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FEBRUARY 2007  Notes from The Departure Lounge

Newest New Year's Resolution: Change Something! Change Everthing!

Wed 28 Feb 2007 -  MGCK Music        Last day of the month and still time to 

CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL STATUS!!!

OK... here's the thing.

'SMILING' suggests you are WEAKER and thus, less consequential.

I'm never smiling again!!! (on second thought.... my smile's a bit predatory.. so, yeah.. I guess I'll keep it.)

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/solved-the-mystery-of-the-miserable-models/#more-37

(you can read the comment I added at the bottom of his smile-equals-social-status article yesterday.)

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Mon 26 Feb 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change your Religion

I'm proud to be a 'born again' Californian. I'm so pleased I've taken the eucharist... eaten of the body of the Golden State. (Yes.. that's what it's called.. the GOLDEN State.) I fought it for a long time.... lived there for 4 years as a transplanted disgruntled ex-New Yorker; who'd been kind of dumped out of an airplane, broke, busted, divorced and disappointed: landing face down in the sand at Ocean Beach after a creative half-life spent in departure lounges from NY to Barcelona to London to Scotland to Singapore to Hong Kong to uh... CALIFORNIA!!! (((how do you get to the West Coast by heading East??????!!!!))  So now I accept that I have been Cal-i-for-ni-ca-ted... evangelised to embrace the grail of Hollywood and Vine, Sunset and Highway 1... And I'm so happy Marty Scorcese lifted the Oscar. You may wonder at this passion for such a tiny man, but his talent is so HUGE and when you find it, see it, there is no excitement like it; the recognition and appreciation of great 'talent'.  New Year's Resolution for the day: Kill dullness anywhere you find it, change your mind and CHANGE YOUR RELIGION

SUN 25 Feb: ACADEMY AWARDS TONIGHT.  The bookies got my bet on Martin Scorcese to win for THE DEPARTED  - 

from the MGCK Music Unoffishal Weblog

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Sat 24 Feb 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change the way you think!

How do you spend your 'time'.. doing mundane, repetitive activities that will dull your ganglia or involving yourself in thoughts and activities that will remap your brainscape??

How The Brain Rewires Itself   

IT WAS A FAIRLY MODEST EXPERIMENT as these things go, with volunteers trooping into the lab at Harvard Medical School to learn and practice a little five-finger piano exercise. Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone instructed the members of one group to play as fluidly as they could, trying to keep to the metronome's 60 beats per minute. Every day for five days, the volunteers practiced for two hours. Then they took a test.

At the end of each day's practice session, they sat beneath a coil of wire that sent a brief magnetic pulse into the motor cortex of their brain, located in a strip running from the crown of the head toward each ear. The so-called transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) test allows scientists to infer the function of neurons just beneath the coil. In the piano players, the TMS mapped how much of the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What the scientists found was that after a week of practice, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas like dandelions on a suburban lawn.

The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it. But Pascual-Leone did not stop there. He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practicing the piano exercise. They played the simple piece of music in their head, holding their hands still while imagining how they would move their fingers. Then they too sat beneath the TMS coil.

When the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups--those who actually tickled the ivories and those who only imagined doing so--they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the physical structure and function of our gray matter. For what the TMS revealed was that the region of motor cortex that controls the piano-playing fingers also expanded in the brains of volunteers who imagined playing the music--just as it had in those who actually played it.

"Mental practice resulted in a similar reorganization" of the brain, Pascual-Leone later wrote. If his results hold for other forms of movement (and there is no reason to think they don't), then mentally practicing a golf swing or a forward pass or a swimming turn could lead to mastery with less physical practice. Even more profound, the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.

OVERTHROWING THE DOGMA:

FOR DECADES, THE PREVAILING DOGMA IN neuroscience was that the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we have. Yes, it can create (and lose) synapses, the connections between neurons that encode memories and learning. And it can suffer injury and degeneration. But this view held that if genes and development dictate that one cluster of neurons will process signals from the eye and another cluster will move the fingers of the right hand, then they'll do that and nothing else until the day you die. There was good reason for lavishly illustrated brain books to show the function, size and location of the brain's structures in permanent ink.

