SONG OF THE DAY: Tamo Daleko

Branko Mataja is yet another story of an obscure artist who created amazing but specialized music, combining the Yugoslav folk music he’d grown up with along with psychedelic guitar playing that he’d recorded himself in California in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The story is a single album existed and then Mataja recorded a second self-released cassette and a Southern California crate digger had found the album and got in touch with Numero Group, who wanted to license reissuing the stuff. Mataja had actually found work as a guitar tech, having taught himself the electrical components to that, and was a classic mad scientist tinkerer, so fucking around with reimagined versions of the folk music played in his childhood home makes sense in that way. Numero Group should have a zine that goes along with every release. Anyways, this Branko Mataja music is pretty great, and the fact some guy just made amazing weird ass hybrid music in his garage that nobody paid attention, but resurfaced four decades later because some random record hunter found a used copy is pretty neat too.

SONG OF THE DAY: Head Over Wheels II (An Ode to G Dep)

Your Old Droog is like an overpriced indoor flea market that’s probably more borderline thinking of itself as an antique spot, in that there’s a ton of cool shit going on, I really enjoy walking around and enjoying the vibe, but I ain’t buying shit.

SONG OF THE DAY: WudźTangClan

There’s a hidden dork process for accumulating these songs of the day, from actual ipod use over the course of my life, but I never reveal that process because it’s all hidden math that is layered into all my ridiculous convoluted ways. Occasionally I’ll have a song of the day that’s me having slowed down a 45 to a 33, and I’ll have to create a video for it, and there’s always the worry it’ll get flagged for copyright infringement because we live in a weird colonial intellectual property era also with digital age where people, generally companies not individual artists, think they own every goddamn thought they ever had. Usually you can find every song on youtube, but occasionally you can’t.

I couldn’t for today’s song, so I uploaded a video. The video was immediately flagged and blocked, which was odd, because even when flagged generally companies allow it to be used but hijack the minimal payouts for ad views attached to the video, which I guess is the only way people can still make money off of shit. But today’s song got flagged and blocked, which seems weird to me because it’s a Polish rap group doing a song about Wu Tang. There’s like 70 live performance videos of this song by this Polish rap group, but no studio versions. Well I didn’t listen to a live version a whole bunch, I listened to the studio version, and I kinda wanted to share that. It’s difficult exploring hip hop scenes in other parts of the world, but you’ll uncover gems (like this group) that come from pretty fucked places (Poland is super fucked, with giant tenements full of poor people, mostly what we in America would consider white, yet also there’s a far right lean to a lot of them, as seen expressed in their football hooligans).

My oldest kid is always sending me Malaysian hip hop links because she fell in love with Malaysia this past summer while there, and it always strikes me as weird that we have this internet level of pretend knowledge, but there’s no real deep digging for international hip hop, or a place where you can easily explore all these other little scenes that have blown up. Ozone magazine was a southern hip hop magazine that eventually became a parody of itself, but I always loved the early years of it because it gave local scene reports every issue similar to how Maximum Rock-n-roll did for punk music. I would absolutely love the fuck out of a global hip hop site like that.

Anyways, this video got blocked, but it’s still showing up for me, so I’m going to link it in the blurb here. The group is called O.S.T.R. and it’s the best Polish hip hop I’ve come across. My maternal grandfather was the child of Polish immigrants, so something in me maybe feels this shit at molecular level, or I could just be projecting that. Like I said, this is a strange era, with digital immersion, and it’s all very superficial, including our knowledge of everything, so half of reality is hidden shit we don’t even understand and the other half is performative bullshit.

SONG OF THE DAY: Winston Reds

The hipster alternative strange east european sort of set of Big Lots versions of famous rappers that started getting created a few years back seems to have sort of petered out. We got our budget Ghostface (in Action Bronson), and our budget Nas (in Your Ol Droog). And while Action Bronson’s latest shit sounds tired and doing the same move he did a while back but to less excitement, much like a washed up WWF wrestler appearing at the county fair, I still enjoy an Your Ol Droog track from time to time. I don’t even mind Action Bronson, because he’s more of a weird fat guy who does cooking shows now, who unfortunately still releases rap music. Your Ol Droog has no other life that I know of, and even though he didn’t turn out to be Nas, I enjoy the fuck out of his flow. (Bonus love for this song because when my pop had hit his hardest drinking times, living with a new family he didn’t seem too settled with, all this Christmas presents for his kids came from shit he got with Winston miles or bucks or whatever the fuck they call it, and I had bright red long johns. I tore the Winston patch off though, not so much because I didn’t feel like being a billboard but because that shit was scratchy as fuck on my chest. Whoda thunk shitty cigarette company long johns would be so shoddy?)

