Look at the world around you.  Look in corners.  Look at the stuff that you’re supposed to miss.

A while back we were in Vancouver for The Eastside Culture Crawl, a great and large open studio event that stretches from the Downtown Eastside all the way to Commercial drive.

Although there honestly wasn’t a lot that really thrilled us, I was delighted to find the “installation” pictured.

These fantastic clear plastic platform shoes were situated half way across a set of railway tracks on an overhead pedestrian walkway between Raymur Street and the end of Keefer Street.

I have no idea whether this was an intentional installation, or whether the graffiti was related to it, or whether somewhere in Strathcona a drag queen is crying her eyes out at having lost her shoes, but it was lovely.

Ever wonder how those big numbers get onto the grass at football games?

It’s really pretty simple: they’re spray-painted on using big honkin’ stencils.

It’s all pretty low-tech, involving one guy who drives the paint sprayer on a golf cart, one who sprays the paint, and two that pick up the stencils and move them to the next location.

The real challenge is that the CFL guys want the lines and number placed within inches – on a 110 yard long football field.   Trust me, there’s nothing more annoying than trying to remove and repaint lines a half hour before game time.

That, and realizing that one of the arrows points the wrong way.

I have accepted that all government advertising is actually pre-election bumph for the party in power, but really the Conservatives have taken things a large step further than anyone before them.

This time of the year one of the fixtures of Canadian life are boxes of income tax returns at the post office. Always in the corner, always on the floor, but always there.  (I’ll ignore pointing out that there are in fact damn few actual Post Offices left in Canada. Instead your mail services and delivery are handled by minimum wage clerks at corner stores and drug stores in what are euphemistically called “Retail Outlets.”)

In the past these boxes had exciting labels like “Your 2008 Tax Returns are here!”

This year though the Tory economic mantras have taken over, with each box stamped in Green “Real Tax Cuts at Your Fingertips.”

My first reading of that was actually ”Real Paper Cuts on your Fingertips.”

When that made no sense I looked closer, and realized that Harper’s people had slapped Tory election advertising on the boxes!

Needless to say, the last people who will benefit from any of Harper’s “Tax Cuts” are those who are likely to be preparing their own tax returns.

Last night I joined the ranks of those who love haggis.

Poor haggis, much maligned and eternally sneered at, usually by those who have never even tasted it. There’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

Twas of course a Robbie Burns celebration, with two friends (and their daughter) all decked out in tartan as expected.

We began with some lovely single malt, cheese and oatcakes, then salad.

Then, with much ceremony, the recitation of Burn’s words.

Address To A Haggis
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an’ strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
“Bethankit!” ‘hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect sconner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll mak it whissle;
An’ legs an’ arms, an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle.

Ye Pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o’ fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,
Gie her a haggis!

What I hadn’t realized was that even if you don’t know all of the vocabulary, the Address To A Haggis is actually a very funny and  entertaining bit of work.  How can you not love:

An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

And as the poem suggests, we cut it open and scooped out all of the steamy richness inside! The haggis itself is lighter than I ever expected, tasting more of liver (kind of like a Pâté) than oatmeal, and with a little gravy and potatoes quite yummy.  It’s a more sophisticated dish than I would have believed.

Really, give it a try!

Last night we watched Knowing on DVD, one of Nick Cage’s 2009 releases.  It was your typical end-of -the-world foreseen by depressed and psychic children type movie – the kind where you keep looking for REDRUM to appear.

When it was done we looked at each other and asked “What ever happened to Nicholas Cage?  Why does it seem that almost every one of his movies is so bad?”

And why would he choose to keep doing obviously bad movies? It’s not like he needs the money.

I liked Wild At Heart, David Lynch’s violent epic.  Cage’s brooding thickness just worked in that film.  I really liked Moonstruck, Norman Jewison’s 1987 romance featuring Cher and Cage as a brooding, uncultured baker. 1987 gave us the Coen Brother’s  Raising Arizona, with Cage playing a none too smart, brooding petty criminal.

Then there was Con-Air. Then there was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Then there was Ghost Rider. Then there were any of the forty plus other pictures Cage has made, each less appealing than the last.

It was at this point that we jumped up and exclaimed “Aha! The movies that succeed are those in which Cage a) has a REALLY strong director and b) gets to play someone who’s not very bright.”

I’m not saying there’s a connection but…

This BBC story about a thirteen year old boy trying to figure out how to use an original Sony Walkman cassette player (“”It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.”) got me to thinking about he good old days of tape.

