the days are going by and mostly im absorbed in baby related issues… akira is really great and provides endless amounts of just everything, now shes up to three word sentances… i have been working a little on music but it may be another month or so before i get into it more intensely… debbie sends thanx for all of the birthday wishes… i’m gonna see if she will put up a message board herself as she is starting to get into doing more e-mailing and computing… actually got to the movies which is a big event now war of the worlds of course, it was unavoidable… thought the first act was really great, i really got caught up, it got a little weighty as it went on but it way surpassed my (low) expectations… should have seen batman though i just re-read ‘the bonfire of the vanities’ which is a great bit of writing… the film version just sucked so dont go by that…’bonfire’ came out in ’87, anyway there’s an amazing bit of prophetic psychic weirdness, or perhaps just astute premonition on the part of Tom Wolfe in the very first chapter; its a scene with the fictional mayor ‘Goldberg’ of NYC being shouted down at a ‘town meeting’ type event in harlem, anyway the head of his police bodyguards is named “Guliaggi”, very cool… im sure Rudy was around at the time Wolfe researched the book, i cant imagine its a coincidence… anyhow very worth reading also colin farrell looks so much like charles manson its nuts, could he be “pooh bear” manson? thanx ali for the letter finally i sort of hate computers, the frustration level is so high, if only i could have HAL around to argue with… i finally had to change my long standing e-mail address, everytime i logged on i was getting 80-90 messages about cock enlargement, teen black elderly and every other kind of slut imaginable, all the weekend vacations i-pods and playstations i’d won and the occasional suggestion that ‘freedom begins at home’ etc. in other words rat out your friends and neighbors… what a relief to be back to not using the spam filters, it got so it was easier to take names out of the spam things than to delete stuff oh i almost finished halo 1, just on the last stupid bit, hopefully the next one will be less monotonous pic is ‘night life in bangkok’

so we are here for one more day, i’ve got to say i thought the disallowed goal was a big drag even though portugal really played well, you have to admit that after Rooney left most of the match was spent with the UK at defense… (after the game i saw colin powell saying how well things were going in iraq and i thought he should be calling the football matches cause then he couldnt get away with such bullshit) we were all looking forward to england vs. france anyway, that would have been the best continuing thanx for all of the nice comments… again jimmy is having problems and i dont know when he’ll be back in the live shows though i certainly hope he will at least contribute to upcoming recordings… thanx to all the UK fans and crowds for another great time here… we all love you guys, what we do is quite difficult and you all make it worthwhile

i was on the phone with debbie watching “the verdict”… after watching most of the trial im pleased that michael didnt get screwed over at the hands of the media… watching some of the bloodthirsty court tv people was particularly grotesque… as i said before there was a witch hunt aspect that overshadowded jacksons deeds… somehow this is indicative of all the demented current ways of today… yeah sure the resources etc etc i spent a day at jury duty up state here… there was a trial of some poor gangbanger kid who may or may not have mugged somebody but he was shadowed by guards obviously not able to make bail and was stuck with the barely thirty public defender… the judge made a note that the trial would be ‘fast’… somehow i didnt get my name picked but i couldnt help make the connections… Noam Chomsky is the one who i think said “No black man can be guilty of a crime in America.” at the same time ive been re-reading my old battered copy of “the family” by ed sanders… now here we have a celebrity in california who didnt get off… seriously i cant recommend ‘the family’ enough to those of you not familiar… as i was finishing i kept thinking how the manson story is just begging for a big budget hollywood treatment a la oliver stone etc… maybe its just too sensitive still the new baby yells a lot, also sleeps

ok, i hadnt mentioned it, but now… we (mostly Barbara) had our second daughter Valentina (after my great friend and mentor the late Vali Myers)… on the 11th just after midnight… if you want to send anything Valentina collects switchblade knives especially Microtech products (see http://www.nicnac.net/ for examples) we dont need any baby stuff!!! repeat; we dont need any baby stuff we have tons… we do however need switchblade knives especially out the front models! they can be pink if you can find them send to: chris stein c/o Matt D’Amico Tenth Street Entertainment 700 San Vincente suite G410 W. Hollywood Ca. 90069 or to Barry on a topical note i just have to comment on Spielberg saying the new star wars effort is the best of the last ones… is that a fucking joke? i cant even remember one from the other, i do recall falling asleep during the ja ja binks one, for real

