kool Aid in Guyana packed a punch.

JONESTOWN (AND THE MAN THEY CALLED 'FATHER')
by Robert Templer

"We got tired. We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhuman world."
- Jim Jones's last statement heard on an audio recording of the mass suicides and murders at Jonestown, Guyana

At the edge of Evergreen Cemetery overlooking a dusty suburb of Oakland in California is a small granite gravestone. It is inscribed simply "In memory of the victims of the Jonestown tragedy." A few feet away is another stone, set flat in the dry earth, that gives some small sense of the scale of that tragedy. It was put there by a man whose wife, 5 daughters, 2 sons and sister all died on November 18, 1978, in the worst mass suicide & murder of modern times when nearly 1000 people died in the South American jungle in the apocalyptic end to Jim Jones and his People's Temple cult. The date marks an anniversary in which groups gather on either side of the United States to remember the victims of Jonestown and to continue their search for answers to why they died. In Oakland, families come together for an annual memorial service at Evergreen Cemetery organized by Winona Norwood, a preacher from Los Angeles. In Washington DC, a small group of scholars go to Capitol Hill to press Congress to release the documents about Jonestown that are still classified by the government on the grounds of national security. J. Gordon Melton, a scholar at the Institute for the Study of American Religion at Santa Barbara, has led the push to find out what the US government knows about the lingering mysteries of Jonestown and why & how so many people died there. Among this group will be Mary McCormick Maaga, a Methodist pastor in New Jersey and a former academic at the University of Sterling, whose new book "Hearing the Voices of Jonestown" has tried to debunk the idea of those who died as the passive victims of Jim Jones and instead explain the forces that shaped their decisions. Inspired by Maaga's friendship with the family of 3 people who died in Jonestown, the book has challenged some of the most deeply held ideas about Jim Jones & his followers but has also evoked criticism that it to beholden to the current fashions of academia and in its attempts to understand the motives of those involved in the killings, too forgiving of their actions.

Of the 911 Americans who died at their commune in Guyana after taking grape flavored Kool Aid punch laced with cyanide, 234 are buried in a mass grave in Evergreen Cemetery. They were mostly some of the 260 children who died and lacking dental records, were never identified. It took 6 months to find a cemetery that would accept the bodies, which had been turned away by communities across northern California. Even in Evergreen, there is nothing that mentions the number of children buried there. (Sadly, the bodies of 412 people in total who committed suicide were never claimed by relatives & so were buried en masse). Plans for a memorial wall fell apart over whether to include Jim Jones's name among those who died. 30yrs after the deaths at Jonestown, the People's Temple still grates on exposed nerves of horror & incomprehension in California, once home to most of Jim Jones's followers. One month after the deaths at Jonestown, a Gallup poll showed that 98 percent of Americans had heard about People's Temple. Only 9/11, the attack on Pearl Harbour and the dropping of the atomic bomb achieved greater levels of awareness among the public. The People's Temple has become the archetypal cult, its members seen as the brainwashed victims of an unhinged man who believed himself to be the reincarnation of both Jesus & Lenin and turned his charismatic power into a force for destruction. After Jonestown, new religious movements could no longer be benign. They were all seen through the same prism of the Jonestown suicides. Novelists from Anthony Burgess to Armistead Maupin used Jones as an emblem of an unfathomable evil. The mention of his mundane name still provokes extraordinary reactions. When I told a meeting in San Francisco that I was writing about Jonestown, a man came up to me and hissed: "Don't believe the lies about them. They were all mad. They were all evil."

"I'm going to tell you that without me, life has no meaning. I'm the best thing you will ever have."

