Once again proving the yanks have no sense of humor, obvious Mr. Waters need to have a few toke and chill the hell out...


PM's jokes on marijuana outrage U.S.
Canada 'ashamed' of Chrétien, drug czar says

Sheldon Alberts and Janice Tibbetts
The Ottawa Citizen


Friday, October 10, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The White House's drug czar lashed out yesterday at Prime Minister Jean Chrétien for relaxing marijuana laws and said Canadians are "ashamed" over the prime minister's recent jokes about smoking marijuana when he retires.

John Walters, director of the National Drug Control Policy Office, said Mr. Chrétien was being irresponsible when he said last week that he might try marijuana when he leaves office next February.

Canadians "are concerned about the behaviour of their prime minister, joking that he is going to use marijuana in his retirement," Mr. Walters said to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"They're ashamed."

Canada is "the one place in the hemisphere where things are going the wrong (way) rapidly," Mr. Walters added. "It's the only country in this hemisphere that's become a major drug producer instead of reducing their drug production."

Justice Minister Martin Cauchon, who is shepherding the federal government's marijuana legislation through the House of Commons, responded that Mr. Walters should "look in his own backyard" before criticizing Mr. Chrétien.

"There are over 10 states that have in place what we call alternative penalties, so you know, if it is not correct to move in that direction, maybe he should spend some time talking to his own states," Mr. Cauchon said.

Mr. Walters' criticisms of Mr. Chrétien came following an effort by the prime minister to make light of his government's controversial decriminalization legislation.

During an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press, Mr. Chrétien said he had never tried marijuana, but might once decriminalization legislation is approved by Parliament.

"I don't know what is marijuana. Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal," he said. "I will have money for my fine and a joint in the other hand."

Jim Munson, Mr. Chrétien's director of communications, declined to comment on Mr. Walters' claim that Canadians are ashamed of their leader.

"I am not going to get into those kind of comments. I mean, they have their point of view and we have our point of view," Mr. Munson said.

The prime minister, while joking about his own lack of personal experience with marijuana, also spoke about the need to crack down on growers and dealers of marijuana, Mr. Munson said.

The bill was handed yesterday to a special parliamentary committee, instead of the busy Commons justice committee, which would not be able to hold public hearings on the controversial legislation until after Christmas.

Randy White, a Canadian Alliance MP on the special committee, said that members do not intend to rush the bill. The Americans will be among the witnesses who will be invited to the hearings.

© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen

Highway 61 rerevisted by Tim Cahill

You can tell Le Petit Gar from Shawinagin is ready to retire and clearly doesn't give a shit what the press says. You have to love that.

Chretien jokes about trying pot once it's decriminalized, ready to pay fine

Canadian Press


Saturday, October 04, 2003



WINNIPEG (CP) - It's an unlikely retirement scenario for Prime Minister Jean Chretien: he's at his lakeside cottage, sipping tea with his wife Aline - and smoking a big fat joint.

The 69-year-old prime minister has never smoked marijuana, he says, but he joked in an interview this week he might be willing to give it a try once it's decriminalized. Chretien made the joke in an Ottawa interview with the Winnipeg Free Press published in Friday's paper.

Chretien was asked how it felt to have bills for decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing same-sex marriages as the exclamation points to his lengthy political career.

"I don't know what is marijuana," Chretien replied.

"Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand."

On a more serious note, he defended his government's marijuana bill, which he is trying to pass this fall in what is expected to be his last parliamentary session.

He said replacing criminal sentences with simple fines is a more realistic way of punishing marijuana users.

"The decriminalization of marijuana is making normal what is the practice," Chretien said.

"It is still illegal, but do you think Canadians want their kids, 18 years old or 17, who smoke marijuana once and get caught by the police, to have a criminal record for the rest of their life?

"What has happened is so illogical that they are not prosecuted anymore. So let's make the law adjust to the realities. It is still illegal, but they will pay a fine. It is in synch with the times.

