Today I met a man named Harvey Finkelstein. I’m not making this up. He’s a young guy. a cool guy. a guy you would want to hang with. But after he gave me his card, right there in black and white Finkelstein… this was no joke. This was his name. and he is keeping it… if there is any name in the entire history of humankind that belongs off limits to call yourself, but only to be used as the butt of all jokes, it would be Finkelstein… that’s just not a name that should be used for anything but stand up comedy… I couldn’t help but just stare at it and wonder… why doesn’t he just change that name? I mean, o.k. its bad enough that he has it… that’s his parent’s fault, for not changing it before they had him, and then later his own fault… but then if he gets married and has a child he’s going to give that same name to his children.. .and they’re going to be forced to walk around with it and go through all that torture as children as well… and for what? some kind of weird pride? Its bad enough to hang on to a crazy name like that yourself – perhaps if you are some kind of a masochist, you would keep the name Finkelstein and be ornery enough to force it upon your wife – but to do that to your children… that’s really inexcusable.

Now what this reminds me of is when I first met the infamous drummer extra-ordinario Infinito. He had just recently relocated from Bolivia, fresh out of college. still very young. Never a serious word out of his mouth. In fact, he’s still that way today. but a little older and wiser. Everytime we took a break at our rehearsals for the rise and shine album he would go up to my microphone and stand there coming up with very American sounding names and say them into the mic and then laugh his ass off. He would say ‘hold on hold on…. ladies and gentleman, Mr. John Smithson…’ and then he would break out into huge laugher like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard… ‘hold on hold on… listen… ladies and gentlemen… Mr. Fred Baxter!’ and then he would laugh. I never got the joke. At least not at first… but then I started thinking of how my friends and I here in America make fun of Spanish names like that sometimes when we were kids… we would say ‘miguel Jose Gomez… or juan martinez… and we would laugh.. I guess because it just sounded so typically Latin or South American or whatever… and then you would meet someone with that name and you would laugh. Holy shit, that guys name is really Jose martinez or whatever… so Infinito would go on and on… ‘ladies and gentlemen… introducing Mr. roger Wilson!’ and he would laugh… as if that was funny that someone could have that name…

Reminds me of something I read today about the pope dying. It said in the new York times that he passed away at 9:35 pm. And I remember seeing it live on TV in the studio that he died at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Well that’s just because I happened to be in America at the time. on the east coast. So that makes sense. But I thought that was strange. time. what a funny thing time is. how the hell are you going to quantify something like that… in the future when people are asked ‘where were you when the pope died?’ they are going to respond according to where they were and what time it was where THEY were, not where the pope was. so if someone was in California they will remember very clearly that the pope died at about noon. And yet the official report will always read that the pope died at 9:35 at night. to make matters even more perplexing, to everyone that was in Australia or new Zealand at the time, they will remember that he died the following day… time on earth. It is quite relative. Next… what else is relative?

current spin: A. Molotkov, this is totally avant garde experimental music project out of Portland OR. Out there. not even music really, but sound. Interesting.

Last screening: sin city. wow. What a feast. Violent and graphic and brutal as all hell. But new. Unique. Bruce was rather predictable, which isn’t a bad thing, because Bruce is great just being Bruce as always, but Mickey Rourke God love him can rest now forever. He performed his swan song. He was over the top amazing. worth seeing again just for his performance… this movie made me extremely uncomfortable and sick throughout. But it still sucks you in. Not my thing, but still a respectable work for its singular vision. One thing is, I will never forget it. a lot of critics are giving it an F. And some are giving it five stars or an A. no one can agree if it’s good or not. That’s a sign of great art. [in that respect the pope was a great artist because he so polarized society] If you ask me I would give it an A because its that good of a piece of work – on its own, it can stand proud, gruesome and discomforting, but proud — but I would give it a 7 out of 10 or a three out of five stars to separate it from the better films of all time. because its not that. but it is a damn good piece of art that you won’t soon forget.