In 1955, Jim Jones founded the People's Temple Full Gospel Christian Church in his home state of Indiana. In the city that once housed the headquarters to the Ku Klux Klan, Jones created a racially integrated church that focused not just on prayer but on social activism. In 1960, he was appointed to a local government position in Indianapolis where he championed the rights of blacks. With his wife, he adopted several children including one Native American & 3 Korean. In 1961, they became the first white couple in the state to adopt a black child. In 1962, he stopped off in Guyana during a trip to Brazil to find a new home for the Temple. The visit would have a profound affect & make a lasting impression... He returned to Indiana in 1965. By 1967, Jones was haunted by a vision he had of a nuclear war (having predicted an end-of-the-world armageddon to occur on July 15th) & moved his congregation to Redwood Valley in northern California, which Esquire magazine had listed as among one of the safest places in the United States to be in the event of an atomic attack. That year the church had just 86 members but it grew exponentially to several thousand members, attracting many African-Americans drawn in by its message of racial equality.

In the early 1970s, Jones opened churches in San Francisco & Los Angeles and began a period of political activity, becoming prominent in social welfare programs & increasing his followers to several thousand. He was a skilled political operator verbose but magnetic in his sermons, sending out his followers to canvas voters and his ability to turn out large numbers of people was valued & much courted by California's sympathetic Democrat elite including then-Governor Jerry Brown. Rosalyn Carter tried to win his endorsement for her husband's presidential campaign. People's Temple members campaigned vigorously for the liberal candidate George Moscone for mayor of San Francisco (when Jones moved them there in 1975) and after Moscone's election victory (as the first openly gay bureaucrat in America), Jones was rewarded with the chairmanship of the city's powerful housing authority. Ironically, among the many causes he adopted at that time was a campaign to install a barrier on Golden Gate Bridge to prevent suicides. Leading political figures showered Jones with praise both publicly & privately with one describing him as acombination of Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein & Chairman Mao. Despite being referred to as the Reverend Jim Jones, some researchers believe he was actually an atheist (just one in a sea of glaring contradictions). As Jones' public power grew, his church was becoming increasingly authoritarian. He began revealing his organization was very left wing & began criticizing the Bible as a tool to subjugate women & blacks (which he did anyways with his brainwashed army of bodyguards, cohorts, slaves & thugs). Members were subjected to increasingly violent discipline and demands that they prove their loyalty to Jones. Defectors began telling stories of violent beatings & ritual humiliations of those who violated Temple rules. The 16yr old daughter of 2 long-time members, Elmer & Deanna Mertle, was beaten on the buttocks 75 times in front of a congregation of 600 for kissing another woman.

Always obsessed by the threat of nuclear war & remembering his tour from 12yrs previous, Jones had sent some of his flock back to the former British colony of Guyana in 1974 to begin work on "Jonestown", a 3800-acre agricultural commune of paradise. Jones was attracted by Guyana's jungle isolation in the remote northwest which again would protect his followers from nuclear war and he felt that Guyana's socialist government would be compliant. With hundreds having made the pilgrimage, in 1977, Jones's church came under increased public scrutiny with news articles based on the testimony of defectors accusing him of physical & sexual abuse. An article in New West magazine in August of that year detailed the murky world of the temple's political & financial activities as well as documenting complaints of abuse. Jones made the fateful decision to move his followers to Guyana, far from the threats of the media, increasingly hostile Temple apostates and the unwanted attention from California & federal authorities looking into human rights abuses. At this time, a group known as the 'Concerned Relatives' began to push for a government investigation into the People's Temple. 2 former members of Jones's inner circle, Tim & Grace Stoen, sued for custody of their son who lived at the Jonestown encampment and was believed to have been fathered by Jones. With relations in Guyana becoming more strained, the group enlisted the help of the Bay Area Congressman Leo Ryan who travelled to Jonestown in November 1978 (first arriving in the capital, Georgetown) to investigate allegations & address the ever-worrying fears that people were being held there against their will. Along with a group of television & press reporters, he spent a day at Jonestown, being shown around and entertained with a show in the evening. Only some 2 dozen people chose to leave after secretly passing notes to the Ryan entourage. When Jones was shown the notes, he appeared & sounded not as a strongarming bully but almost bewildered & deflated. But these defections of long standing devotees now disillusioned pushed the increasingly fractious & distressed Jones and his inner circle over the edge. One man tried to stab Ryan who was only superficially hurt from the knife attack but decided to leave Jonestown immediately with a group of 15 would-be escapees. Later that day on orders from Jones, a squad of armed men in a tractor-trailer followed Ryan back to an airstrip and opened fire on his plane, killing the Congressman, 3 journalists & one of the Temple members who chose to leave. The remaining escapees having scrambled for cover during the shooting, fled into the jungle & the hitmen rejoined Jones back at the compound. Ryan's death was the only time a member of Congress had been murdered in the course of his duty.

