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F911

Saw it last night. The sorrow. Michael Moore lets the sorrow flow. He’s funny sometimes too, but from the beginning, he gets the tone right -- from the stolen election through the atrocity of 9-11 and on through the Iraq catastrophe, it’s all drenched with sorrow.

Funny: I almost didn’t catch it, but my friend Jake laughed & I figure it out: When Moore shows Bush’s Air National Guard record, regarding Bush’s failure to appear to a medical exam, the soundtrack plays just the guitar riff of the ‘80s classic rock hit “Cocaine.” For just a second or 2. Music as icon, suggesting the song’s lyrics.

Afterwards, walking to our cars, some serialist humor: Jake’s dad, a retired composition professor and serialist composer, said, “Now we can watch it retrograde.” I laughed.

Moore’s thesis is right on, that the “war on terror” is straight outta Orwell’s vision of 1984 -- endless, unwinnable, and designed to oppress the population.

(Let it here be noted that the Jackson 5’s Victory Tour took place in the year 1984.)



NO SYMPATHY

I caught about half of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” on the quality rock station this morning. Hadn’t heard it in years, really digging it despite the loose, energetic, awkward funklessness of the band, until the last verse, when Jagger threatens to lay my soul to waste, and I just had to shake my head and snort in derision. Some skinny white guy waste my soul? I don’t think so. Not only did Jagger fail to convince, but my experience with the devil tells me he’s a smooth-talking con man with no power on his own to waste anything, just the power of persuasion. The devil is salesman extraordinaire, selling lies, paranoia, laziness, complacency, a bunch of crap I don’t need.