I Love Dancehall Promo Video

LaToya Bufford and Catherine Chiemelu are taking this on a quick tour of Northern California this weekend.

"South Pacific" - DMTC - Final Dress Rehearsal

Friday is opening night!

At Least The Gutters Are Useful For Something

Yesterday, various birds were taking baths in them, and robins were raiding them for worms.

Several days ago, there was a rare squashed squirrel. Smashed squirrels used to be common, but I thought natural selection had wiped out the stupid ones. Well, accidents DO happen!

V.I.C - Wobble Baby

RIP, "Sacramento Top 25"

Ever since I was aware of it, I've been trying to make Number One on the "Sacramento Top 25" Web site, maintained by John Bressler. I yearned for it, and yearned for it, even though it had no practical purpose at all, and may have, in fact, been a bad measure of Sacramento Top blogs.

Bressler lost interest in his project years ago and finally pulled the plug. Still, when "Sacramento Top 25" finally expired - lost, abandoned, and all-but-forgotten - guess which Sacramento blog was Number One?

Marc Valdez Weblog!

My Reactions To The 35th Annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference

Lots and lots of books!

Here are my reactions (in parentheses) to the various talks I attended at the conference - Popular and American Culture Studies: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, February 19-22, 2014, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

It's been a long time since I've been to an academic conference, but this one was particularly-fun, because anyone can get excited by popular culture, whether they are an academic, or not. I wasn't actually presenting anything, and I wasn't in academia at all. Freed from any obligation to impress anyone, I asked lots of questions at most of the talks I attended.

My mission at this conference was to propagate among other academics an idée fixe of mine: namely, that there is a hidden Native-American subtext running through "Breaking Bad". So, I spoke at tiresome length about this at every opportunity. Since there were several distinct academic groups interested in "Breaking Bad" at this conference, not necessarily in close contact, some repetition was necessary.

1005 Breaking Bad 1 - Wed, 02/19/2014 - 1:00pm - 2:30pm, Enchantment D. Panel Chair: Bridget Roussell Cowlishaw
The Uncertainty: Chemical Control and Human Chaos in “Breaking Bad” - Eli Turner, University of Arizona
(I was a bit disappointed by Turner's talk, because he is not a physicist, and so thought his classical/quantum physics dichotomy to be tiresome. I pointed out there is a third approach, available since the 1980's, of Chaos Theory: noise constrained into self-replicating fractal patterns.)


1023 Breaking Bad 2 - Wed, 02/19/2014 - 2:45pm - 4:15pm, Enchantment D. Panel Chair: Bridget Roussell Cowlishaw
Panopticism and Paranoia in “Breaking Bad” - Jeff Pettis, Independent Scholar
My Bad Experience: Social Media Beyond Fan Engagement - Miguel S. Jaramillo, Independent Scholar
Baby Blue: A Uses and Gratifications Analysis of “Breaking Bad” Viewers - Nick Gerlich, West Texas A&M University

Nick Gerlich and Bridget Roussell Cowlishaw listen as Jeff Pettis presents "Panopticism and Paranoia in “Breaking Bad”.

(The most interesting talk of the entire conference was Pettis' presentation regarding Michel Foucault's concept of Panopticism and its application to Breaking Bad, with Walt's efforts to reach a panoptic point, Lydia's efforts to remain hidden, and Gus Fring hiding in plain sight. Pettis' concerns dovetailed very nicely with my idée fixe about Lydia pointing on a map at zone of radio silence, which is actually the location of the Ansazi's Pueblo Pintado, a crucial component of their lunar cycle observations, for which no panoptic point is possible.)

Miguel Jaramillo presents "My Bad Experience: Social Media Beyond Fan Engagement".

(I was there to cheer on Miguel!)

Nick Gerlich presents "Baby Blue: A Uses and Gratifications Analysis of “Breaking Bad” Viewers".

