Random notes, links and incomplete thoughts:

Mystery and Misery does more justice to Jad Fair than my feeble attempt and has a full list of links to his and 1/2 Jap legal downloads for ya.

The final line-up for the Siren Festival is here and later that night Joseph Arthur is playing down at the end of Long Island. I am planning on being at both events -- if NYC traffic does not totally bum me out or I don't fall asleep after the Siren Festival (pacing, it's all about pacing). I'm going to be away on vacation next week and this will be the culmination.

Garageandbeat have a ton of, well, garage disk reviews here. Mostly sixties-style garage bands but hey it's free and writes about cooler music than you'll find in most paid-for publications.

And in a more contemporary vein, Stereogum is a snarky take on current culture and whatever the f the author wants to write about. Mostly he rags on Britney and seems to have a friend (or is) in the papparazi -- either that or he's an anti-stalker (he stalks her not because he loves her but because he hates her). Yes, it's not healthy to make this type of stuff a big part of your life but it's good to have a laugh on some multi-millionaire pop princess once in a while.

I saw Spiderman 2 today. Kind of boring after awhile. Do they have to repeatedly hit you over the head with the message? So, here's the message: Sometimes you have to sacrifice your dream to do what is right but often your friends and family will be there to help you realize your dream. Got it? Now add that to "with great power comes great responsibility" and we have the beginning of a Sam Raimi book to live by (wonder what the message of the evil dead is -- um, don't fuck with the evil dead?). Bruce Campbell has a great cameo, by the way.

Speaking of Raimi, here's an interesting story about how he wants to create a 1000 year film. This reminds me of that excellent flick, Smoke where Harvey Keitel takes a picture every day for years and years of his tobacco shop. The result was a stunning piece of film as his friend pages through Keitel's wonderous book.

So, I think its a pretty cool idea and perhaps even more accessible to the modern man/woman than the LongNow Foundation's idea of building a clock that strikes every 1000 years. I mean, where's the feedback mechanism - what are we supposed to do in the interim? I once met Danny Hillis, who leads this effort, and he said that he wanted to inspire people to think long term. That's great -- modern man, especially Americans, really don't think about the long-term consequences of what we do today.

With Raimi's idea we'll have a continual stream of data to look at and marvel (and perhaps get disgusted at times) and people will eventually (after say a hundre years) really start to "get" that long-term perspective. I had a friend years ago (he died) who studied all the great religions and came to the conclusion that the human race was in its adoloscence. Either we grow up and take responsibilty for what we do or we drive off deadman's curve.

My only critique of Raimi's idea is, assuming CNN got the story right, that it ought to be extended to all the great cities of the world not just the ones in the United States. So even though I'm not a huge fan of his latest film (liked the first one but probably because of the newness of it), I hope he makes a ton of money and can get some sort of effort going to get his vision into reality. Maybe Bruce Campbell can host a marathon fund-raiser on fX next Memorial Day weekend.