Aki Basho 2018 Honour Tanka Day Eleven: TOCHINOSHIN (7-4)

[sometimes Tochinoshin's technique is "fuck you"] 

this basho's third act 

begins with two unbeaten 

yokozuna left 

below that, many stories 

still unfold with fine texture 

one such story has 

been our man Tochinoshin, 

the Bulgarian 

the past year has seen no one 

else be quite as dominant 

our Bulgarian 

hero was makekoshi 

last basho, injured 

with Mitakeumi breathing 

down his neck, he needs eight wins 

bull Tochinoshin's 

(he who lifts ev'rything and 

throws it) been missing 

and facing undefeated 

yokozuna's always tough 

Kakuryu's wiley 

grace as yokozuna has 

been underrated 

I say this as casual 

dude who has overlooked him 

he seemed to be the 

third Mongolian before 

sumo scandals broke 

with Harumafuji gone, 

Kakuryu stood out stronger 

he and Hakuho 

were the lone unbeaten men 

left when day started 

Tochinoshin was fighting 

to keep ozeki status 

he hadn't been straight 

up lifting fools this basho, 

until yesterday 

against yokozuna though? 

surely, he'd become humbled 

nah, fam… the brutal 

beast from Bulgaria was 

full of spirit war 

Kakuryu's master tactics 

meant nothing lifted off ground 

he literally 

got carried the fuck away 

by Tochinoshin 

our Bulgarian hero 

one win away from safety 

"Tochi" shikona 

remains most honorable - 

three yokozunas 

Tochinoshin continues 

their tradition, with brute strength 

Hatsu Basho 2018 Honour Tanka Day 7: TOCHINOSHIN (6-1)

[attempting to get my sumo gif game to sekiwake level]

day seven showdown 
between two undefeated 
streaking rikishi 

yokozuna Kakuryu 
felt like fourth yokozuna 

but with one retired, 
and two injured, Kakuryu 
is sumo's top face 

Tochinoshin lowkey thicc - 
Eastern European stud 

and yet, what makes a 
yokozuna special is 
they possess extra 

top sanyaku, undefeated, 
will come out slapping full force 

top sanyaku, full 
of shaky confidence, will 
attempt clutch control 

top sanyaku, hoping to 
move even higher, will dream 

but yokozuna 
are supposed to possess that 
extra quality 

in this day seven bout, we 
see this play out exactly 

Tochinoshin starts 
without fear, but Georgian slaps 
don't phase Kakuryu 

once they finally clutch, game 
over for Tochinoshin 

yokozunas are 
expected to be level 
above all others 

that's why Harumafuji 
was shamed into retirement 

that's also why poor 
Kisenosato has been 
mentioned as finished 

yokozunas aren't supposed 
to be just another dude 

though undefeated, 
day seven Tochinoshin 
was quickly humbled 

there is no shame in this loss - 
it's how it's supposed to be 

[full match below, for suckas that gotta know]

Nagoya Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 7: AOIYAMA (7-0)

("blue mountain" surges forward)

perfect first seven 

bouts Nagoya basho for 

big Aoiyama 

disciple of Kotooshu, 

blue mountain Bulgarian 

never won yusho - 

Kotooshu only won 

one over ten years 

Kotooshu also’s only 

European-born elder 

path of outsider 

is always most difficult; 

it’s worse in sumo 

and yet Japanese themselves 

have lost certain interest 

prosperity meant 

poor country boys with big dreams 

occur less often 

Aoiyama earned fighting 

spirit award first basho 

but that was six years 

in rear view mirror; never 

been close since that point 

he’s been consistent middle 

of the pack maegashira 

at times, he’s flirted 

with bigger success - double 

digit wins three times 

but a perfect first seven? 

this is an aberration 

another win means 

kachikoshi with bouts to 

spare for “blue mountain” 

day seven provided as 

opponent Ichinojo 

this aberration 

is energies synchronized 

in perfect moments 

synchronized energies means 

unusual confidence 

Aoiyama moved 

only forwards this quick bout, 

momentum focused 

blue mountain’s blue mawashi 

gave no chance to be controlled 

Ichinojo could 

do little but slow the force 

moving him backwards 

this force was more than one man - 

energies control all life 

Aoiyama - pale 

by sumo’s traditions, “white” 

in America 

but the big Bulgarian’s 

got his best basho ever 

is this beginning 

of an even bigger run? 

only time will say 

can Aoiyama challenge 

elder Kotooshu’s legend? 

legends are made one 

basho at a time; bashos 

one bout at a time 

a perfect week still leaves wide 

gaps in a man’s destiny 

Natsu Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 12: AOIYAMA (2-10)

oh Aoiyama  

you giant Bulgarian, 

what are you doing? 

European sumo so 

pasty and flabby-breasted 

left knee heavily 

wrapped from birth it sometimes seems… 

what are you doing? 

following Kotooshu’s 

footsteps into too far east 

a perpetual 

maegashira, but also 

once sekiwake 

now nearing thirty one years, 

what are you doing, big man? 

do the blue mountains 

of Bulgaria still call? 

what of Elhovo? 

where the Tundzha river crawls 

between Strandzha and Sakar 

so far from home, here 

in this strange world of sumo, 

grappling for respect 

left knee throbs for home, big man, 

what the fuck are you doing? 