(I was surprised that Nick was presenting in this session - the Breaking Bad session 3 had apparently been cancelled. Lori Westermann, Nick's colleague from West Texas A&M University, had not yet arrived in town, and was as yet unavailable. Their projected future number of Breaking Bad Albuquerque visitors was high - 400,000? - and it disturbed me.

1052 Special Event: Fire and Ice Reception: Hosted by the Hyatt Regency - Wed, 02/19/2014 - 6:15pm - 7:45pm, Grand Pavilion 4-6. Panel Chair: Southwest PACA Executive Team
Come join our Executive Staff as we celebrate the official opening of the 35th annual meeting of the Southwest PCA/ACA. Hosted by the Hyatt Regency Hotel, light refreshments and beverages will be available, honoring our conference attendees.
(A social occasion, which was a bit of a challenge, because I didn't know anyone there. I ended up talking a lot with Chris Trujillo, Internet Tech from Chamita, near Española, whose dad is a neighbor of my former classmate, and renowned wildlife vet, Kathy Ramsey. Good guy, Chris!)

Screening "The Quiller Memorandum".

1053 James Bond, Espionage, and Eurospy: Screening and Discussion: “The Quiller Memorandum” (1966) - Wed, 02/19/2014 - 8:00pm, Grand Pavilion 1-2. Panel Chair: Michele Brittany
Shot on location in Berlin and at Pinewood Studios, this spy-thriller is based on the 1965 spy novel by Elleston Trevor titled The Berlin Memorandum. The film was distributed by Rank Organisation and 20th Century Fox in late 1966. It starred George Segal, Alec Guinness and Max von Sydow and was directed by Michael Anderson. The film score was composed by John Barry, who scored Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. The film received three BAFTA nominations for Best British Screenplay, Best British Art Direction, and Best British Film Editing.
A discussion will following with media experts: Ian Dawe, Independent Scholar; Nicholas Diak, Independent Scholar; Hannah Means-Shannon, Georgian Court University; and Robert G. Weiner, Texas Tech University Libraries.
(I was so tired at the end of the day, such that when the hero was drugged and carried off for interrogation in Max von Sydow's rambling mansion, I just had to leave and catch a nap).

2035 Theatre and Performance Studies 2: Cultural Force(s): Musical Theater and Stand Up Comedy - Thu, 02/20/2014 - 9:45am - 11:15am, Sage. Panel Chair: Lynn Sally
Guilty Pleasure: The Shaming of American Musical Theatre - Nicole Samsel, Independent Scholar
Contested Cultural Citizenship in “Bloody Blood Andrew Jackson” - Maria Patrice Amon, University of California, Irvine
Hearing Voices: Metadiscourse and Counterfactuals in the Stand-Up Comedy of Jim Gaffigan - Lynn Zimmerman, Notre Dame College
(What is a conference worth if it doesn't feature Musical Theater? Interesting talk by Nicole Samsel. I asked about Disney musicals and mentioned everyone should see Rent, Jr. I have never seen “Bloody Blood Andrew Jackson” but asked Maria Patrice Amon if she knew UCI alumnus Katherine Coppola: apparently not.)


2061 Classical Representations in Popular Culture 1: Tragic Representations - Thu, 02/20/2014 - 1:15pm - 2:45pm, Enchantment B. Panel Chair: Angeline Chiu
Pathei Meth-os: “Breaking Bad” and Elements of Greek Tragedy - Angeline Chiu, University of Vermont
(Charismatic Angeline Chiu had the second most-interesting talk of the conference; discussing the elements of classical Greek drama, as applied to "Breaking Bad". Once again, her talk dovetailed very nicely with my idée fixe. Apparently one concept in classical Greek drama is the idea of "Miasma", of how the drama occurs in the looming shadow of dark past events or legends. I pointed out that given the history of To'hajiilee, such a miasma exists in "Breaking Bad", which surprised her, since she is not a Southwestern historian, and made her eager for more information.)


