J.S. > Recent Status Updates

I'm only 27% in and ready to mark it DNF. This author REALLY needs to hire an editor!

For a Halloween read, this is turning out to be a dud (and a pretty boring one, at that).

Oh! I think I have to let this one settle for a day before I can rate/review it.

Oh! I think I have to let this one digest for a day before I can rate/review it.

Suddenly all the advertisements on GR are for face masks. What’s next? Toilet paper?

Great songs tend to have some kind of tension at the vey heart of them, the bitter and the sweet balanced perfectly. ‘One’ is not about oneness, it’s about difference. It is not the old hippie idea of ‘Let’s all live together.’ It is a much more punk rock concept. It’s anti-romantic: We’re are one but were not the same. We get to carry each other… I could never figure out why people want it at their weddings.
- Bono

Bono: U2 have had two really rotten fashion phases. One was the October tour, where I had a skunk on my head. It looked like a badger, actually with peroxide… The second was the The Unforgettable Fire period. Forget about a bad-hair day, I was having a bad-hair life.
Edge: Looking back at photographs… the lack of style is astonishing.
Adam: We were really trying to be a little bit looser… something like refugee-chic.

We were able to start renegotiating what had originally been quite a poor record deal. Other major labels were starting to approach us with better offers. But what Island could give us was the return of our copyrights… giving us back our songs, extending the record deal, upping the royalty and improving terms generally. The band knew how important it was to own their own songs…
-Paul McGuiness (manager)

No one was singing [the refrain from “40“ at Red Rocks]. They were all too cold and there weren’t enough of them. We had pulled off this concert that no one thought we could, it would have been so nice to hear the crowd chanting… Then our tour manager had got the mike and was hiding beneath the barrier, trying to get the crowd to sing… and slowly they started singing… The edit made it appear a little less organized.

Adam: 'New Year's Day’ started as a soundcheck jam. I was basically trying to play 'Fade to Grey’ by Visage. Sometimes your mistakes are your best bits.
Bono: It's just a killer bass line, and Adam's haircut is really the clue to it. He considered himself vaguely sympathetic to the New Romantic movement. So listen to 'Fade to Grey’, the Steve Strange track, and you'll get a little glimpse into 'New Year's Day.’

Bono: The [October] cover was my fault. I had this strong feeling about Docklands, Dublin… I think the instinct was right, but it just didn't come off.
Larry: Although it's not a particularly ingenious or clever album cover, there's no pretense. It's just a picture of four guys with funny haircuts.
Adam: A lot of people tried to dissuade us…but we were so much up our own arses that we didn't have the sense to listen.

‘I Will Follow’ came out of a screaming argument in the rehearsal room. It's a song about unconditional love, which is what a mother has for her child. If you walk away, I will follow. No matter what you do, you cannot separate yourself from my love. Which echoes the scriptures: 'nor height, nor depth… shall separate us from the love of God’… This is mind-blowing to me looking back. What drugs were we on? None! -Bono

I had a clear idea of what the cover should look like, a child's face coming out of white, like a photograph before it's fully developed… the end of adolescent angst, the elusiveness of being male, the sexuality, spirituality, friendship. It had a huge gay following, that album. I couldn't really fathom it at the time. But I look back now and see that it's full of homo-eroticsm: ‘in the shadows, boy meets man.’ Bono

“There was a time when I would have thought that being in a band meant sex, drugs and rock and roll. It would have been an aspiration originally. But, once I found myself in that situation, I wasn't so keen on it. I wasn't so sure that I wanted to be laid by that person or take those drugs, so there was comfort in the fact that the other three people in the band were actually kind of sane on that level.” - Adam

“I was waiting to find the thing that would become my life's work - and it found me. I fell into it and eventually, when the band started getting good, I realized this was what I wanted to do. It wasn't that I had always harbored a secret ambition to become a rock star... If I hadn't stumbled into Bono, Adam and Larry, I would probably have gone to college... I really have no idea where I would be without U2.”- Edge

“U2's appeal was it's ambiguity. It had open-ended interpretations. In my mind's eye, I was thinking more of a U-boat than I was of Gary Powers and the spy plane, and I quite liked that. Strangely, it turns out that the train line in Berlin that took you to Zoo Station was called the U2 line. You see it everywhere you go in Berlin.
I hate the name, by the way.” - Bono

“It was my father who suggested I put a notice up at the school board for fellow musicians. We didn't always see eye to eye but through it all he was still watching my back, he was figuring, ‘OK, the kid wants to play drums, how do I help him survive... because he's never going to be a brain surgeon.’... The old man stepped in with the school notice. It was him - it wasn't even my idea.” - Larry Mullen Jr.