I didn’t have a Walkman, but I had a cassette player/recorder, as well as tape players in all of my cars.  Despite the fact thet “Home taping is killing music” we all made and traded mix tapes and copies of vinyl albums.  The challenge was that if you actually wanted to mix the tape – blend the songs one into another seamlessly – you had to record the entire tape in one go with no stops or starts.

Usually that meant getting two thirds of the way through, blowing a transition, and starting all over again.

A well done mix-tape was, and still is, dramatically better than “shuffle”. Instead of being random, it is a well thought out package, with the mixer worrying about how well each song transitions into the next, and how the tape as a whole flows.  Plus you need to time your songs so that the last one on each side ends just as the cassette tape is to run out.

Being limited to forty-five minutes on a side (you never use tapes longer than c-90 because the tape is thin and tends to jam up the works in your cassette player) meant that you had to select a group of about ten to fifteen songs, time them, and add up the lengths to make sure

that you came in at about 44 and half minutes. Then you would turn the tape over and do the same for the second side.

Try that with your iPod.

The other secret of mix-tapes was always to use Maxell Chrome tape. There was never, ever a doubt that Maxell was the best, and that Chrome tape was the best all round choice.

Gotta say, that Maxell guy was one of the best bits of advertising ever produced.  Hope he got royalties.

Michael Jackson died yesterday.  During the orgy of coverage he’s being described as having been  just one small step short of being a combination of Ghandi, Beethoven, and Fred Astaire.

I’m here to tell you that that’s just nonsense.

Michael Jakson was a pop singer and dancer, and was good at both.

He was not a genius – one term being bandied about.   He may have been a successful singer, and for quite a while made lots of money, but nothing that he ever did came close to exhibiting “genius” talents or intelligence.

He did not “change the face of pop music.”  His records, though likeable, were not particularly innovative in either music or performance.  His performances were pretty much like a thousand other singers of his type, and broke no new ground in either style or presentation.

He did not invent, or even re-invent music video.  There had already been lots of long form dance sequences set to popular songs in films called “musicals.”  ”Thriller” may have been fun, but I’ll take “An American in Paris” or “Singin’ in the Rain.”

The best summary that I’ve heard today is this: you cannot compare Michael Jackson to John Lennon. Lennnon continued to re-invent his music and create new and exciting work throughout his life.  Jackson had a handful of monster hits, then repeated himself til the day he died.

I know people who average one new CD every two or three years.  I’m not one of them.  Between eMusic.com and Pirate Bay I probably average ten or twelve albums each month. Some of those are new, some of them are old, and some are pure “take a chance because it sounds interesting” stuff.

On top of that, last year I digitized all of my CDs, and wind up tossing some of those onto my MP3 player as well.

This month I was listening to to two young artists who, for lack of a better term, I characterize as “hip hop.”  One, K’Naan, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and is now living in Canada.  His albums are hopeful, creative, and are on constant repeat.  The other is  M.I.A., a Londoner of  Sri Lankan Tamil descent who does some really nice bhangra meets hip hop music.

Stop now, check them out. Really.

What they led me to though (via an eMusic recommendation) was some very, very old school hip hop.  It’s actually a genre that I’ve never taken the time to really explore.

This week’s pretty much constant listen is Dr. Dre’s “Chronic”, from way back in 1992.  One of the albums that launched Death Row Records, it sounds as fresh today as anything released last week.

The challenge for me with this album is the considerable misogyny – something that seems to characterize a lot of rap and hip hop.  Certainly a song lyric like “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks… ” offends my sensibilities.

Still, it this serious? It’s offensive, and tasteless, and arguably inflammatory.  But is it for real? A joke? Another streetwise boast full of hyperbole?

I put that aside for a minute and listened to the album in its entirety. Rather than having songs pop up at random on my MP3 player, I set it to play Chronic from beginning to end.

What I heard, and what I came to appreciate once I had let myself get beyond the foul-mouthed refrains and the violent and misogynistic imagery, were the remarkable lyrics delivered by Dre (and Snoop Dogg, who figures large in this album) and the unquestionably superb music.

From the title track “Chronic”, which offers a direct rip-off (homage?) of Parliament/Funkadelic,  to the dead on politics of “A Nigga Witta Gun”, this album really stands out as the work of a top notch producer working with top-notch artists.

What I really understand now is that this is at its best a concept album in the sense that it is the whole that stands out, rather than individual tracks.  The misogyny, the juvenile comedy, the violence, obscenity, and boastfulness are all part of the genre, and all contribute to a strong – and entertaining – message.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, Dr. Dre is due out with his third solo album sometime this year.

Yesterday I found myself typing the program for a music recital – essentially copying student names, composers, and works into a list.  It’s the kind of thing that I’ve done hundreds of times, but which has stopped being an everyday thing since I escaped the world of non-profit organizations.

