Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Tava mugura ir silta un plata. Uz tās var lieliski apgulties un iemigt. Sapņi klājas viens uz otra, veidojot kupenas. Tu esi manas mājas.

"Yo, roka vetenāri!

Sen man nav bijusi shaada rubrika, bet nu taa atgriezusies (vismaz uz vienu dienu):

Back to Mr. D. once again! I don`t really know why I keep reading his books, probably because he has a lot of them in the library I visit occasionally. So, this one is a clear piece of satyre. Frank the Fifth is the owner of a private bank, but the times are hard, you know, and a private bank can`t survive unless you do some dirty work. Franks with lower numbers - his predecessors also did some nasty stuff but at least they were rich - one of them owned China, for example. But Frank the Fifth is a good fellow, he likes literature, but everyone who works for him is a crook and those crooks steal from the bank the whole time. On the other hand they also steal, lie and even murder FOR the bank. Then the things are going extremely bad, Frank immitates his own death, but it goes against the plan of his children who plan to take over the bank which their father wants to close. And the whole shebang goes on once again. The rest of the people is worse than Frank - he can`t even kill a person, unlike his wife, for example. Of course, this stuff is massive satyre, and it`s funny, if you ask my opinion. This Duerenmatt fellow knew how to write a good piece of satyre, that`s for sure.

I rarely divide my description of a single book in two parts, especially if this book consists of only two plays. But this will be the case, for this is the only way I can praise the Donkey`s Shadow as much as I intend to, and as much as it deserves. The whole situation is, of course, a bit of a paradox - when Struthion, a dentist (of the day of the ancient Greece), needs to go to the neighboring town to pay a visit to his client, he loans a donkey from a donkey-owner named Anthrax(who owns just this one donkey), and the owner joins him on the trip (for he`s got only one donkey and can`t do anything without the donkey). But the dentist is sensitive to the heat and while on the trip he wants to rest in the shade of donkey`s shadow. But the owner says - you only paid for riding the donkey, for using the shade you must pay me extra. So they end up in a court. Lawyers promise both of them impressive amounts of money for the victory but ask for a fair share for themselves as well. To pay the lawyers Struthion loses his praxis, while Anthrax sells his house, wife and daughter. Everyone in the town gets bribed, and radical "pro-donkey" and "contra-donkey" parties arise in the town, ending everything with a fire that burns the city down. And after that everyone wants to kill the donkey, as if the poor creature was responsible for their own stupidity. The ideas, the language, the situations - it`s all just so perfect that I can say nothing more than that it`s marvelous.

Having found an interest towards Duerenmatt`s writing I decided to read another book by him. This time it`s a story book, and it`s still no stinker. First, there`s "The Fall" - a board of 15 people runs some sort of revolutionary communist state, under tyrany of a guy named A (the members of the board are named according to their rating with roman letters). Everything changes when there`s some strange news of the dissapearence of a guy named O which results in a disobeyment and killing the tyrant. Later it turns out though that nothing had indeed happened to O who just had forgotten what day it was. And the hero of the story without doing anything from N gets upgraded to G. Then there`s "Abu Chanifa and Anan ben David" - a muslim and a rabbi get sent to a joint room in a prison and spend many hundreds of years together discovering the common things in their beliefs. Later the rabbi gets released and becomes the eternal jew make 2, but in the end he finds his pal in prison once again. "Smithy" tells us of a guy who makes his money by making corpses dissapear, as he falls in love with a woman that he must make dissapear. And last but not least comes the funniest of them all - "The death of Pythia" which tells us how the Oracle of Delphi predicts just as a joke that Oedypus will kill his father and marry his mother, and how the prediction comes true on more than one level - not only does he do that - but he also sleeps with his REAL mother and kills his REAL father - for there was a baby exchange, and maybe there was more than one Oedypus. Conclusion: stories number 1 and 4 are just great, number 2 is very good, but number 3 is nothing special. Which still makes it a very good book.

