Five Poems

Five Poems
By Jack Brummet


Concrete Poem

No Exit, 3

Once you grab a tiger by the tail,

You can never let it go.

                  ***

Mission Statement

The army
Has two duties--

To break things, and kill people;

Everything else is just fluff and overhead.

                   ***

It's Better Than You Think

1

Every throbbing second of your time here,
You engage in a game of dodge ball,

Bobbing and weaving through a multitude
Of objective hazards, walls, and shoals

Over which you have no control―
And only a fraction of which you ever see.

2

We almost always feel less
Safe than we actually are.

                   ***

Takeback

1
You can withdraw it
Marginalize it
Forget it

Hide it
Lie about it
And deny it three times before the cock crows.

2
You can snigger about it
Weep about it
Shout about it

Hide it under a bush (oh no)
Sing the blues about it
And sweep it under the rug.

3
You can get an ulcer over it
Jump off the Aurora Bridge over it
Lose your family over it

Lose your shorts or mind over it
And pretend
It never happened.

4
You can dream about it
Run away from it
Rationalize it

Psychoanalyze it
And drink it away
But you can't take back love.
    ---o0o---

Ten covers of Waterloo Sunset - one of The Kinks' greatest songs, #42 in Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time with videos/covers by Peter Gabriel, Ray Davies, Elliott Smith, Def Leppard, Jackson Brown, and lyrics

By Jack Brummet
Pop Music Editor

Waterloo Bridge on the Thames River in London - click to enlarge

A London FM radio poll in 2004 named Waterloo Sunset the "Greatest Song About London", and Time Out named it the "Anthem of London." 

Waterloo Sunset is  #42 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  Paul Weller and Damon Albarn, and many other musicians, cite the song as their favourite of all-time. Even the sometimes cranky Pitchfork Media named it the 29th best song of the 1960s.  It's probably in my top fifty.

The notoriously cranky, but often brilliant,  journalist Robert Christgau called the song "the most beautiful song in the English language."   Pete Townshend of The Who has called it "divine" and "a masterpiece".  Allmusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine said it is "possibly the most beautiful song of the rock and roll era."

Ray Davies performs the song at Glastonbury in 2010.  This is a wonderful cover of his own song with a choir. 



The Kinks perform Waterloo Sunset at the time of its release:



Billy Bragg's cover, performed right next to Waterloo Bridge in London:



Peter Gabriel's gorgeous and heartbreaking version with strings:



The late, great Elliott Smith, who performed the song frequently at shows:



Def Leppard!:



David Bowie:



A guy named Steve on YouTube:



Another [piano-centric] cover by Ray Davies in NYC by Ray Davies with a choral octet:



Ray Davies and Jackson Brown:



Waterloo Sunset
By Ray Davies

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I don't need no friends
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is evening time
Waterloo sunset's fine

Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station
Every Friday night
But I am so lazy, don't want to wander
I stay at home at night
But I don't feel afraid
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is evening time
Waterloo sunset's fine

Millions of people swarming like flies 'round Waterloo underground
But Terry and Julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And they don't need no friends
As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset
They are in paradise

Waterloo sunset's fine

---o0o---

President Reagan and Vladimir Putin. . .23 years ago?

By Jack Brummet
Presidential History Editor

click to enlarge

I missed this photo/controversy when it first appeared two years ago.  People seem absolutely convinced this is Vladimir Putin posing as a tourist.  The Russians vehemently deny this is him at all.  There are fairly tantalizing arguments on either side of the question.

According to Pete Souza, "President Barack Obama's official photographer, a picture he took in Red Square 21 years ago indicates that Mr Putin was part of a KGB plot to embarrass Reagan on his first ever visit to Moscow."

Kremlin officials are said to be angry about the emergence of Mr Souza's photograph, and believe it is an attempt to smear Mr Putin.  Russian experts (e.g., "experts in Russia") claim that the young man dressed in a tight t-shirt with a camera slung around his neck is not Mr Putin.

Souza told National Public Radio in the United States that the incident occurred when Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet general secretary, toured Red Square in the Summer of 1988.  Reagan was led to a group of Russian tourists who were allegedly positioned in Red Square to ask a series of pointed questions about America's human rights record.

Souza now says that a secret service officer told him the tourists were in fact "all KGB families."

"Now what is really interesting is a picture I have in my Reagan book," he said. "Off to the left is one of these tourists with a camera around his shoulder and it has been pointed out to me and verified that that was Putin. As soon as you see the picture you go: 'Oh my gosh, it really is him.'"

Experts in Moscow, however, call B.S.  During Reagan's visit, Putin was serving as a mid-ranking KGB spy in Dresden and would not have been called to Moscow to help with a dirty trick.  The Russians also note that the man in the photograph has a thicker head of hair than Mr Putin ever did.

Yeah, it does resemble the Prime Minister.  But I could really go either way. . .

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Drawing: The Parts

By Jack Brummet

[pen and ink on 24" x 24" muslin surplus hospital drawcloth] - click to enlarge

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Happy Flag Day!

By Mona Goldwater
Tea Party-GOP Analyst

From a Flag Day 2010 Wonkette.com post:  Here is how to display the flag with dignity:

1. Get an Army flag, too, from Big Lots or whatever. Israel flags are fine, too.
2. Throw the flag over the bar stool — the one covered in baby vomit and cheeto dust — and just lean on the American Flag, like a slob.
3. Wear pantyhose while jogging, for some reason.
4. If the flag touches the carpet, ticks could get on it. That’s not allowed according to the Constitution.

---o0o---

Alien Lore No. 209 - The Greatest Story Ever Denied

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal Editor

UFO - Greatest Story Ever Denied is an hour and a half long rundown of some of the most interesting and provocative Grey/UFO events following the Roswell crash in 1946.   One focus is the "Battle of LA," in which government forces fired upon which they thought was a UFO, but later claimed was a weather balloon. The film includes amazing photographs of Klieg lights trained on UFOs in the skies above LA and a radio broadcast describing the 1,500 rounds that were shot at the unidentified craft -- without hitting a single one! The documentary also covers some of the early military "cover-ups," and information about UFOs that researchers claim are invisible and can only be seem with infrared cameras.

"The nations of this world will have to unite for the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the Earth must some day make a common front against attack by people from other planets." -- General Douglas MacArthur October 8, 1955

I try to avoid reading the comments on YouTube--generally you feel like you need a bath after reading them.  In this case, I did enjoy one commenter who suggests that the reason there has been no public acknowledgement of UFOs and Greys is that the Greys signed a mutual non-disclosure agreement with the "nations of earth."

"To me, the most compelling reason why UFOs have never been publicly acknowledged is that there must be a non-disclosure agreement between the ETs and the nations of the earth. When a nation asks "Why should we agree to not disclose your existence?" the reply might have been, "Remember the Tunguska Event?" "Yes." "We can do that on a much more massive scale. It's up to you."

"Fear is a powerful motivator."

---o0o---

Living Presidents of the United States

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor
illustration by Jack Brummet
We have a pretty good crop of living Presidents right now.  In 2001-2004, there were six, and there were a couple of other groups of six in our history, some fives, and on and on.  There have been six Presidents who, while they were in office (or during their terms) were the sole living President (George Washington (1789–97), John Adams (1799–1801), Ulysses S. Grant (1875–77), Theodore Roosevelt (1908–09), Herbert Hoover (1933), and Richard Nixon (1973–74).

click to enlarge

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The collected Weiner Tweets from All This Is That

By Pablo Fanque,
National Affairs Editor

Although we didn't write many (any?) pieces on ATIT about the Weiner Broil, we did indeed keep up and did a fair amount of tweeting on the subject (probably 2/3 of them were from Jack).  And with this, I don't think we'll be doing much thinking about The Honorable Representative from New York,  unless he announces he's running for President, hangs himself or something similarly drastic. 

The All This Is That Tweets:

I think the Weiner story cycle is finally detumescing. #WeinerGate #FadeToBlack

____________

@RickSantorumPRRick Santorum PR RT @RickSantorumPR "We may have our differences; but I'm impressed by how Nancy Pelosi handles Weiner." 

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"Pelosi Demands Removal of Weiner" #WeinerHeadlines #SexRehab 

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@AlecBaldwin I thought your piece on Weiner was sensitive, thoughtful, and apt. So, are the knuckleheads taking you to task?

 ____________

"Boehner Won't Bite on Weiner" http://bit.ly/lLUdy7 Yes, the real headline. #WeinerHeadlines 

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Borowitz on Weiner's press conference: “It’s tough to know what he was really thinking because he was standing behind a podium.” 

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Women Who Received Pictures of Weiner March on Washington ("Traffic snarled for miles") Borowitz--> http://bit.ly/l1wCFD 

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Ethics panel plans to grill Weiner. #Weinerheadlines

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"The congressman had a sex scandal and had to apologize to Bill Clinton? For what?! Copyright infringement?" —Jon Stewart
____________

Harry Reid:--"Senator, what advice would you give him if he asked you?" Reid: "Call somebody else." #deadmanwalking

 ____________

Glenn Beck, Anthony Weiner, John Boehner and remembering back to when Edmund Muskie's crying speech ended his Pr... http://bit.ly/j9xtNv

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Anthony Weiner: Dead Man Walking: In his delayed press conference this afternoon, Congressman Anthony Weiner sa... http://bit.ly/irLwjz

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RT@samsteinhp "were you fully erect!?" Reporter asks to close out press conference. PERFECT

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live from the press conf--[boohoos] Weiner: I lied. I did it all. I'm not resigning. #deadmanwalking 

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RT @BorowitzReport: What every parent needs to know: http://bit.ly/kZ0leE How to talk about Anthony Weiner w/ your kids! #Ick 

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Juli Weiner To Anthony Weiner, On Weiner Jokes: ‘It Gets Better’ http://bit.ly/k9fh2Q #AnyOneWantOdds? 

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Weiner's quote "I can't say with certitude [it's mine]" goes down w/ "I did not inhale" as feeblest ever... #DidntWorkForBill

_________________

Scared Tweetless --http://www.webpronews.com/weinergate-scares-congressional-tweeters-2011-06
#ScaredTweetless #Weinergate #RunningScared

---o0o---

Digital art: Five Presidents Standing

by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Faces No 221 and 222 - four scratchboard sketches from April, 2010, Udaipur, India

And, the same analog image, digitally reversed. . .click to enlarge

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Faces No. 220: 'cube mates - drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Faces No. 218 - drawing by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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