On same-sex marriage, Chretien said he thinks it is better to err on the side of giving more rights than taking away rights. But he didn't want to talk about whether that view has caused him problems as a Catholic.

"My grandfather had been refused holy communion because he was a Liberal organizer," he said. "For us, my mentality, my religion belongs to me and I will deal personally with that. I am a public person in a very diverse society, and I don't think I can impose every limit of my morality on others, because I don't want others to impose their morality on me."

Oh to be back home and listening to the cbc blues series

With the western world supposedly beseiged by snarling, foaming at the mouth, fanged, three-eyed terrorists intent on eating our children it nice to see the attorney general of the Excited States is spending his limited resources well.
the next step will be arresting reggae singers for singing about weed

well I almost had a bit of a dust up at the office last night. For a branch of the world's largest newspaper our editors seem to have a funny idea of what constitutes journalism.
A couple of examples:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm
I think most of us will have heard of the 5 Ws (Who what where when why) Well where I work "who" is usually a well guarded secret, even when the name is in the public domain. The above story has two main actors in it, one who is on trial for accessory to murder after the fact(destruction of evidence). His name is therefore a matter of public record, but the oiks at the parent paper won't use it because they think it might identify the other main actor in the story - a police lt. who has been accused of accepting a bribe. Said Lt. was interviewed and testified at the trial and his name is also therefor a matter of public record, but we don't run it because he might not like it.
example two shows us how accurate stats can be used to twist the truth
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm
this one concerns the number of foreigners arrested in the first half of the year. The police say the number is up by 20 percent from last year to just over 9,000 and that about 240 of those were arrested for "murder and other violent crimes". Sounds like a massive crime wave committed by those pernicious foreign devils doesn't it? Spot the logical/statistical fallacy yet?
9,000 arrests out of how many? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?

five minutes of web cruising later we find out that in 2002 2,735,612 crimes were reported to police, including 1,340 murders and that in all, 542,115 arrests were made
Current year stat are not yet readily available in english, but would have been included in the report the DY story was based on. When I mentioned this I was told that because it wasn't in the original japanese story, we could not add it to our story.
The next day I checked the other two main english language dailies and found out that while we at the Daily Anonymous didn't have the essential background info to put the crime stats in context, our rivals did.

The international Herald-Tribune/Asahi:
"Crimes allegedly committed by foreigners accounted for only 1.39 percent of all criminal cases in the half-year."

The Japan Times:
"Crime allegedly committed by foreigners, a popular media scapegoat, accounted for a scant 1.39 percent of all cases in the half-year period. The total number of arrests and papers sent to prosecutors, including those involving Japanese, reached 1.34 million in the first six months of this year."

It is the classic propagandists big lie. "Our country is in peril, the communists have receive triple the number of votes in this latest election compared to last election." says the red baiter, not telling us that last time they got 20 of 200,000 votes cast and this time they got 60 out of 300,000 votes cast.

The problem is when I complain about these things, the editors look at me like I've grown an extra head. "We Japanese don't like to use too many names, we like to keep thing anonymous" said one editor (good of her to speak for the entire population of 128 million) and of course as all Japanese know (and as we keep telling them) "Foreigners are responsible for most of the crime in Japan"


Now obviously if both rival papers had the information it was readily available, probably contained in the same report from the NPA. Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that the writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun intentionally left out the information.
Could there be an agenda at work here?
You bet your (insert off-colour colloquial expression here) there is.
A quick search of our database turned up a half dozen similar stories, all with the same information missing. It also turned up four editorials that followed the stories, calling for measures to be taken to halt the rising flood of criminal foreigners.

conclusion: I work for facists here at Partoftheproblem, Inc.

Is the ministry of truth taking job applications?

this article does not exactly inspire faith in the democratic process

www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...ageid=968256289824&col=968342212737
rather it calls to mind Frank Zappa's "Dumb all over"
http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/lyrics/You_Are_What_You_Is.html#Dumb

seem to having a little trouble with the new comment function due to reblogger being offline at the moment but I will try to sort things out in the near future.