2091 Theater and Performance Studies 3: Burlesque - Thu, 02/20/2014 - 3:00pm - 4:30pm, Sage. Panel Chair: Lynn Sally
Batman and Sparkly Underthings: Nerdlesque as a Distinct Subgenre of Neo-Burlesque Performance - Jessica Thorp, University of Toronto
Tit for Tat: Burlesque and Pop Culture. An Exploration of the Potential Benefits and Drawbacks to the Mutual Appropriation Between Mainstream Media and Neo-Burlesque - Adrienne Sowers, Independent Scholar
Going Gaga: Using the Gendered Body to Re(-)Present Gender Roles - Lynn Sally, Metropolitan College of New York
(I had never heard of Nerdlesque, and so was fascinated. I asked how narrow a slice a fandom one could utilize, using the example of a friend of mine, who nerded out on Auto Repair Manuals. Would that suffice as a starting point? Thorp replied she didn't know, but some very narrow fascinations have been used to good effect, using the example she saw of a Burlesque routine inspired by an addiction to Ikea.)


2107 Theatre and Performance Studies 4: Roundtable: Unlimited Ways to Strip: The Changing Performance of Burlesque - Thu, 02/20/2014 - 4:45pm - 6:15pm, Sage. Panel Chair: Lynn Sally
The burgeoning field of burlesque is quickly becoming populated with performers from many different backgrounds: acrobatics, modern dance, aerial, fire, belly dance, classical ballet, tap, to name only a few. As competition becomes stiff, performers work to be innovative. However, classic burlesque remains a staple, and sometimes a more desired performance. The tensions inherent in this change, and the addition of a plethora of male performers, adds richness and the variety to modern burlesque performance while expanding the philosophical underpinnings of this art.
This roundtable discussion will feature burlesque—and boylesque—performers for the southwest. Each performer has an in-depth understanding of the history and the current manifestations of burlesque.
The roundtable will be chaired by Dr. Anne Key, College of Southern Nevada, whose specialty is gender and religious studies. She is also a current burlesque performer in Albuquerque.
(Once again, a fascinating discussion! I was slow to realize that all the presenters were not just academics, but burlesque performers too. One scholar in the audience went TMI with a description of Nevada attractions. Hands on experience, so to speak!)


2112.5 Breaking Bad 3: Roundtable: Making Good with “Breaking Bad”
Thu, 02/20/2014 – 8:00pm, Grand Pavilion 3
Panel Chair: Nick Gerlich
This roundtable will be comprised of individuals from the Albuquerque area with these areas of expertise related to “Breaking Bad”: Location scouting, set design, character development, economic development, and the resulting local business ventures.
(I was on this panel, together with Ann Lerner of the ABQ Film Office, Miguel Jaramillo, and Andre and Keith from Bathing Bad. Other invitees - Marq Smith, Ed Candelaria, and Michael Flowers - didn't show up. Lots of fun, and interesting. I went on and on about my idée fixe, and people seemed very appreciative. Film Historian Tom Donnelly was in the audience, and he asked questions. It was interesting listening to Andre and Keith, refugees from the New Orleans business community, discuss Bathing Bad, and their current efforts to diversify.

After the panel, Nick Gerlich, Lori Westermann, Miguel Jaramillo, Jennie Rexer, and .... Nick's wife??? .... went over to Forque Restaurant in the Albuquerque Hyatt and had foo-foo drinks: or, at least, I did.)


3037 Alfred Hitchcock 3: Gender and Voyeurism - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 11:30am - 1:00pm, Enchantment A. Panel Chair: Michael Howarth
The Male Gaze From the “Rear Window”: Alfred Hitchcock’s Anticipation of Laura Mulvey’s Criticism - Nicholas Harl, California State University, Long Beach
(It's been so long since I saw "Rear Window" I had nothing to contribute.)