The doctrine of the unchanging human brain has had profound ramifications. For one thing, it lowered expectations about the value of rehabilitation for adults who had suffered brain damage from a stroke or about the possibility of fixing the pathological wiring that underlies psychiatric diseases. And it implied that other brain-based fixities, such as the happiness set point that, according to a growing body of research, a person returns to after the deepest tragedy or the greatest joy, are nearly unalterable.

But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers of "neuroplasticity"--the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience. These aren't minor tweaks either. Something as basic as the function of the visual or auditory cortex can change as a result of a person's experience of becoming deaf or blind at a young age. Even when the brain suffers a trauma late in life, it can rezone itself like a city in a frenzy of urban renewal. If a stroke knocks out, say, the neighborhood of motor cortex that moves the right arm, a new technique called constraint-induced movement therapy can coax next-door regions to take over the function of the damaged area. The brain can be rewired.

The first discoveries of neuroplasticity came from studies of how changes in the messages the brain receives through the senses can alter its structure and function. When no transmissions arrive from the eyes in someone who has been blind from a young age, for instance, the visual cortex can learn to hear or feel or even support verbal memory. When signals from the skin or muscles bombard the motor cortex or the somatosensory cortex (which processes touch), the brain expands the area that is wired to move, say, the fingers. In this sense, the very structure of our brain--the relative size of different regions, the strength of connections between them, even their functions--reflects the lives we have led. Like sand on a beach, the brain bears the footprints of the decisions we have made, the skills we have learned, the actions we have taken.

THINKING ABOUT THINKING:

AS SCIENTISTS PROBE the limits of neuroplasticity, they are finding that mind sculpting can occur even without input from the outside world. The brain can change as a result of the thoughts we think, as with Pascual-Leone's virtual piano players. This has important implications for health: something as seemingly insubstantial as a thought can affect the very stuff of the brain, altering neuronal connections in a way that can treat mental illness or, perhaps, lead to a greater capacity for empathy and compassion. It may even dial up the supposedly immovable happiness set point.

In a series of experiments, for instance, Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can quiet activity in the circuit that underlies obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), just as drugs do. Schwartz had become intrigued with the therapeutic potential of mindfulness meditation, the Buddhist practice of observing one's inner experiences as if they were happening to someone else.

When OCD patients were plagued by an obsessive thought, Schwartz instructed them to think, "My brain is generating another obsessive thought. Don't I know it is just some garbage thrown up by a faulty circuit?" After 10 weeks of mindfulness-based therapy, 12 out of 18 patients improved significantly. Before-and-after brain scans showed that activity in the orbital frontal cortex, the core of the OCD circuit, had fallen dramatically and in exactly the way that drugs effective against OCD affect the brain. Schwartz called it "self-directed neuroplasticity," concluding that "the mind can change the brain."

The same is true when cognitive techniques are used to treat depression. Scientists at the University of Toronto had 14 depressed adults undergo CBT, which teaches patients to view their own thoughts differently--to see a failed date, for instance, not as proof that "I will never be loved" but as a minor thing that didn't work out. Thirteen other patients received paroxetine (the generic form of the antidepressant Paxil). All experienced comparable improvement after treatment. Then the scientists scanned the patients' brains. "Our hypothesis was, if you do well with treatment, your brain will have changed in the same way no matter which treatment you received," said Toronto's Zindel Segal.

But no. Depressed brains responded differently to the two kinds of treatment--and in a very interesting way. CBT muted overactivity in the frontal cortex, the seat of reasoning, logic and higher thought as well as of endless rumination about that disastrous date. Paroxetine, by contrast, raised activity there. On the other hand, CBT raised activity in the hippocampus of the limbic system, the brain's emotion center. Paroxetine lowered activity there. As Toronto's Helen Mayberg explains, "Cognitive therapy targets the cortex, the thinking brain, reshaping how you process information and changing your thinking pattern. It decreases rumination, and trains the brain to adopt different thinking circuits." As with Schwartz's OCD patients, thinking had changed a pattern of activity--in this case, a pattern associated with depression--in the brain.