i’m still enamored of ‘kung fu hustle’ dont blow your shot to see it on a big screen (i got a note from Koey in singapore who says as i suspected the title is just ‘kung fu’ in chinese)… im sorry i only have seen ‘ghost in the shell 2’ on dvd i missed it in the theaters… so the big TV PARTY opening at the tribeca festival in NYC, seemed to be a success in spite of a very partisan audience… another turn out of the old ‘gang’, various people i havent seen in a while, great to see graffiti great old pal ‘LEE’ (Quinones), Freddy, Charlie Rocket etc. best though was D and i were sitting right next to Jerry Stiller! debbie hit him in the head in ‘Hairspray’ but i never met him so i was pretty thrilled to shmooze with him, he said he loved the TV P film, during the q&a he said it should be in the smithsonian! we heard that Bobby D’N saw the thing but who knows… so after there was a party that the TV Party orchestra played at, the TV Party orchestra consisted this time of me, Walter Steding, Lennie Ferrari, James Chance, Robert Aaron and the bass player from ‘Crazy Mary’ a band that walter plays in whose name i dont know, sorry… so these days i go to sleep around 8-9 pm, so by 11 i was pretty fried and suddenly i’m thrust into your basic rock and roll club intensity, i was soaked in this hot enviornment in about two minutes, i thought i might explode, but we jammed for maybe a half hour and i left walter still up there sawing away on his violin… i have noticed that there are all these new ways of garnering income in our great society these days; the finger in the chili of course, though we see that one has to cook the finger in chili first for the sake of authenticity… 5-6 whatever guys in some middle eastern drag getting thrown out of dennys: “we dont serve bin ladens here!” they are told, suing for 27 million… lastly, though theres likely lots of stuff im not mentioning, ratting out your friends and school mates; i saw an article about the system now in place of rewarding those who ‘tell’ on people in school with food coupons, cash (100-500$ if its about firearms) and parking spaces… one might think this was all fiction, but…

been meaning to write but doing stuff… still about movies… i liked ‘SIN CITY’ but it didnt blow me away, i wish the Raymond Chandler/ Phil Marlowe dialogs were a little smarter, i wish the girls costumes were more up to date etc etc overall i just felt like it “tried too hard” if you know what i mean… ‘Old Boy’ is a way superior film as are many of the asian imports i’ve been raving about lately… for example ‘Casshern’ is the same green screen technique but more complex… oh yeah some of the melodramatic deliveries left me cold (like Brittany Murphy’s whose work i generally really like) why emulate a crappy style of acting, it just made it campy… i thought Elijah Wood was great (actually i have one of the ring things on tv now without the sound thats what reminded me to write) great to see him so un wholesome and of course Mickey Rourke was very loveable, i hope he does more stuff than he has been lately beyond that i’ve been watching Sesame Street a lot with Akira and am kind of amazed what goes on there… i was way too old for it growing up so i never payed much attention to it… its sort of a Freudian dream… all the monsters run the entire gamut of human weird emotional states and mental conditions big bird is some sort of depressive, ernie and bert share a sado-masochistic relationship while ernie himself is a total control freak passive aggressive, elmo is pretty psychotic, he reminds me of the person who you run into who when you say “whats happening” screams back “YOU ARE! YOU! YOU” oscar is completely negative grover has dreams of grandeur and grovels a lot (hence his name) zoe is just plain annoying and controlling the count is obsessive compulsive etc etc all in all the cookie monster seems to be the best adjusted and has the only genuine sense of humor… now even more weird the “people” all are almost bereft of any psychological traits, they could all be the same person… as far as childrens programming goes Sesame is the only fucking tolerable thing though i do sometimes get off on “Bear in the Big Blue House” mostly cause of the strange celtic witch stuff that goes on with the shadow… some shows make me want to kill we have Zaboomafoo… now you all are aware of my stances on human sexuality and its difficult for me to discuss the two guys on the show without using politically incorrect terminology BUT DAMN MARY! any how on EVERY FUCKING SHOW there is a bit where the two ‘heros’ (the Kratt brothers) go “on a trip” okay, so they ‘go in to the closet’ now i swear this is real, see, the monkey sings this “they’re going to the closet, they’re going on a trip” then all of their crap falls on them ha ha and the monkey sings: “they’re coming from the closet, they’re going out the door!” on top of this there is a real monkey/lemur with an abused puppet stand-in… if you dont believe me check it, to think poor sponge bob is being maligned with this going on … Akira gets to watch Zaboomafoo cause of the cool animal… what she CANT WATCH is the miserable wiggles… i’m not even gonna go into it its too horrible for words, suffice it to say ‘the wiggles’, australians, used to be a band called the cockroaches or cockroach, at least thats what i heard in Aus., if thats true i cant even begin to imagine… any way although we may not know any of the cockroaches big hits the fucking wiggles are now raking in the bucks… oh yeah i was gonna quit but i forgot “Oobie”… oobie is a very inexpensive show to produce as its just hands with eyeballs stuck on them… something grimly fascinating about oobie, this is not just me i’ve heard this from others that they were sort of horrified but fascinated by oobie and friends… their dialog is primitive leaving out various adjectives and other aspects of proper speech this gives a really strange cast to the whole deal; “Oobie loves Grampoo…” etc etc oh yeah the other childrens show i have been watching faithfully is “THE MICHAEL JACKSON TRIAL”… mostly on court tv and the re-inactments on E… i stil really dont know what i really think about it all just that there is a fucked up witch hunt aspect to the whole thing regardless of his guilt or innocence… plus being in show-biz and knowing the bullshit that goes on i cant really write off the whole conspiracy deal… no matter how odd this may sound to the layman, the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the recording industry is every bit as crazy as the publics perception of poor Michael might be

