Kurt Vile - "Pretty Pimpin" Official Video

Heart - Stairway to Heaven (Live at Kennedy Center Honors) [FULL VERSION]

Daniel Plainview

Daniel Plainview represents existential, utilitarian, evolunionary man.  He has faith in only himself and the earth that provides the minerals he exploits for profit in a largely unregulated western United States around the turn of the 20th century.

He is driven.  He doesn't delve into the origins of the drive, though he is duped to some extent into familial sentimentality by an imposter who claimed to be his "brother from another mother."  In a moment of weakness, Plainview decides to believe the lie in order to assuage a part of himself that he hates.  This is the sentimental aspect of the human personality.  Long buried, Plainview opts to ressurect what little sentiment lay at his foundation.  He errs in so doing and kills his faux sibiling as punishment for the internal humiliation that accompanies all victims of fraud.  The murder is a foregoine conclusion once Plainview discovered the fraudulent scheme.  It is justified.

Daniel Plainview followed his own drive and kept his own counsel.  Yet, the arrival of H.W. Plainview, likewise a fraud constructed by Daniel Plainview, revealed sentiment.  Plainview held out the boy as his own purely for econmic gain by skillfully placing the boy adjacent to him during town meetings gathered to either approve or deny mining privileges.  He played upon the sentiment of others.  Random justice would play upon his own sentiment by the introduction of his "brother" into his life, and the injuries suffered by H.W. while playing at the site of Plainview's first gusher.  H.W. lost his hearing and was left to observe this world by the acts of its inhabitats instead of the hollow words that emanated from their mouths.  His first subject would be Daniel Plainview.

Daniel Plainview represents the story of man in terms of his base arrival into the realm of life, without regard to "superstition," which is a word he used to describe the belief in God.  He was thrown into this crowded life and was left with the choice of following his own internal engines or those that society had constructed for those who might be less in tune with their plight.  Plainview is skeletal man.  His bones are his soul.  He manipulates thier movement for his own gain, which is driven by his need to make as much money as he can in order to escape human society.  In the end he realizes this goal, thus realizing his own misery -- a misery that was kept at bay while he was in his productive era.

The only suspicious aspect of Plainview's character was his reclusion into his mansion and solitude toward the end of the film.  I suspect that, had Plainview acutally lived, he would have worked until the day he gleefully died.

Officer Daniel Pantaleo - Latest Recipient of the Henry S. Kissinger Scumbag Award

Beirut Live at AB - Ancienne Belgique (Full concert)

I Repeat: Officer Daniel Pantaleo Murdered Eric Garner and Apparently Got Away With It

A televised homicide with no indictment.

I am mystified that Daniel Pantoleo has not been charged with Eric Garner's murder.  Garner is rarely mentioned anymore, despite the fact that this white-on-black police homicide (murder) is a slam-dunk.  I smell politics emanating from Staten Island's District Attorneys office.

Eagles of Death Metal - Peace, Love, Death Metal

Albert Camus

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
                                                                                                             Albert Camus

Drug and alcohol dependence disproportionately affects this crowd, I suspect.

Mack English

To put it lightly, my feelings got hurt on August 5, 2014 when I learned from an early morning telephone call from Richie English, that his father, my buddy of 20 years, Mack English, was killed in an accident that occurred on his property.  Richie called me moments after he found his daddy next to Panther Creek where Mack had been dragged by a runaway trailer he had attempted to unhitch from his truck.  Mack was reckless.  He had the knack of being able to channel that recklessness into pure energy, which got him rich at a fairly early age.  But, ironically, that material wealth would contribute to the misery that shows on his face in these pictures.  His luck ran out.  Mack English was a fascinating man.  I miss him and still cannot fully come to terms with the fact that he is gone from this life.  Mack and Richie were the only persons from my side of things to visit the hospital when my son, Frank, (pictured above), was born.  That's the work of a true friend, whom I'll miss for the rest of my life.  I literally think of him every day. 

Ten years have elapsed since this post. While I do have a distant fondness for this bizarre version of a man, I no longer miss him. At all.

The Music of Mark Orton

War On Drugs - Lost in the Dream - One Man's Review

Imagine, if you can, a neo--Travelling-Wilbury-esque amalgam including the haunting intersessions of the Boards of Canada, buffeting Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, a dollop of Mark Knofler, and Bruce Springstein playing in the rock&roll tradition a series of music that compels the listener to drive extra laps around the block every evening after work to get a second helping of his personal favorite, Red Eyes.  If you can audibly imagine such an array, you're barely underway embracing the mark that War on Drugs has etched into the groove of alternative rock&roll music with its album, Lost in the Dream.

Go out and get it.  Now.