S14: Top 14 Football Clubs From Places In The Former Yugoslavia

The break-up of Yugoslavia has fascinated me greatly in recent years, probably because in my caveman-like American education system upbringing, there is white folks and there is black folks, which has been expanded to include all non-white folks. Of course I am being purposefully simplistic here, and I try to live my life (and lead my children’s lives) to minimize the effect of racial pseudo-sciences on their psyche. But as the eastern bloc of communist countries propped up by the Soviet Union came unraveled in the ‘90s, nowhere was there more chaos and conflict than the former Yugoslavia. And the reason for this is essentially that whiteness is not as simple as the American Dream (RIP Dusty Rhodes) would lead one to believe. Yugoslavia disintegrated (and actually continues to, with regards to Kosovo as well as other territories) into various shades of what we’d call “whiteness” here in America, that were all very firm in their distinctions between each other, to the point they wanted to kill the fuck out of each other. Thus, I find that interesting, as ultimately I think America will always be fucked as long as it sees things in simple black-and-white terms, both racially but really in all aspects of our culture, we tend to break it down into two polar opposites and that’s it, no in betwixt thinking allowed. “You’re either with us, or against us.”

So for this week’s Sporting 14, I decided to travel through the fourteen soccer clubs in nations that were formerly part of Yugoslavia that have had the most continental success in the past 14 years, meaning games played in either the UEFA Champions League or the Europa League. (Champions League counts double.) Most of these teams may not seem relevant when one thinks about the current heavyweight clubs like Barcelona and Bayern Munich and the English league’s most premier clubs, but the (at the time) Yugoslavian club Red Star Belgrade actually won the Champions Cup, which was what the Champions League was back then, in 1991.

But additionally, there is a strong football/soccer undercurrent to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Not long after Croatia had multi-party elections favoring Croatian independence in 1990, there was a big rivalry derby between Red Star Belgrade (now of Serbia) and Dinamo Zagreb (now of Croatia) which ended in conflict and riot, and in fact the captain of Dinamo Zagreb, Zvonimir Boban, kicking a cop, who were mostly Croatian, because the cop was beating a Dinamo supporter. Now understand with these teams (and many teams still in non-wealthy leagues, but especially in Eastern Europe) supporters can often mean “nationalist thug”, which is exactly what a lot of the hardcore supporters were for these two teams in that time of rising ethnic tensions, before the actual Yugoslav Wars broke out and ethnic tensions became ethnic cleansings. Some of the larger and more nefarious militias were composed of football club “supporters”, and due to lack of open space in many larger cities, it is suggested that more than a few current football stadiums in former Yugoslavian states are likely all mass graves.

So let us travel around the former Yugoslavia through it’s most successful football clubs of the past 14 years, from the nations of Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia, which all were once Yugoslavia…

#1: GNK DINAMO ZAGREB (Zagreb, Croatia) – One of the most successful clubs in this area, both before the break-up as well as afterwards, and one that could probably be considered as national a Croatian team as is possible in league play. The actual club was formed in the late 1940s, but during the rising ethnic tensions period of the early ‘90s, they started claiming ties to Croatian clubs from before then, and have always tip-toed (stomped?) along extreme right-wing nationalist lines. Their ultras group is called the Bad Blue Boys, and is one of the most notorious in all of Europe, both for the violent intensity as well as their racist-as-fuck attitude. Still, Dinamo Zagreb has been one of the only teams from former Yugoslavia to be able to qualify for the Champions League group stage in recent years, including during this 2015-16 season. And though they’ve never advanced beyond that group stage, they did beat Arsenal during that stage this past September in Zagreb. They’ve also won the Croatian First Football League ten years in a row, and sit just barely at the top of that table again for this season. And for comparison’s sake with the rest of these teams, they won four Yugoslav First League titles, and 7 Yugoslav Cups before Yugoslavia ceased to exist.

#2: FK PARTIZAN (Belgrade, Serbia) – Partizan is another regional heavyweight, though this club didn’t have as prominent a spot in obvious break-up of Yugoslavia as their top Serbian rival, Red Star Belgrade, did. But Partizan was the first Balkan (thus Yugoslavian, and actually in all of Eastern Europe) club to make the Champions Cup final, losing to Real Madrid. The club was formed initially by military officers, and in fact the name itself Partizan refers to a Communist military formation. They are still only the second-most popular Serbian club, but enjoy a lot of support in Serbian pockets of Montenegro and Bosnia & Herzegovina (which includes an autonomous Serbian region still, called Republika Srpska). Their supporters are called Grobari, which means the Gravediggers, and actually there is an alternate crest for Partizan featuring a shovel. And though the Grobari have had their fair share of notable moments of hooliganism, they pale in comparison to Red Star Belgrade, and lack the same ultra-nationalist history. The club has won the Serbian SuperLiga 7 of the last 8 years, and they’ve made group stage of the Champions League twice in the past 14 years, and the Europa League multiple times, but never gotten beyond that, except for 2005 when they made it all the way to the round of 16 in the Europa League knockout stage (still called UEFA Cup then). And during the dissolving period between 1992 and 2005, they won 8 league titles in whatever assortment of countries were still aligned, plus 11 Yugoslav First League titles before then, as well as 5 Yugoslav Cups.

