12ozProphet

Went to a Q Department video screening for director Jaron Albertin(don’t ask, it was too hot of a night to really enjoy the work being projected) and spent some time talking with Arnaud from Alife, and José Parlá, who was in a great mood as usual, probably because he’s living that fly life and was about to head to London for the week.

José told me he’s going to be working on some more pottery over there, and we also talked about the pottery he’s worked on in the south of Japan - my man is doing his thing! Sorry about the poor-quality photo, but those dudes make such big moves, it’s hard to focus.

Spotted this on the internet and I gotta say it’s sorta progressive for Jay-Z… The cover for Blueprint III. Hot, although as you can see it sorta feels a little like something else. Yeah, it’s a little reminiscent of the Secret Machines cover, but that’s OK, Jay - the all-white instruments are always a good look. Still, I’m so old-school that I immediately think of this when I see that abstracted “3” in there. The mighty E-Mu Systems Emulator 3. Don’t tell my girl, but I have one sitting in our basement storage, taking up about a 5th of the space with it’s big-ass ATA flight case. It’s got a 4 megabyte hard-drive, no lie. Back in the day that was a lot! When you trimmed samples, you had to trim both the right and left sides separately, and you had to remember the sample number you were trimming at and match it, otherwise there would be a ‘pop’ at the end of the sample when you played it back. Why keep it, now that the iPhone can likely do more? Well, it’s got these wicked-smooth filters that are analog, when nearly everything else uses digital filters. And I also have the sound collection that was used by Harold Budd using an E-3 on the White Arcades album, which I like a lot. But whatever I’m saying here, know that the thing has been in my basement for years - so maybe I’m just being clingy.

I was with my man Chris from K1X, who was visiting from Berlin, at the newest burger spot in my area, Five Guys… A good quick burger, probably one of the closest things to In-N-Out on the East Coast. While we were getting our drinks, he did some crazy cafeteria ‘suicide’ style mixing, half Coca-Cola, half orange Fanta. WHAT… IS… THAT?!? I asked… “You never had this? It’s called a ‘spezi’ in Germany.” So I made my own, and I will say: it’s good. Not too hard to figure out it’s a lot like a Cherry Coke… But with orange. He tells me it’s based on an old drink brand in Germany called Spezi, with the slogan “Spezi ist Spitze,” or “Spezi Is Great”. Chris then asked me if I’d ever tried Sprite in beer. I had to shake my head ‘No…’  What are you guys doing over there in Berlin?

My friend Wendy sent me this piece about Pete Nice from 3rd Bass. Seems the Rap Prime Minister (“some say sinister”) is in some tangles about his baseball and sports memorabilia collection. My friend Jeff from my old days working at Drawing Board was friends with the guy and told me he had an insane baseball collection and planned on opening a museum up in Cooperstown, but I don’t know what ever happened with that. Probably like those stories of Terminator X raising ostriches.

I’ve been busy and slouching on my blog duties, so here’s a few quick links. And a Def Jam Story.

Nice piece over at Complex about dead rap magazines...The image above is the one they used for ‘On The Go,’ one of the more feisty mags of the era, close to my heart because it was put on by a bunch of dudes I know (Espo, Max Glazer, Ari Foreman, etc). That ‘Cru’ issue took me back… I was working at Def Jam at the time and I was in charge of all the Cru graphics. I did that logo, I did the package for Tha Dirty 30, I did those signs for the cover photo shoot, and then… The record went nowhere. Despite being great, despite the guys being cool mutherfuckers, despite the best ingredients a street team could have - bold yellow/black/white graphics and an amazing graphic for face-painting - I mean, look at that kid just over Chad’s shoulder! But alas, you can’t force people to recognize good shit sometimes. The stars were aligned (or crossed, it seems) as even these Nike Air Humaras came out at the same time…

Violator’s David Lighty stopped me in the elevator to bug out on them and declare that he was going to make them the official Violator footwear during the promotion of the Cru’s album. Well, at least everyone looked good trying.

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I also got this link from my man Gerry V this week: The Tonetable app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Sorta Dope! Use your iPhone as a Serato Scratch (or other programs, it appears) controller…

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Speaking of On The Go magazine, I live right around the corner from my man Ari, one of the guys behind the magazine, and the current torchbearer of the excellent On The Go marque, now a promotional agency. We cool out around SoHo sometimes, but he takes it to new levels here, lounging on the crosswalk-midpoint bench on Houston and Broadway! We sat for a while and it’s amazing how the human brain just tunes out redundancies like say, traffic noise. Not a bad place to chill and people spot.