In doing this work though – it took maybe twenty minutes – I realized how much I love working with words, and how it has been missing from my everyday experiences.  I guess that anyone who follows this blog is too aware that posts have dropped to nothing in the last few months.

The question that I am examining this week is why I stopped writing.  I have time, I have energy, I have many wonderful things happening, and many more comment-worthy things happening around me – gang wars, Olympics, a nascent financial Depression.  Each of these is worth examination, and each I think is an area where I have opinions worth adding.

Maybe it’s a a question of being very happy, very settled, and  relatively free of strife and anxiety. Maybe it’s because of my shrink. Maybe it’s because I feel less that I have to prove myself.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been holding back, collecting ideas and thoughts so that I can write with more depth and substance.

Part of the reason that this now seems important is that I do see the need to broaden my income sources, both to make little more money, and to ensure that if one jobs falls through – like construction work – I’ll have at a least some cushion.  I no longer see poverty as an option, and frankly like having enough money to pay my way, pay my bills and even treat myself and those around me on occasion.  I am conscious that there were people who helped me out greatly during a few very hard years, and now I am “paying that forward” by helping out where I can.

What I am doing though is helping out individuals, people that I know, rather than supporting causes and charities.   Somehow, for some reason, that seems to be most important right now.

Perhaps it’s because when I fell on hard times it was friends and individuals who helped me most,  not the institutions that one would hope were there (with a couple noteable exceptions).  Perhaps it’s my way of transforming charity from an a abstract to a real and immediate act.  Perhaps I look around myself here on the North Shore of Vancouver and understand that for many a charitable donation is in fact a way to not deal with the problems that beset an otherwise affluent city, and serve to insulate one from the reality of say the Downtown Eastside.

When living in Hamilton the poverty was in my face, deeply ingrained in the local culture, and by a political climate that steadfastly refused to deal with any of the core problems.  In North Vancouver it feels as if everything exists in a soft, warm middle class, and that poverty is something that happens far, far away, or at least across the Seabus.

That comfortable culture is appealing, and for me at least offers great relief and a chance to heal and to catch my breathe and plan my next moves.   It worries me though that at the same time I might begin to see the drug addicts and gang members and all of the troubled souls as “them” instead of “us.”  That compartmentalism is what allows our leaders to spend billions of dollars on games and edifices while allowing tens of thousands of people to live in abject poverty.

The time has come to remind myself that putting ideas into words is how I clarify my thoughts, and how I set myself in motion to take action.

William Safire’s Rules for Writers:

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don’t overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

Remember last year, when I wrote about Bob Gourlay? Well, this just in.

Hello Barry – I was blown away last year when I read your Blog, and I want to warmly thank you for not forgetting those programs! I never ever dreamed that the show would have an important impact on those terrific young kids in Kelowna during the 1960′s early 70′s.

Thanks to your Blog, I am doing now the Crystal Sound Barrier on www.cronicaradio.com

Every 2 weeks or so I do a new 30 min show! THIS WEEK, FRIDAY, I will be doing a SPECIAL SHOW dedicated to YOU and the kids of Kelowna who remember those songs. I will be talking this week about SEX – something I could not do on CKOV! I will be playing a record that echoes the feeling
of those wild flower power 60′s!

Reply if you wish to roberto@mailmallorca.com

Wishing all of you only the GREATEST of SUCCESS!

- Bob Gourlay of CKOV’s The Crystal Sound Barrier.

Today on the MaplePost e-mail list I found myself drawn into yet another discussion about what musicians, especially folk musicians, can do to battle on-line music sharing via peer to peer and other technologies.

The irony of course is that in the same day I was in the process of moving my entire CD collection onto my computer using a lovely CD ripping program called CDex. I place the CD in the PC and CDex reads it, looks up the artist and track information at the CDDB database, and then converts the whole thing into a folder of high quality MP3s. It’s taking maybe 20 minutes per CD, but that’s unattended so really it’s no big deal.

You see, sometime this month I realized that I had more music in digital format (much from emusic.com) than on disc, and I was listening to five albums on the computer or MP3 player for every one that I heard off of CD. Moving everything to digital just made sense.

So I’ve taking to telling folks that instead of offering the age old complaint that musicians need to get paid (with which I don’t argue) you need to tell us all how to make sure that that happens in a technologically changing environment. Wishing won’t make it so, neither will bullying, so what does the music industry (and/or performers) need to do?

