Does righteousness have a sound? Can good intentions be heard in the language of music? Saxophonist/composer Dan Blake’s new recording, Da Fe, attempts an aural answer to those questions, and the results are convincing. A Buddhist, social justice warrior, and former member of the Esperanza Spalding band, Blake’s values are deeply humanist and compassionate; on the...
Pick your preferred metaphor: You can’t put the egg back in the shell. You can’t stuff the Genie back in the bottle. You can’t force Pandora to close her box. And you can’t stop the Progressive Movement that’s sweeping the United States of America. Bernie Sanders started it. The People will finish it. After listening...
The documentary “Jumbo Wild“tells the ongoing story of a politically-connected real estate developer’s quest to build a ski resort on British Columbia’s remote and pristine Jumbo Glacier — despite overwhelming resistance to the disastrous scheme from local residents, First Nations representatives, and legions of environmentalists. The film is beautifully photographed and surprisingly fair-minded toward the stubbornly...
Your righteous race to accumulate Good Karma Requires making love And opposing hate This noble social justice quest cannot carve out exceptions To the covenant Between your values and yourself You cannot advocate for the homeless While cheerleading for the Wall Street Banks that put people out of homes You cannot advocate for Peace While...
MK Punky hosts and performs in “Revolutionary Words” at Elderberries Café, in Hollywood — with Aquatic Medicine
MK Punky hosts and performs in “Revolutionary Words” at Elderberries Café, in Hollywood
At the Middle School two driveways down the street, Hollywood safari vans tote tipsy tourists and King of Pop-culture purists to contemplate like jurists the Michael Jackson Auditorium, whose much-lauded eponym was sleek and slim, and boyishly indiscreet. At this school, Russian parents take parking spots and umbrage, when their children start to bleat about the...
We learned this week that being the Governor of California requires extraordinary quotients of shamelessness. Jerry Brown is not embarrassed to be the Prison Industry’s boy in Sacramento, and so we should not be embarrassed to have elected him to lead us and protect us from druggies, who Brown prefers to leave behind bars, the...
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100. The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend to happen with alarming regularity....
At the Super Bowl this Sunday, when most of America will gather to watch our national character accurately represented by a brutal, war-like game (football), controlled by a ruthless, cartel-like corporation (the NFL), selling us mostly disposable, harmful products (automobiles, alcohol, online gambling), you’re almost certain to see an expensive (and weirdly effective) propaganda campaign...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