Check out this video my friend Alex sent me the link to…

It’s like Busby Berkeley with iChat!

OK, have a good weekend, ya bums.

OK, first off… What the fuck man… I’ve been at war deep in the Creative Suite trenches so if reading a ‘Bill McMullen Blog’ is important to you, I apologize. I sorta hate blogs that talk about why the writer has been so silent, so I guess I can’t win with this direction. I apologize again. Let’s move on… it’s me, not you.

A while ago, I put up a post about how I did an iTunes search for ‘Police’ and I wound up with a great playlist. It sparked some interest and the comments were populated with great suggestions for more songs. Really cool. Well, last night, while working… OK, actually it was about 30 minutes ago, I’m still working. Anyway, I was listening to some crazy Hawkwind jam and the note progression reminded me of ‘Waiting for The Man’ by the Velvet Underground, and it put in my head that I wanted to hear it. So, I typed ‘waiting’ and wound up with this:

Awesome. Apologies to Sage Francis, but a 25-minute backpacker’s cipher is not on the agenda for the ‘09. I might skip that Gwen Stefani track too, which simultaneously bites Nina Hagen and Weezer’s ‘Hashpipe’. I guess I could have blurred that out.

Check out this 2007 Creative Review interview with designer David Pelham, art director for Penquin Books from 1972-1980. I bumbled across it looking up images and although it’s not spanking new like some quickstrike Susan Boyle dunks or anything, I wanted to pass it on to the artist and design heads out there. You are welcome to scroll quickly through the images of covers if you are fighting deadlines or ADD. Nice insight into the old days of paste-up and repro typesetting, etc. And amazing design. The story he tells about finishing the ‘Clockwork Orange’ cover at 4am Monday morning, just in time for a 5am motorcycle courier pick-up, sounds all too familiar.

No one was happy with this schmuck.

Glen E. Friedman sent me this interesting Michael Moore piece inspired by the impending bankruptcy announcement and restructuring of General Motors, likely to be announced officially today. It simplifies some things but brings up some thoughts on how this could potentially be good, actually.

Goodbye, GM

by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence”—the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one—has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh—and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with—dare I say it—joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.
But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know—who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let’s be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is “reorganized” by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made “Roger & Me,” I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
We are now in a different kind of war—a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call “cars” may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn’t give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true—that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don’t put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce—and most of those who have been laid off—employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades—and we don’t even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories—that simply isn’t true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that’s a start. Please, please, please don’t save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don’t throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.
100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front—and the back—seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it’s over. It’s a new day and a new century. The President—and the UAW—must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.
So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
MichaelMoore.com

Earlier today I wanted to listen to the song Police & Thieves. Junior Murvin original version, Clash version, didn’t matter. Typed “police & th” in the search field in iTunes, not even finishing the whole song name, because as the huge list of everything I have was pared down with each character, this awesome list of songs was left and I just stopped right there and listened to it. Fuckin’ A. I might try to repeat the magic again tomorrow. Anyone want to suggest any other ‘police’ songs that should make the cut? (I do like ‘em, but the band ‘The Police’ doesn’t qualify.)

Interview up at Manifest Worldwide

The kind folks over at Manifest clothing interviewed me as part of their series of talking with hip-hop heads, performers and visual artists, and it’s just been posted over there at this link, in case you just can’t go another hot internet minute without reading more words from me. At least check out the shirts; nice ‘golden-era’ vibe over there. They make the ‘Listen To Paul’s Boutique’ one that you see me in above. Peep the ‘Humpty Tribe’ one that prompted the woman working at Staples to stop me and ask: “Is that supposed to be the guy who did the Humpty Dance?”

Gripping, slice-of-life shit. Not really; I take that back. Have the good sense to at least smoke weed if you’re gonna be a clown.
***I just want to warn you, nothing really happens in this video. It’s just a bunch of Canadian metalheads dumbing out.

I have a piece called ‘American Mixtape V.2’ in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s fundraising auction ‘FRESH’ this weekend. It’s a large screen-printed wooden panel from an edition of five. There’s a lot of good stuff in the auction, and it goes for good prices too! So if you’re in L.A., check it out. Here’s a link to all the info.

The above-right photo is from the TRYHARDER blog, who has a nice set of preview pics up, showing a lot of what’s available.