"Where's the vat, the vat, the vat? Where's the vat with the green C on it? The vat with the green C. Bring it so the adults can begin."

Shortly after the Ryan deputation was gunned down & fully realizing the legal retribution that would come down heavy on his head, Jones invoked the most severe state of emergency & at 6PM on November 18th the suicides began. He told his followers that Guyanese troops would soon arrive a& would kill their children. On the audio tape of the suicide, he rants about the betrayal of those who had left, suggesting that to prove their loyalty to him, his followers must now die. Their deaths, he assured them, would be remembered as an act of "revolutionary suicide." The children were killed first, followed by the adults whose bodies were found outside the open-sided hall where the drink was served up out, each dose measured out with a syringe. 2 nurses marked each person who had taken their dose with a cross from a marker pen. A calm female voice, never identified, is heard on the tape reassuring parents that their children are not crying from pain but only because the grape drink & cyanide potion is a little bitter. At least 911 people died from swallowing or being injected with poison. In doling out the lethal cocktail, those who were reluctant or resisted trying to flee, died anyway - forced to drink the deadly concoction at gunpoint or shot. Jim Jones and a nurse, Annie Moore, were shot in the head. Later a temple leader, Sharon Amos, who was in Georgetown slit her throat & those of her 3 children. The final suicide came a few months later when the Temple spokesman, Mike Prokes, shot himself in a motel room in California. In all 923 people died. The still eerie photographs of bodies show a morbid, nightmarish twist on a family-type garden party of willing victims collapsed in sociable heaps, lying side by side in the clearing surrounded in deafening silence. Headlines around the world expressed shock & tv news aired uncensored audio soundbites of the flock being lectured to for the last time as Jones exhorted the beauty of dying over the loudspeaker. As terrible as the Jonestown aftermath was, it was oddly unsurprising & nowhere was this dual response felt more strongly than in California where most of the dead had once belonged during their San Francisco base. This phase of the Temple was now being maligned as a haven for 'free-thinking crazies' who were further derided for engaging in sham faith healing services, divine visions & seeking advice from extraterrestrials. From the early to mid 1980's following the deaths, the Guyanese government allowed Jonestown for a time to be re-occupied by refugees from Laos. Later, the buildings & grounds where looted by locals but never taken over because of their insidious association with the mass killings. The whole pavilion was put to the torch & destroyed by fire with the ruins left to decay and be reclaimed by the jungle. On the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the notorious event, documentary film crews returned to the site looking for artifacts.
In 2009, the director of Guyana's Tourism authority put up a memorial plaque with hopes of creating a later monument to honor the victims. By 2010, some Guyanese sought to controversially revive the site as a reminder of what transpired there, for tourist dollars (just as Auschwitz does today). In Nov 2011, a local goldminer (claiming to have backers in New York) again took up the proposal by asking the government to make Jonestown a tourist attraction despite its grisly history & that Dec, discussions were being held by a Council. Although not officially rejected, those opposed cited predictable outrage from the victims families n' relatives, bad taste & wariness of marrying the country's image solely to Jonestown constituting an insentitivity to the national memory.

"There's nothing to death. It's just stepping over to another plane. Don't be this way. Stop these hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die."

