The baseball playoffs are underway, and today the Phillies beat the Dodgers. Isn't that - I don't know - exciting?

I don't get it, myself. Rooting for a professional sports team. Isn't is kind of like rooting for Hummer to beat Land Rover in sales this quarter?

Don't get me wrong, I understand the history of regional rivalries in professional sports. But it's been a couple decades, at least, since players showed allegiance to anyone other than their agents. When I was a kid, pretty much the same group of guys would show up every year and put on Viking or Twins uniforms. There was a continuum there, and you felt like the players represented your state or your city. I know the reality of the situation is most of them couldn't have switched teams even if they wanted to, but from a fan's perspective that confidence in knowing the same players would be out there scratching their balls and patting each other on the ass every season was comforting. And after a while you felt like you knew them and their personalities, and a bond with the team as a whole was a natural extension of that.

But now, the players move, the teams move, everyone follows the money. There's nothing wrong with that. But I don't see how, as a fan, you can latch on to any one revolving door team and feel any affinity for it. Professional sports teams are corporations. They are logos. They are not people, they are not regions. It's like watching a television show where one of the characters is replaced between seasons, and no one says, "Gee, you look different." They just continue on as if nothing happened and everything is the same as it ever was.

I can still watch a major league baseball game once every 10 years or so. I understand and appreciate the game, and if two well matched teams are playing, it's like a (really long) game of chess. A game of chess where even the pawns are worth half a million dollars - but still. Caring which team wins seems utterly pointless. What's the difference? Is the city of Philadelphia better than the city of Los Angeles today? Do the Dodgers give a shit whether you sit in front of your television and cheer? Ask the people who used to live in Chavez Ravine whether the Dodgers really give a shit about anything that goes on in Los Angeles.

So yeah, the Phillies logo beat the Dodgers logo. Woot! I'll bet Major League Baseball tracks merchandise sales, and they could probably tell you how many more Phillies hats sold today. Those poor fucking Dodger hats though, collecting dust on the shelves. Tragic. You think the "Bud Bowl" was a joke? It was prophesy, baby. Bud wins! Bud wins! Well, that's just about as exciting as the Patriots winning, or whoever wins the Super Bowl these days. Or whether Barak Obama will beat John McCain. And McCain is definitely the Bud Light in that scenario. Or maybe the O'Douls.

Hey man, rooting for your kid's little league team, that's understandable. Hell, it's actually a lot of fun. Your high school team? Yeah, go for it. Those are your peers, and you probably know some of them. At least you've seen them around, or they steal your lunch money or slam you into the lockers as they pass by. College - eh...you're verging on the professional side there. It's unlikely the average dink walking around UCLA ever sees any of the star athletes in the bookstore or on the bus. It's abstract. The sports are barely related to the school, except in name.

Yet 60 year old men still sit in the expensive seats at the rose bowl every season, cheering for a bunch of kids from all over the country, who will scatter back over the country again as soon as they graduate or are drafted. But they wear that logo, and they (ostensibly) go to that school, so that is their team. And when their team wins, that is, naturally, a personal reflection of their own greatness.

Right?

Follow the money, babies. Go Hummer! Go Land Rover!

Yay.

Okay, I'm going to rave about a fringe movie again, one that will only appeal to one out of every hundred people who read this, but it's what I do, so don't try to stop me. The last one, Rockers, is mainly of interest to old school reggae lovers and Jamaicaphiles, and this one will hit a chord mainly with old punks and possibly fans of Diane Lane and Laura Dern. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.

It was one of Lane's first films after A Little Romance, which made a big splash in 1979 and landed her on the cover of TIME magazine. Lane had just turned 15 when they began filming The Fabulous Stains, and Laura Dern was even younger (12 years old when filming began!), with only a bit part in 1979's B movie classic, Foxes, to her credit. Also appearing in the film are Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, Paul Simonon of the Clash, Fee Waybill, front-man for the Tubes, Ray Winstone, Elizabeth Daily, Christine Lahti and a cast of thousands.

The film was directed by Lou Adler, who had directed only once before, Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, and never directed a film again after The Fabulous Stains. Adler was more of a music business type, having founded Dunhill and Ode Records, both big labels in the 60's and 70's. He also managed dozens of groups, won grammys - no slouch, but perhaps not born to be a movie director. He may, however, have born to direct this particular film.

On the surface The Fabulous Stains is a rock and roll B-movie rags to riches to rags story. Originally titled All Washed Up, the writer, Nancy Dowd, had harassment issues during production, and wasn't exactly thrilled with the way the film turned out (a tacked-on "happy ending") so she had her name removed from the credits. That happy ending was shot almost two years after production had finished because the movie tested so poorly with audiences. They simply didn't know what the hell to make of it. Since they didn't understand it in the first place, maybe a downer ending seemed a bit much.

But this movie isn't for the typical "I dunno, I'll see whatever's showing" mall crowd. For those interested in the music of the era though (and the later Riot Grrrl feminist punk movement, some of whose key members have cited this film as inspiration), it is definitely worth a close look.

A B-movie, yes, but one that expertly captures many truths about the music business, perhaps more so than any other "rock and roll" film ever made. From the less-than-successful punk band (the Looters; Jones, Cook, Simonon and Winstone), to the even less successful - but once famous - glam/metal band, The Metal Corpses (Waybill), the film is populated by real world characters and the look and feel capture that world and that era incredibly well. I credit Adler's music business experience with supplying the stark, precise reality. No director who hadn't lived some of this stuff could have possibly recreated it.

The film never played to mass audiences, in fact, it has been said that only two 35 mm prints were ever made, and as of a few years ago, only one of the tattered prints survived, occasionally making its way to festivals and revival houses. But in the early 80's a couple of early cable channels aired it, bootleg VHS copies were made, and from there The Fabulous Stains earned its cult status.

I was one of those who made a VHS copy from cable (or more accurately, the lone pre-cable channel in my building, ON-TV), back in the early 80's. I dragged that tape around the country with me for 20 years, forcing it on people whenever I could. Not many appreciated it as much as I did, but I always blamed that on the awful quality of the tape, rather than my possible lack of taste. The quality of all the bootlegs was poor because the channels that aired the film were mostly scrambled UHF signal "cable," a primitive precursor to the digital cable services we have now.

Rhino has just released a DVD version of The Fabulous Stains, and it is a joy to behold. It is a wide screen transfer, which makes this the first time the film can be seen as-shot, unless you were one of the three dozen people to see it in a theater. One of the main problems with the bootlegs was muddy sound, but the DVD is pretty damn clear all the way around. It's almost 30 years old so it doesn't have THX DOLBY wraparound 3D ThunderSound, and although there is a 5.1 home theater audio setting, much of the sound in the film is definitely low budget indie, meaning you may have to rewind a few times to pick up a garbled line here and there.

The DVD is thin on "bonus" material, but it does have a couple of great commentary tracks, one by Adler and one by Lane and Dern. Interestingly, a "making of" short exists, but it is not included here. The only place you can find it is on a documentary about the rainbow wig "John 3:16" guy who used to be on camera at every sports event years ago. You remember him. He eventually wound up barricaded in a hotel room with hostages (surprise?) --- an interesting story in itself, but I have no idea why the making of The Fabulous Stains is on there. Allison Anders, director of Grace of My Heart, Mi Vida Loca, Gas, Food Lodging and Border Radio, writes the liner notes. So yay Rhino, I certainly never thought this would see DVD release.

Oh yeah, the film itself. I should probably say something about it, since I have probably bored everyone away by now with a thousand words of background.

Don't let the pictures here of the absurd hair and makeup on the girls throw you. I know it's Hollywood-wrong, but the hair ties into the story so you can consider it kind of a prop, and the angular lightning bolt makeup is really about the only place this film misses the mark.

In a nutshell, here's the story; a Rastafarian named "Lawnboy" (Barry Ford) is driving the Looters and the Metal Corpses around the bleak Northeastern U.S. in his bus, managing a tour of tiny dives. He sees Corinne "third degree" Burns (Lane) on a television news show after her mother dies, and for various reasons, offers the Stains a spot on the tour. So the Stains get on the bus and the fun begins.

I know, it's improbable. And there is the issue of that hair. But I have never seen another film that so successfully puts the bleak, no-budget rock and roll tour life onto the screen, or one that so deftly captures the "out with the old, in with the new" moment in time when punk threatened to make metal obsolete. The film was made in Vancouver and Pennsylvania, and a cold, wet, overcast mood permeates practically every frame. If it sounds dismal, it should. The majority of time life in a tour bus (or van, or car) is dismal. The Fabulous Stains nails that feeling perfectly.

The heart and soul of the film is the statement that Corinne wants the Stains to make. This is where the film gets into spooky precognition of the Riot Grrrl/third wave of punk scene, with its strong feminist message. Lines like, "I think every citizen should be given a guitar on her sixteenth birthday," and "They [men] have such big plans for the future, but those plans don't include us. So what does that make you? Just another girl lining up to die." Or at the pivotal moment of the film, "I'm perfect! But no one in this shithole gets me, because I don't put out!"

These are not the kind of things you heard from the actual female bands of the day, I promise you. Remember, it was post Runaways, pre-MTV when this was made, so you have to put yourself back into that time to realize how foreign and completely out of left field some of this stuff sounded. That Lane was capable of delivering such a believable and powerful performance without ever once crossing over into cringe or cheese territory - at the age of 15! - is really astounding.

So yeah, the Fabulous Stains. You could say I recommend it. Especially if you are old enough to remember those wacky late 70's, early 80's, when everything seemed possible. At least until it all collapsed under a blizzard of emptiness, advertising (a.k.a. MTV) and mediocrity.

Even if you're young and fresh and know full well that those old farts Green Day invented punk rock, it would be worth your while to watch the Fabulous Stains. I remember that I was slightly amused by watching all those old Elvis movies as a kid...that's what this will be like for you. Yet another ironic relic that you can smugly consume while maintaining your practiced distance and sense of entitlement and superiority. Knock yourself out.

No, this is not about the domain broker, they actually paid me (no champagne yet though). This is about fame and fortune in HOLLYWOOD, bitches!

So, this band I was in during the late 1980's was in a movie. It was a lot of fun. You know, pretending to play for hours while they film you from on top, behind, up your nose and every other which way you can imagine. Yeah, it was a real blast. "A little more energy, fellows!" Okay, okay, let me summon my spare energy after four hours miming the same song. Toward the end I couldn't even remember how to play the song, I was so punch drunk, so I was just moving my fingers around on the guitar, like an actor! I always hoped that would make it into the movie, but it didn't.

The movie was called Defenseless, and Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard were the big name actors. What? You've never heard of it? Well, that could be because it sucked. But a lot of movies suck, so who knows. You could tell it wasn't going to be great when it wasn't released for a couple of years after filming. I guess they were trying to fix it during those years. Well, it did come out, in 1991, and I went to the premiere and watched myself as background on the screen for 20 seconds or so, after which a friend of mine who was a crew member on the movie leaned over and openly mocked me, "Ooh, look at you, big star! Welcome to Hollywood!" Which was funny - but maybe only if you knew the guy.

Here's the thing about bands in movies; they are props. They are always props, no matter who the band is. Every band that gets a movie gig thinks that it is their big break, but when is the last time a band became well known after being a prop in a movie? Well, never. Every time I see a band in a movie since then I shout, "Boom Shaka!" - the name of the band I was a movie star with - and laugh. It's good for a paycheck, but if your band is offered a movie spot, you might want to ramp down your expectations and look at it as just another gig, because that's what it is.

But even when you're a prop in a movie, you will probably want a souvenir, and I'm no different, so recently I went over to Amazon to get a DVD of Defenseless. As it turns out, it's way out of print, and was only released by some fringe DVD joint in the first place. But it is not exactly in high demand, so I was able to find a new copy for about $5. It arrived yesterday and I popped it in and scanned it for our scene.

The quality of the film transfer was awful - in fact it wasn't even wide screen, so I suspect it was "mastered" from 3/4" video. That's what it looks like. So, fast forward, fast forward, ah, there it is. Blah blah blah, actors talking, blah blah blah...here we come...aaaannnndddd...cut to next scene.

Huh?

They had cut us out, as if to reinforce our prop status.

I had seen the movie on VHS years ago, and we were in that version, so it was kind of weird that the scene was cut in the DVD. What is this thing, the USA network version? Well, I didn't need to see myself 19 years younger, sporting a beautiful, all-original 1960 Les Paul Junior that I had to sell for a paltry $700 shortly after filming. Who needs it. Too much nostalgia is bad for the soul anyway.

Success in any creative field is about 846 million times more difficult to achieve than success in normal every day business. Any monkey who can put in enough college time can get all degreed up and slump into an office somewhere, get their nose nestled comfortably into the right asses and be a "success" in a few short years. In fact, in most industries, the more inept and clueless you are, the better.

But music, art - most of the time you consider yourself successful if you can support yourself at a poverty level without a "normal" job. It's a bleak road with a few intermittent rewards and bursts of euphoria, but for the most part it is simply difficult. Sound like fun? Then go for it! You know you are on the right track when you are so passionately single minded that you never consider doing anything else.

You're still not going to get rich (if that is how you measure success), but you'll have an interesting life. And at the end of the day, that's much better than success at something you don't give a damn about.

---

More on movies in the next few days, because I just received a DVD of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, the long lost 1981 classic, that has, until now, only been available on shitty bootlegs and YouTube videos (which are just shittier versions of shitty bootlegs). Stay tuned.

If you needed proof that even the Republican party considers the next presidential election to be a "gimme" for Obama, look no further than the decision today to run Sarah Palin as Vice President next to John McCain. From the great state of Alaska, where every politician is either under investigation or already indicted for corruption and fraud, Palin is under investigation herself for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan because he wouldn't carry out a personal vendetta for her and fire her former brother-in-law from the state police.

They may as well have thrown Keith Richards or Miley Cyrus up there with McCain. That's how clear the message is: "We do not expect to win, so who gives a shit who the vice presidential nominee is?"

It is all so laughable, your politics. What a sad, sticky circle jerk of twitchy, insecure cocksuckers, ridiculously unqualified to do any kind of real work. Politicians, radio "personalities," circus clowns, used car salesmen - what a wonderfully talentless ghetto of petty idiocy and drooling pandering.

You can elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the corpse of Tammy Faye Baker president for all I care. No politician has ever done anything for me. They have done things to me, and to you as well. But invariably they are doing for themselves. If you can't see that, you are --- well, you're a typical American voter. Or perhaps one of those genius Hillary Clinton supporters who now say they will vote for McCain (I think there are only about 20 of them, really, but some never-say-die Republicans have suckerfished themselves onto those 20 in a sadly desperate attempt to sway what I (and they) can only assume is some sort of "profoundly retarded" voting bloc).

It's all so meaningless and scripted and all of these assholes are the same. All of them. From your precious savior Barak to anti-women's rights zealot Palin. They sway whichever way the polls blow, and they blow whoever they have to in order to sway the votes they need to fatten the wallets of themselves and their cronies.

So, you go girl! Yay Sarah! Yay John! Two more footnotes.

Yesterday I had a domain in a Moniker.com/SnapNames auction that "sold" for $19,000. Pop the champagne corks, right? Not so fast, kid! Today the auction results do not include a few of the names that "sold" yesterday, mine included. All I can gather from that is that the sale didn't go through.

So what is this shit? Were they letting people from the bar stumble in and raise their hands to bid? Just another example of the awesomeness that is the internet: you can bid on something at a live auction and then just say, "Yeah, you know - I don't think so. I changed my mind." Maybe the $18k bidder or the $17k bidder would have paid, but there's no way of knowing that now.

Well, it's always good for the soul to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, right? The upside is now I have a general valuation on the thing, so I can make a private sale, and the imbeciles at Moniker/SnapNames won't get to take a 15% "commission" off the total.



Update: the domain did sell. The results page is fucked up. Thanks to my good friends at Moniker and SnapNames, the most honest and marvelous company on the internet!

Yep.

Maybe I should wait until I get the check to say that...

How much do you know about databases? If the answer is "not much," consider yourself lucky.

I don't much about them either, but that hasn't prevented me from creating and maintaining half a dozen large databases. I ran into what you might call a big problem with one of them over the weekend.

When I created this thing I knew even less than I do now, and I put all the data into one table. Problem is, one table doesn't really handle complicated entries very well. So after adding items to the database and using it online for 5 years or so, I decided to fix it.

I came up with a new layout (or schema, if data organization turns you on) that consists of 10 tables. That right there should give you some idea of what a mess the original one-table database was. Anyway, I set up the new layout, wrote a simple little script to migrate the data from old to new database and set out populating the new database.

One row at a time.

The script was a click-through deal that allowed me to verify the info for each entry as I went along. Verifying each entry required at least four clicks (and evaluating the information on each click). There were 5600 entries to validate/move. I spent about 3 years on and off, here and there, moving the data over. Hey, I'm obsessive and patient!

Well, when I came up with the new database layout, one of the primary cool features was the ability to identify and compare items that might be the same, yet were titled differently. That means populating a separate table containing the associations between the two titles.

Bored yet? Well, stay tuned for the comedy!

So if, say, the same poem was published under different titles (not uncommon for this author), both of those titles should be in the database, and another entry in that mysterious association table would link them together.

But for some reason, from the beginning, I did not use that association table. Don't ask me why. Maybe I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do it, so I pretended it wasn't there. Whatever the reason, while I was migrating that data, line by line, over 3 years time, what I did was this: if the same poem had two titles, I would replace the "newer" title with the older one.

I didn't stop to think what a ridiculously bad idea that was. I just kept plowing through. It was a very big job, so I just did it the way I did it from the start, hoping to some day put the whole nightmare behind me.

Long story short, the new database is now - to me - essentially worthless! Har har har.

The way the new database is now, if someone searches for a poem with a newer title, they may or may not find older appearances, depending on how the title has changed.

So, yeah, I spent 3 years replacing a bad database with a not-much-better database.

I still have the original database (it's still being used on the site), so it will be possible to fix some of this. Though the fix is going to require another item by item script. And another script to add the associations. I don't know if I have enough years left in my life to actually finish this fucker, I gotta tell ya.

So how was your weekend?

I watched the movie Rockers again over the weekend. This is absolutely and unequivocally tied for my favorite movie of all time. Rockers is my Woodstock, baby. Shot in Jamaica in 1976 and 1977, the golden age of reggae music, this film is packed with legendary roots musicians as "actors," great music, a wicked revenge story that culminates in a sort of shantytown crissmass mornin', iya!

If you don't have an ear for Jamaican patois the movie can be hard to follow (even though it is subtitled). It's easy to miss a lot of the subtleties in the subtitles. So to speak. But if you love reggae music of that era, there is no other film that tops this. The Harder They Come gives you a good look at Jamaica at the beginning of the 1970's, but musically it is almost pre-reggae, made during the days rock steady was turning into the reggae style that Rockers is steeped in: the golden age roots rock reggae music that crept up seemingly out of nowhere and took the world by the scruff of the neck.

Rockers is the story of a man and his motorbike. That man being Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace, one of the greatest reggae drummers ever to pick up the sticks and come forward with him licks, seen? Well, mafia bad boys thief him bike, and him well vexed over that. Who wouldn't be? He seeks solace from Winston Rodney - aka Burning Spear - and in a moment that may just send shivers up your spine, Spear takes Horsemouth down to the shore and they sit on some rubble and Spear sings Jah no dead to Horsemouth with the waves crashing in the background.

I can guarantee you that you will never see anything quite like that scene anywhere, in any movie. That alone is reason enough to take a peek at Rockers. Listen, I'm biased. Reggae is in my blood. But get this: it debuted at the Cannes film festival the same night as Apocalypse Now, but Rockers was on the front page of Le Monde the next morning because a riot broke out when 3000 people showed up to see it in a theater that held only 300. Le Monde's review started with; "This is not merely film making, this is cinema."

I will add that it's very funny as well. Some of the comedy may be buried in the language, but there are more than a few scenes (that I won't spoil for you) that are funny as hell, and one near the end that you will not forget for a long time. The people, the place, the music - it was a very brief moment in time, and it's gone now. The fact that Rockers documented it is a minor miracle in my book.

I don't know if you'll like Rockers, but you should rent it and get yourself relaxed one night - however you go about that - and drink it in. Even if you don't know what the hell is going on half the time, it is still a beautiful experience that anyone who loves reggae music, Rastafari, Jamaica, humanity or just good old rough and tumble indie style movie making - excuse me, cinema - will enjoy.

"What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

- H.L. Mencken

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