Saw the Polyphonic Spree in concert last night — the show was fantastic. I had a smile plastered on my face the whole time. Total crowd sing-along mania: “HOLD ME NOW, DON’T START SHAKING!” The folks up front and center were mimicking every freaked-out move the choir made.

Jon Brion also played with the Spree the whole time. (This was at Bimbo’s in San Francisco — fairly small club, so it was great.) It was almost the exact same setlist they’ve been doing this whole tour (starting off with the harp solo, then into “We Sound Amazed,” and barreling joyously into the set with a rapturous “Light and Day,” including the same covers, Bowie’s “Memory of a Free Festival,” a little detour into Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” and the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” at the end). It’s also apparently the last concert of the tour; Tim promised the show would be different next time around, and alluded to a summer release of new music.

(Alas, I missed Toshio Hirano, who the bartendress (“my boyfriend is half-Filipino”) described as “this 70-year old Japanese guy who sang old cowboy songs and did the whole yodeling thing.” But I did get to catch From Bubblegum To Sky, whose album I have to check out; they played perfect little scrappy pop songs.)

(Confidential to Boyong: just for you, I touched Ms. Orange’s robe. They walked through the audience just before the encore and happened to take a path right in front of me.)

And one last cool thing: the whisper went through the crowd that a certain indie-rock goddess was in the audience, and sure enough, on my way to the bathroom, I saw Polly Jean Harvey…

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Attempting to burrow and disappear into the admiration of certain works of art, I tried to make such deep and pure identification that my integrity as a human self would become optional, a vestige of my relationship to the art. I wanted to submit and submerge, even to die a little. I developed a preference, among others, for art that required endurance, that mimicked a galactic endlessness and wore out the nonbelievers. By ignoring my hunger or my need to use the bathroom during a three-hour movie by Kubrick or Tarkovsky, I’d voted against my body, with its undeniable pangs and griefs, in favor of a self composed of eyeballs and brain, floating in the void of pure art.

– from Jonathan Lethem, in “The Beards”

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So I’ve got tickets to see Lav Diaz’s Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family), showing at the NAATA filmfest here in the Bay Area next month. While I’ve long wanted to see anything by Diaz — in particular, Batang Westside, which as far as I know never showed anywhere near here — Ebolusyon should give one pause, since it’s 10 and a half hours long.

That’s right: 630 minutes, and it isn’t a typo; the zero’s really there. While the film itself sounds fantastic — it traces the life of a Filipino family from 1971 to 1987, both before and after the martial-law years — I must confess a curiosity about what a ten-and-a-half hour long film might be like. (I’ve never seen Shoah or Berlin Alexanderplatz; the longest film I’ve ever sat through was Frederick Wiseman’s Near Death, which will test anyone even in the shorter version shown on PBS.)

Will it be like a wayang performance, where people chat and sleep and walk in and out? Or will there be a hardy few left in the theater when the movie ends, everyone congratulating each other for making it through? Will it play like a soap opera, or will it be like Andy Warhol’s Empire? I’m tempted to think of it almost like a Morton Feldman piece, but there has got to be more of a narrative… maybe a view of Philippine history as written by Fernand Braudel…

There’s a great interview here made by Brandon Wee for Senses of Cinema, where he is asked about why he wants to “[mount] such provocative durations:”

In Ebolusyon, I am capturing real time. I am trying to experience what these people are experiencing. They walk. I must experience their walk. I must experience their boredom and sorrows. I would go to any extent in my art to fathom the paradox that is the Filipino. I would go to any extent in my art to fathom the mystery of humankind’s existence. I want to understand death. I want to understand solitude. I want to understand struggle. I want to understand the philosophy of a growing flower in the middle of a swamp.

And read the last paragraph of the interview: art can wait indeed.

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Continuing the all-Japanese uploads: the Boredoms’ musical career can be roughly divided into two phases: their early spastic punk, augmented by noisy electronic squiggles, and expansive, mind-melting Krautpsych.

I happen to like their second phase best: “Super Going,” from their 1998 album Super Ae. The track here doesn’t do the album justice, since the album is really an hour-long suite. At the very least, crank it up for the full effect — phased vocals coming in and out (the lyrics are simple: “Shine in / Shine on”), keyboard chirps and twitters, and a relentless, trance-inducing drumbeat. (Wait for the part in the eighth minute or so when the whole thing gets kicked up a notch.)

Saw them a few years back with Karen when they toured as the Vooredoms: Eye on vocals and synth, three drummers (Yoshimi, ATR and E-Da), and one hour-long song — the kind of concert that leaves bodies in its wake.

Hear it (17 mb).

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Having been approved 261-161 in the House, H.R. 418 is about to wend its way through the Senate, and it’s one nasty bill, designed in part “to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal.” Because Sec. 103 is so (intentionally) vague, it becomes almost infinitely applicable and malleable.

Check out, for instance, their criteria for inadmissible aliens:

‘(IV) [Any alien who] is a representative (as defined in clause (v)) of–

`(aa) a terrorist organization; or

`(bb) a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity;

“Endorses or espouses” could already refer to (for instance) Ward Churchill. It’s the politico-legal embodiment of David Horowitz’s bleating about how the academic left supports terrorism.

`(VII) [Any alien who] endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades
others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization;

That is, you don’t even have to be a “representative” — just someone who “persuades” others to support those so-called terrorist organizations.

`(IX) [Any alien who] is the spouse or child of an alien who is inadmissible under this subparagraph, if the activity causing the alien to be found inadmissible occurred within the last 5 years…

It’s retroactive, and applies to your nearest and dearest as well.

Moral of the story: the next time there’s, say, a Palestinian solidarity rally (or, for you Pinoy readers, any leftist organization that in any way remotely resembles the Communist Party of the Philippines — since we know those people overseas can’t tell those orgs apart) in your town, remember that “solidarity” may be a semantic hop and a skip away from “endorse or espouse.” Don’t forget: that strict upholder of the Constitution, Alberto Gonzales, is watching!

The bill gets worse, particularly with Rep. Pete Sessions’ last-minute amendment, described here:

Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) offered an amendment that passed the House by a voice vote. The amendment would provide unprecedented authority to bounty hunters to “pursue, apprehend, detain and surrender” immigrants in removal proceedings. It also would set the minimum bond amount at $10,000 and prohibit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from releasing on recognizance anyone placed in proceedings.

You’ve been warned.

And don’t even get me started on denying drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants…

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