Some of the impetus to re-examine Jonestown has come from a surprising source: the family of Carolyn Moore, Jones's long-standing mistress and one of the inner core of leaders of the People's Temple. Carolyn, Kimo, her son by Jones, and her sister Annie all died at Jonestown. Since then their sister, Rebecca Moore, a professor at the University of North Dakota, has written extensively about Jonestown, mostly defending the images of those who died there in her books "A Sympathetic History of Jonestown" and "In Defense of the People's Temple". Moore and her parents, a Methodist minister and a social activist who live in California, have not shied away from the horrors of the event but have tried to promote what they believe is a richer understanding of those who died whom they feel have been stripped of humanity by being labelled as deranged cult members. Said Moore: "My family's response was different from most of the families. Most people felt this deep shame about it and refused to talk about it but we did not. My sisters were guilty of planning this event but I can still love them for their humanity." Scholars of new religious movements - they mostly disdain the term cult as derogatory, pointing out that the only difference between a cult and an established faith is time and the acceptance that comes with it - have tried to rework the views of Jonestown. The standard analysis, produced in dozens of books soon after the event, portrayed Jones as an evil genius surrounded by a compliant harem of women and a group of mostly African-American followers lured in by false promises of an escape from poverty & racism. In her book, Maaga turns that view on its head, asserting by the time the group reached Guyana, Jones's power was on the wain as he consumed increasing amounts of prescription drugs and that he was surrounded by powerful & competent women who were increasingly asserting their control. It is these women, particularly Carolyn & Annie Moore that Maaga focused her attention on. Said Maaga: "What surprised me when I looked at the People's Temple members and what they said about themselves, is that they didn't see themselves as vulnerable but as empowered members of this community." African Americans joined not because they were deprived but because Jones offered them a vision of a society that was not available anywhere else. Maaga writes admiringly of Jones's attempt to create a "an egalitarian society in which hierarchies based upon race, class and gender would be erased," evoking what one critic of the book dismissed as "the holy trinity of multicultural academia."

It is here that Maaga seems to be shoe-horning facts together to fit the theory. She attempts to balance scholarship that has focused on mostly discredited ideas about brainwashing in cults by restoring "agency" - current academic jargon for free will - to members of the People's Temple. But she also has to admit that people faced increasing coercion & violence from the mid 1970s onwards and the beatings & the suicide rehearsals increased. Jones, who had been married to his wife Marceline since 1949, had numerous mistresses among the senior women. His relationship was particularly close with Carolyn Moore. They became lovers soon after she joined the People's Temple in the late 1960s and in 1975 she had a son by Jones. Several other women, including Grace Stoen, one of the leading defectors, had long sexual relationships with Jones. Maaga proposes that Jones was not simply a rapacious sexual predator but engaged in sex with willing followers eager to enhance their power and break down gender hierarchies. But Jones saw himself as so potent that he attributed defections from the group to his refusal to sleep with them. Jones may, as Maaga says, have offered women more power in the group than they might have received outside but it was still done by linking the opportunities to controlling and sordid sexual demands. It hardly seems like a step forward for feminism. Likewise, Jones's professed racial egalitarianism hardly stands up to scrutiny. Around 3 quarters of the residents of Jonestown were black. Half were black women and yet there were very few blacks among the Temple's leadership and Jones did not admit black women into his powerful coterie of mistresses. Even Jones's son Stephan, recognising the hypocrisy, scathingly referred to his father's mistresses as "sacrificial martyrs" and the Temple's leaders as "the white elite." Stephan, who survived along with 2 other brothers because he was away in Georgetown playing in a basketball tournament, also told Maaga in 1992 that Jones was afraid of being shown up as sexually inadequate if he faced the "aggressive, almost animal-like sexual appetites" he attributed to black women.

"Please for God's sake let's get on with it. We've lived - we've lived as no other people lived and loved. We've has as much of this world as you're gonna get. Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it."

More convincing than Maaga's defence of Jonestown from the views of anti-cult critics is her attempt to trace the trajectory of the group as it descended towards self-destruction. She maintains that the suicides were less the result of Jones's overwhelming charisma but of the collapse of his power saying: "What I wanted to find out was at what point did passion become blindness. This happened at the point where their focus shifted from worrying more about creating an egalitarian, diverse community to worrying more about what the people who left were saying, when they started to get into the self-righteous demonisation of anyone who disagreed with them." For 5yrs before the suicides, Jones had been priming his Temple members, conducting countless rehearsals for the suicides, known as "White Nights". These were mostly tests of loyalty to him that built up a mindset that loyalty also meant sacrificing one's life, while survival was tantamount to betrayal. Those in the leadership were obliged to pledge in writing to kill themselves should there be the need to stage a final "White Night" and Maaga quotes a chilling letter believed to have been sent to Jones by Annie Moore possibly several years before the deaths in which she discusses different ways to carry out mass suicides. Moore wrote: "I never thought people would line up to be killed but actually think a select group would have to kill the majority of people secretly without the people knowing it."

Long before Congressman Ryan started to investigate Jonestown, the community was already struggling. Two thirds of the community were young or old and so the heavy burden of agricultural work fell to just one third of the group. It was never a success at growing its own food, relying on imports from outside. In the heat & humidity of the jungle people were also getting sick with fungal & parasitic diseases. And yet despite these difficulties, Maaga argues, it was the community's faith not in Jones but in the actual community they had built at Jonestown that they were not willing to forsake. Jones was increasingly crippled by what was referred to as "his blood sugar problem" - in fact an addiction to tranquillizers. He was increasingly out of touch with reality in Jonestown, spinning apocalyptic tales of nuclear war between China & Russia and telling people that the United States had set up concentration camps for blacks. While the Temple members were based in California they had enough contact with the outside world to balance Jones's more unhinged views but in Jonestown there was less connection to reality. That isolation helped to foster the increasingly intense suspicion of outsiders and fears of defections from the group. Said Maaga: "There is some evidence of coup attempts but even if he had been replaced it is quite likely that the suicides would have taken place. By that stage he didn't really control his own movement, he was more symbolic than anything. Those around him were terrified perhaps of their own desire to leave, their own potential for betrayal."

American Pathologists performed only perfunctory autopsies on 7 of the badly decomposed bodies from Jonestown so there is no clear idea of how many adults were injected or forced to drink the cyanide potion. Some accounts of the deaths have suggested that maybe 70 people were killed along with the 260 children who were murdered, mostly by their parents. More than 600 willingly went to their deaths. The question of how those people went from having such powerful hope that they could create a utopian society to sinking into such despair may never be answered adequately. (In December 1986 a church member, Larry Layton, received a life sentence for aiding & abetting the murders of those who died at the airstrip. Layton had gone to the airstrip pretending to be a defector then produced a gun and injured 2 people). J. Gordon Melton and other academics pushing the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee want to see the results of the government investigation that was never released, possibly because of CIA involvement in Guyana. The continued classification of these documents only fuels the baroque conspiracy theories that link Jonestown to everything from the Kennedy assassination & Russian ties to secret mind control experiments & an American military cover-up involving discrepancies in the body count. (Many ask if his own death was self-inflicted or murder since the alleged killing gun was supposedly lying 12 feet away from his body). Said Melton: "We know from some sources that there are a considerable number of documents. There have been a series of requests under the Freedom of Information Act, but all but one have been turned down on the grounds of national security. This is one of the big questions - what security issues could be involved in Jonestown 20 years after the event?" Rebecca Moore said she had a mixed reaction to Maaga's book, which both explains more about her 2 sisters and their actions but also shows them to be more powerful in the organization than previously thought. She concluded: "What really hit me was the fact that my sisters were responsible for the planning & implementing the deaths. He could not have done it alone. It is also sad to see the despair that took over the community in the last few days - the choice between surviving and betrayal or dying and remaining loyal."