Motley Kamuka

I was walking to the grocery and the birds made me think of Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds, and wondered if that added anything to the culture to be able to imagine birds rising up and attacking humans.  Charitably you could imagine horror as an attempt to challenge you to overcome fears. But what if you don't overcome them and it just adds new ones in, or strengthens old ones? Maybe teen panic is a subgenre with includes the horrors of sexuality and becoming an adult. I never had the desire to watch Human Centipede. The South Parks parody "asparagus with cuttlefish" was enough for me.  I remember as a teen wanting to watch Halloween, but I can't even remember if I saw it.  The most horrible movie I sat through was called Irreversible, it was a French movie that's denouement was a brutal raping of a pregnant woman by a crazed drug addict criminal. My friend's girlfriend said she grew up watching inappropriate movies with her family, she said it sort of bl...

My pop is going to Berlin November 21st (2023). This is going to be my Berlin exploration space notes while I explore where he is going. Associations prior to this study: Cabaret , Babylon Berlin (currently on Netflix). First watch videos of others there:  Richard Ayoade  (Comedian from IT Crowd among other things) with a fellow comedian.  Elissa and Rodrigo  (19 minutes). Skim the Wikipedia article. Look at all the photos. Look at the list of 11 best novels set in Berlin. The first one that comes to my mind that I've heard about is Isherwood's novel that was the basis for Caberet. Of course I join r/Berlin on Reddit. There are supposedly 51 museums in Berlin. There is a museum island. There are 55 Exhibits in museums and galleries about photographs . When I search "free of charge" I get 620 results. There are 11 jazz bars in Berlin ( source ). I learned about Albert von Le Coq . I would like to go to the museum in south west Berlin that has all the looted Silk Ro...

"Let’s be clear about something: men like Scalise and Jordan – extremists and election deniers, comfortable with white supremacy and willing to discard democratic principles – have ascended to what counts for leadership in the Republican conference not in spite of the depravity of their positions, but because of them. They are the products of rightwing political, fundraising and media apparatuses that incentivize candidates to move further and further to the right – and which have left the Republican party itself both unable and unwilling to impose discipline on its politicians." Moira Donegan in the Guardian . I watched the vote on Monday, and I saw the memes with the former ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy laughing behind Jim Jordan. Republicans don't care of they're irrelevant and impotent, that's their mission in House of Representatives. From the crazy Gerrymandered district of sexual abuse cover uping insurrectionist Jim Jordan, to the white supremacist Scalise...

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967 during the Six Day War . Each side has complex and embedded stories that justify violence towards each other.  ( Vox : "The militant group based in occupied Gaza launched aerial attacks and broke through the heavily secured fence into the State of Israel. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, a historic scale of violence for the country. The Israeli counterattack will inevitably lead to more death and destruction for Palestinians and a tightened occupation.") The Jewish people were attempted to be exterminated during Hitler's rise in Germany, and the general scapegoating, othering and anti-semitism in Europe. Jewish people just want to have a place where they are safe, since the winds of anti-semitism can easily blow, like the strains of hate groups in the USA. The peaceful ones who walked into the killing chambers are dead, it's the feisty vengeful fighters who are left. No, it's not that simple, nothing i...

  Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special.  In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

I don't know if I haven't seen live jazz in a while, or I hadn't been out for a while, but I saw the most amazing set at Smalls with: Ari Hoenig / Drums Tivon Pennicott / Tenor Sax Gadi Lehavi / Piano I was effusive, it was in the pocket, the was transcendent. I felt rapture listening to it. When I went up to shake Ari's hand, I think he might of thought I was too excited, but I really appreciated the set.  I was like, it's not like the album on Spotify. My friend talked with Tivon about his setup on his sax, he had pedals and electronic things on the reed, and an amplifier.  Ari would expand and contract the density of his percussion, the width of his sounds, the volume, in the interplay with Tivon and Gadi. Gadi was playing the bass lines from the synth on top of the piano. I thought Monday would be a bit bland, but we also had to get out because the second set was sold out and we couldn't get it. I love jazz at 730, I'm not a night owl. But I love it so m...