Meanwhile consider the benefits of thisme hearties, ahrrrr! and this too ye scaborus sea-dogs

Nice to see this coming from an American, rather than a Canadian.

This is an article from a paper in Pittsburg.

"It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada"
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Pittsburg, PA Post-Gazette
You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud music
or throws raucous parties. He doesn't gossip over the fence, just smiles
politely and offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is cared-for, his house is
neat as a pin and you get the feeling he doesn't always lock his front door.
He wears Dockers. You hardly know he's there.
And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends his
weekends at peace marches and that guy you've seen mowing the yard is his
spouse.
Allow me to introduce Canada.
The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they're up there,
but they've been busy doing some surprising things. It's like discovering
that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have been building an
espresso machine.
Did you realize, for example, that our reliable little tag-along brother
never joined the Coalition of the Willing? Canada wasn't willing, as it
turns out, to join the fun in Iraq. I can only assume American diner menus
weren't angrily changed to include "freedom bacon," because nobody here eats
the stuff anyway.
And then there's the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are authorized
to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering legislation that
would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as you may have heard, but
would reduce the penalty for possession of under 15 grams to a fine, like a
speeding ticket. This is to allow law enforcement to concentrate resources
on traffickers; if your garden is full of wasps, it's smarter to go for the
nest rather than trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United
States, bong.
Now, here's the part that I, as an American, can't understand. These poor
benighted pinkos are doing everything wrong. They have a drug problem:
Marijuana offenses have doubled since 1991. And Canada has strict gun
control laws, which means that the criminals must all be heavily armed, the
law-abiding civilians helpless and the government on the verge of a massive
confiscation campaign. (The laws have been in place since the '70s, but I'm
sure the government will get around to the confiscation eventually.) They
don't even have a death penalty!
And yet ... nationally, overall crime in Canada has been declining since
1991. Violent crimes fell 13 percent in 2002. Of course, there are still
crimes committed with guns -- brought in from the United States, which has
become the major illegal weapons supplier for all of North America -- but my
theory is that the surge in pot-smoking has rendered most criminals too
relaxed to commit violent crimes. They're probably more focused on
shoplifting boxes of Ho-Hos from convenience stores.
And then there's the most reckless move of all: Just last month, Canada
decided to allow and recognize same-sex marriages. Merciful moose, what can
they be thinking? Will there be married Mounties (they always get their
man!)? Dudley Do-Right was sweet on Nell, not Mel! We must be the only ones
who really care about families. Not enough to make sure they all have health
insurance, of course, but more than those libertines up north.
This sort of behavior is a clear and present danger to all our stereotypes
about Canada. It's supposed to be a cold, wholesome country of polite,
beer-drinking hockey players, not founded by freedom-fighters in a bloody
revolution but quietly assembled by loyalists and royalists more interested
in orderand good government than liberty and independence.
But if we are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our
time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so
reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do
what they want to?
Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to
polls. As a result, Canada's government isn't influenced by large,
well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with those of
Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran.
Canada signed the Kyoto global warming treaty, lets 19-year-olds drink,
has more of its population living in urban areas and accepts more immigrants
per capita than the United States.
These are all things we've been told will wreck our society. But I guess
Canadians are different, because theirs seems oddly sound.
Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really demand
that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more adult -- more secure.
They aren't afraid of foreigners. They aren't afraid of homosexuality. Most
of all, they're not afraid of each other.
I wonder if America will ever be that cool.

The perfect song for both rainy days and sunny days is:

eensy weensy spider

J.

ok, I take up this challenge with aplomb. I found Les' list a tad literal. Janis' Summertime always sounds wintry to me.

