somehow, we got onto the subject of kate bush. i think it had something to do with a nick cave song, but i can’t honestly remember. this is why it’s a good idea to write things immediately after they happen. anyway, she wanted to show me a swell, powerful kate bush video and she picked the swellest, most powerful one she could think of. turns out that the original lacks the swellness and the power that she remembered. more on that later. the thing that blew my mind when i saw it was that i immediately recognized the title. i couldn’t quite remember where i had heard or seen it, but i knew that somehow, it was important. then, a few minutes into the video, i recognized it for what it was.

this video is a fucking fantastic mini-musical drama about the fall of wilhelm reich. shit, yeah. no overdone choreography involving bad dance moves and pop-music love stories. this is the real fucking deal and it involves a god-damned hero of psychology. some folks might say parapsychology (or even pseudo-psychology) and those folks should be stoned to death for their false belief in the inerrancy of the AMA and APA. fuck established medicine. what really attracted me to the video, aside from becca’s infinitely superior taste in music, is the fact that i’ve been to orgonon. it’s in maine. yeah, that’s right. while “it’s in maine” isn’t a phrase that can be applied to many interesting things, this fucking crazy mad scientist’s estate, complete with a mad scientist’s laboratory actually does exist in the greatest, most northeastern state. nate and rory and i went there a few years ago and it was a fucking fantastic introduction ot all things orgone. and yes, we saw cloudbusters.

as it turns out, the version that becca remembered as being incredibly powerful was the organon mix version of the song. i’d embed it here, but youtube has apparently degenerated into absolute shit over the past few minutes and i’m unable to do anything useful with it.

swell facts:
1. it is, in fact, donald sutherland who plays reich in the video.
2. the video is based on kate bush’s understanding of peter reich’s memoirs of his father, rather than on her knowledge of wilhelm himself.
3. it is very hard to say wilhelm himself 5 times in a row.
4. organon is an incorrect spelling of orgonon.
5. terry gilliam worked on, but did not direct the video.
6. reich was the last scientist in the u.s. to have his books publicly burned.

a lot of cool info here

this i already knew. either mr awkward or dr mcdougal turned me onto them a couple years ago and i’ve occasionally pulled them out when i’m in the mood. what sort of mood is required to desire that particular sort of electro-pop i can’t really say. i just know that sometimes i find myself thinking, “damn, i feel like listening to neon neon. so i do. and it rocks.

there is a song on the album titled “i told her on alderaan” and considering the righteous star wars kick i’ve been on, i keep getting that song stuck in my head. today i finally looked up the lyrics. i wanted to know why the star wars reference was included in an otherwise non-geek, non-sci-fi, non-star wars related album. the answer to this question still eludes me. but i learned a lot more.

first, the lyrics:
I Told Her on Alderaan
She had a face from an animation
Before a cinema screen projection
And if you ever got bad reception
She’d flash a smile and change the perception

She got suspicious of my intention
I didn’t give her enough attention
Like I would give into some temptation
I think her head needed medication

I told her on Alderaan
That nothing else was going on
x4

One day I took her to see the doctor
He put her in a cell and locked her
And all the patients, they started to mock her
For ever thinking that someone would leave her

I told her on Alderaan
That nothing else was going on
x4
(silver pylons in the sun)

now, the video:
strangely, it’s actually for two non-consecutive songs on the album – told her on alderaan and trick for treat..

now, after i watched that, i had to figure out what the hell the video was about. turns out the whole album is a concept album about the life of john delorean. the john delorean. the maker of the delorean dmc-12. yeah, that’s right. gull wing doors, baby.

points of interest:
john deloreon drank cutty sark scotch. he apparently did commercials as well, but i can’t find any yet.
the album is named stainless style because the delorean was stainless steel. it’s a play on words, you see.
neon neon is made up of boom bip and gruff rhys, known welshman and frontman for the super furry animals.
u.s. patent #5,359,941 filed by john delorean and found in 1994 was for a raised monorail system

that is what i’ve learned.

i was looking up this movie and i had a flashback to the first time i had ever learned the word. i don’t remember exactly what i was reading (might have been asimov’s guide to the bible – yes, that asimov), but it was probably about 11 or 12 years ago when i was first getting into old testament history. i was reading genesis because it was, and is, my favorite book of the bible. genesis 11 begins with the tower of babel scene, one of the most mythologically epic stories in the entire hebrew bible. then it switches to a “begat” list of the descendants of shem (semites) ending with the line of abram (later abraham).

verse 31 says “..and they went out together from ur of the chaldeans to go into the land of canaan.” the problem was that the word chaldean refers to the new babylonian period (6th century bce) and not to either the period of abraham (traditionally the 19th century bce) or of the presumed writer, moses (traditionally the 15th century bce). the commentary i was reading pointed out that this reference was anachronistic and therefore showed that abrahamic origin story was written after moses. this kind of blew my mind at the time.
i’ve been a bible geek ever since.

he sells miracle water. fucking miracle water.

inside edition doesn’t think very highly of him.

kind of a tool. at least, apparently, he has chicken.

and…

Drifters of the deep from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.