mbf tod@y

Mr. Scruff's Ninja Tuna

"“Ninja Tuna” – a bollocking big fish that can sneak past armed guards dressed in black p.j.s before unleashing a deadly attack using only the tops the of the tin cans which were meant to entomb him.
 
The Eric Morecambe of contemporary dance music (by which we mean he’s a genius, not that he wears glasses) returns to the long-playing record fray with his first studio album since the scrumptious “Trouser Jazz” and he’s sounding in finer fettle than ever. “Ninja Tuna” is an album that mixes up all of Andy Carthy’s favourite influences and turns them into a funny, unique, amiable and distinctively British sound which will start parties, destroy dancefloors and soundtrack your spring cleaning so successfully you’ll find yourself getting deep into that dusting." (Ninja Tune)

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Italy is stuck in the 1920s: signs of a "rapid authoritarian escalation" abound

"On September 10, prosecutors in Rome asked for leave from the government to put [comedian Sabina Guzzanti] on trial, charged with "contempt of the Pope". Addressing a big leftwing rally in the Italian capital, the comedian had said: "In 20 years [the former Cardinal Joseph] Ratzinger will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons - not passive ones, but very active ones."

Within 48 hours, her case had even worked its way into the US presidential election. Sitting alongside John McCain on Barbara Walters' morning talkshow, The View, the actor Whoopi Goldberg asked: "Did you know that in Italy a comedian called Guzzanti risks five years in jail for a joke about the Pope?" It brought howls of dismay from the live audience.

"Quite a few Italians, too, were shocked to discover that it was an offence in their country to poke fun at the pontiff. The offence was introduced in 1929 by a treaty between the papacy and Italy's then fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.The treaty was revised in the 1980s and one of the changes was to remove the offence of which Guzzanti was accused.

"But in Italy there is this habit of passing lots of new laws and only seldom remembering to cancel the old ones," says Guzzanti. "So the new ones and the old co-exist." [...]

Like many a giullare, the price of her jibes at the rich and powerful has been exile - not from the realms of an affronted prince, but from the kingdom of the mighty Silvio, Il cavaliere ("the knight"), as he likes to be called.

Though most Italians have long come to accept it, his control of what they see on their television sets is flagrantly, and perilously, abnormal. Since being sworn in again this year as prime minister, he has had direct or indirect control of six of the seven channels from which the vast majority of Italians get their news and the other information on which they base their opinions.Not the least important thing about Guzzanti is that she embodies what this means.In practice, it is forbidden in Italy to give Berlusconi anything more than a gentle ribbing, or ask the really hard questions about how he obtained his wealth and power. Thatis precisely what she did on her TV programme five years ago when Berlusconi was last in power. It was taken off the air by the state-owned RAI after only two episodes. Lawyers for one of Berlusconi's companies then sued Guzzanti for €20m in damages. They did not win because the judge ruled that the things she had said about him on air were true. But she has never been allowed back onto RAI, except for the very occasional guest performance. 

[...] But the reason, she says, that she had brought him into her speech to the rally in Rome was that she sees some aspects of the Vatican's conservative teaching as underpinning a "rapid authoritarian escalation" in Italy. She cites a string of recent incidents in which suspected far-right-wingers have beaten up gay people. "The discrimination [in Catholic doctrine] against homosexuals - now that really ought to be an offence, especially if it provokes behaviour that is homophobic and violent." (John Hooper, The Guardian) 

Please, update your calendars. Italy is not stuck in the 1950s, as the Financial Times suggests. It has now regressed to the 1920s.

The country suffers from Benjamin Button's syndrome. It's growing younger (read: more juvenile) by the day. Don't be surprised if gladiator shows will soon be introduced in the so-called Imperial Rome.

Can Italy get possibly more farcical than this?

Or fascist, for that matter?

Or feudal? Intolerant? Racist?

