A NEW HOME FOR CHARLIE GITEAU'S BRAIN

One consequence of the Defense Department's decision to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center is that the National Museum of Health and Medicine will have to be relocated.

My friend Chuck took me on a tour of this fascinating and macabre little attraction when I was in Washington, D.C. a few years ago. It's the type of place the Addams Family would enjoy. You can see fragments of Abraham Lincoln's skull and the bullet that killed him, various pickled body parts and this cute array of baby skeletons. ("Hi! I'm Caspar the Friendly Skeleton ...")

Here's a link to a story that was on NPR last May.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: WALL OF BBQ

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 27, 2005

As a solo artist, Stan Ridgway is nothing short of an eclectic, eccentric musician.

He draws from all sorts of musical sources -- garage rock, horror movie soundtracks, crime jazz, and more. His most recent solo album, last year’s Snakebite, showed a fine knack for rootsy country and blues.

Lyrically, Ridgway has a skewed outlook and a soft spot for losers, loonies, small-time crooks and society’s dregs. Most of his songs are sympathetic to his characters. He grants them dignity and many of his songs seem to offer a ray of hope for those struggling beneath the underbelly.

But when Ridgway records as the front man of his band Drywall, all bets are off.

And, after a ridiculously long recess, Drywall is back with Barbecue Babylon, “The Third Installment of the Trilogy of Apocalyptic Documents.”

Drywall is Ridgway, his wife, keyboardist Pietra Wexstun and guitarist/bassist Rick King.

(For those keeping score, the first installment was 1995’s Work the Dumb Oracle, which contained some of Ridgway’s most intense songs -- “Police Call,” “Bel Air Blues,” “Big American Problem.” The second was The Drywall Incident which was mainly instrumental tracks.)

Like Work the Dumb Oracle, the songs on the new album are darker, harsher, more extreme both musically and lyrically than Ridgway‘s other work. Rays of hope don‘t last long in Drywall Land. And except for a few stray moments, forget about kindness or dignity.

And, yes, the world of Barbecue Babylon is apocalyptic. Corruption is everywhere. A desperate spirit of lawless has settled over the land. Thievery and murder abound, but the government has gone even more insane than the populace. To play on a few song titles here -- It‘s a “Land of Spook” run by people seemingly intent on achieving a “Wargasm.”

Life is cheap. Love is tawdry. Paranoia thrives. (“The AARP is after me," sings one sad Ridgway narrator.) Doom is always just around the corner.

Luckily, Ridgway’s twisted humor still abounds.

Not only does Ridgway make a great carnival barker at the gates of Armageddon, but the music here is some of the strongest he’s ever done.

The opening tune “Goin’ on Down to the BBQ,” is a deceptively upbeat tropical romp with shaking maracas and a happy organ that sounds like it might break into “Tequila” at any moment. The song sounds like a darker version of Joe “King” Carrasco. "Tammy Got a Knife with a razor blade/ She brought her baby with a burnt teddy bear/ Lost her finger on a midnight swinger/ Cook it up and like it medium rare.”

But after the cops break up the backyard party, Drywall goes straight for the Bizarro world with the acid jazzy “Fortune Cookies.” A honking sax soars over the techno rhythms as Ridgway declares, “Fascist state television, it’s a blast … that‘s the way the cookie crumbles.”

On “Big Weird Thing,” against a throbbing electronic sonic backdrop punctuated by sampled voices and sinister clanking bells, Ridgway goes into a berserk rant. He sounds like the celebrated crank Francis E. Dec (Google him, if you dare) or one of those frothing preachers and political crackpots that David Byrne and Brian Eno sampled from short-wave radio broadcasts on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. “It’s a whitewash! Disintegration! Surely something that just seems to rot and fester … Show me these things and I shall salute it.”

On Barbecue, Drywall sounds more like a band than they did on Dumb Oracle. Wexstun, whose voice is a proven delight on her own albums (released under the name Hecate’s Angels) gets two solo spots on this album. The most impressive is “Bold Marauder,” an old Richard & Mimi Farina song that‘s appropriately sinister and, yes, apocalyptic for a Drywall CD:.

“For I will sour the winds on high and I will soil the river/And I will burn the grain in the field and I will be your mother/And I will go to ravage and kill and I will go to plunder/And I will take a fury to wife and I will be your mother/And death will be our darling and fear will be our name …”

Pietra’s also out front on “Something’s Gonna Blow” (with Stan providing unison baritone backup.) This one, with its rolicking garage-rock backup, reminds me of the Farinas also, their more rocked-out tunes like’ “House Un-American Blues Activity Dream” (or maybe Frank Zappa’s “Trouble Every Day.“) Drywall’s tune is a bitchen funky-chicken dance about economic decay.

There’s a secret hidden track featuring the voice of the president of the United States of America. Ridgway surely remembers The National Lampoon’'s infamous cut-and-paste manipulation of a Richard Nixon speech (“I am … a crook …”). He’s done the same shock-and-awe editing here for President Bush.

“Every year by law and by custom we meet here to threaten the world,” the president says, backed by an ominous Mid Eastern sounding Drywall instrumental track, interrupted every now and then by applause. “We must offer every child in America three nuclear missiles … We are building a culture to encourage international terrorism … I have a message for the people of Iraq: `Go home and die.’ ”


There’s one notable calm in the madness of Barbecue Babylon, a cool, almost jazzy little finger-popper called “Buried the Pope.” Ridgway released this surprising reverent tune as a free internet download just days after Pope John Paul II’s death.

“A world choked up with lies and politician doublespeak/ Nowhere to get the truth sometimes, but some will always seek/ Now you can criticize it, run it down/ Maybe religion’s not your dope/ But it’s hard to argue solid about a man of peace and hope/ That’s the day they buried the pope.”

But the funeral is just a short respite for Ridgway’s outrage. Elsewhere he has nothing but contempt for the large and in charge. In a sweet, almost western-sound waltz called “Robbers & Bandits & Bastards & Thieves,” he sings, “Hey nothing’ is new, this story is old/ Some will always steal tin and then sell it for gold …”

That’s not the case for Ridgway and Drywall. They’re selling pure gold with this record.

(Barbecue Babylon is available only at Stan Ridgway concerts and the internet. Check out CD Baby)

UDATE: This just in from International Ridgway HQs: Barbeque Babylon will be out and in record stores and at Amazon Aug. 30th.

So there ya go.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: TOUGHER QUESTIONS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 25, 2005

After the criticism that Gov. Bill Richardson received for his appointment of former state police officer Tommy Rodella for Rio Arriba County Magistrate Judge earlier this year, the governor said he was going to get tougher on the selection process for judges.

At first the promise seemed rather empty. As documented in this column last month, some applicants for a Santa Fe County magistrate position described their interviews with Richardson as short and superficial.

Since then, Rodella resigned after criticism from Richardson over a drunken driving case Rodella had handled.

So now there’s a new application form for magistrate positions that shows Richardson at least is asking tougher questions than before.

Some of the questions on the form — which is available on the governor’s web site — seem to be directly inspired by Rodella — who had been investigated by state police for several alleged infractions, including using his influence as a cop to fix traffic tickets to garner political support for his wife, State Rep. Debbie Rodella, D-San Juan Pueblo.

Richardson and his staff claimed he was unaware of these problems until they hit the papers.

Among the new questions:

* “Is there any past or present conduct in your professional or personal life that creates a substantial question as to your qualifications to serve in the judicial position involved or which might interfere with your ability to so serve?”

*“Have you ever been terminated, disciplined, admonished, warned, reprimanded, sanctioned or otherwise punished for any conduct that occurred in your present or previous employment? If so, please explain the nature of the conduct and the result.”

*“To the best of your knowledge, have your ever been investigated by your present or previous employer for misconduct? If so, please explain the nature of the allegation(s) and the result.

Applicants are now asked to sign waiver forms giving up their rights to confidentiality for personnel records, including files related to disciplinary investigations.

The new form asks whether the applicant has been arrested or charged with any misdemeanor or felony other than a minor traffic offense. Separate questions ask about drunken driving charges and domestic violence offenses.

There’s a special question for lawyer applicants. “If you are an attorney, have you ever been the subject of a formal complaint or charged with any violation of any rules of professional conduct in any jurisdiction? If so, have you ever received any discipline, formal or informal, including an ‘Informal Admonition(?) If so, when, and please explain.”

There’s one for judges who apply: “If you have served as a judge, has any formal charge of a violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct been filed against you, and if so, how was it resolved?”

One applicant for the position, former public defender Andrew O’Connor, said this week he thought the new questions were “intrusive” and possibly illegal.

O’Connor admitted he probably doesn’t have much of a chance of getting the appointment due to comments he made last month in this column after being rejected for the Santa Fe magistrate position. He said the only question the governor asked in the previous interview was “Is there anything in your past that would hurt me politically if I appoint you?”

Alien Nation: Did Richardson just have a “Sister Souljah moment”?

You remember Sister Souljah, don’t you? If so, it’s probably not for her music but for her coming under fire in 1992 by Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Clinton. The rapper had made a statement about “killing white people,” which candidate Clinton repudiated — even though the repudiation was repudiated by some Clinton allies like the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

On this week’s Latino USA syndicated radio show (heard locally on KUNM FM), Richardson -- talking about his recently declared state of emergency for our state's border with Mexico -- used the phrase “illegal alien” to describe undocumented immigrants.

Some Hispanic activists who those who work for immigration rights say that term is offensive. But those who favor a crackdown on people who enter the country illegally say the objection to the phrase is unbridled political correctness.

Richardson used the term at least twice on that show and once during his interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

Maria Hinojosa of Latino USA called him on it, noting that this was the first time she’d ever heard him say “illegal aliens.”

Richardson responded, “ ... as a matter of frustration, I have, you know, started using ‘illegal aliens’ because I have seen how some of the traffic of these individuals in trucks and cars come into my state.”

He said human traffickers known as “coyotes” and “other crime-infested people” are hurting some of his constituents, including “many that are Hispanic.”

90 DAYS WITH PAY

By DEBORAH BAKER Associated Press
August 24, 2005

SANTA FE - The state Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily suspended a Santa Fe municipal judge while a disciplinary panel investigates allegations
of misconduct.

Judge Frances Gallegos will be suspended with pay for 90 days as of Monday, the high court ruled following a hearing.

So I'm trying to figure out what I can to at work to get a three-month suspension with pay ...

BACK TO WORK, BACK TO SCHOOL

I returned to work today after a two-week vacation. First time in two weeks that I wore long pants. Luckily it was a pretty easy day.

But tomorrow should be even stranger. I'm going back to school -- and even to my old alma mater, The University of New Mexico.

I'm already feeling like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School. But instead of "Hot Lips" Houlihan, my professor will be former U.S. Sen. Fred R. Harris, a fellow Okie in exile.

I'm taking Harris' American Politics class. For years I nagged my daughter to take this. Only recently I realized that my real motivation was that I wanted to take it myself.

But the cool thing is that my daughter is going to take the class with me. She'll probably embarass me and get a better grade. But I'll probably be the only student with a direct memory of Harris' jingle when he ran for Senate back in the '60s:

The man from Oklahoma
Is a man that you can trust
A vote for Fred R. Harris
Is a vote of confidence ...