#3: NK MARIBOR (Maribor, Slovenia) – Maribor is the top club from Slovenia, having won the Slovenian First League six years in a row, and 13 times total. The biggest accomplishment they had when in the full Yugoslav football system was making a Yugoslav Cup semi-final in 1968, and winning the Second League in 1966-67. They sort of break away from the ethnic militarism of other clubs from former Yugoslavia (I guess sort of like how Slovenia as a nation has done) by wearing purple (instead of traditional blue or red war colors) and being not afraid to bring in foreigners, including from South America and Africa. In fact, their current captain is a Brazilian player, Marco Tavares, who is their all-time top goal-scorer, and has been with the club since 2008, and in fact gained his Slovenian citizenship a few years back. (The whole “citizenship” of football players is a completely sketchy subject that could occupy a thousand Sporting 14 lists itself, and also makes Abby Wambach’s anti-“foreign guys” statement at her retirement so fucking stupid.) Unrelated to anything but really fucking scary sounding is the fact the President of NK Maribor right now is named Drago Cotar.

#4: RED STAR BELGRADE (Belgrade, Serbia) – It’s no coincidence that Red Star Belgrade and Dinamo Zagreb were involved in a riot that many considered one of the triggering events of the break-up of Yugoslavia. More so than most clubs, Red Star Belgrade had multiple notable supporter groups, who shared the North stand in their home stadium. Some were more Italian, with the songs and fireworks shit, while others were more traditionally English (for the time) meaning they got drunk and fought people. It all sort of morphed together, and in the late ‘80s when fragmented nationalism started spiking throughout Yugoslavia after Tito’s stronghold over the country was gone, these supporters became fiercely Serbian nationalist. (Speaking of Tito – Josep Tito – it should be noted here that not only the fall of Soviet Union contributed to break-up of Yugoslavia, as Tito was President of the nation from 1953 until his death in 1980. And despite our western declarations for DEMOCRACY and how bad dictators are, Tito was able – as unquestioned authoritarian – to hold together the disparate ethnicities of Yugoslavia. Once he died, with no one of that eminence to replace him, it was only a matter of time probably, whether the Soviet Union fell or not, which of course, Croatia was declaring independence before the Soviet Union broke up.) But due to these supporters, their maintained rivalry with city rival Partizan is considered The Eternal Derby, and always a chaotic match, even with the shared ethnicity. Most all the former Yugoslavian nations have their own “Eternal Derby” but the Partizan/Red Star one is the one that maintains the most infamy and prominence, even if Red Star Belgrade has only won a pair of Serbian Super Liga titles during the current phase (since 2007), but with 5 more during the 1990s-2006 transition period, and 19 in the old Yugoslav First League. They also won the Yugoslav Cup 12 times, and were one of the most prominent clubs then, if not so much now. But as mentioned before, they are the only Yugoslavian club to have ever won the European Cup/Champions League, which given current conditions of modern football business plan, I doubt any of these teams will ever get close again, at least not until capitalism falls. (This also is one of the great things about football clubs – that the teams survive multiple regimes/governments, and the supporters end up with this notion that they own the team far more than any person who simply buys it could.)

#5: HNK HAJDUK SPLIT (Split, Croatia) – Hajduk Split is the other big Croatian club (both of which have Croatian red and white checkerboard on their crest). The club was originally started by students at a bar, back when Yugoslavia was still a Kingdom before World War II. They’ve won six Croatian First League titles since 1992 (including in 1992), and won 9 Yugoslav First League titles before then, as well as 9 Yugoslav Cups. They form the other half of Croatia’s Eternal Derby when they play against Dinamo Zagreb.

#6: FK RABOTNICKI (Skopje, Macedonia) – Rabotnicki are one of the top Macedonian clubs, having won the Macedonian First League four times, but were not really a prominent fixture of Yugoslavian First League, having only competed in the Yugoslav First League for only two years. But even relegation back then was ethnic/regional, as the second level league they mostly competed in – and won 8 times, was a Macedonian specific league. Macedonia, though declaring independence in 1991 during the initial fracturing of Yugoslavia, maintained peaceable relations throughout most of the break-up, although during the Kosovo War in 1999, a large influx of Albanian refugees caused there an Albanian nationalist presence in the country. With Albania on one border, and Albanian-heavy Kosovo (which is working towards becoming a seventh nation carved from the former Yugoslavia, and is doing so first and foremost through football, actually trying to get UEFA recognition as its own entity in time for World Cup qualifying this spring) on the other, there’s a lot of threatening talk of the Albanian-dominant portions of Macedonia becoming part of Albania or their own nation. So that’s your future fragment of all this, potentially.

#7: FK SARAJEVO (Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina) – Sarajevo is one of the most successful Bosnian clubs, with a history going back to post World War II. They’ve won the Premier League of Bosnia and Herzegovina three times, and had won the old Yugoslav First League twice. A lot of prominent soccer rivalries in cities around the world revolve around a working class team and a middle class team. In Sarajevo, FK Sarajevo would be considered the middle class team. Their supporters, known as the Pitari (eaters of pita), have not been the most infamous of former Yugoslav clubs, but did have a highlight moment in 1986 when they threw a large painted viper snake onto the visitor’s bench during a match against Red Star Belgrade (the most hated team in all non-Belgrade games back in those days). Sarajevo was pretty fucked during the siege of Bosnia, and I guess you’d have to consider FK Sarajevo the more assimilated of the two big Sarajevo clubs (the other one comes later in this list), but that sort of assumes Bosnia has been assimilated. There’s this dude Aleksandar Hermon who won a MacArthur Genius grant a few years back, and is a noted essayist who is a fan of the club. I didn’t get knocked away by his stuff like I had hoped, but he’s a great writer to check out if you are interested in this shit, and he has an essay called “If God Existed, He’d be a Solid Midfielder” that’s a great fucking read, though I think online it might mostly be behind paywalls. BUT THERE ARE WAYS (as you hopefully already know).

#8: NK SIROKI BRIJEG (Siroki Brijeg, Bosnia & Herzegovina) – Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a multi-ethnic nation where the old Bosnian/Croat/Serb rivalries fester. Siroki Brijeg is the top Croatian club in Bosnia & Herzegovina’s national lines. They’ve won the Premier League of Bosnia and Herzegovina titles two times, as well as five titles of the previous First League of Herzeg-Bosnia that followed Yugoslavia’s break-up.  Oddly, the team has existed since 1948, but never experienced any success of note in the former Yugoslavia, because Siroki Brijeg the city didn’t get a lot of support from the government, as a smaller city. All of its successes have happened since Yugoslavia broke-up, and partially perhaps due to the support of Croatians still living under Bosnian flag. As of today, they are third in the Premier League standings this season, just behind Zrinjski Mostar and Sloboda Tuzla.

#9: FK ZELJEZNICAR (Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina) – Zeljeznicar is the other big club in Sarajevo. “Zeljeznicar” means railway worker, and were one of the best Bosnian teams during the Yugoslav First League era, actually winning the Yugoslav First League in 1971-72 season. After the break-up of the country, they became and remained a top club in Bosnia, but they’ve been known for developing talent that they end up selling off to larger clubs in other nations. They are the working class team opposed to FK Sarajevo’s more middle class support. “Zeljo is a matter of philosophy, and Sarajevo is a matter of geography” goes the mantra of Zeljeznicar supporters. Their rivalry is Bosnia’s “Eternal Derby” though the rivalry is not as violent and full of hate as its parallels in Serbia and Croatia.

#10: FK VARDAR (Skopje, Macedonia) – Vardar (named after a river, always a solid move imo) is the most popular Macedonian club, and has won the Macedonian First League 8 times since it’s inception in 1992, including 3 out of the last 4 years. Notably, they also won a Yugoslav Cup title in 1961, rare for teams outside the Serbian/Croatian stronghold clubs. Having a sizeable stadium (capacity 33,000) for the Balkan states, and regular appearances in UEFA tournaments (due to always winning in Macedonia), the club is set to maintain its position as prominent small nation super club.

#11: HNK RIJEKA (Rijeka, Croatia) – Rijeka is a top Croatian club, oddly situated in a city that was originally part of Italy before becoming part of Yugoslavia after World War II. In fact, this club’s foundation is disputed as potentially in 1946 when Rijeka became part of Yugoslavia, but also potentially much earlier as U.S. Fiumana (the city was known as Fiume while still part of Italy) back in 1926. Nonetheless, Rijeka competed in the old Yugoslav First League, and though they never won they are proud to tout they were the best-placing Croatian club three seasons during that time, and won the Yugoslav Cup twice. Unfortunately, being in the same league as Dinamo Zagreb the powerhouse means they’ve never won a league title in current Croatia, though have consistently been number two, and in fact made group stage of the Europa League two out of the past three seasons. Their rivalry with Hajduk Split, called the Adriatic Derby, is considered their most heated rivalry.

#12: ND GORICA (Nova Gorica, Slovenia) – Gorica is the second top team from Slovenia, and won the Slovenian National League four times, and has consistently competed in UEFA club competitions throughout the 2000s.

#13: FK VOJVODINA (Novi Sad, Serbia) – Vojvodina is a Serbian club from the second largest city in Serbia, called Novi Sad, which I am going to guess translates as the New Sad. Obviously if you are living in a post-Yugoslav Balkan second city called the New Sad, it’s a meager life, straddling the false promises of Communism and late capitalism. I kinda don’t even give a fuck about more specifics on this team, or the rest of this list honestly, because the whole specter of that straddling two economic eras, neither of which has been what it’s promised, makes me feel the new sad.

#14: HSK ZRINJSKI MOSTAR (Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina) – Zrinjski Mostar competes in Bosnia, but is Croatian, and includes the Croat checkerboard on their crest. During World War II, there was an outlaw league that competed in the region, and once the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed after the war, all teams that had competed in it were banned, including Zrinjski Mostar. Thus they stopped existing from 1945 to 1992, due to being associated with pre-Yugoslavia nationalism. Odd that they finally reformed, proudly Croat, under Bosnian existence, and continue to do so there. The whole region is complicated as fuck, and the Bosnian Premier League actually has Bosnian and Serbian and Croatian teams all together still, so you wonder if shit won’t pop off again at some point, though during social unrest in Bosnia a few years back, those left there made street proclamations (through graffiti and banners) that it was a proud and tolerant multi-ethnic state. Time will tell though. Zrinjski Mostar has won the Bosnian Premier League three times though. 

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - April '11 #3: "Efige Efige" by Stelios Kazantzidis

This song comes from that season of The Wire with all the Polish dock workers bullshit, which my first time through The Wire labyrinth, I did not enjoy so much, naturally inclined as an American male mutated by hip hop culture to more closely want to experience vicariously the gangster shit like Avon Barksdale's crew. However, the second time through while laid up with the gut rots earlier this year, I much more loved on the second season of Polock bullshit. This song was used as a montage point, and just caught the fuck out of my ear, so I searched the dude out. I guess he's some famous Greek singer from like the '30s or something. This song is dope as fuck though.
I work with a Russian chick now, and I have become fairly interested in the whole European heritage thing, mostly because in America, as a Southern man with mixed Scots/Irish bloodlines chock full of all sorts of other flavored creamers, I don't know shit about personal heritage beyond like my grandpa being an alcoholic who hated black people and never knew Mexicans. I think that's standard issue heritage in America, which touts the Great Melting Pot as a selling point, but it's also a weakness exploited by our pop cultures. Not many of us have any sense of personal identity outside of the things we consume, and this is true whether you are white or black or whatever. Not many black dudes or chicks know what specific area of Africa they descend from, much less an ethnic heritage beyond "black". This allows us to buy into whatever the fuck we want to be I guess, which kinda sucks, because I'd rather have a better idea of how my great grandmother on grandpa's Polish branch of my personal family tree might have made fermented foods in the old country. Or maybe my Norwegian parented grandmother had a grandma who actually used a "magic stick" to stir gruit ale. I will never know.
Too often in the American myth, the desire to know one's personal heritage is mislabeled as a distillation process for hatred of others. I would rather we all know more about where we came from and not be entirely dependent upon this American culture that's built with brick facades and a whole shitload of shine on it. Doesn't necessarily mean I'm gonna get all noose-happy when I see a Ghanaian dude from New Jersey dating a perfectly Scots/Irish trashy white gurl from South Cackalacka.
There is some level of basic white guilt thrown into being a white mutt as well, even though - and I have no researched proof of this - as far up my family tree as I know about, no relatives were industrial overlords, 33rd degree Freemasons, plantation owners, or even successful enough to be considered a millionaire. We're mostly just shit of the earth struggling to connect this Monday to next Friday. So I try to detach myself from any feelings of wrongdoing perpetuated by America. Most likely my bloodlines were "given" free land in the wild west of Appalachia to either kill or be killed by the Injuns until the land was fit for colonial expansion.
Oddly enough, on my mom's side, my grandfather was the son of Polish immigrants (I've even seen the Ellis Island papers on my great grandmother), and my grandmother was the abandoned daughter of Norwegian peoples. You can see it in her cheekbones too. My dad's side though is straight Southern mutt Scots-Irish-German-teaspoon of cumin-tablespoon of cream of tartar nonsense that most everybody else who would be classified as "white" that is around me comes from. We are everything, and thus nothing.
STEAL "Efige Efige"
NEXT: Big pharma jingles from the street!