3049 Motor Culture and the Road 1: Car History, the Drive-In, and the American Experience - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 11:30am - 1:00pm, Enchantment F. Panel Chair: Carla Lesh
Standin’ on the Corner Park in Winslow, Arizona: A Uniquely American Sense of Place Through Song - Beth Grimes, Northern Arizona University
Fill ‘er Up: Mississippi Motoring - Erin Scott, University of Mississippi
(I related my story of finding a wallet in Winslow, AZ, and learning that a substantial component of the population winters in Winslow, but summers on the Navajo or Hopi Reservations to the north. Thus, there might be a substantial class or racial component to community remembrance of the Eagles' song. Grimes thought that was a good point. Scott was at the Breaking Bad panel, and she related that the Japanese have a particular resonance to Flanery O'Connor stories, which I thought strange. I told her about my travels through Meridian, MS in 1978, and about the the favorite ice cream parlor that was razed in favor of a McDonald's, and how the McDonald's decorated itself in the bric-a-brac from the ice cream parlor - a waste if there was one. Scott said that was in keeping with her understanding that a lot of colorful MS restaurants bit the dust in the wake of the oil embargo of the 70's.)


3064 Native American/Indigenous Studies 4: Native Peoples Depicting Themselves - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 1:15pm - 2:45pm, Fiesta 1. Panel Chair: Margaret Vaughan
Language and Land as Cultural Identity - Lauren Hatch, Western Washington University
(Interesting talk about language, specifically about Washington State. During discussions, interesting comparisons with Australian aborigines. I noted that Australian natural landscapes are simply louder than North American equivalents.)


3078 Film and History 4: Technology, Distribution, and Transatlantic Teardrops - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 3:00pm - 4:30pm, Grand Pavilion 6. Panel Chair: Brad L. Duren, Oklahoma Panhandle State University
Targeting Colonial Audiences: Film Distribution and Cinema-going in the 1930s British Caribbean - Karen Beasley, University of Texas at Arlington
Capturing the Full Dimension Stereo Realist Cameras in “Them!” and “Two for the Road” - Aaron Rich, New York University
A Matter of Past, Present and Future and 1946: Temporal and Transcultural Historical Significance in “It’s a Wonderful Life” - Tom Donnelly, Leeds Trinity University College
(Tom Donnelly was pleased to see me - he had attended the Breaking Bad panel. Not many people in attendance. Liked Donnelly's presentation, and wondered how Herbert Hoover would have reacted to “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Wondered if Caribbean newspaper sources were adequate to distinguish whether "Britishness" as a selling point was more effective in some places than others in the Caribbean.)


3082 Grateful Dead 10: The Music of the Dead: Songs and Solos, Jams and Performance - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 3:00pm - 4:30pm, Grand Pavilion 1-2. Panel Chair: Shaugn O’Donnell
Towards a Classification System of Jam Space Types in the Music of the Grateful Dead, Furthur, and Phish - Heather Laurel, The City College of New York
(Not sure if this is the presentation I saw. I entered late, and a visual map was on the screen describing a recorded Grateful Dead performance, as the presenter said now and then 'we're here now, at the bass counterpoint,' and the like. The diagram was strange: from the rear of the room it looked like a line drawing of a large mutant porcupine and small furry friends approaching a library card catalog. Since I arrived late, I had trouble following it. Nearby, an academic laid down on the chairs, and slept. Why was I hear? I didn't even really like the Grateful Dead. So, I left early.)