As is the case with spam, the technology will always stay one step ahead of the government. For instance, many of the big ISPs have been throttling or otherwise crippling traffic from Bittorrent clients, even though many quite legitimate and legal downloads are well suited to using that technology. The solution turned out to be relatively simple. Most Bittorrent clients now offer the option of encrypting traffic so that it can’t be identified as Bittorrent, and speeds pop right back up.

Beyond that there is a generation of music lovers who have grown up with file trading and peer to peer, and who either see nothing wrong with up and downloading songs, or who at least see it as just one of the acceptable ways that they may acquire music. Just as my friends and I traded mix tapes, these kids trade songs and albums on-line.

The horse is out of the barn. The change has happened. Success will go to those who embrace it, not to those who try to stop it.

This week I have found myself listening to Bach.

First piano works, then tonight cello.

We live in an age when More is More, when excess is expected and demanded in all things.

Right now I am listening to one man play one instrument. There is no accompaniment, nor orchestration, no video, no commentary.

Just one man, a bow, and four strings. And Bach.

And I find myself thinking, what is there in our world today that can match that simple equation? What around us is of such simple purity that it doesn’t need to be gilded or amplified?

Why do we need American Idol, a manufactured event, a competition choreographed for television? Why are the people behind such things unable or unwilling to dispense with faux drama and just present what they feel are the best talents of our time?

I remember, just barely, the Ed Sullivan show. Although it may seem quaint today, that show did something that is now unthinkable.

Each week it collected a remarkable group of performers that were judged as good enough to entertain an entire country, and presented them on stage.

Opera singers, rock and roll bands, dog acts, jugglers, comedians – it didn’t matter what each was, just that they were the best.

Somewhere in the Sullivan organization people were doing the leg work, seeking out talent, holding auditions, and deciding who would succeed and who would not.

Today we watch the good, the bad, and the horrid, and take silent delight in watching a new group each week be eliminated. Will they cry? Will they become angry? Will they come back, or abandon their hopes of stardom?

Where we once sought to experience beauty and marvel in virtuosity, we now prefer to believe that our Idols have feet of clay, are no more talented or soulful than our average selves.

That kind of entertainment lowers and debases us. It causes us to believe that we shouldn’t aspire to beauty and excellence, just to the average and the mundane.

My hope then is that I can hold tight to the music that surrounds me this evening, can allow the sound of bow on string to envelop and saturate my heart and my being, and that I can carry that with me, guiding me, and guiding my choices.

And my dream is that in every choice and every move that I allow beauty and inspiration to be what guides me.

Following last month’s Deep Wireless Festival (which I blogged for Transom.org) I traded messages with Gregory Whitehead, examining some of the themes that emerged from his presentation. The following is adapted from that exchange.</i>

Gregory,

Thank you again for a wonderful performance yesterday. The Big Sloppy rings true to me.

If the truth were known, very little at radio conferences has thrilled me in recent years.

Some of that no doubt comes from hanging out with the American crowd, who still see This American Life as cutting edge. Even Outfront, which again has been a darling in radio circles, seems often to be doing the same thing over and over.

Little by little I have been putting pieces together, trying to figure out why there is so little on the airwaves which seem to be worth the investment of my time.

After Sunday two important threads emerged.

The first of course came from Heidi Grundmann‘s talk about Co-op Radio in the eighties. I vividly remember those days, and the people who threw caution and convention to the winds and tried whatever looked as if it might be an interesting project. The attitude really was one of “Let’s push the medium as far as we possibly can.”

These were also people that appreciated that they were working very specifically in radio, and that the medium had attributes and an aesthetic which would be and still is different from working in just audio.

(A point which I think is lost on many people still.)

It’s astonishing that she would raise names like Patrick Ready, Hank Bull, and GX Jupitter-Larsen mere days after I had discussed these same people in my inaugural blog post. Whether you call it synchronicity or mere coincidence, it cannot be ignored.

Your comments about “branding” really did hit home. Is that the issue? That so many artists and producers are so busy marketing themselves that they lose sight of the need to keep Art at the forefront?

Thinking back to Deep Wireless, almost every person in that room has a web page, many have blogs, and at least in Toronto the bulk of people seem to have disappeared into Facebook or MySpace.

And yes, people are re-creating themselves as brands. Just as so much radio in the US wants be the next TAL or Prairie Home Companion, many of these people begin their work by asking how they can fit within the narrow confines of what public radio will accept.

You described it as “branding”, but I see it as self censorship, which is one of the things that always fascinates me about the American people. While living in the U.S., especially after 9/11, it amazed me how so many people can simultaneously believe that they are afforded Freedom of Speech, while carefully moderating what they will say on a great many topics.

And increasingly self censorship in radio is wrapped in the need to present yourself in a persona that fits established conventions.

Could these young producers and artists function in an environment like Co-op Radio of the eighties? What would happen if you told them “hereis an hour of airtime each week. There are no rules.” How would they adapt if you placed them in an atmosphere where you were judged solely by your work, not by how you present yourself on the Internet and during sales pitches?

(And yes, I know that not all that was created back at Co-op radio was brilliant or even listenable, and that some of it was downright dull, but that’s the point – you take chances, and trust that some of them will create beauty and insight.)

At the end of the day what I am looking for is radio that shocks, that challenges form, that demands that I sit up and listen. I want to hear people who do more than transmit cools sounds, who play with the essence of the medium, who embrace RF radiation as their instrument.

Thanks once again, and keep reminding people of all of the things thatthey dare not ask themselves, but which they always appreciate after the fact.

Yours,

Barry

This weekend I will be live on the Transom.org web site, liveblogging the Radio Without Boundaries conference, arguably the apex of the Deep Wireless Festival. In a strange way it will be like returning home after a long trip.

Back in 2003 I was part of the group that created Transmissions sans Frontières, the first Radio Without Boundaries conference. TSF followed on the heels of the first Third Coast Festival in Chicago in 2001. Like Third Coast the focus was on radio, but with a strong streak of experimental and boundary pushing work that (during Third Coast’s first year) went well beyond the National Public Radio influenced works heard in Chicago.

What we discovered was a community of producers and listeners who craved works like those presented. People who saw in radio possibilities that went far beyond what they were hearing on commercial radio, the CBC, and NPR. People who either already knew of visionaries like R. Murray Schafer, Peter Leonhard Braun, and Willem de Ritter, or new listeners who just knew that radio was something more than what they were hearing.

We pleased some people, we challenged and confused a couple, and we sent everyone home with new ears and new attitudes. We brought together CBC types, NPR types, pirate radio types, artists, critics, and fans, mixed them all up, and watched the sparks fly.

That conference in many ways paid homage to some of the people who shaped my radiophonic sensibilities – Hank Bull and Patrick Ready, whose weekly HP Radio Show was one that was never to be missed, and to the late Howard Broomfield, who approached sound with a reverence and exuberance that has remained unmatched.

Life being what it is, I haven’t really been able to attend Radio Without Boundaries since that first year, even though I’ve had the pleasure of managing the New Adventures web site for many years. In some strange fashion I have lived vicariously though the pictures and biographies and listings that I posted there.

This year I was asked to be part of the team liveblogging the last week of Deep Wireless. I consider that quite an honour.

I have always seen myself as more of an observer of art than a participant – and yes, I should change that – so I take this as a challenge to immerse myself in the works and people, and to reflect to the Transom audience the essence of Radio Without Boundaries.

I am thrilled.

A month or so back I was thinking about my love affair with radio, and was able to trace it back even further, to one radio program, and one DJ. I wrote about him on my own blog, and since than have found out that although he has traveled half way around the world, and has had at least a couple of careers, he’s still making radio.

So as I head into this week I dedicate it to Bob Gourlay, and the hours that I spent listening to his show, the Crystal Sound Barrier.

Seldom does a motion picture leave one speechless and filled with awe. Most film today seems to be intended for the video store, and then television, and consequently aims at the lowest common denominator.

La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc is not that sort of film.

Created in 1928 by Carl Theodor Dreyer it is a work of power and elegance, one which quite deliberately ignores questions of period cotsume and decor, and instead portays a character that I doubt could be mastered by any of the current generation of Hollywood actresses.

From IMDB:

“Maria Falconetti is unforgettable as Joan, perfectly distilling the pain, terror, and saintliness required by what is probably one of the most demanding roles an actor could attempt.”

The performance by Maria Falconetti is nothing short of beautiful. I can’t think of an actress that has moved me to the degree that she has in this film. Was Jeanne d’Arc in a state of rapture? Madness? Both? It is never clear or easy to tell.

Really at this moment I am near speechless.

This is a film that you should seek out.

(the version that I screened was a Criterion release restored from an original director’s cut discovered lost in a Danish mental hospital until its discovery in 1981. For this DVD it was paired with a new score by composer Richard Einhorn.)

Image swiped from courtesy Wonkette. Really, I have no strong opinions on PETA, or even on bullfighting for that matter, but gosh almighty are these kids cute. They were part of today’s PETA sponsored “Running of the Nudes.”

Can you imagine anyone in Washington DC having more fun than these kids did while protesting in front of the Spanish Embassy against the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona?

Then again, can you imagine this protest in January?

My… what would Hemingway say…