"I saw the best 'art surfers' of my generation destroyed, big madness, starving hysterical naked / dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to / the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night,..." - Allen Ginsberg, Howl

Rotten Reviews: Here is the first of 5 bad reviews for famous modern classics of lit. from Rotten Reviews II, ed. by B. Henderson. If you are a writer that has gotten a bad review, join a famous club: In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, "This isn't writing. It's research." The New Republic.

Best Films of 2001: Usually the Jan. Musea spotlights the best films of the year. Too short a list this year. Best 5 are: Memento, the short termed memory, backwards film; Waking Life, a philosophical cartoon; Ghost Worldeal comic book heroine and her empty world; Amalie, like Pippa in the poem, she brings happiness to others, then finds love for herself too; Haiku Tunnel, office comedy with some of the best supporting comic performances .

Fatally Fashionable Feathers: In 1914 alone 20,000 birds of paradise, 40,000 hummingbirds, and 30,000 other species were said to be slaughtered to supply the London feather market and clothe fashionable ladies. (The Great Chain of Life, J. Krutch)

City Planning: Art S. Rev. Says, "Tax breaks for renovators, tax hikes for developers."

Review 2: Lord of the Flies, William Golding, "...completely unpleasant" - The New Yorker.

Museum: Johannesburg, S. Africa has opened the Apartheid Museum (Nov. 30). As you enter you are given a ticket randomly assigning you a skin color, then ushered through one of 2 doors marked "white' and "non-white'. (LA Times)

Quote: "Leroy Neiman is to the art world what a banjo is to an orchestra." - Martin Mull, Hollywood Squares.

Review 3: We Bombed in New Haven, Joseph Heller, "A dud of the first magnitude..." - Saturday Review.

Poetry Festival: The annual International Poetry Festival in war torn (drug cartel) Medellin, Columbia draws more poets and larger audiences than any other in the world. This year 107 poets from 69 countries read to 150,000 people who attended more than 100 readings over 10 days at 80 different sites. Founding poets include Angela Garcia, Gabriel Jaime Caro, Jairo Guzman and Javier Naranjo , all part of a poetry quarterly called Prometeo. We salute all involved And they are our CAMP CHAMPS of the month.

Quote: The Pope writes "every possible measure must be taken to ensure that tourism never becomes a latter day form of exploitation, but is, instead, a point of fruitful dialogue between different civilizations in which experiences are exchanged in creative ways." The article goes on to say that one main concern is the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade. (Vatican City)

I have a Code: Musea recently published a very tough code that no one has yet cracked ( see #104). Speaking of codes, in WWII the U.S. Marines recruited Navaho's as radio 'code talkers'. They provided reliable fast communication into the battle zones in their own language which the enemy couldn't decipher. (Navajo)

Review 4: Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller, "... a gadfly with delusions of grandeur." - Time.

But Not Forgotten: Musea remembers the passing of Ken Kesey author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He was the epitome of the 60's hippie, 'You are either on the bus or off." /// Grigory Chukhrai, filmmaker known for his classic Ballad of a Soldier /// George Harrison, Beatle. George was one of 4 reasons I became a musician/composer. He was underrated as a composer and had it not been for John & Paul, he would have been remembered not only for his precise and innovative guitar work, but for his compositions. He was certainly one of the decade's top 10 best composers. I perform his passionate I Need You in concert weekly. It's a favorite.

Review 5 (and my fav.): Rabbit Redux, John Updike, "Rabbit Redux is bad in all the ways Rabbit Run was bad, but it is bad in some different ways as well..." - Book World.

Ender: And speaking of George: On the Concert for Bangladesh Album, Ravi Shankar's group floats a flourish of tones, the crowd applauds and then Shankar says, "Thank you. If you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you'll enjoy the playing more." - (Newsweek)

Long live the revolution in the arts!

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