3101 Religion 3: Theology of "Breaking Bad" and Girl Geniuses - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 4:45pm - 6:15pm, Sendero 3. Panel Chair: Warren Kay, Merrimack College
“Breaking Bad” as Theological Text: A Process-Theological Reflection on Theodicy and Anthropodicy - Brent Hege, Butler University
Theology, Morality and Audience Participation in “Breaking Bad” - Sean Sagan, University of California, Riverside
Created Entities, Created Stories: The History and Reality of “Girl Genius’s” Jagermonsters - Cori Knight, University of California, Riverside
(Interesting and thought-provoking! Just before the talks, Bridget Roussell Cowlishaw and Susan Johnston, who had both attended the "Breaking Bad" panel discussion the previous evening, both urged me to write a Guidebook regarding "Breaking Bad" locations. Flattering! I was puzzled about the Hege's concept of 'divine lures' placed in order to lead Walter White away from his life of criminality. I made people laugh when I suggested that maybe God is just a heavenly version of Saul Goodman; a well-connected fellow, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, to drop divine lures now and then. "No, no, no," Hege replied, "it's more personal than that." I didn't know anything about “Girl Genius” or Jagermonsters, so learned a lot. Afterwards, I approached Sean Sagan, and even joined him briefly afterwards at Mahoney's bar, telling him about my idée fixe. He seemed intrigued. Turns out, Sagan is going to be doing his dissertation, in close collaboration with Cori Knight, on evangelical pamphlets (aka tracts, as my brother-in-law corrected me), with a heavy emphasis on Jack T. Chick, who apparently is still alive, in his 90's. Great choice!)

Awards Ceremony.

3106 Special Event: Peter C. Rollins Book Award Keynote Speech and Graduate Student Awards Ceremony - Fri, 02/21/2014 - 6:30pm - 8:00pm, Grand Pavilion 4-6. Panel Chair: Southwest PCA/ACA Executive Team
This signature event includes the presentation of the Rollins Book Awards for 2013 and the Rollins Book Award Keynote Address by Dr. Alisa Perren. She will discuss her most award winning book, Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s. Dr. Perren is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Her scholarly areas of specialty include media industry studies, television studies, and the history of US film/television. Her scholarship has appeared in Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, the Journal of Film and Video, and the Journal of Popular Film and Television.
We will also announce the winners of our 2014 Graduate Student Awards for the best papers by graduate students on a variety of subjects. We welcome all presenters to attend, congratulating these scholars and recognizing their achievement and scholarly contributions to the study of Popular and American culture.
For the first time in the organization’s history, the Rollins Book Award Committee is proud to announce the recipients of the 2013 Peter C. Rollins Book Award in the following new subject categories:
 Popular Culture: Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller, Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology (Scarecrow Press, 2012)
 Sequential Art/Comics and Animation Studies: Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (Routledge, 2011)
Join us in honoring these outstanding individuals and our graduate student award recipients during our gala ceremony on Friday, February 21, 2014.
(I arrived late, but enjoyed the award presentations.)

(Early Saturday morning, I was woken from a sound sleep by partying Germans in hotel room next door. Loud, young, smoking-up-a-storm Germans. Hissed at them and thought about the war. And now, I'm sure I was not welcome at their party. Damned Germans....

So, sleepless, with just two hours of sleep, and quite unexpectedly for a late riser like myself, I was awake and available for attending sessions early on Saturday morning.)


4011 Science Fiction and Fantasy 21: "The Hunger Games" and Gender - Sat, 02/22/2014 - 8:00am - 9:30am, Grand Pavilion 3. Panel Chair: Kathleen Lacey
Hunger, History, and Heroines: Katniss Everdeen and Annie Oakley - Thomas DuBose, Louisiana State University in Shreveport
“As Usual, Ladies First”: Manners, Etiquette Manuals and “The Hunger Games” - Richmond Adams, Eastern Oklahoma State College
Katniss’s Choice: Reflections on Masculinity, Romance, and the Happy Ending - Kathleen Lacey, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
(AWESOME presentation by Thomas DuBose, comparing Katniss Everdeen with Annie Oakley. It works! I asked about Annie Oakley's heritage. Was she Southern or Northern? Turns out her family moved to Oklahoma from Ohio - Northern! This surprised me - I thought her adherence to some expectations regarding women's roles might be antebellum Southern in origin, but I was wrong. Richmond Adams' presentation was also superb: how Effie Trinket carries the ethos of 19th Century Victorian etiquette manuals virtually intact into the dystopian future of "The Hunger Games". I didn't really care much for Lacey's agonizing over Gale vs. Peeta - I'm a guy after all - but she did screen this awesome trailer, for which I'm very grateful:)