HAPPINESS AND MEDITATION:

COULD THINKING ABOUT THOUGHTS IN A NEW WAY affect not only such pathological brain states as OCD and depression but also normal activity? To find out, neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison turned to Buddhist monks, the Olympic athletes of mental training. Some monks have spent more than 10,000 hours of their lives in meditation. Earlier in Davidson's career, he had found that activity greater in the left prefrontal cortex than in the right correlates with a higher baseline level of contentment. The relative left/right activity came to be seen as a marker for the happiness set point, since people tend to return to this level no matter whether they win the lottery or lose their spouse. If mental training can alter activity characteristic of OCD and depression, might meditation or other forms of mental training, Davidson wondered, produce changes that underlie enduring happiness and other positive emotions? "That's the hypothesis," he says, "that we can think of emotions, moods and states such as compassion as trainable mental skills."

With the help and encouragement of the Dalai Lama, Davidson recruited Buddhist monks to go to Madison and meditate inside his functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tube while he measured their brain activity during various mental states. For comparison, he used undergraduates who had had no experience with meditation but got a crash course in the basic techniques. During the generation of pure compassion, a standard Buddhist meditation technique, brain regions that keep track of what is self and what is other became quieter, the fMRI showed, as if the subjects--experienced meditators as well as novices--opened their minds and hearts to others.

More interesting were the differences between the so-called adepts and the novices. In the former, there was significantly greater activation in a brain network linked to empathy and maternal love. Connections from the frontal regions, so active during compassion meditation, to the brain's emotional regions seemed to become stronger with more years of meditation practice, as if the brain had forged more robust connections between thinking and feeling.

But perhaps the most striking difference was in an area in the left prefrontal cortex--the site of activity that marks happiness. While the monks were generating feelings of compassion, activity in the left prefrontal swamped activity in the right prefrontal (associated with negative moods) to a degree never before seen from purely mental activity. By contrast, the undergraduate controls showed no such differences between the left and right prefrontal cortex. This suggests, says Davidson, that the positive state is a skill that can be trained.

For the monks as well as the patients with depression or OCD, the conscious act of thinking about their thoughts in a particular way rearranged the brain. The discovery of neuroplasticity, in particular the power of the mind to change the brain, is still too new for scientists, let alone the rest of us, to grasp its full meaning. But even as it offers new therapies for illnesses of the mind, it promises something more fundamental: a new understanding of what it means to be human.

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Fri 23 Feb 2007 -  MGCK Music        So you want everything for free???!

What a sad bunch o' pricks you are. The most profound moments, musically and cinematically have come to me via 'the industry'.  The greatest artists have been brought from neophyte to award-winning stance via A&R people and movie moguls who spent money on the development of talent.  I don't want to buy pirated DVD's.  I don't want to download  or swap 'free' music.  I don't, because ultimately I know this will lead (sure as shit) to a collapse of the industry and a free-for-all flood (already happenin') of ONLY mundane non-'talent'.  Not paying for real talent will leave the genuine artists unable to afford to work and create.  I WANT Marty Scorcese to make films.  I WANT to see his genius on the screen.  I WANT Joni Mitchell to have a record deal and keep inspiring me with her brilliant mind and music.  I WANT new talent that has value to be developed.. not just grabbed up and 'thrown against the wall' to see what sticks in an industry that can no longer afford 'development'.  I don't want to have to 'find' Norah Jones on MySpace...I don't want to hear her music made in  shitty studios with lousy production...  I WANT labels like BLUE NOTE to find her for me, develop and distribute her.  I want access to real music and film; beautifully produced and packaged... not BEDROOM jams and indie prods... OK... That's it.  

This rant is the result of watching a pirated DVD of 'BLOOD DIAMOND' last night.  A DVD that was obviously copied from one of the many Screen Actor's Guild member DVD's that get sent around so people can vote.  Don't do it.  Are you so poor that you have to buy shit copies of great stuff and make the middle-man rich, rather than the artist?  Just DON'T DO IT.

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Thurs 22 Feb 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change Your Look

These kids did!!!

Some mugshots of those who rose to fame and fortune and those who rose and fell in a heap.

Whoever  you are and wherever you are.. you too can take a groovy mugshot or just have an NYPD-style make-over.   These and much more from: http://www.thesmokinggun.com  It seems you can't be a 'star', a celebrity, or the least bit successful unless you've done two things: been arrested and been in rehab.  At least I'm halfway there.  I was in rehab when I was 15... Can I collect my Oscar now???

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Wed 21 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change Your Location

YESTERDAY:  I was remiss in not promoting a documentary on BBC1 last night, about THE DIGGER; an exposé style news sheet in Glasgow.  The documentary was produced by my friend, film-maker David Graham Scott (who has recently returned to working and living in Glasgow).  The piece had it's ups and downs, but the facts were fully intriguing - pretty f*ckin' full-on actually.  It's an ugly life out there, in 'the projects'.  Sorry I didn't mention it earlier.  Worth seeing.

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Sun 18 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change the Year

Here comes THE YEAR OF THE PIG!!!   ""Paul Ng, a geomancer and master of feng shui who is popular for his predictions, said this is the Year of the Fire Pig, which comes every 60 years.

"This is a record year to get married and to have babies because the Fire Pig Year is inherited with a lucky sign," said Mr. Ng, who is based in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto. "I think a baby born this year will benefit the parents financially. And the kids will tend to be a bit luckier."

Mr. Ng had other, less sunny predictions for the world. They included possible wild fires, battles and wars. Accidents involving height, such as satellites malfunctioning, bridges collapsing, high rises becoming unstable may also occur. Problems related to birds and contagious illnesses may return. And cults might cause problems in the form of group suicides, he said."" 

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Sat 17 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change the Program

What can you do on a Friday night that you haven't done a thousand times before???

Seemingly, not much, except go to a pub or a club, especially if you're in the far North. That's why it's a challenge to change the program and do something a little different.. so.. last night.. a FRIDAY NIGHT...we went Sight-seeing.. Yes!! Sight-seeing at night!!!  

A lovely place to do just that is South Queensferry, where the apogee of two great bridges (Forth Road and Railway Bridge) appear almost to meet on the Fife side.  Beautiful, with the gently lapping tide reflecting the lights. (A little difficult to photograph in the dark.. and I had to borrow this one from someone else on Google!) 

Other suggestions for a Friday night??: visit WANDERLIST and peruse their suggestions and, if you feel like it, add one of your own......  OR.... just head on out to a SHOOTING PEOPLE PARTY in NEW YORK!

 SHOOTING PEOPLE are ALWAYS having a party on a Friday night SOMEWHERE in the BIG APPLE.. (I'm SHURE Of it!!!)  

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Fri 16 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change your Point of View!

A complete turnaround happened to me this last few months in California.  

A sudden shift from Indie-Vagabond-just-truckin'-along-out-here-doin'-what-I-wanna-do-la-de-da-de-da values to 'Circle-the-Fuckin' Wagons!! We're Under Attack!!!!!!' ... 

Yes indeed ...I mean... a return to...  "!TRADITIONAL COMMERCIAL!" values!!!!; particularly where record labels, packaging and distribution are concerned.  It was Steve Jobs' announcement that he's challenging the Digital Rights Management (DRM) regulations; to reduce the royalty paid to 'artists'(!!!), so iTunes can shift more product globally... (maybe shift more downloads to the starving peoples in Africa.)  

His view expressed in print media across the land, "Jobs wants changes in online music - Record industry should drop copyright-protection system to help consumers"... argues that copyright regulations are holding up the streaming STAMPEDE!!! [To 'help' consumers????!!!!!  Since when did 'consumers' need any help??!!! (Read the article)  Steve Jobs (and I told you I met this man like 10 years ago) declaration of war on the artist was the last straw for me in a personal shift that's been coming for a while now.  

Over these last few 'indie' years - as a lone wolf, it's come to my attention, again and again, that if you're an 'artist' and you don't have some legally savvy, tuned-up and mammonly-moneyed dudes looking out for your interests (like Zeppelin's Peter Grant and ATLANTIC Records), you will either get completely ignored or completely ripped off and run over;  your poor pale little talent-poached carcass left bleeding by the side of the road, whining about what a bunch of pricks the industry is made up of...  Well, actually, the real threat is not from the industry. Not no more no more.  

The HUGER threat out there is the developing taste for the free or 'near-as-dammit' free download wanted by the 8 billion potential 'consumers' on this planet, who want to pay YOU, the artist, .000000000000043 of a cent per download or, if they can get away with it... pay YOU, the artist, absolutely NUTHIN'.  The only way, in this colourful digital landscape, for YOU, the artist, to have your 'interests' looked after, promoted, marketed, protected and paid for (on a quarterly basis), is if you've got some grisly industry wolverine on your side.  Someone who ALSO happens to be due a paycheck from the sweat of your efforts.  So.. yes.. in an odd way.. I see the commercial industry as the great saviours of income for musicians.  I never thought I'd hear myself say it.. but yeah.  I'm saying it now.