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The New York Times Review of Books on J.G. Ballard

"In a January 2008 Times of London article about the fifty greatest British writers since World War II, J.G. Ballard was twenty-seventh, in a list that begins with Philip Larkin and George Orwell, and doesn't even get as far as such eminent figures as Margaret Drabble, Michael Holroyd, or Victoria Glendinning. Yet his work isn't well known in America, and many of his books, including his new memoir, have not so far been published here, maybe because of a limited audience for science fiction, social satire, and the avant-garde, three categories that claim this protean figure. The review quotes on the back cover of his novel Cocaine Nights (1996) refer to him variously as a mystery writer; 'one of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced'; a detective-novelist; and 'Britain's number one living novelist.' (Diane Johnson, The New York Times Review of Books)

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The last days of David Foster Wallace

"The people who knew the brilliant writer best talk about the crippling anxiety and spiraling depression of his torturous final weeks." (Robert Ito, Salon)

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Island of the Dead aka Diary of the Dead 2

"[My next movie] starts with the blonde who drove away [in Diary of the Dead] and the national guardsmen who robbed the people. So those are the only characters that return. What it's about is tribalism. How the Internet creates a Hatfields and McCoys situation. It's on an island, where people have been lured by someone on the net as a safe haven, but really what these guys are trying to do is hold them up at the boat docks." (George A. Romero)

Read more (on Shock Around the Clock)

The Outbreak

Interesting online game/interactive movie.Literally, viral. Play it here. (via Quiet Earth)

Renzo Piano rocks San Francisco: "Mamma mia!"

 

"The California Academy of Sciences finally opened its revolutionary, eco-friendly, glass-enclosed iconic building in Golden Gate Park on Saturday, and welcomed an enthusiastic invasion by tens of thousands of visitors waiting in line for five hours or more. [...]

Then Heidi Melton, an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera, sang the national anthem and Gregory Farrington, the academy's executive director, introduced Renzo Piano, the famed Italian architect whose design of the academy building has already earned extraordinary critical praise and who, as Farrington said, "instantly came to understand the soul of this institution."

The crowd of hundreds massed in front of the building cheered and applauded.

Piano himself was brief: When he first learned about the academy's goals, he recalled, "I said, 'Mamma mia! I need this job! The Earth is fragile and it needs our help, so I want to help.' " He turned to the crowd, his arms outstretched.

"Do you like it?" he asked. The crowd roared." (David Perlman, The San Francisco Chronicle)

Renzo Piano is my hero. Italy might be rotting away, but its brightest stars are rockin' elesewhere. God bless America :-)

(Image credit: Laura Morton, San Francisco Chronicle)

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See the gallery

Bomb the Bass' Future Chaos: "Electronic music with soul"

"It's entirely a masterpiece – No Bones is unsettlingly ethereal while Hold Me Up is just unmemorable – but it's pretty damn close. It's taken time – the album was first being talked about as far back as 2006 – but this is worth the wait. Expect the accompanying live performances – purported to feature live video scratching – to be epic. Future Chaos isn't just dance. In Simenon's words, it’s ''electronic music with soul'' but there are so many other elements too" (Sophie Bruce, BBC)

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Leonardo da Vinci is Alive and Kickin' in San Jose'!

Since last June I have been collaborating with The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose', California. I am currently working as a curator for an exhibition - provisionally titled "The Creative Engines of the Silicon Valley" - that will open in 2010, thorugh the mighty Stanford Humanities Lab.

Meanwhile, The Tech is announcing the opening of Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future, "The largest, most comprehensive exhibit of the innovative art, science and engineering works of Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries."

"Leonardo: 500 Years Into the Future represents the remarkable achievements of fifteenth century artist-engineers - Filippo Brunelleschi, The Sienese Engineers, and Leonardo da Vinci - and exemplifies the pivotal unity of art, technology and science. 

This exhibition brings together over 200 artifacts, including drawings, sculptures and life-size models of the art, architectural projects, machines and mechanisms crafted from the original notebooks of the Renaissance artist-engineers. Didactic tools, including multi-media stations with interactive functions, put the machines and achievements of Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance artist-engineers into modern day context."

Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future will be at The Tech September 27, 2008 to January 4, 2009.

Simply unmissable.

More information here

Ciro Ascione ha ucciso Marge Simpson

Dopo l'Uomo Ragno, Marge Simpson.

Riceviamo e volentieri pubblichiamo notizia repellente dell'enfant terrible Ciro:

"Mitico emmebieffe,
 
ti comunico che ho ucciso Marge Simpson.
 
Alla bufalazza hanno creduto Libero (edizione cartacea), Linus di Radio Deejay, RTL Network, Dagospia, più diverse centinaia di siti e blog. Il simpsonologo Marco Malaspina (autore del libro "La scienza nei simpson") ha dato la ferale notizia nel corso di una conferenza gremitissima.
 
Ecco la falsa notizia.
 
Ecco la spiegazione, con tutti i link ai polli che ci sono cascati:
 
Un abbraccio, Ciro"

Che dire? Ciro! Ciro! Ciro! Ommioddidiodiociro noooooo!