4030 Science Fiction and Fantasy 22: "The Hunger Games'" Influences - Sat, 02/22/2014 - 9:45am - 11:15am, Grand Pavilion 3. Panel Chair: Brian Cowlishaw
Bloodsuckers in Dystopia: The Vampire Tradition in “The Hunger Games” - Karen Eisman, Texas State University
Lambs to the Slaughter: The Depiction and Idealization of Innocence in Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” - Lindsay Brown, University of Winnipeg
(OK talks, but more girl-oriented somehow, and for me less compelling. Wondered about the theme of the power of innocence.)

A Few Breaking Bad Pictures

Washtub Laundry

Washtub Laundry

Tuco's Headquarters

Kimo Theater

Badger's Signwaving Post

Parking Garage

Lydia's Interrogation Basement

Lydia's Interrogation Basement

Lydia's Interrogation Basement

First Street Underpass

Bernalillo County Annex

The Big-I

The Big-I

Kiwanis Trail (a possibility for the road to Walt's Cabin)

Site of Walt's Cabin

Frank Sandoval's RV

Frank Sandoval

Frank Sandoval's RV

Paseo del Norte Overpass over Coors Rd. NW

Airport Parking Garage staircase

SWPCA Fun

The Southwest Popular/America Culture Association meeting in Albuquerque has been tons of fun, mostly because anybody can play, not just academics. Here are a few examples:

A religious scholar at UC Riverside named Sean Sagan is going to be doing his dissertation on evangelical pamplets, with a heavy emphasis on Jack T. Chick pamphlets. Great choice!

The sessions on Burlesque featured discussion of a new variety - Nerdlesque - that incorporates fandom in various ways - Superman, Batman, Ikea - whatever one can nerd out on. I was slow to realize that all the presenters were not just academics, but burlesque performers too. One scholar went TMI with a description of Nevada attractions. Hands on experience!

One Hunger Games panel presenter featured an apt comparison between Katniss Everdeen and Annie Oakley. It works!

My Breaking-Bad panel exposure went well, with a number of useful new contacts.

New Mexico Hiatus

Mission accomplished by Diarmaida in Germany, via the Heisenberg Chronicles.

Heading to the 35th Annual SWPACA Pop Culture Conference in Albuquerque. In particular, I'll be attending:

Breaking Bad 3: Roundtable: Making Good with “Breaking Bad”
Thu, 02/20/2014 – 8:00pm, Grand Pavilion 3
Panel Chair: Nick Gerlich

This roundtable will be comprised of individuals from the Albuquerque area with these areas of expertise related to “Breaking Bad”: Location scouting, set design, character development, economic development, and the resulting local business ventures.

Nick adds:

Next week Lori and I will be in ABQ for the Pop Culture Association conference, at which we will present our paper on BrBa (along with 6 others). We are also hosting a 3-hour driving tour on Saturday 22nd. I'd be happy to share my route slip with you, if you like. I also have a much longer 8-hour, 85-mile tour that covers 48 sites. Next Thursday we are hosting a BrBa roundtable discussion at the conference. Our guests include Marq and Ed, Miguel Jaramillo, Keith Allen West (of Bathing Bad fame), and Ann Lerner, the ABQ Film Liaison officer. This should be a ton of fun. And if you could somehow find a way to "have some business" in ABQ next week, we'd love to have you along!

RIP, Mary Grace Canfield

Aka Ralph Monroe.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

All Kinds Of Surprises On Cable TV

And it's expensive as hell too.

"Wild Sweet Love" - Sacramento Ballet

Enjoyable afternoon at the Sacramento Community Theater.

