I know enough about war to realize it’s a kind of subconscious global pastime. I don’t pretend to know much more about it, which gives me a sense of defiant joy (which I protect fiercely). But I will say that over the past month, there’s been plenty of wartime montages going through my head and living space. For me, this leads to cool bouts of existentialism and return trips to the refrigerator for microversions of beer. I am not making light—I am just telling you how I deal with hazy information. All of war is hazy. In practice, and in truth. The beer is for the freedoms I’m meant to exhibit.
Anyway, three events occurred in rapid succession for me—I watched The Tillman Story, I received news that Osama Bin Laden was killed a full 24 hours after everyone else, and director/photojournalist Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya as he went about trying to search out the heart of the haziness with a video camera. These are all unrelated events, ranging from semi-recent to entirely recent, with a common denominator being “killed.” All of them are dead—atheist, pantheist, fanatic. All of them were individual parcels of manias, religion, neuroses, convictions and passions. All of them obscured at some point by media. All o
f them mysteriously driven.
Starting with Pat Tillman, who walked away from a coveted position in the definitive American psyche—an NFL football player for the Arizona Cardinals—to join the Army. Why he did this? Presumably because of a gnawing sense of obligation to live up to his military examples (relatives) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The Tillman Story goes so far beyond what you’d expect, particularly when you’re not sure what you’re expecting. The documentary is fascinating not for capturing the All-American football player with the mysterious, patriotic bent, but because it demystifies. It plays at the fog of war itself, the underlying agendas, the cover-up of how he was killed, the family of his who won’t stand for it, and the size they become (pebble-like) when up against The Thing (high-ranking, untouchable military officials). It serves as a small, barely visible lantern in the haziness of war, zeroed in on in a courtroom and in the Afghanistan mountains. In effect, it is a story of obfuscation being at heart of things, with Pat Tillman’s face attached as a hero-tinted campaigning tool. The trick the film turns is a co-mingling sense of trust and distrust, the rising and falling ceilings of each. This thing touches on the outposts of what we know we don’t know. Hell, even Jon Krakauer wrote a book about Tillman, 
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, that could be shelved in either fiction or nonfiction and be right in both instances.
some researchers speculate that the soldiers' immune systems were weakened by malnourishment as well as the stress of combat and attacks from chemical weapons, increasing their vulnerability to the flu, widening the spread of the disease.
industry executives and Hall of Fame members. The ne
w inductees for the 24th Annual Induction Ceremony will be announced in January 2009. The ceremony will be held on April 4 at historic Public Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, the museum’s home, instead of at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York where 21 of the previous 23 events have taken place. To be eligible for nomination into the Rock Hall, an artist must have released its first single or album at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination.
available to the public.
hell, I might as well add Dr. John, Tim Buckley, Robert Wyatt/Soft Machine, Tim Hardin, Brigitte Fontaine, John Fahey, Pentangle, Jimmy Ricks and the Ravens, Tommy James, Television, Nico, Gabor Szabo, Richard and Mimi Farina, einstuerzende neubauten, Young Marble Giants, Pearls Before Swine, Pere Ubu, Link Wray, James Blood Ulmer, Throbbing Gristle, Sandy Bull, Derek Bailey, Tiny Grimes, Can, Nina Simone, Exuma, Lenny Breau, Sonny Sharrock…