Šodienas vadmotīvs ir pēdējais "Bāreņu" disks, kurā apkopoti Bastardi. Salīdzinoši ar pirmajiem diviem diskiem šeit ir ievērojami vairāk kaveru, jau ievadā piedāvājot ļoti pārliecinošu versiju "Trīsgrašu operas" fragmentam - "What keeps mankind alive". Pats Veitss te varbūt arī ir autors kādai daļai kompozīciju, bet šī daļa noteikti nav diez ko liela. Piemēram, ierunāts stāstījums par kara skudrām. Viņš kaverē gandrīz visu - sākot ar Čārlzu Bukoski, turpinot ar Moby Grape dalībnieku "Skipu Spencu" un beidzot ar par sevi daudz jaunāko Danielu Džonstonu. Skanējuma ziņā šo disku var sadalīt divās apmēram vienādās daļās - ierunātie gabali ar minimālu muzikālu fonu un "trakās" Veitsa dziesmas (kas par to, ka to autors nav pats Toms, jo jebkura dziesma Veitsa izpildījumā kļūst par Toma Veitsa dziesmu). Labākās dziesmas šajā krājumā ir "Two Sisters", "Poor Little Lamb" (kas izklausās pēc vecākas un depresīvākas Kinks "She`s bought a hat like Princess Marina`s"), "Altar Boy" un no "mutiskajām" kompozīcijām - "Missing my son". Protams, ierunātos gabalus klausīties desmitiem reižu varētu būt pat ļoti apnicīgi, toties neierunātās dziesmas šajā diskā gandrīz visas ir atmiņā ļoti paliekošas, līdz ar to arī runājamos gabalus vajadzētu pieciest. Protams, var tiem pārslēgties pāri, bet tas jau būtu tas pats, kas izraut grāmatai lappuses.

This is the first time I encounter the fellow with the name of Rybczynski. Since my Internet connection is down at the moment I have no way of checking who he is/was and how much fame he has. This film, "The orchestra", is more of a music video than an actual film. It doesn`t have a real plot, it has no text and it doesn`t come off as trivial. The film contains several parts revolving around several pieces of classical music. There`s a part of old people waking up and being harrassed by a butler; there`s a part in front of a church with a whole lot of people playing the march of death, there`s a segment of boy/girl aging while walking along a long piano; there`s dancing in the Louvre; there`s a butler walking in the sky; there`s a couple flying in a cathedral and there are people going up a ladder to communism (probably I forgot to mention something but that`s not that important). The favourites of mine are the boy/girl sequence and the Louvre part. But the others aren`t half-bad either. This film is mostly for your eyes, of course, but it is done beautifuly without a doubt. The minimalistic camera work that rarely switches from one camera to another, but chooses sliding the same camera for quite a long time thus creating an illusion of a sequence being shot in one scene (which probably applies only to some layers of the sequence while others were added later on). The last part with the stairway is a bit overlong, that`s a thing I can`t deny, but otherwise I have no complaints at all. Watch it if you can! And if you can`t borrow it from me and watch it anyhow!