LEARNED ELDERS: Miroslav Tichy

I'm not sure anyone on this fat, bloated earth really exemplifies the philosophical idea behind The Learned Elders of Rojonekku building more than Miroslav Tichy. A lifelong balance of living the life of an outsider, perhaps starting as an outcast, or perhaps just feeling an alienation from the way the human world seems to naturally spin, and pulling yourself out of it. And then much like the fickle creature it is, civilization tries to force it's way into his world, expects to be embraced.
Nowadays, Tichy is an old dude - 75 years old, trying to live a vaguely hermetic lifestyle, but has now been "discovered" (which I'm fully part of, and furthering with this, but that's part of the lesson with Tichy's tale), disrupting his elder years in the Czech Republic.
Although he is considered one of the great international self-taught artists, he actually received fine arts training in communist Czechoslovakia, and after doing the required military bid as a young man, started to become a fairly promising modernist painter. But his works and attitude made him seem a threat to the paranoid Communist powers in charge, so Tichy was treated as a dissident, monitored closely, harassed, and the effect was he pulled back.
Sometime in the '60s, Tichy then being a man in his 40s, he built a homemade camera from scrap objects - toilet paper rolls, duct tape, cardboard - really, if you look at a picture of what he was taking pictures with, it's amazing and inspiring. (I fully plan on building a camera this summer as well and taking pictures of junk cars at this junkyard in Buckingham, because it makes sense really. Trash pointed at trash, and something hopefully neat-looking or beautiful and visually exciting coming from that. It's like artistic compost almost. You can find directions for building cameras from scrap objects online, and in fact, when I was in elementary school, we still did the oatmeal box pinhole camera experiment in public schools.)
Tichy started wandering his hometown of Kyjov in the '60s, taking pictures of unsuspecting beautiful women, often times in bathing suits, and lots of the times, they had no idea. (There is a certain stalkerish nature to his work, which now that he's an old ass man with a wild long beard, you can write off as just good-natured appreciation of the female form. But I would imagine if he was still a 40-year-old dude of normal health and virility, it would be a lot creepier.) Sometimes, he'd get posed photos as well, because the woman in the picture wouldn't believe he was actually taking a picture with the duct taped cardboard contraption in his hand. He wandered, taking these pictures on through the 1980s. He was still on the Communist government's watch list, so never got any recognition for his homemade pictures, which he developed as well using relatively primitive techniques, creating sepia tones with brown blotches at times, which just added to the ambiance in retrospect. All of it had never seen the eyes of other humans until an old neighbor, Roman Buxbaum, became friends with Tichy, discovered all these pics this dude had been taking, and started collecting them, feeling they should be preserved. Tichy would give the guy big bundles of these secret photographs, and Buxbaum even bought pictures Tichy gave to the elderly woman who was his second moms at the time, another neighbor.
Then the Communist regime fell, and the Czech Republic turned into a more vibrant artsy ass place, centered in Prague, which became a sort of 1990s version of Paris when all the expatriate American writers were living there back in the day. Eventually, Tichy's work was "discovered" at a show curated by Buxbaum in 2004, and his fame exploded. His pictures became a hot commodity in the outsider art/art brut world, which is understandable, and a Tichy Ocean Foundation was set up to be an official place for his art to be disseminated and circulated.
The thing is, Tichy never wanted any of that. He has, in fact, broken all ties with Buxbaum, and says that nobody other than him, the older woman neighbor he gave pictures to over the years, or his lawyer has a right to sell or propagate his works.
Of course, the art world moves much like the rest of our civilized world - without much concern for the person behind the message so much as ready to materially embrace the message. So his works have become more popular than ever, interviewers and fans continually bother the old man at home, and you can go to the Tichy Ocean Foundation website and buy a print yourself if you can afford it. An ostracized man builds a camera from scraps to take haphazard pictures of beautiful women, keeps the thousands of pictures to himself and closest friends, just trying to find some steady inspiration for life, something to happily get out of bed every day and enjoy his life in his own way, and eventually once the marketability of it is discovered, it overtakes that simple life that he so cherishes. Ultimately, this is how you are rewarded for your creative endeavors in our human civilization as it stands. And as many of the kids who are in the Rojonekku plan have dreams of being famous for this or that type of creative expression, that's an important lesson to remember. Fame is not more golden, just because a thousand cameras flash against it. A golden life can shine just as brightly dwelling in the shadows nobody thinks to look. And, in fact, it is in those unseen shadows where that golden life can shine without anyone ever noticing the value of it and trying to commodify it out of your own grasp.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - February '11 #8: "Fire In The City" by The Grateful Dead with Jon Hendricks

