Jokes my Father Never Told Me: a biography of Richard Pryor by his daughter

I seem to be waking up around 10 am these days, just in time to watch Quantum Leap on ITV2, to the sound of radio4 slowly fading in. I've noticed it quite alot recently, my eyes are open and I am seeing things before I can hear anything, resulting in a strange delay in the two senses, the overly english voices of the radio fading into my conciousness slowly and smoothly. It certainly is an interesting effect.

I listen to the radio alot when I'm drifting off, it gives me something other than the thoughts in my head to focus on. This is a good thing. Sometimes when all I have are my thoughts and memories they take on behomothic proportions, my brain kicks over into 6th gear, and before I realise it I'm spinning on a carosel of cognition I cannot for the life of me stop. Sometimes its good and I end up writing a poem, or making a note of something, but other times I end up scraping the bucket of my emotions and generally feeling like shit. Either way, it means sleep ain't coming soon.

When my hearing came around this morning a woman was intereviewing another woman concerning a book she had written about her father. The interview sounded interesting and as I lay there, with my faculties filtering back to the forefront of my mind, I tried to figure out who it was they were talking about. A gathered little tidbits of clues from their discussion. Black... 60s... Hendrix? Jewish heritiage... Hendrix was part cherokee, not part Jew, so he's out... How about Dylan? Dylan was white but maybe... maybe the mother of the child in question was black? The title was the big give away: The Jokes my father never told me... Jokes... black... Richard Pryor? Maybe. The interview finished and I was still none the wiser, but then all I had to do was remember the title and look it up on online.

Which is what I did. It was Richard Pryor, the woman being interviewed Rain Pryor, his daughter. I got alot of respect for Pryor's art: He gets labelled the funniest black commedian that ever lived, but that's a terrible condecending title to hold. Richard Pryor was one of the funniest commedians who ever lived FULL STOP-black, white, or aqua marine. He sure did lead a fucked up life though....

( review ) ( excerpt ) ( Richard Pryor Homepage ) ( mp3 of 'That Nigger's Crazy' over at Odeo ) ( Richard Pryor stuff on youtube )

.....I.an.I.be.blind.....

why not rastafari? ( apart from the obviously corrupting influence of christianity... )

buju banton would be oh so cool if it wasn't for the homophobia...

[ natch ]

Lynch tells it like it is

Some motivinspirational words to budding filmmakers from David Lynch

any excuse to continue my vendetta against George Lucas...

from the guardian film site...

"Frank Darabont appears to be still nursing a grudge after George Lucas allegedly vetoed his script for Indiana Jones 4. The creator of The Shawshank Redemption claims that he "wasted a year" of his life writing the fourth and final instalment of the franchise, only for the producer to reject it, reputedly against the wishes of director Steven Spielberg. "It showed me how badly things can go," Darabont told MTV.com. "I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he thought was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie and suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because

George Lucas doesn't like the script."

The man who wrote and directed The Phantom Menace didn't like a script written by the guy who wrote and directed The Shawshank Redemption. Maybe the script didn't allow Lucas the leg room he would need to add a whole host of pointless, annoying computer generated characters. GEORGE LUCAS IS A TALENTLESS HACK. He made so much money off of Star Wars that his creative talent left his skull screaming for release. This man should never be allowed anywhere near a camera or Silicon Graphics workstation EVER AGAIN!

the soldier and the hunchback

Many moons ago, me and production-mate Tim we're in the uni library doing research for our respective dissertations. At the time that it popped into my head I was eyeballing a book called New Punk Cinema. I sketched it down a few times and smiled to myself, extremely pleased: I'd created a cool little glyph/icon type thing. It was a question mark and exclamation mark merged into one, to create a kind of spikey 'P' character. I showed it to Tim, who agreed that it looked pretty cool.

I've just finished reading Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson. Alistair Crowley appears as a character, as does James Joyce and Albert Einstein. The Protagonist is in the process of being initiated by Crowley (whom he has been condition by Crowley himself, albeit in disguise, to despise), unknown to the protagonist, into the Ordo Templi Orientis. Along the obfuscated path that our hero wanders he comes across an essay by Crowley entitled 'the soldier and the hunchback'.

I won't go into detail (you can read the essay if yr after specifics), but basically the solider is the exclamation mark, and the hunchback is the question mark. Obviously, there's alot more to it than that, Crowley sure did like to mystify, and I haven't read the essay myself. I just thought it was kinda weird that I'd drawn that little symbol over a year ago and now I find its basic componants, and the idea I kinda wanted to express, expoused by Crowley.

Then again, researching and reading into these kinds of things does tend to produce coincidances.

Here is the essay in question, if yr curious. It's a PDF file. Lemmie know if it's any good.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead

Which is something I'm sure you already know, if you are the kind of person who cares about the death of literary figures. If you don't I'm sure you couldn't care less. So it goes. Vonnegut has always been one of those writers that I have always had the intention of reading but never have. Maybe his demise will mean that I'll finally read Slaughterhouse 5.

In tribute to a writer I've never read I present Vonnegut reading an Excerpt of Slaughterhouse 5. You can either listen to it here, playing through tunefeed, which is set up to play automatically, or you can go to this salon page and download it yourself.

( via )

podcast on drum and bass

Like most forms of electronic music, drum and bass is flexible enough to incoporate other genres of electronic music such as dancehall, house and electro. It is perhaps for this reason why drum and bass has remained relevant for over 15 years. In fact, after a brief lull, there is currently a resurgence of excitement in drum and bass!

Drum and bass emerged out of the UK in the 1990s as an offshoot of the breakbeat and rave scene."

( link )
aaaaaaaaaactually, drum and bass was an offshoot of jungle, which was an offshoot of rave and hardcore. Of course, there are certainly ties to breakbeat.

Now I gotta go, cuz the Cowboy Bebop movie is on SciFi and I ain't seen it yet.

Journalists have fallen from grace

"Movie depictions of journalists have changed. Gone are Watergate’s crusaders toppling tyrannical Tricky Dick in 1976’s “All the President’s Men,” and swashbuckling foreign correspondents in the 1980s’ “The Year of Living Dangerously,” “Under Fire” and “Salvador,” starring Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte and James Woods, respectively.

Tinseltown now prefers to be critical of reporters and writers, a trend that has mushroomed during the Iraq war."

( link ) ( via )

Jane Campion to direct adaptation of Keats' life as litbiopic frenzy continues unabated

"Rarely has death seemed so cruel yet so poetic. John Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne when he saw her walking in her garden and was inspired to produce some of the most beautiful verse and love letters ever written. By the age of 25 he was dead, the world robbed of his genius by tuberculosis. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before such ingredients caught a filmmaker's eye."

( via )

How come I can name two New Zealand filmmakers off the top of my head, but try as I might I cannot think of any filmmakers of Austrailian origin?

Nevermind, it's a rhetorical question.

C∅nsume and Die

"Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet. Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe.

It is consumerism."

- Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder and Programme Director of Forum for the Future

Anger as former-Iranian hostages sell their stories to the highest bidder

Anger as hostages sell stories to highest bidder

Of course, I heard last night on radio 4 (it helps me sleep, k?) that they had been given permission by the MOD, or someone, to sell their stories to the media. What could this possibly mean? Could this be a covert effort by the government to build up anti-Iranian sentiment in order to support some kind of something?

Just saying...

still in the abyss...

...that is my netless existence. Right now my sister is down from uni placement so I'm on her laptop leeching a neighbours wifi conection. Is typical, no? Just when I'm starting to build up traffic to this site again with regular updates the powers that be decide to cut our broadband.
*blah*

Anyway, some news.

The first safe as milk will take place on the 23rd of April. Thanks to Chas at Grassroots (and of Cardiff band Captain Paranoid and the Delusions) for help pulling the flier together. Your lightnin' freehand/photoshop skillz certainly sped up the process. Got some pretty talented people playing live acoustic stuff, plus some poetry from yours truely and this guy, some eclectic DJ sets, and open mic slots for those with the cojones to get up themselves. It promises to be a pretty cool night, with a possible afterparty for the faithful, so if yr in the cardiff area come on down and enjoy the new _smokefree enviroment.

Speaking of the smoking ban, I'm thinking about writing a lil piece on it from the aftermath perspective, as well as issuing a call to arms to the smokers of Wales. Maybe.

Also on the gonzojournalistical agenda of writing is a forthcoming article on the sociological influence of hair, complete with half-arsed academic referencing, to coincide with my drastic new cut. Long story short: It was my mother's 50th birthday and I thought it would make a neat present, and it did. Now there is pressure to keep it at this length. This remains to be seen.

Gotta run now. Sister demanding laptop back.