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Pow Biff Bang!

About Me


"Most people have the same hopes and aspirations--work in which they can find meaning and a way in which they can express their capacity to love." -- Lewis H. Lapham
"I plead your mercy and your pity. Is not life a mirror-maze?" -- Joe Strummer
"We should be kind to each other. Be civil. And appreciate the good moments by saying 'If this isn't nice, what is?'" -- Kurt Vonnegut
"Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age." -- William Blake

My Interests

I'm interested in compassionate, open and idealistic people, those who grasp the beauty, dignity and creativity inherent in our lives and who struggle against the tendency for those qualities to be undone by the walls planted between us and in us by the dominant organizing principles of the life we find ourselves in.

Music:

The Methadones, McRackins, The Damned, Talking Heads, The Clash, Magazine, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Wire, Ruts, The Saints, David Bowie, TV Smith, Buzzcocks, The Queers, The Barracudas, Detour Records, Dillinger Four, The Jam, TV21, The Stitches, The Epoxies, Swingin' Utters, Long Tall Shorty, The Dickies, The Ends, The Chords, Die Hunns, The Soviettes, Ian Page & the Affair, The Briefs, Nu-tra, Rinaldi Sings, Carbon/Silicon, The Prisoners, The Movements, Glen Matlock, Small World, etc.

Movies:

Ikiru, Red Beard, Walkabout, Koyaanisqatsi, McCabe and Mrs Miller, 3 Women, Grey Gardens, Salesman, Election, Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Quadrophenia, Through a Glass Darkly, Waking Life, Band of Outsiders

Television:

Arrested Development, Little Britain, The Office (UK and US), The Sopranos, The Prisoner, Twin Peaks

Books:

Keep the Aspidistra Flying, As I Lay Dying, All the King's Men, Hocus Pocus, A Confederacy of Dunces, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, Paul Krugman's The Great Unraveling, Walter Karp's The Politics of War, Lapham's Imperial Masquerade, Tao Te Ching , Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, A Death in the Family

Heroes:

Friends of the human spirit

My Blog

Queer

I see that The Queers are playing in Nashville on April 5th. The Queers played my first punk-rock show, and it was in Nashville at Lucy's on Church St. in 1995. It seems like both two seconds ago and...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Sun, 25 Mar 2007 05:31:00 PST

The Cult of Scarface

In the cult of Scarface it happens that its adherents all long to look into their rear-view mirrors, spy a smokey tail-grabbin' their ass, and resolve to see what he's got under the hood before introd...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:46:00 PST

When You're Young

From time to time I find myself listening to The Jam's miraculous output from 1979 to 1981 and declaring to myself that during that period they were the best band ever, yet notions of the other giants...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Fri, 01 Sep 2006 06:43:00 PST

"Just put that hammer down, and give it hell ...."

How can it be that no one has covered the Smokey & the Bandit theme song, Jerry Reed's East Bound and Down?  I don't care what portion of the globe you're from--any banjo-infused anthem for m...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 04:58:00 PST

Fire Crackers

"Well, I hope you're happy with what you've made, in the land of the free and the home of the brave." -- David Byrne ...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:20:00 PST

Read William Blake

From William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell""He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.[...]"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.[...]"The most sublime act is to set anot...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Mon, 26 Jun 2006 05:15:00 PST

This land was made for you and me

"Sweden was rife with social tensions during the period just before World War I broke out.  Liberals and Social Democrats demanded reforms but refused major increases in defense appropriations b...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Sun, 04 Jun 2006 06:56:00 PST

homesick

A pleasant memory: A few months ago I was at Stockholm University, where my girlfriend went to school, and I came upon a display that seemed to have something to do with sex.  Not speaking too mu...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Mon, 22 May 2006 11:58:00 PST

"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens." -- David Byrne

A restlessness that I shouldn't have allowed to get the better of me got the better of me a few days ago, and it sent me shopping.   I hadn't bought any new clothes in a year or so, and I ...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Sun, 14 May 2006 12:04:00 PST

apropos of nothing

I see that Greg Ostertag is retiring from the NBA.  He sticks out in my memory because I recall my grandfather talking about him, giving my dad a hard time about Kansas' dominance (my grandfather...
Posted by Pow Biff Bang! on Wed, 19 Apr 2006 10:28:00 PST