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Happy Valentine's Day Wed 14 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change your heart!

Love someone for all the reasons you first loved them, and leave your baggage at the door.

To help you on your appreciative path... a little Valentines video put together by ALAVALA in San Francisco, using a song I wrote and kind of threw away a few years back (i.e. never demo'd properly) but there's a message in here.. so Listen and Watch and be very very happy you can do those simple things ....

and have a nice day ["3 x Love" words and music © Electra C Smith 2001]

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Notes from The Departure Lounge

Sun 11 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change your ticket!

Which I did.... twice.. at a cost of $200 a pop, before I could decide on a date of departure (told you I hate appointments!!!)  It was the turning of sunny days into foggy and rainy ones that sealed the deal.  San Francisco was becoming just like.. just like... EDINBURGH!!!!!!!! So I took that last Super Shuttle to the departure lounge - so early in the morning I couldn't even remember to cry.  Boarded that big silver bird and retraced the journey back: to the far cold North.

Lots of abstract thoughts along the way, and ideas triggered from randomly perused newspaper and magazine articles and just the sheer mass of humanity moving, moving, moving....The most chilling moment came on lift-off from Atlanta, when I realised I was leaving.. not just leaving but LEA-VING... AM-ER-I-CA !!! again and wondered if maybe I needed a mental health check, especially when I glanced around at my puffy-faced northern British flight-mates and wrote this note: ""They all look like they got dressed in the 80's , i.e. bad jeans and bad hair.""  I also noted some bad manners and mingey miserable attitudes, but anybody going back to serial days of rain, cold, winter-dark and grey skies is allowed to be down-hearted.

Anyway, other thoughts... a review of new 'How To' book, 'STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS', the gist of which was with all of our 'planning'.. we make no contingency for serendipity or natural happiness to just pop into our lives.  We also make plans based on our current values and experience, foregoing the input queer twists of fate and unforseen events will have on our 'plans' and I quote: 

""The mistake of future predictions? They are always based on conditions and values in the present. "Who ever would have guessed...??" is the question that always belies planning.

A future 'happiness' I hadn't planned for, on this occasion, was two seats by the window to myself for both flights.  Both flights being near empty.  Also a little bit shocked at the number of US Troops in the Atlanta Airport.  Camouflage everywhere.  Made me realise we have a troop movement going overseas.  It is real.  Iraq is NOT a video game.  It's happening.  Flesh and blood, going to tangle with more flesh and blood somewhere else.  How oddly barbaric and ancient it seems when you actually clock it.  Like dead bodies.. we don't see them very often, but when you do, it puts another spin on your own existence and it's ultimate moment.  All the hordes of people to-ing and fro-ing in the airport and then the flight itself to some distant destination set me thinking about where we all think we're going and I wrote:

""So many lights below.  So many lives.  So much going on everywhere and like the polar bear, maybe we are all swimming towards something that is gone.""

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  Notes from Under the Bridge  Thurs 8 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change your mind!

Ok..  So I've done it.. .I've changed my mind and I'm about to take off into the wild blue yonder.  Watching a Pete Rose interview with Norman Mailer and listening to the genius septegenarian author talking about how he can't write 10 pages a day like he used to.  How as he ages, he expects to slow down and shrink until he becomes like the dot on the page - period, and then gone.  I guess as people get older, they slow down so death can catch up.  Older people make dying look easy.  Maybe that's the point.  For them it is.

Anyway... I'm looking at the hills of the East Bay and wishing JM and I were headed once again up to Yosemite; to the Wawona Hotel and Christmas in the snow.  This has been a great trip.  A GREAT GREAT TRIP!!! No LSD required... nature was the trigger.  All of it, every moment was spectacular.  And now, it's time to go.

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Wed 7 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Change the weather!

The weather's changing in San Francisco.  Meteorologists promise that February is going to deliver all the rain that January didn't.  As I stroll around the town in my last days here it's with a heavy heart we say good-bye to the sun.

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Tues 6 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        It's marvelous!! until you think about it.

Letter to the editor San Francisco Chronicle re: The Queen Mary 2

    Behemoth of the Seas: ""There have been at least three major articles about the Queen Mary 2's arrival in San Francisco, covering everything from who's on her, how much food is consumed, where she's been and where she's going and how she's getting into the city. The Queen Mary 2 certainly sounds like a technological marvel.  What's missing for me is some information explaining whether this technology extends to making the ship 'green'.
    Cruise ships are a major cause of air and ocean pollution, dangerous to large marine mammals and consume huge amounts of resources.  Cruise ships dump raw sewage in the open ocean and create mountains of trash everyday.  They are a symbol of wretched excess and consumption.  I would love to have learned whether this marvellous new behemoth, mostly available to the privileged few, is also leading the way to making cruising less detrimental to the environment shared by wildlife and people, privileged and otherwise."" Maggie Rufo, Novato, CA  

She's right ya know...  It doesn't take an Einstein to figure it out:

   plus   turns the ocean into a 
 
and makes lots of dead

[photo of the QM2 at Pier 29  © E C Smith Feb 2007] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mon 5 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        A sober moment

After a very merry 'Superbowl Sunday'.. New 'friend' and poet, Ian Horn, turned me on to Benjamin Zephaniah's MySpace.  Of course, I clicked on over and begged Zephaniah's eternal 'friend'ship.   A great poet and a great man.

Finally saw DREAMGIRLS on Saturday night.  Would recommend it for Jennifer Hudson's EPIC performance.   Beyonce Knowles may be the pretty one, but really.. the big girl got it all. 

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Sun 4 February 2007 -  MGCK Music        Superbowl Sunday

Indianapolis Colts V Chicago Bears in Miami... PRINCE played in the half-time... and like all the other 50 million no-brainers watching the game, we drank a lotta beer

By half-time the stadium was soaked.  Monsoon like rains, but the show went on and despite the weather, PRINCE hit his godly Hendrix-esque stride by the last track, 'Purple Rain'.  Well.. 'almost' Hendrix-esque: i.e. he may have taken as many drugs, but probably not the right ones.  Still... inspired guitar-playing and a better half-time than the Justin Timberlake shenanigans of past Superbowls.

Then the Colts won.... and broke my heart.

Unfortunately, at the same time the Queen Mary 2,  was sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge.  The largest Ocean Liner ever to have done so, as crowds of thousands lined the bridge and the piers all the way into town.  Bridge horns blowing, ships horns answering.  Apparently it was a glorious experience for those who saw it and it was an absolutely Bee-Yoo-Ti-Ful spring day out there.. but you can't be in two places at once.  Superbowl pre-game show started at 2:30, kick-off at 3:20.  Queen Mary swam under the bridge at 3pm on the dot.  Had to make a choice. 

Still, reminds me, when I leave here, most of all, I will miss the sound of fog-horns.  So haunting.

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Fri 2 February 2007 -  MGCK Music       First days of Spring... and the road is beckoning...

LAST NIGHT(1 Feb) Went to the Album Preview Party for Illinois band, FALL OUT BOY @ Mr Smith's on 7th street... a 6-8pm two-hour intro, pre launch party to a 'launch' to come some time later, with another party????  I went for a few minutes with a friend and had to flash my ID... yes indeed I AM over 21.  Island are the label and that doesn't make the drinks any cheaper.  I understand the point.   Publicity.  Not that they need any... Apparently they've got 19 million hits on MySpace and over a million friends and sell lots of albums.  Just because I didn't know who they were before apparently isn't going to dent their popularity.  But it's that 'boy singer' voice over 'pop-metal' guitars parading as something tougher that turns me right the f*ck OFF.   So, I still don't know who they are...but I know their name and now.. so do you!!!!  If you want to pass your own judgments on the music go to www.myspace.com/FalloutBoy and become a friend or something.

Re Mr Smith's: OK in that modern style-bar designed for super hoe-downs kinda way - super clean, super shiny, three floors, three bars, VIP Room and boasts a regular customer in our sex-charged super-handsome SF mayor, Gavin Newsom - fresh from an affair with his appointment secretary and wife to his Campaign Manager... a man with many apologies to make.  Anyway, bring back the Paradise Lounge!  That's all I have to say.

On the personal side... I was thinking, maybe I have to become a Catholic or something.. take some vows.. get a lash... flagellate the hell out of my bad self.  I've spent almost three months in the sun and accomplished very very little.. I've treated each day like an open road, or an hors d'ouvre, to be savoured, eaten, enjoyed and not put much more thought into it.  I am, as I contemplate leaving this beautiful land of sun and sand and mountains and madness, riddled with guilt, that I didn't do more... make the most of every moment... at least GET A VIDEO FOR KITTY KITTY COMPLETED!!!!!  I came here with that plan in mind.. started talking with ALAVALA about the story-board.. even brought the shoes and an orange bikini and a mini-kilt for part of the shoot and just didn't the f*ck carry through.  Didn't write a single new song.  Spent a LOTTA money.  Saw LOTSA movies.. (including this last week, CATCH AND RELEASE, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, PAN'S LABRYNTH, VENUS and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - The latter two DVD's being sent to my Screen Actor's Guild member for pre Screen Actor's Guild award perusal and member's vote.  But the DVD's arrived the Monday AFTER the awards!!!)  So anyway.. it's been a time of soaking up visual stimulation and story-lines, but non-achievement makes me anxious.. almost nauseous if I'm honest.  I'll go home feeling like a fallen angel of laziness...  Only one cure for it today... some time in the Hot Tub.  

Actually, to be honest.. I DID accomplish one thing here I set out to do... some unfinished 'script' business.. Sent the screenplay for 'ONE DAY IN MAY', off to Writers Guild of America West in LA for registration... only 10 years late!!!  I looked at the original, completed in 1996.  Man... maybe it just takes a decade to get a thing done.  That means, the video for Kitty Kitty will be ready to go in 2017... just in time for the asteroid impact.

Anyway... .flowers are blooming everywhere and especially these beautiful camelias in the patio:

Minerva's Taurus Horoscope for 2007: ""TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Jupiter settles into your hormone house for most of the year. Oh, the possibilities! Loans look good, too; perhaps you'll refinance. An inheritance can come now; also a bonus. Make a decision on May 16 and expect to see results in November. The problem regarding your home and/or family should unkink itself around that time, too. Your summer sizzles starting June 24. Celebrate yourself on Oct. 26."" 

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At the beginning of every new month, we archive an old month... taking out the best bits.  Here are the highlights from April 2005:

BRING BACK COUNTERCULTURE

1 Apr 2005 Fri MGCK Music    Whatever happened to.....  hitch-hiking? and the open road?

http://www.bruceeisner.com/new_culture/current_affairs/  Very cool, very interesting and VERY telling website devoted to discussions on/literature about 'hey... whatever happened to the counterculture?'  It morphed into the consumer culture.  Read on.  Scroll down and check out the list of archive articles.. there's mucho interesting stuff there.  Actually, too much. Too much to read and take in.  You'd need three heads and several brains.  Maybe they'll work that out in a lab somewherever, some day soon.

End Apr 2005 MGCK Music    .. ..."Goin' to California...."

Ocean Beach here we come.   

Be there and bye til later....

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If you're looking for LAST MONTH's stuff : go to Last month's blog: January 07

Still smokin'!!!!

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  BE THERE...... or BE SOMEWHERE ELSE!  If you don't know how.. take lessons on COUNTERCULTURE.

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SPACE: The FINAL FRONTIER! Always an eyeful: The Universe Today

Sites worth a visit and support are: http://www.adbusters.org and Be an 'Antipreneur' - anti-corporate - self-motivated activist: http://adbusters.org/metas/politico/antipreneur/

http://www.indymedia.org.uk

as always www.clearchannelsucks.net  (note: this site WAS closed down in a court battle with the Media Giant who got awarded the rights to the website name.. but it has sprung up again in an Appeal.. gripping stuff..

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MGCK Music                                  

MySpace for Electra: www.myspace.com/electrasong or www.myspace.com/electramagick (we can't log in to upload or change anything as we've forgotten the frickin password!)

MySpace for Deep (and meaningful) Six: www.myspace.com/deepsixxxxxx 

MySpace for Jimmy Miller 1: www.myspace.com/anonandon

MySpace for Jimmy Miller 2: www.myspace.com/jimmymilleredinburgh

MySpace for MAGICK 101: www.myspace.com/magick101

MySpace for Diamond Kitty: www.myspace.com/dkinfo

MySpace for DEAD EASY: www.myspace.com/deadeasy