Tikai nupat man ienāca prātā viena doma, līdz kurai noteikti daudzi jau ir aizdomājušies pirms manis, proti, ka "Let it Bleed" ir pāra albūms Bītlu diskam "Let it Be". Žēl tikai, ka Stouni savu ierakstu izlaida kā pirmie, jo tas būtu bijis lieliska atbilde uz "Let it Be". Pēc daudzu domām šis albūms ir viens no Stounu lielāko ierakstu plejādes - līdzās "Beggars Banquet", "Sticky Fingers" un "Exile on Main Street". Pēc manām domām - tiem daudziem varētu būt zināms pamats tā uzskatīt, lai arī Stounu fans es patiešām nekad neesmu bijis un droši vien nekad par tādu nekļūšu. Esmu popsīgais puika, kam patīk Bītli un The Kinks, bet Stounu tumšās puses mani bieži atstāj vienaldzīgu. Protams, par "Let it Bleed" tā teikt nevarētu. Tomēr viena problēma ir - Stounu balādes mani īpaši nepārliecina un īpaši nesaista, tā piemēram, "Love in Vain" man nešķiet nepieciešama. Vēl viens mīnuss - "Live with Me" ir itin līdzīgs vēl vienai šī albūma dziesmai - "Midnight Rambler", tikai otrais ir mazliet mierīgāks gabals. Toties man ļoti patīk šī ieraksta tituldziesma, kura gan varbūt nav nekas tik ļoti exceptional, ka man vajadzētu tās dēļ palikt trakam.Tomēr galvenā diska virsotne neapšaubāmi ir gospelīgais un mega skaistais, mega pārliecinošais un unikālais "You Can`t Always Get What You Want", kas man nez kāpēc asociējas ar "Mehānisko Apelsīnu". Vismaz ievadošā gospeļu kora dziedāšana atmiņā rada ainu ar Aleksu slimnīcā, kad viņš apjauš, ka atkal ir "back to his old self" un redz visādas ainas savā gaumē un saka: "I was cured alright!". Vēl te, dabiski, mitinās arī leģendārais "Gimme Shelter" - ļoti pārliecinoša kompozīcija, tomēr vispār man stouni nepatīk viņu ne īpaši lielās daudzveidības dēļ, manā izpratnē stouni vienmēr ir pārāk atpazīstami. Nē, "Let it Bleed" mani nepārliecina, ka Stouni un Bītli ir liekami vienā plauktā. Un ne tāpēc, ka tas būtu tāds ieraksts, ko pat Rods Stjuarts būtu varējis ierakstīt, bet tāpēc, ka Bītliem tas nebūtu karjeras augstākais punkts.

"Broadway the Hard Way" ir Frenka Zappas versija par Brodvejas mūzikla tēmu. Protams, ka Zappas mūzikls pēc definīcijas ir muzikāli ļoti sarežģīts, tekstuāli - asas parodijas pilns. Man personīgi vislabāk patīk ievadošais grandiozais "Elvis Has Just Left The Building". "Elvis has just left building/Those are his footprints right there/Elvis has just left building/To climb up the heavenly stair." Lieliska dziesma. Turpinājumā notiek "Planet of the baritone women" - catchy as hell. Daži gabali gan mani atstāj izteikti "aukstu", piemēram riebīgu sintezatora skaņu bagātinātā "When the lie`s so big". Toties pseido kantrī-dū vops gabalā "Rhymin` Man" ir vienkārši lielisks. Vēl es ne pārāk saprotu repojošo Zappu dziesmā "Promiscuous" (teksts gan varbūt ir smieklīgs un šokējošs, bet tas neglābj to no tizla 80to gadu repa gabala skanējuma). Viena no albūma virsotnēm ir parodija par Maiklu Džeksonu un viņa ādas krāsu "Why don`t you like me", kurā meistarīgi iepīta "Billie Jean" tēma un tiek apgalvots, ka "Jermaine is a negro". Vēl viens vērā ņemams skaņdarbs - Police "Murder By Numbers" džeziska kaverversija, kuru dzied Stings. Labā stilā ir arī albūma nobeigums - "What Kind of Girl" - stāsts par prostitūtu, kurai patīk televīzijas kristiešu priekšā mesties ceļā, šajā dziesmā iepīts arī bītlu "Strawberry fields forever". Doma tam visam veidojumam ir ņirgāties par ASV politiķiem (konkrētiem), tikai problēma ir tāda, ka es tak neko nezinu par 80. gadu beigu politiku štatos, līdz ar to daudz kas man absolūti nešķiet interesants un tikai melodijas un aranžējumi spēj manās acīs šo lietu glābt. Bet tie to ne vienmēr izdara.