“It is hard to explain the significance of music for all of the kids in our area. There was nothing else nearly as important in terms of establishing your identity. I would have huge arguments with my friends about who was the best band in the world, or what was the best record ever made. The TV music shows... were considered unmissable.” - The Edge

I just noticed that NetGalley is today called "NutGalley" and has a squirrel logo. Also, the "shelf" is now "your nut stash." Very amusing and worth a smile! Now, if Polity and Luath Press would just approve the titles I've requested, it would bring another smile to my face. I might even put my current read on hold.

I just noticed that NetGalley is today called "NutGalley" and has a squirrel logo. Also, the "shelf" is now "your nut stash." Very amusing and worth a smile!

It is tempting to see the world of pigeons through rose-tinted spectacles as a wonderfully British story of eccentrics who all somehow managed to pull together in the war effort. Tempting, but not true. The reality is that the pigeon world was filled with the kind of petty bureaucratic and personal rivalries that festered even at a time of national crisis.

The reputation of MI6—fueled by thriller writers even then—might have been fearsome, but the reality did not always match up. Brainpower was often lacking, as the emphasis was on a kind of schoolboy cunning... One report in 1940 suggested German troops in Norway were training to swim ashore wearing green watertight suits and had been heard practicing on Scottish bagpipes.

The reputation of MI6—fueled by thriller writers even then—might have been fearsome, but the reality did not always match up. Brainpower was often lacking, as the emphasis was on a kind of schoolboy cunning... One report in 1940 suggested German troops in Norway were training to swim ashore wearing green watertight suits and had been heard practicing on Scottish bagpipes.

[Shirō] Ishii, it was proved beyond doubt, was a sociopath... [H]is most blatant effort [at using biological weapons]--what he called "Cherry Blossoms at Night"-- ...would be a full-scale attack to bring America to its knees: Planes would attack San Diego with anthrax spores, sending the nation into a panic. The attack was schedule for September 22, 1945.
Before it could take place, America used the atom bomb...

We went and saw "Jaws" last weekend (thanks Braiden and Paige for a nice birthday present) at the Hollywood Bowl with a live orchestra providing the soundtrack. It was actually a lot of fun! Maybe this is blasphemy, but personally, I think the movie was better than the book in this case.

(Some spoilers, but a good article: https://www.avclub.com/spielberg-s-ja...)

“Before you are much older,” he shouted, and his voice was running in a ring all round the Valley, “you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness..."

MacArthur encouraged his soldiers to mingle and fraternize with the population, and to give chocolates to children. The Japanese people, surprised by such openness and friendliness, called them "the happy soldiers"... They were our best ambassadors, Mac said. [He] and his officials ran a tight ship, brooking no abuse or offense to Japanese dignity... there was to be no plundering of the country's artistic heritage.

A November 1944 Gallup poll showed 13% of Americans favored killing *all* the people in Japan after the war ended. Even the NYT ran articles on the feasibility of eliminating the Japanese race... Early in the occupation the Japanese premier caused an uproar when he said: "If you in the US will forget Pearl Harbor, we will forget Hiroshima." They were astonished at the anger this remark stirred in the Americans.

Just as the militarists had used the emperor as their tool, so would MacArthur... "I don't trust the vermin," said Admiral Halsey of the emperor. MacArthur was willing to do so: it was part of his strategic game plan to overlook inconvenient truths in pursuit of long-term goals. If he was to lead a successful and peaceful occupation, he would need the emperor just as much as the emperor needed him.