more film reviews… KUNG FU HUSTLE is gonna be one of my all time favorite movies… just great, not dumb like kung pow and the ilk, hustle has no western influences its just brilliant… my only problem is the title as i’m fairly certain that the idiomatic use of ‘hustle’ probably is not a literal translation but you never know… i’d apppreciate anyone who can read chinese would report in… now whats funny is on the posters and ads for it ‘kung fu hustle’ is favorably compared to a tarantino film and this is dumb since its the other way around… yeah sure ‘bill’ was great but its a lift isnt it? saying this ‘kung fu hustle’ is “like” a quentin film is like saying Herzogs ‘Nosferatu’ is “like” Murnaus… i only recently found out that “Reservoir Dogs ” is a remake of an asian, maybe a John Woo film ‘hustle’ most reminded me of a fantastic Korean fim called “Volcano High” which so far hasnt gotten a US release i was also pleased to see a preview for a US release of “Night Watch”… a russian film i may have mentioned earlier, also really great lots of questions about blondie and related projects and i dont have any answers at present

so i am grimly awaiting the first onslaught of 9-11 films from hollywood… i think that recent travolta hero firefighter movie was sort of testing the waters… be prepared as soon as enough time goes by so that the films arent lumped in with the 9-11 hats t-shirts and commemorative belt buckles made out of genuine steel from the trade center theres gonna be a ton of em… what better combination of hollywood sentimentality combined with a great national disaster… this is better than the one about the volcano in los angeles, or ‘earthquake’ etc etc so expect the story covered from every possible angle; from the terrorists to the firemen to the working people, add an orgy of special effects CGI explosions, the p.o.v of people jumping from the 60th floor etc if hollywood had any taste or dignity they’d leave it alone completely… by the way i dont suppose that many are aware that we were living right down the block from the whole event when it happened and for me the horror of it was matched by the fucking circus that quickly surrounded the event/area… every day seeing hordes of story hungry newscasters camped out bored and half asleep sitting around drinking coffee and then coming to life in front of the cameras where they were filled with false emotion etc etc… the tourist trade that sprung up was equally bizzare, people with cameras around their necks would stop me and ask where “ground zero” was… well i digress, in a similar vein i’ve been watching the michael jackson trial mostly cause theres nothing else on regular tv that i can stand and it really does appear that there is a lot of vindictiveness in the whole case regardless of what the poor guy was up to, another circus ‘wow’ he had seventeen hundred pictures of naked chicks on his computer, c’mon i’ll bet half the men in america who own computers etc etc and ‘wow!’ a whole briefcase filled with sex mags… gimmie a fucking break and that film i’d raved about “OLD BOY” has gotten a US release, at least the best asian films are being picked up here picture is “fake new york in las vegas”

my latest thinking is that in twenty years or so when we are taken over by chinese/asian corporate/state entities we will all be alot better off… as i understand it the chinese economy is booming and if we keep depleting our funds on expsenive and pointless military initiatives… well its probably already too late to do anything about it, i dont pretend to understand the economics of the situation too specifically but it seems we are already deep in national debt to china/japan check http://202.221.217.59/print/news/nn12-2004/nn20041228d2.htm which discusses japanese and chinese funding of US deficit anyhow to me coming at it from a cultural artistic point of view i think we would be so much better off with more asian influence now yesterday i went to see constantine which was like fair to crummy depending on what your expectations of it mine being low, but before that i watched a korean film at home that i’d picked up in the airport at hong kong, “OLD BOY” is just a remarkable piece of filmmaking directed by Park Chanwook, i dont think it ever had a US release, then a few days before that i watched Wan Kar Wai’s “2046” which is slow but also amazing… it would be one thing if all there was in the way of films was the crap churned out by hollywood but with just fantastic films coming out of various foreign markets it just is all the more pathetic… but how much of all this is due to what is happening in our society is due to the rigidity, crazy censorships that are being instituted, etc… yeah etc etc anyway do check out ‘old boy’ its no doubt available online, 2046 is very beautiful, but is purely a romance, warning for action fans picture is DH in bangkok/asia is calling

back in new york, really if i never see another airplane… there must be a better way; boats, blimps, bangkok was a lot different than it was when we were last there in 1977, its a fascinating place still, urban jungle, d and i stayed on an extra day to look around i wish i could spend more time in these places… very different and more rugged than singapore in singapore we played with ‘pug jelly’ and the ‘zircon gov. pawn stars’ … really nice people all… there was a lot of heavy duty flu within the band, by the end everyone was feeling varying degrees of weird, its weird enough to come from blazing hot bangkok streets to the snow here, lots of great japanese, hong kong, style toys over there, (see kidrobot.com for the basics) also it hadnt occurred to me that i could just walk into an ordinary music store to score all kinds of cool asian films… its tough being in places that are so exotic and then getting back to the normalcy of the states… the gig in the sydney opera house was pretty fantastic i think the place was full… i still really like sydney, something about the bohemian atmophere in the tropical setting more when i wake up more later