Summer:
Steal my Sunshine - Len
Hot Fun in the Summertime - Sly and the Family Stone
Long Hot Summer Night - Jimi Hendrix Experience

Rainy Day:
Rainy Day, Dream Away - Jimi Hendrix Experience
Riders on the Storm - Doors
The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin

Mike

Right-o folks, a Woodshed Challenge. Les (Tokyo Blues) Coles is compiling a cd of the best summer songs and the best rainy day songs. The criterion is that the song must 'evoke summer' or 'the feeling of a rainy day'

so far we have:
In the summer time -Mungo Jerry
Summertime- Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the holding co.
Sunny Days - Lighthouse
Summer in the City -?@Lovin' spoonful
walking on sunshine - Katrina and the waves
Summer time blues - eddie cochran
we're here for a good time - trooper
dock of the bay - Otis Redding
Sunshine Superman - Donovan


Rainy day women #12&35 - Bob Dylan
Rain- Beatles
Stormy Weather- Lena Horne
Stormy Monday - Allman Bros
You are like a Hurricane - Neil Young
Looks like Rain - Buddy Guy
I'm fixing a hole - Beatles (sgt pepper)
Lousiana - Wild Magnolia
Rainy day people - gordon lightfoot
Rainy night in Georgia- Gladys Knight & the pips
Rain down on me - blue rodeo
Rain on the roof - lovin' spoonful

This is from the .blues blog maintained by my pal and fellow Yomiuri scribe, Les Coles. He also maintains the excellent tokyo-blues.com check out the harp lesson there or the edited version on the bbc's hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
Les 6:50 PM [+] ::
...
Feel like going down the crossroads?


Voodoo doctor auctions Devil's Pact services on eBay

Eastern England (Aug. 22) -- Author and Voodoo practitioner Doktor Snake is auctioning his services on eBay to help musicians gain fame and fortune by making a pact with the Devil at the crossroads - just like 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson reputedly did.

Snake, author of "Doktor Snake's Voodoo Spellbook" (St. Martin's Press), says he has made the pact himself (before he got a publishing deal) and that he intends to personally guide winning bidders through the Crossroads Rite.

Snake says he will also provide a "genuine Devil's contract," which will serve as a binding agreement between the musician and the Lord of Darkness.

He does stress, however, that it is not as Satanic as it sounds.

"What lies at the heart of the Crossroads Rite is not about the Devil," he explains. "The Devil as prince of all evil is really a Christian invention. In the Crossroads Rite, the Devil is more a teaching spirit that gives you access to your inner-genius."

Snake claims that, during the 1990s, a number of now high-profile rock singers and musicians consulted him about performing the Crossroads Rite before they became famous. He says confidentiality prevents him from naming names.

He is confident that he can help winning eBay bidders gain fame.

"This is a foolproof method of achieving a meteoric rise to fame and fortune," he says.

Doktor Snake is a practising Voodoo doctor (or witch doctor), currently living in Norwich, Eastern England. Unusually for a professional Voodoo practitioner, he is white.

As chronicled in his "Voodoo Spellbook", Doktor Snake's Voodoo mentor was the late Earl Marlowe, a Trinidadian "conjure man" who Snake played in a band with in London during the 1980s. Marlowe took him under his wing and taught him the arts of Voodoo - along with the secret lore surrounding the Devil's Pact at the crossroads.

Doktor Snake's eBay auction goes live at midnight on September 7th

IN YOUR EAR



Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

THE THORNS

The Thorns

Sony Music Japan Int'l, 2,400 yen


Grab your 12-string guitar, California folk-rock has returned.

The tasty three-part harmonies of singer-songwriters Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins and Matthew Sweet instantly evoke the The Byrds, the early work of The Eagles and especially Crosby, Stills and Nash, with an occasional hint of Tom Petty, the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas.

All three are accomplished solo artists and producers. Despite being accustomed to working alone, they were keen to try a more interactive project.

After things clicked during a brief demo session in the spring of 2002, the three spent a couple of weeks writing songs on a ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley and in a suite in the Montrose Hotel in Los Angeles. That autumn, they were joined in the studio in Atlanta by producer Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Train), ace session drummer Jim Keltner and E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan.

The result is 13 tracks (plus two extras just for Japan) that hark back to the best of the aforementioned bands while creating a new melodic, harmony-driven power-folk for the new century that owes more to 1970s pop singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne than traditional folk roots. No faux-soul boy band nasal whinging tweaked in the studio here, these guys are the real full-throated deal.

The lead track "Runaway Feeling" has a steering-wheel tapping feel and simple catchy progression that could fool the listener into thinking they've stumbled onto a lost track from Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever, and the melancholic "Dragonfly" could have been the lead single from a Vietnam-era Crosby, Stills and Nash album. "Long, Sweet Summer Night" is the kind of short, sweet pop tune that Brian Wilson wishes he could still write.

The production and arrangements are polished and bright, but the rougher original demo of "Brambles" featured as a bonus track for Japanese release indicates that The Thorns might benefit from a looser, more acoustic-based approach that lets a darkness into their California sunshine.



VARIOUS ARTISTS

Masked and Anonymous

Sony Music Japan Int'l, 2,400 yen

While film soundtracks rarely feature enough new material to merit critical attention, an exception must be made for Bob Dylan's latest cinematic effort, Masked and Anonymous. By all reports, the movie, directed by Larry Charles, is surreal, and the soundtrack certainly reflects that with four new performances by Dylan and 10 by other artists covering his compositions, often in other languages.

The Magokoro Brothers' "My Back Pages" with its Japanese lyrics might provide a good entry point for Japanese interested in seeing what all the fuss is about. Los Lobos add a little Latin spice to the semi-cajun "On a Night Like This" and the album even includes an Italian rap version of "Like a Rolling Stone." One of the most interesting interpretations is Sertab Erener's Arabian-flavored "One More Cup of Coffee."

America's greatest living songwriter tackles the traditional bluegrass number "Diamond Joe" and the Confederate anthem "Dixie" with equal aplomb and his scorching reworking of "Cold Irons Bound" from his 1997 Grammy-winning album Time Out Of Mind is the high point of the album.

A must-have for serious Dylan aficionados, but for the casual fan there are better collections of covers available.

Get with it people! The Beatles are tired! Van Halen is way better....&*$#$^%^#(....
Sorry about that, The spirit of John Shymko just took over my typing hand for a moment. Me like Beatles too!

Mike,
I actually had a dream about the Golden Nugget the other night. I owned the place and you were patting down the kids for quarters!
Ah, nuggin'.

J.

Ah, the venerable Beatles. I can't seem to get very far from the first band I ever loved. My obsession with the Fabs contributed to my eighth-grade social outcast status, and next month I begin rehearsals to perform the entire White Album live at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. Check it here. I've been listening to that album over and over again for the past month, sometimes playing along and sometimes not, but it does not take a fatty of kind bud to affirm the essential goodness of all things Beatle. Funny thing about the moptops. Unlike, say, Dylan, Beatle outtakes tend to deserve their obscurity. I've listened to a few of the studio boots from the White Album era now and I can say that not one of the performances really deserves a place on a legit Beatles album. Not so with Bob, whose "Blind Willie McTell", "Series of Dreams", etc could easily have supplanted a few of their more favoured contemporaries ("Union Sundown" and "Disease of Conceit" spring to mind).

seriously the new Gibson book is really good too!

Great googly moogly as the man said.
Hiromi and the kids are up in Miyagi-ken ( I know that means fuck all to any of you, you're sitting there saying "well okay is that the next block or further away or what? Who, What, Where, When,Why is Miyagi?

Well actually Miyagi is an area in Northern Japan, it's the area my wife is from. She has gone up to her parents place with the youngins for Obon, which sort of the Japanese festival of the ancestors.