I'm not even going to talk about the Grateful Dead, because as soon as you might be able to enjoy them, on the first spring day of a comfortable year, no work in sight, feeling good to your soul, stereotypical hippieness will rear it's ugly head in some way, in an overly bumper stickered Subaru stationwagon or perhaps somebody sending you an etsy link or just a blank-eyed older dude in those pants that look like pajamas for Bolivians walking past you calling you "brother". It'll ruin it.
I think that's why I like this "Fire In The City" song so much. The Dead should've done more apocalyptic music. Now, if you actually listen to this song, it's most likely about Civil Rights or whatever, and all the riots that were going on back in the day. But I'd like to think it's about an Apocalypse instead. I don't care about history or what's right or a peaceful and tolerant world. I want to be able to enjoy the warmth and breeziness of a good day, and when it's not a good day, I want the whole world to explode into fiery suffering and pain. So this song, if I close my mind just enough, let's me enjoy the best of both worlds.
I do not know who Jon Hendricks is. I think he was the LF for the Pittsburgh Pirates when Dock Ellis pitched that no-hitter on LSD, but I'm also not sure if they had black people riots in Pittsburgh. I would doubt it, because there's too many white people with at least 9 consonants in their last name, and those types of places are usually segregated far beyond black and white and down to like Ukrainian neighborhoods and Russian neighborhoods and Polish neighborhoods and Kenyan neighborhoods and then American mutt blacks live in projects and the fifteen blocks around it and American mutt whites live outside of town, so it's so broken up with micro-segregation that there were no riots, and probably never will be. Sometimes, I wish I lived in a city like that, because I really like good sausages, and wish there was a store with some old fucker behind a glass counter and you could buy actual 9 links of sausage that were still linked and drape them around your neck and walk around like Tony Soprano in that one episode where they were having a cookout. I have always wanted to walk around with sausages like that.
I was gonna say, "But I'm from the South, so instead I get scrapple." But I don't eat scrapple, and most places I would eat breakfast at don't even serve scrapple. Blueberry pancakes maybe, but not scrapple.
STEAL "Fire In The City"
NEXT: dorm room makeout music!

g r f a l

“my soul – like eagle – fly high,”

I sing in broken english

on my wagon ride westward

Friday Love/Hate

I hate having been busted up the past couple weeks. I do not do well with idle time and being a street person, need to walk amongst street peoples to feel at ease within my own soul. My soul has been very congested, and I do not know if it is how off-kilter my skeletal shape has become in the past year, or if it is the muscle relaxers, but really I have not been in a positive mode to where I want to enjoy myself. I think a big part of it is I’ve probably watched more TV in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years, and that can be very mind-crushing. I’ve been trying to mix in some short stories from alleged masters as part of a future project on this blog, and to get me rolling on a short fiction collection I’ve been outlining (which for me means jotting things down on notecards, which get held together by rubber bands or hair ties, and shuffled and reordered and marked up or crossed out or flipped over and reused… my method for outlining really anything more than stream of conscious that I write is kind of like what they taught you to do for taking research paper notes in public schools in 1988, but all zipped out on ritalin). I hate that I’ve had two weeks out of work but have not cranked out a novel, even though I could not find a comfortable way to sit upright and type until like this past Monday, and my laptop battery has been burning my pajama-concealed dick. I hear that makes you sterile, which is fine by me because even with insurance I can’t afford a vasectomy.

I love the fact there are wild mutant boars and wolves roaming the Ukrainian countryside in the blocked zone from the Chernobyl accident. They’re apparently gonna let tourists start seeing the city of Chernobyl now, which is crazy because in certain parts the radioactivity level is still insane, and the sarcophagus they encased the cracked reactor inside of is apparently predicted to fall apart as well. There are also giant dead zones in neighboring Belarus, who bore the wind-blown effects of the radiation pretty heavily, and there’s abandoned cities and villages all throughout that area. And really that’s the ultimate effect of a so-called dirty bomb – not the immediate death, because if you set off a dirty bomb in Manhattan, it would only kill maybe a couple thousand people immediately, if you were lucky. But the entire area for like thirty miles radius would be contaminated, and you couldn’t clean it up. The radiation would have to be allowed to decay at it’s normal half-life, which means basically New York City would be rendered uninhabitable. Of course, if you vacated it completely, you’d still have people moving back – the homeless and elderly and vagrants – who would occupy this dead zone in cancerous states of communal anarchy. But the mutant boars and wolves of the Chernobyl region are very intriguing to me, because I remember the post-Chernobyl pics in Time magazine of pigs without eyes or horses with five legs and shit (seriously), and you have to figure a species that is now running wild in this location, including the dead woods where men are not allowed to go because five minutes inside would cause you to glow in the dark that evening (again, seriously), they’ve had twenty years to genetically adjust themselves. Not to mention with no men around to prey upon them or run them off, they lack the natural fear response most animals feel towards the presence of man. I kinda hope rather than dirty bombs, there are like some next level anarcho-eco-terrorists who want to unleash a pack of nuclear wolves on downtown Berlin or mutant boars into the middle of like Detroit or Cleveland. Terrorist are so fucking boring, probably because so many of them are fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are always boring as fuck, unless they are snake handlers. I ain’t much of a church-goer, but if I do feel compelled, you best believe I make the drive over to the Church of Lord Jesus with Signs Following over in Victoria, not too far from where my dad lived before he passed.