At the pre-game talk, Ron Cunningham talked about his experiences traveling in China in 1980, and told an amusing story of turning to gaze out a bus window, and came face-to-face with a Chinese infant on the other side, being held up by his parents to gaze in wonderment at him. The kid screamed at his foreign visage. Cunningham explained that there was something intrinsically Chinese about Ma Cong's world premiere of "Acceptance", just as there was something intrinsically American about "Wild Sweet Love". Strangely, after watching both pieces, I felt differently, but that was OK. Ballet lives on a plane above mere nations. Still, there was a subtle commonality between Edwaard Liang's "Wunderland" and Ma Cong's "Acceptance" (For my taste, I liked "Wunderland" better - the interesting use of the leg to gain torque and the finish with a body swing, for example.

There was also a backward spring I liked very much. (Was this Lauryn Winterhalder and Stefan Calka in "Acceptance"? I really like Winterhalder! Also enjoyed seeing Karina Hagemeyer.)

At an intermission, Sally and I spied Ron's dancing daughter, Alexandra Cunningham (who is now nursing a torn ACL). Since Sally had similar surgery a little over a year ago, she was eager to compare notes. (I was a little embarrassed, and worried they would soon be comparing scars, so I scuttled off to the lobby.)

Oddly enough, I remember seeing "Wild Sweet Love" before, with Ilana Goldman instead of Ava Chatterson as the Jogging Girl. That was 2007. Strange that I remember it so clearly. I manage to forget everything else.

Worried about the small size of the audience.

The Teel's announced a $250,000 dollar grant to the Sacramento Ballet. Yippee! It's important to remember, though, that that just pays a poverty wage to 25 dancers for a year. More is needed. Much, much more to run a ballet company even half as good as Sacramento Ballet.

One must be half mad to run a ballet company. (Like being half mad to run a musical theater company.)

Tonight, I'm rattled by TCM's presentation on TV this evening of Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire". Half-mad Blanche Du Bois rattling around inside a florid Southern mansion of the mind, depending on the "kindness of strangers."

Like the arts.

"Gamer" (2009) Trailer With Glimpses Of Breaking Bad Sites

At 0:58, the John M. Roberts Dam, everyone's favorite Albuquerque filming location.

Restored Captive

A life so hard:

On a May morning in 1836, at a stockade called Parker’s Fort near the Navasota River in Texas, some ninety miles south of present-day Dallas, a nine-year-old girl was taken captive by a Comanche raiding party. At the beginning of March 1955, a famous director at a crisis point in his career began shooting a movie distantly derived from that earlier event.

...Cynthia Ann Parker too became a restored captive, having surrendered, after twenty-four years with the Comanches, to a force of US troops and Texas Rangers in 1860, at what has been variously called the Battle of Pease River and the Pease River Massacre. She was then thirty-three years old.

...At Pease River, as soldiers shot down old men, women, and children, a woman in a buffalo robe, holding her infant daughter, called out “Americano!” It took a while for her to be identified as Cynthia Ann Parker. She now spoke only Comanche and at first said (through an interpreter) that she had forgotten her original name. An observer wrote: “She was sullen…a hard looker…as dirty as she could be and looked to me more like an Indian than a white woman.” Her rescue was hardly an occasion for public celebration. Apparently it resembled more a second captivity. Withdrawn, terrified, grief-stricken at the loss of her husband and of her two sons, she was passed from relative to relative, no one knowing what to do with her.

... She tore off the clothes she had been dressed in and tried to run away. At her uncle’s house in Fort Worth, she crawled under the bed to avoid the stares of strangers. She was bound with a rope and put on public display for curiosity-seekers: “Tears were streaming down her face, and she was muttering in the Indian language.” She made a fire in the backyard and practiced a Comanche mourning ritual. In a rare encounter with a Comanche speaker, a retired Indian scout, she pleaded with him all night to take her back to Comanchería: “My heart is crying all the time for my two sons.” Around 1865 she died unmemorialized, devastated by the recent death of the daughter she had with her when she was rescued. Her uncle Isaac Parker called her “the most unhappy person I ever saw…. She was as much an Indian as if she had been born one. She knew no other people except as enemies.”

And from that suffering, came this:

"The Goblin Song"

Nora Unkel is making a big push right now for funding for "The Goblin Song". Her team is casting Cody Craven in the film, so you know it will be good.

Support!

Vampire Squid Update

Jeopardizing the world again:

Allowing one company to control the supply of crucial physical commodities, and also trade in the financial products that might be related to those markets, is an open invitation to commit mass manipulation. It's something akin to letting casino owners who take book on NFL games during the week also coach all the teams on Sundays.

The situation has opened a Pandora's box of horrifying new corruption possibilities, but it's been hard for the public to notice, since regulators have struggled to put even the slightest dent in Wall Street's older, more familiar scams.

...For instance, in just the past two years, fines in excess of $400 million have been levied against both JPMorgan Chase and Barclays for allegedly manipulating the delivery of electricity in several states, including California. In the case of Barclays, which is contesting the fine, regulators claim prices were manipulated to help the bank win financial bets it had made on those same energy markets.

...The motive for the Kochs, or anyone else, to hoard a commodity like oil can be almost beautiful in its simplicity. Basically, a bank or a trading company wants to buy commodities cheap in the present and sell them for a premium as futures. This trade, sometimes called "arbitraging the contango," works best if the cost of storing your oil or metals or whatever you're dealing with is negligible – you make more money off the futures trade if you don't have to pay rent while you wait to deliver.

...Loosely translated, Masters was saying that there was a limited amount of money to be made simply trading commodities in the traditional legal manner. The solution? "We need to be active in the underlying physical commodity markets," she said, "in order to understand and make prices."

We need to make prices. The head of Chase's commodities division actually said this, out loud, and it speaks to both the general unlikelihood of God's existence and the consistently low level of competence of America's regulators that she was not immediately zapped between the eyebrows with a thunderbolt upon doing so.

...When Goldman bought Metro in February 2010, the average delivery time for an aluminum order was six weeks. Under Goldman ownership, Metro's delivery times soon ballooned by a factor of 10, to an average of 16 months, leading in part to the explosive growth of a surcharge called the Midwest premium, which represented not the cost of aluminum itself but the cost of its storage and delivery, a thing easily manipulated when you control the supply. ..."In layman's terms, they were artificially jacking up the shipping and handling costs," says Mehta.

...Every time you bought a can of soda in 2011 and 2012, you paid a little tax thanks to firms like Goldman. Mehta, whose fund has a financial stake in the issue, insists there's an irony here that should infuriate everyone. "Banks used taxpayer-backed subsidies," he says, "to drive up prices for the very same taxpayers that bailed them out in the first place."

...The other, perhaps even darker problem involves the new existential dangers both to the environment and to the stability of the financial system. ... How long before one of these fully loaded monster ships capsizes, and Morgan Stanley becomes the next BP, not only killing a gazillion birds and sea mammals off some unlucky country's shores but also taking the financial system down with them, as lawsuits plunge the company into bankruptcy with Lehman-style repercussions?

...Banks in America were never meant to own industries. This principle has been part of our culture practically from the beginning of our history. .... Then, with a few throwaway lines in a 1999 law that nobody ever heard of until now, that whole struggle went up in smoke, and here we are, in Hobbes' jungle, waiting for the next fully legal catastrophe to unfold.

"My Insane Asylum Would Be Like A Mirrored Room"

More Music Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with TSMS Radio on BlogTalkRadio

Kelsey was interviewed on the Sasha Marina show earlier this week (gap in the middle).

RIP, Kip Korth

Valued Delta Chamber member and Delta marina owner Kip Korth passed away on February 7th, 2014. He is survived by his wife Linda and his daughter Lauren. Kip was a friend to many of us and will be sorely missed. Kip’s family requests that any donations in his memory go to Restore the Delta. A memorial will be held at a future date.

Valentine's Day Video