Long story short - I have the place to myself, and myself to myself for that matter, so tea has been consumed, if you catch my drift, and lo and behold, Nippon Public Broadcasting - NHK- just so happens to have Hard Day's Night on the schedule tonigt.

directed by Richard Lester, who also directed John Lennon in How "I Won the War" and Michae‚Œ?@‚x‚?‚’‚‹ in "The Three Musketeers" among other things.
‚h?@‚„efy any of you to roll a fat one and sit down and actually watch "A Hard Days Night" and not decide these guys are absolute geniuses!
I know its been said a million times by a million different people but-

Damn, the Beatles are a REALLY good band.

Really, really, good

more archival stuff from the yomiuri, though some of you might be interested in this one.

Gibson now just 15 minutes into the future



Kevin Wood Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Pattern Recognition

By William Gibson

Putnam, 368 pp, 25.95 dollars


William Gibson is a study in contradictions. The author of seven science fiction novels, he often denies being a science fiction author. He wrote his first novel, 1985's award-winning Neuromancer--which led to him being credited with launching the cyberpunk genre and coining the term cyberspace--on a manual typewriter.

While his previous works have been set in a dystopian near future, his latest, Pattern Recognition, is ostensibly set in the present, though some of the technology and practices described are so cutting-edge as to give the novel a sense of being set in the almost-future of next week or next month.

Though Pattern Recognition dispenses with the techno-wizardry and orbital communities posited in Gibson's earlier work, his recurring themes of the authenticity of art and the nature of creativity are still present. In terms of plot, Pattern Recognition echoes Neuromancer, centered as they both are on a search for the elusive creator of mysterious works of art.

Cayce Pollard is an intuitive marketing consultant, a "coolhunter" who can tell at a glance whether a design will catch on or flop. She is also obsessed with "the footage" a mysterious series of compelling video clips of unknown origin that keep appearing on the Internet, spawning a dedicated subculture. When the eccentric head of a London advertising agency persuades her to seek out the creator of the footage, Cayce bounces from London to Tokyo to Russia with danger, betrayal and intrigue stalking her every step of the way.

Perhaps as a bit of self-satire of his earlier writing, which was sometimes criticized for using brand names in place of adjectives, or perhaps as the kryptonite to her coolhunting superpowers, Gibson saddles Cayce with a bizarre allergy to certain trademarks and logos, with Bibendum the Michelen Man causing nausea and too much Tommy Hilfiger leading to panic attacks. Cayce even has to have the Levi logo ground off the buttons of her jeans.

Cayce is also in mourning for her father, a former government "security expert" and probable CIA man who may or may not have been at the World Trade Center when he disappeared in New York on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Cayce has inherited a touch of her father's professional paranoia and his legacy looms large in the story.

Gibson has an impressive ability to create with a few deft phrases original characters like Cayce who, while seeming impossible, are eminently believable: Hubertus Bigend, the too-handsome and ultra-persuasive cutting-edge advertising whiz that his former lover, a friend of Cayce's, describes as a "real Lombard--loads of money, but a real dickhead"; Boone Chu, a Chinese-American "white hat hacker," security consultant and failed dot.commer from Oklahoma; Hobbs-Baranov, an abrasive, alcoholic retired mathematician and code-breaker obsessed with an early mechanical computer/calculator created in a concentration camp.

As in most of his books, the characters are not always as fleshed out as they might be and sometimes more attention is paid to their clothing than to their motivations. Nor is sparkling dialogue Gibson's strong suit, with conversations existing more to move the plot along than to develop characters.

However, when it comes to creating an atmosphere or capturing a specific feeling, few modern writers can touch him.

Evocative descriptions of places, from the "cyclopean Stalin-era buildings in burnt orange brick" of Moscow to the "manically animated forest of signs" of Shinjuku, Tokyo, fill the book. Where other writers these days are prone to throwing around postmodern references to television programs, movies or pop music, Gibson is more likely to reference architecture and design, graphic art and obscure subcultures such as Japan's "Otaku covens."

As the man who described cyberspace before there was an Internet, Gibson is especially adept at capturing the feel of bulletin board conversations, the paranoid fear of having one's personal Internet history and e-mail laid bare, the closeness of an e-mail relationship, the eeriness of hearing an e-mail friend's voice for the first time and the shock of a first in-the-flesh meeting between old e-friends.

While Gibson's best science fiction efforts have been set in a near-future that seems so real it could be last week, Pattern Recognition is set in a near past that feels like next week. This is by far his most complex work. By stripping away the action-movie violence and Buck Rogers (by way of William Burroughs) gadgetry that, while entertaining, often obscured the more serious themes of his earlier works, Gibson has managed a mature novel of considerable depth and perception that is rife with insight into the nature of electronic relationships, mass culture and the commodification of creativity.

sorry more archiving

Not much white marble in George Pelecanos' gritty Washington



Kevin Wood Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Soul Circus

By George P. Pelecanos

Little, Brown; 352 pp; 24.95 dollars


When most of us think of Washington, the first images that come to mind are of the U.S. Capitol building and the White House, of prosperous middle-aged white men in suits and ties going about the business of running the most powerful nation on earth.

Those familiar with the work of crime writer George P. Pelecanos may have a very different vision of the city. In Soul Circus, his 11th novel set in the roughest neighborhoods of Washington, Pelecanos gives the reader a close look at the world of gangs, guns, poverty and drugs that dominates much of the U.S. capital.

Pelecanos' Washington is a dark, dirty and dangerous place where even ex-cop private eyes like Derek Strange and Terry Quinn walk softly down some streets.

Soul Circus follows directly on the heels of Pelecanos' 2002 bestseller Hell to Pay and the 2001 novel that introduced Strange and Quinn, Right as Rain. Strange, a rock-steady pillar of the African-American community in his mid-fifties, has taken on the younger, hot-headed Irish-American Quinn as a partner in Strange Investigations.

Following up on the events of Hell to Pay, we find the two working for lawyers defending drug kingpin Granville Oliver. Strange has been retained to find the former girlfriend of Oliver's right-hand man, whose testimony can keep him off death row, while Quinn is involved in trying to find the ex-girlfriend of the loser brother of a local street gang leader.

As in his previous work, notably the three novels featuring hard-drinking investigator Nick Stefanos, even the heroes have flaws. The quick-tempered Quinn is unable to back away from the smallest affront and Strange has more than one skeleton in his own closet. While both act heroically on occasion and do their best to do the right thing, their very human weaknesses are what ultimately make the two protagonists sympathetic, realistic characters.

That gift for creating believable, detailed characters extends even to the most minor players in Soul Circus, with characters who pop up in only a few scenes expertly drawn with a minimum of exposition.

Where other authors might supply a quick stereotype or faceless cardboard cutout, even the counterman in the diner and the parents of the kids on the peewee football team Strange coaches have unique identities and distinct faces. Pelecanos has mastered the art of showing us a character through minimal but vivid description, realistic dialogue and believable action rather than long paragraphs of back story and explanation.

While mastering all the conventions of the hardboiled genre, Pelecanos is not a slave to them and manages to make political and philosophical points about race relations, gun control, feminism, masculinity and honesty without it interfering with the readers enjoyment of the story.

Pelecanos clearly argues that the easy availability of firearms is one of the greatest contributing factors to violent crime, even using Nick Stefanos, the hero of three of his earlier books, in a cameo role to drive the point home.

While offering a bleak view of life in the ghettos of Washington, Pelecanos also shows how small acts of decency can make a difference in the world and refuses to fall into the usual trap of having one tough good guy solve all the world's problems with his fists and a gun. Hollywood-style violence without consequences does not exist in the real world and Pelecanos shows how the death of anyone diminishes us all without preaching.

With Soul Circus, Pelecanos should garner the fame he richly deserves and take his place in the pantheon of noir greats alongside Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy.