FOR MY SISTER

My sister was born with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and I know how debilitating it is. I have joined up for the arthritis walk, as well as set up a donation page. The donations go to the Arthritis Foundation. Check it out:

2008 Arthritis Walk - Battery Park, NY - General Donation

If you are interested in donating, awesome. If not, and you feel like going for a nice walk for a great cause, message me!

Thanks so much,

Jen

8:59 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

What is going on in the world?

This story made me laugh...but not because it was funny...while amusing, it is also scary and sad.

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Yes, the Times They Are a Changin' --> -->--> -->--> -->By Tony Norman    http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-23.htm

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Back in the days when this was a free country, it was possible to sing an antiwar song like "Masters of War" without having to give the Secret Service a second thought. But 41 years after Bob Dylan recorded his elegiac, acoustically spare meditation on the folly of war, the lyrics are still causing trouble with those H.L.Mencken referred to as the "booboisie." Last week, radio talk shows in Colorado were abuzz over a local punk band's plans to cover "Masters of War" at a Friday night talent show at Boulder High School. Rumors about the band, which drolly calls itself the Coalition of the Willing, prompted calls to the Secret Service in Denver because of alleged threats against President Bush. The "threat" consisted of the following copyrighted lyrics: "Let me ask you one question / Is your money that good? / Will it buy you forgiveness? / Do you think that it could? / I think you will find / When your death takes its toll / All the money you made / Will never buy back your soul. "And I hope that you die / And your death will come soon / I will follow your casket / In the pale afternoon / And I'll watch while you're lowered / Down to your death bed / And I'll stand over your grave / 'Til I'm sure that you're dead." Never mind that the intent of the song was to use a corpse as a metaphor for the Cold War-era U.S. military, people still called talk shows in Boulder insisting that the lyrics were about assassinating George Bush! These days, high school students who call themselves the Coalition of the Willing are assumed to be seditious until proven innocent. Bob Dylan was standing on less controversial ground four decades ago when he wrote what would became the third-most-covered antiwar song in recording history. In "Masters of War," Dylan was echoing President Eisenhower's parting words to the country in 1961 -- a blunt warning about the military industrial complex and its corrosive effects on American life. Ike's words were still an important part of the public conversation when Dylan's song hit the airwaves nearly two years later. But as clever as the lyrics were, they weren't particularly radical. If anything, Dylan's observations, though laced with bitterness and poetic license, were a distillation of conventional wisdom: "You fasten the triggers / For the others to fire / Then you sit back and watch / When the death count gets higher / You hide in your mansion / As young people's blood / Flows out of their bodies / And is buried in the mud." Decades after the trauma of Vietnam, the public's attitude toward the military has become less skeptical than it was at the beginning of the Cold War. Since 9/11, most Americans prefer to let the yellow ribbons on their car bumpers debate the issues for them. "Support the Troops" has become shorthand for "Don't Ask Questions." In the context of today's politics, the lyrics to "Masters of War" can't help but come across as both radical and prophetic. A day before the talent show, the Secret Service paid a visit to Boulder High School and corralled the school's principal, who quickly vouched for his students' patriotism. Most of the chatter that had been swirling on talk radio about the band was nonsense, but the Secret Service had to check it out. Rather than risk another second of embarrassment, the agency quickly cleared the band. The next night, the Coalition of the Willing performed before a sold-out crowd of young people who'd gotten a crash course on the threat to their civil liberties. An American flag was the band's only backdrop, signaling the anarchy in their souls. Though cleared of treason, the C.O.W. must have taken delight in singing the song's most prescient lyrics: "How much do I know / To talk out of turn? / You might say that I'm young / You might say I'm unlearned / But there's one thing I know / Though I'm younger than you / Even Jesus would never forgive what you do."

9:55 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Control...yay!!!

The Ian Curtis film, Control,finally has a US release date of October 10th!! About time!!!

The trailer gave me chills...

http://www.controlthemovie.com/

6:54 AM - 3 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Hilly Kristal
Current mood: indescribable

NEW YORK - Hilly Kristal, whose dank Bowery rock club CBGB served as the birthplace of the punk rock movement and a launching pad for bands like the Ramones, Blondie and the Talking Heads, has died. He was 75.

Kristal, who lost a bitter fight last year to stop the club's eviction from its home of 33 years, died Tuesday at Cabrini Hospital after a battle with lung cancer, his son Mark Dana Kristal said Wednesday.

Last October, as the club headed toward its final show with Patti Smith, Kristal was using a cane to get around and showing the effects of his cancer treatment. He was hoping to open a Las Vegas incarnation of the infamous venue that opened in 1973.

"He created a club that started on a small, out-of-the-way skid row, and saw it go around the world," said Lenny Kaye, a longtime member of the Patti Smith Group. "Everywhere you travel around the world, you saw somebody wearing a CBGB T-shirt."

While the club's glory days were long past when it shut down, its name transcended the venue and become synonymous with the three-chord thrash of punk and its influence on generations of musicians worldwide.

The club also became a brand name for a line of clothing and accessories, even guitar straps; its store, CBGB Fashions, was moved a few blocks away from the original club, but remained open.

"I'm thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and going on to do more with CBGB's," Kristal told The Associated Press last October.

Kristal started the club in 1973 with the hope of making it a mecca of country, bluegrass and blues — called CBGB & OMFUG, for "Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandisers" — but found few bands to book. It instead became the epicenter of the mid-1970s punk movement.

"There was never gourmet food, and there was never country bluegrass," his son said Wednesday.

Besides the Ramones and the Talking Heads, many of the other sonically defiant bands that found frenzied crowds at CBGB during those years became legendary — including Smith, Blondie and Television.

Smith said at the venue's last show that Kristal "was our champion and in those days, there were very few."

Throughout the years, CBGB had rented its space from the building's owner, the Bowery Residents' Committee, an agency that houses homeless people.

In the early 2000s, a feud broke out when the committee went to court to collect more than $300,000 in back rent from the club, then later successfully sought to evict it. By the time it closed, CBGB had become part museum and part barroom.

At the club's boarded-up storefront Wednesday morning, fans left a dozen candles, two bunches of flowers and a foam rubber baseball bat — an apparent tribute to the Ramones' classic "Beat on the Brat." A spray-painted message read: "RIP Hilly, we'll miss you, thank you."

Other survivors include his wife, Karen, and daughter, Lisa.

11:40 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Speechless
Current mood: annoyed

December 19, 2006 -- The former Episcopal church that once housed the sacrilegious Limelight nightclub will be born again - as a retail mini-mall.

Now known as the Avalon nightclub, the legendary 12,000-square-foot venue on Sixth Avenue at West 20th Street will shutter its doors in early 2007.

"The landlord has decided that he doesn't want to go forward with another nightclub," said broker Frank Terzulli, of Winnick Realty Group.

"He's going to cut it up for retail tenants and a restaurant with patio seating."

Terzulli added, "The area is becoming more upscale with high-priced condos and stores, and that will make it more difficult to get permits from the community board" for a nightclub.

Cops have been cracking down on Chelsea nightclubs and their rowdy and sometimes violent patrons since the murder last summer of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore, who was killed after a night of drinking at the Guest House nightspot.

Officials have warned club owners that they will conduct more stings on underage drinking and insist that the clubs do more to police themselves.

Community leaders have also complained about Chelsea's club-filled districts, which have been blasted as a "teenage wasteland."

Landlord Ben Ashkenazy's company, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., owns and operates several retail malls and the three flagship Barneys stores in New York, Chicago and Beverly Hills.

Sources say international discount-clothing retailer H&M is the likely main tenant for the space, which features triple-height ceilings and mezzanine levels.

A representative for Winnick would not confirm any specific names, since no leases have yet been signed.

Limelight, founded in the deconsecrated church in 1983, hosted some of clubland's wildest parties in the '80s and early '90s under now-deported club king Peter Gatien.

In 1996, federal agents charged that Limelight was a "drug supermarket" and shut it down.

Gatien was acquitted of racketeering and drug charges but convicted of tax evasion. He spent time in jail and was eventually deported to his native Canada.

That same year, one of the club's flamboyant promoters, Michael Alig, pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing Angel Melendez, a club regular and reputed drug dealer over a money dispute. He's still in jail.

Limelight reopened under new management but was shuttered again in 2002.

It came back to life in November of that year as the short-lived Estate. Avalon followed a few months later.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12192006/news/regionalnews/shopping_club_regionalnews_braden_keil.htm

7:54 AM - 5 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

to live by

Hatred ever kills, love never dies such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Love can never express itself by imposing sufferings on others. It can only express itself by self-suffering, by self-purification

Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect

Where there is love, there is life; hatred leads to destruction

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will

They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them

If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning

Love never claims, it ever gives; love never suffers, never resents, never revenges itself. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction

True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all

To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms.

Patience and perseverance, if we have them, overcome mountains of difficulties

Man will ever remain imperfect and it will always be his part to try to be perfect

Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization.

We are daily witnessing the phenomenon of the impossible of yesterday becoming the possible of today

6:43 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment