KMFDM & Porcupine Tree

Last night I saw Porcupine Tree in concert at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore, and two days before, I saw KMFDM at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.  Both are bands I’ve never seen before – and which are VERY different even from each other.

 KMFDM.  This is a German techno band led by Sascha Konietzko.  The name stands for KEIN MITLEID FUR DIE MEHRHEIT, German for “no pity for the majority”.  They’ve been around since 1984, adding in heavy guitar to make it somewhat heavy metal with the album UAIOE, continuing to the latest album, Blitz, which came out this year.  They seem to prefer 5-letter album titles, e.g. Money, Angst, [Symbols], WWIII, etc.  The current lineup consists of Konietzko on vocals & electronics, Lucia Cifarelli (more vocals & electronics) (pretty damn hot!), Jules Hodgson on lead guitar, Andy Selway on drums (yes, a LIVE drummer, unlike Sisters of Mercy), and Steve White on rhythm guitar.  Most of the songs are in English, some are in German, and one, “Davai”, is in Russian.  The lyrics vary from tongue-in-cheek (“KMFDM sucks!”) to political or cynical, but it’s all high octane and fun.  Like Iron Maiden with Derek Riggs, KMFDM have an illustrator, “Brute”, who does their album artwork and some of their videos, of which “Drug Against War” sticks in my mind the most. 

            Sascha and Lucia have their “podiums” set up center stage, with Jules outboard on Sascha’s side, Steve outboard on Lucia’s side, and the drummer center back stage.  I say “podiums” because the small platforms from which each of them sing and control their electronic boxes look exactly like that, and with two of them it’s like they’re involved in some techno trance metal debate – though they do leave the podium quite often.  I recognized about half the material, including my favorites, “Light” and “Drug Against War”.  The whole thing has more of a party atmosphere than anything overly serious.  The crowd was 2/3 ordinary concert fans and 1/3 goth scene people (aka “Food Court Druids”).  I had a great time.

 Porcupine Tree.  PT could best be described as “Opeth WITHOUT Cookie Monster Vocals”.  It’s heavy prog music, but Steve Wilson sings normally.  It’s more overtly Floyd-like than Opeth, though.  The Dream Theater resemblance is also there.  What “prog” tends to mean these days is some parts very heavy, some parts very light, lots of keyboards and spacey stuff, and overall somewhat pretentious.  The lineup is Steve Wilson (guitars & vocals), Richard Barbieri (keyboards), Colin Edwin (bass), and Gavin Harrison (drums).  They started off with “The Incident”, the 55 minute title track from the new album which takes up an entire CD, then took a 10 minute break, and came back for more, playing roughly 2 hours.

            Like Tool, they have a large viewscreen which they use to stunning effect, partly abstract, psychedelic imagery and partly various images – similar to the imagery Opeth use.  I got the impression of being in the midst of a prog hurricane of influences: Opeth, Tool, Pink Floyd, but varying in strength, never too much of one before slipping into another.  It’s certainly an “experience”, up there with Tool.  Both bands give you far more than simply “Ok, we came here and we’ll play our songs and go”.  You get pulled into it, surrounded by it, embraced by it – it’s almost too much.  Almost, but not quite.  I’ll delve into their earlier material to pick up on the songs I didn’t know, as I only have the new album and the one before it, Fear of a Blank Planet.  They have been around since 1987.

If I Were King...

…I would proclaim the following:

 1.  Henceforth, the soda and its parent company formerly known as Dr. Pepper, shall be known as Sgt. Pepper.  Various songs from that album and elements thereof shall be made part of any commercial or promotion associated therewith, and no royalties to be paid to Michael Jackson – they all go to Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, the Harrison estate, and (Sir) Paul McCartney.

 2.  Supermarket checkout lines, express lanes.  If you exceed the limit, your excess purchases will be charged double, starting with the most expensive item and working back to the limit.  You have been warned.  This transaction is NOT voidable by the cashier or manager.  And 20 units of the same item counts as 20 units, not 1.  Learn to count, people!

 3.  Capital punishment for ANYONE on “The Price is Right” who bids ONE dollar more than the last person.  Drew Carey himself will “come on down” with a gun and shoot you on the spot.  Spaying or neutering the offender might be the more appropriate penalty, but this one dollar bullshit just shows the contestant has already lost his/her testicles or ovaries.

 4.  School names.  Enough with this boring idiocy of naming schools after repetitively dull historical figures or equally dull local community figures no one really knows about or cares about – except for the corrupt assholes who picked the names, clearly hoping that one day THEY will have schools named after themselves.  It’s time we picked some names which reflect individuals who truly had a major impact on our society in different ways.  Yes, it’s time for….Albert Hoffman High School; Timothy Leary High School; James Hendrix High School; James Morrison High School; Stevie Ray Vaughn High School; Leo Fender High School; etc.  Or we can pick politically incorrect historical figures, such as Attilla the Hun, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Benedict Arnold.  You get the point.  I don’t think they name schools in England after people, preferring localities, so we’ll take some English and use them – Lennon, McCartney, Jagger, Richards, Gilmour, Waters, etc. 

 5.  If you are Adam Lambert, or have his hairstyle, you will be immediately accosted and have your head shaved like the collaborating women in WWII.  And this “bald & goatee” thing is OVER!  Enough!  Hear me Andy Powell and Rob Halford?   Unless you can trace ancestry to a Germanic tribe fighting the Romans, give it a rest. 

 In a related topic, If had more money than I knew what to do with (but wasn’t necessarily king), I would:

 1.         Turn the Turtledove Timeline series (How Few Remains, Great War, American Empire, and Settling Account) into movies, with big name stars, without any concern for turning a profit.  Morgan Freeman as Scipio?  Sure.  Nicole Kidman as Anne Colleton?  Why not?  Tom Berenger as Roger Kimball?  You bet.  Denzel Washington as Cincinnatus?  Good idea.  Maybe even Ed Harris as Irving Morrell, and Robin Williams as Theodore Roosevelt (see the Night at the Museum films).  I’m thinking of Edward Norton as Jake Featherston. 

Minimal changes on the screenplay – even if that means “nigger” is spit out liberally in every movie.  Chill out people, and watch it to the very end.  You’ll love it.

 2.         Buy up every clapped out, rusted 3^rd Gen. Firebird or Camaro and renovate them with V8s, etc.  I’d buy so many I could set up a factory to do this, and buy up crate 350s in bulk with a volume discount.  Then I’d sell them for modest amounts, with no regard to profit. 

 3.         I’d buy up a small town, and collect all the homeless people from across the country.  I’d have social workers figure out which are the (A) crazy but harmless people turned out of asylums because they’re no threat to society, but who still can’t support themselves, the (B) normal people who simply became homeless due to rotten luck, but who could be self-sufficient if someone believed in them and found a decent job for them, (C) drug addicts, and (D) truly criminally insane.  My understanding is that shelters don’t work because predators abuse the homeless therein, such that they’re actually safer on the streets.  Apparently these shelters have poor security.  Hopefully, by relocating the homeless to a remote area, this problem can be eliminated.  At the very least, they will have someplace safe to stay, a roof over their head, food, health care, etc.  I’d try to set it up like a real town, not a mental institution.  No, it’s NOT “The Island.” 

Toys

Every August (Shelby), September (Ian), October (Zoe), and February (Beatrice) I go shopping for gifts for my nephew and three nieces.  I make an effort to get gifts they’ll enjoy, though it’s easier for Ian as I’m a guy, than it is for the girls.  Recall that Seinfeld episode where Jerry dates the woman with an eccentric collection of 70s-era toys, and he and George drug her with wine and turkey so they can play with her toys while she sleeps.  Elaine is horrified…until George mentions the Easy-Bake Oven.  But shopping for toys brings me back to the age when I used to play with them myself.

 It would be insane to try to list every toy I played with from birth to the present, but some trends are worth noting.

 Big Wheel & Green Machine.  Years ago at University of Maryland, my suitemate Chris and I were in the North Gym on our way to work out, and we noticed a very familiar kid’s plastic tricycle in a dumpster.  I smiled at him and asked, “do you know what THAT is?” and he smiled and said, “a BIG WHEEL!”  Before we could ride bicycles, even with training wheels, this was the Porsche of kids transportation.  We had another vehicle, something circular with two large wheels which were parallel to each other but perpendicular to the base (here I feel I’m some archeologist or anthropologist); and the Green Machine.  The Green Machine is like those reclining stationary bicycles or the sit-down ones the uber-dorks ride around on – but much cooler because it was green and bad-ass.

 GI Joe.  As boys we played with these – and these were the tall, 9” (or so) anatomically incorrect figures you could dress in cloth uniforms, not the more recent completely plastic figurines brought to life in the movie.  No sign of “Cobra” or other fictitious bad guys.  In the process of collecting the “outfits”, I got a fair amount of WWII uniforms: German infantry, British, American, Russian, plus German Afrika Korps and Fallschirmjager.  Too bad there were no WWI uniforms, though I suppose the French Foreign Legion uniform was similar – with white pants instead of red.  The uniforms had pants, jacket, boots, helmet, belt, and weapon, and were very well done.

 Britains.  These were small plastic figurines, about an inch high, with green metal bases, which we picked up at Harrod’s in London.  Of course I was getting the German WWII soldiers with a Kubelwagen, a mortar team (see above) and my brother got the Americans, including a Jeep with a .50 cal MG and a recoilless rifle.  I remember playing with these on the window sill of my bedroom of our apartment in Neuilly.  Although our focus was WWII, I know there were Civil War figures (Union vs. CSA) and more modern British soldiers – I suppose for Falklands or Northern Ireland simulations.

 Models.  I seem to recall having built – unsuccessfully – a P40 Flying Tigers fighter in the US, I must have been less than 9 years old. In Europe I got much better, and even got an airbrush which I learned how to use fairly well.  I got a few Monogram models – which often had these great Shepard Paine diorama features, though his were so well done they were more discouraging than inspirational (no WAY were we going to top him!) - but soon discovered I liked Tamiya the most.  Italerei and Testors were OK, but often they had the bad habit of making the soldiers’ feet separate, so you could never quite glue them to stand up on their own.  I never cared for planes, as you could never decide whether to make the model with the landing gear up or down, although we did make a B-17, a B-24, and a B-29.  I never did make a diorama, but I did subscribe to Military Modeler for several years.  Mostly I was painting German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS soldiers, and a few tanks: Panzer III, IV, and Panther; and an 88.  I never did make any model cars, but I have the Monogram ’92 Formula and Revell ’68 Firebird I may eventually tackle one of these days.  When we started playing role playing games, the skills I learned painting German soldiers came in handy painting various orcs, elves, sorcerors, skeletons, and adventurers.

 Micronauts.  These we played with in the US before going to France.  They were various different robots and figures, some of which were detachable with magnets.  I never learned any of the backstory on this, but I do recall that they were very popular with most of my male friends.

 Legos.  I found Legos to be fairly fun and stimulating.  Eventually we got the Expert set, and I made all sorts of armored cars with “machine guns”.  First you’d follow the instructions to build the castle or whatever, but eventually you let your imagination take you places and came up with all sorts of different things.

 Play-Doh.  It had a distinctive smell to it.  This is something we played with as very young kids, but not too young for me to remember.  Like Legos, it was a “toy” you could be extremely creative and imaginative with, so I think these types of toys are important for developing our little minds.

 Star Wars.  When the first movie came out, we went nuts, collecting all the figures, the X-Wing, the Death Star, and the Tie Fighter.  By the time “The Empire Strikes Back” came out, we were past the age of playing with these, and in Europe, so the focus was on models, Britains and GI Joes.

Hot Wheels & Matchbox.  These are the little cars of various models.  Hot Wheels are more exotic and fun, whereas Matchbox has a more utilitarian and pedestrian (!) collection.  Ideally you play with them on a little track.  I still like them, so every now and then I pick up a few ‘60s muscle car ones at Toys R Us or Giant if something catches my eye.

 Smash ‘Em Up Derby.   I loved these, but they’re long gone.  The cars – Nomad and Ford – would have fenders and parts that bashed up and could be replaced. They had ramps, and you’d slide the T strip through and then quickly pull it out to set the car going.

 Unique Imports.  Later called The Collector’s Armory, and originally located in Alexandria, on Slater’s Lane right off the GW Parkway.  They specialized in very realistic replicas of various guns, of which we got the MP-40 Schmeisser (mine) and CAR-15 (my brother) – which we still have today.  Fortunately no one shot us as we played at the compound with these things.  Much, much later, when I had a Beretta 92FS (9mm) and an AR-15 (.223), out of curiosity I re-examined the guns with real ammo, and found that the rounds would not even enter the chamber or the magazine.   On the other hand, in some toy store in Belgium we picked up fake plastic Thompson (with box magazine) and FN-FAL – probably about 1/3 scale – which actually fired small plastic bullets, but at such a low velocity you’d barely know you were hit, much less injured. 

 In the US we typically bought toys at Toys R Us.  My dad had a running joke that as we passed the one on Rockville Pike, he’d claim, “didn’t you hear? There was a huge fire, it burned down”.  There was a toy store, Jeremiah’s, in the Village Mall – and several Kay-Bee toy stores scattered at malls.  When in NYC we’d check out FAO Schwartz, but that was a bit too upscale: an entire fort?  Downsized Mercedes?  Think of where super rich and royal families go to buy toys for their spoiled princes and princesses, and the rest of us peons simply wish and hope for our parents to win the lottery.

 In Europe, we’d go to Fantou (Neuilly), the Four Seasons at SHAPE, but Galeries Lafayette and Harrod’s had knockout toy section – and of course there’s Hamley’s, an entire toy department store in London.  Now it’s back to the old favorite, Toys R Us, for our needs.

Brazilian Cinema

By now I’ve seen a fair amount of Brazilian films, which are mostly entertaining.  Some are violent and cynical, others are lighthearted and enjoyable.  They tend to fall into three categories.

 Rio de Janeiro.  Brazil’s capital until Brasilia took over in 1960, Rio is still arguably Brazil’s most important city, notwithstanding São Paulo’s larger population and wealth.  Its beaches, its Carnival, and its mountains all give it a unique beauty and provide an excellent setting for various films.

Blame It On Rio.  Not sure if this qualifies as a “Brazilian” film, even if it is set in Rio.  The major players are Michael Caine, Valerie Harper, and a very young, pre-boob-job Demi Moore.  Caine and his best friend take their teenage daughters to Rio for vacation; Caine’s wife (Harper) curiously declines to accompany them, for reasons which will become apparent later.  The best friend’s daughter (Michelle Johnson) turns out to have a huge crush on Caine, and is too deliciously sexy to resist – and the saucy heat and sensuality of the city and its erotic beaches conspire to destroy whatever scruples he may have had about sleeping with a girl he considers his de facto niece (thus “blame it on Rio”).  The best friend, of course, finds out that his daughter has a lover, and vows to murder the poor fool, whoever he is, much to Caine’s dismay and concern.  How things turn out is equally amusing and entertaining.

 The Girl From Rio (old).  Part James Bond, part Barbarella, minus Jane Fonda or Sean Connery, this bizarre spy story takes place in Rio circa 1968.  I found it alluring but kind of stupid, mostly feminine eye candy (some, but not much, nudity) and a view of Rio at that time.

 The Girl from Rio (new).  A completely different movie, featuring Hugh Laurie, the doctor from “House”.  He’s a hapless, bored banker in London whose wife is having an affair with his boss.  He dreams of leaving foggy, dull London in favor of sunny, hot Rio de Janeiro and its luscious Carnival festivities – and has one particular dancer in mind.  Having been dicked over by his wife and boss, and finding himself entrusted with the bank’s ample cash supply and no supervision over the Christmas holiday, he zips off to Rio, paying for a first class ticket (one way) in cash.  He even manages to find the woman, and all sorts of crazy misadventures ensue.  Excellent views of contemporary Rio de Janeiro and an equally engaging plot.

            I recall Eddie Murphy joking about Elvis’ movies: he couldn’t act, but the moviemakers thought, “hey, he’s Elvis.  Just let him sing the parts, and he’ll be OK.”  Similarly, the temptation is to bootstrap films set in Rio by featuring lots of dazzling footage of beaches, women, mountains…beaches again…etc. and not really bother with anything resembling a coherent or intelligent plot.  At least in this case, the story is pretty good – and Laurie makes a very sympathetic character.

 Bossa Nova.  Most of the actors and actresses in this film are Brazilian veterans of TV Globo’s novellas, with the exception of Amy Irving (Steven Spielberg’s ex-wife) who plays an American ex-flight attendant widow – her husband was a pilot who drowned one day.  She teaches English (yes, Brazilians go out of their way to learn English, unlike the amigos who live in our own country).  A corporate lawyer, Pedro Paulo (Antonio Fagundes), takes a liking to her, and they start a romance, despite her misgivings (having given up on romance and men for so many years after her husband’s death).  One of her students is a highly paid Flamengo player, Acacio (typical Brazilian football players with only one name) who is angling to be signed by an English Premier League team – he’s taking lessons to learn how to trash talk his English opponents.  He ends up in a romance with Pedro Paulo’s cute intern (Giovanna Antonelli).  Another of her students is a young Brazilian girl with an Internet boyfriend Gary.  Of course, it’s the movies, so NO ONE is how they claim to be.  Somewhat funny and endearing.

 The Man Who Copied.  This takes place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, source of Mrs Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, far, far south, almost in Argentina.  A humble “copy machine operator” (Lazaro Ramos, also in "Cidade de Deus" and "Man of the Year"), Andre, who lives with his mom and has an extremely modest income, falls in love with Silvia, a pretty white girl who lives across the street from him, and whose window he peeps into every night with binoculars.  Very much aware of how “little money” + “lame ass job” = NO woman, he tries to find a way to purchase a robe for his mother, from Silvia’s clothing store, and impress her that he isn’t completely worthless.  Along the way he forges counterfeit reais (Brazilian currency) using the sophisticated new color copier at his workplace, and finally conspires to rob the armored truck which services the bank across the street, only to find, to his horror, that the girl’s father is the security guard for the bank and recognizes him from the heist. It’s not really violent or funny, more like modestly charming.  And it turns out that people from Porto Alegre have an inferiority complex with regard to Rio de Janeiro, and want to move up there.  We’ll see about that (there IS a Rio de Janeiro ingredient to the story…).

 Traficantes/Crime.  Somewhere along the line, Brazilian filmmakers got the impression that foreigners associated Brazil with RIO DE JANEIRO and scantily clad women in dental floss bikinis, and Carnival.  But what about the plight of Rio’s poor, in the slums (favelas)?  What about the crime, drugs, and despair?  Aren’t we, as Brazilian filmmakers, doing the favelados cariocas a grave injustice by not showing their problems to the world?  Shouldn’t we be making violent, bloody, depressing films, something like what Quentin Tarantino would make if he was Brazilian?  So they came out with these films:

 Cidade de Deus (City of God).  This was so well esteemed it competed at our Oscars in four categories – none of which involved foreign films.  Alas, it won none of them.  But for a movie in Portuguese, that’s remarkable in itself.  The film follows two young black boys as they grow up in the slum called City of God, which had been set up in the 1960s to pull the poor people away from the city and give them a new place to live.  Eventually this new city devolved into slums anyway, and two separate gangs competed for dominance.  Even small children were drawn into, and recruited, by the drug lords.  One of the kids takes a liking to photography and manages to avoid taking sides – and earns the trust of both gangs.  The other one is ruthless and violent, and kills his way to the top of his gang. The film is VERY violent.

 Elite Squad.  This features Rio’s elite anti-drug squad, essentially a heavily armed SWAT team of “untouchables”.  Wagner Moura stars as one of the main SWAT team members. The regular police are grossly underpaid and undertrained, so they tend to be brutal and corrupt.  The story follows several characters and covers some students and drug dealers.  The most horrible part – barely watchable – is when the drug dealers kill an NGO (social worker) who had unwittingly invited a cop into the gangster’s inner circle: they stack him up in tires and douse him with gasoline, burning him alive. 

 Manda Bala (Send a Bullet).  This is a documentary on corruption and crime in Brazil, focusing on a network of illicit frog farms in the north of the country and an egregiously corrupt governor; and the scourge of kidnapping in São Paulo.  The kidnappers cut off their victims’ fingers and ears and send them to the families to encourage ransom.  Flush with their ill-gotten ransom cash, they frequently “share the wealth” with their fellow favelados, modern-day Robin Hoods stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.  There’s not much actual violence, but the segments about reconstructive surgery, to “rebuild” an ear for a rich girl who had hers cut off completely by a kidnapper, are somewhat gruesome.  It’s not a pretty story.

 Bus 174.  This is a documentary in Portuguese with English subtitles, regarding an incident which took place in Rio de Janeiro in June 2000, just two weeks before I arrived there on my first trip.  A homeless man, Sandro de Nascimento, hijacked a bus along the main street which goes past the Jardin Botanico.  All 7-8 passengers on the bus were women.  He held them hostage for several hours.  The bus was quickly surrounded not only by police and SWAT teams, but also TV news media.  They interview the women on the bus, Sandro’s aunt, his adopted mother, various street kids who knew him, various journalists, a drug dealer, and some cops. 

            Eventually Sandro got off the bus with one of the women, and a cop charged him, shooting at point blank range.  Not only did he miss Sandro, he HIT the hostage!  D’oh!  (Chief Wiggums in SWAT gear).  For his part, Sandro shot the woman 3 times, so she died practically on the spot.  Then the crowd, a mob, was about to lynch Sandro himself (no one was impressed that the police didn’t take him out with a sniper, as they had plenty of chances) so the police threw him into a van, and then strangled him in the back of the van.  A full, 100%, complete goatfuck by the police.  For their part, the police argued that they couldn’t take a shot at him, even with a sniper, because he was on TV and no one wanted the responsibility of killing the man on live TV.  And many of the commentators observed that the media made the situation much worse by giving Sandro an outlet and putting the police on the spot. 

            For his part, Sandro had been 8 years old when his mother was brutally murdered right in front of him.  He was homeless since then, a street kid who did cocaine and glue sniffing, and had been in and out of Rio’s corrupt and brutal jail system several times.  A few social workers commented on his particular case.  The bottom line is that blame appears to be spread equally to everyone.

            Remarkably, for a documentary on such a nasty and depressing topic, like “Elite Squad” and “Manda Bala”, this has lots of fantastic overhead helicopter footage of Rio de Janeiro, which makes the city look much nicer than it is on the streets.  I suppose they wanted to juxtapose Rio’s beauty with the hard reality of street kids and a fucked up criminal justice system.

 The Man of the Year.  No, not the Robin Williams film.  It takes place in Rio de Janeiro, but part of the city I’ve never seen and don’t recognize. Wagner Moura – AGAIN!  Man, this guy is in every film.  Some actor, Murilo Benicio – who looks like a cross between Ron “Office Space” Livingston and Colin Farrell – plays Maiquel, who recently dyed his hair blond and hooked up with the girl who took care of it.  He kills Suel (Moura), a local hoodlum, simply due to a disagreement: Suel accused him of being “viado” (queer) due to the blondness.  Then something strange happens: instead of getting in trouble, he’s a celebrity.  The cops not only don’t arrest him, they thank him.  The guy’s teenage jailbait chick moves in with him.  The local dentist fixes his teeth for free – and gives him more assignments.  He winds up in a corrupt “security agency” which is more like a fancy protection racket.  As always happens when the hero gets everything he wants but is somehow unhappy, it all falls apart.  His associate Marcão (played by Lazaro Ramos, from “Cidade de Deus” and “The Man Who Copied”) gets caught with a kilo of coke – too much for even the corrupt cop Santana to fix.  Eventually he has to solve things: and he does.

 Out in Nowhere.  Set aside from the RIO RIO RIO movies, and the BANG BANG movies, are a third genre which are more low-key, philosophical, sometimes a little racy, and set in far off, remote parts of Brazil.

 Bye Bye Brasil.  This is an older film, from the 70s, taking place in various parts of Rio: the Amazon jungle, Salvador, Recife, Belem (mouth of the Amazon), and Brasilia.  Jose Wilker and Fabio Junior star in this.  Wilker is a cynical, jaded, circus performer, calling himself Gypsy Lord (in goatee and guyliner) who tours small towns in the northeast of Brazil, including Recife and Salvador, as the “Caravana Holidei”, which includes his mistress Salome and a mute black giant, Swallow.  FJ and his pregnant wife Dasdo manage to hop onboard in Salvador and follow them to Recife and Belem.  Unfortunately they have to compete with the “fishbones” (TV antennas), though each town only has ONE TV and everyone watches it together in the town square instead of paying attention to Wilker and his troupe.  After unsuccessfully pimping out his wife – FJ ends up in bed with Salome, and Wilker (Gypsy Lord) with Dasdo – he decides to take Dasdo to Brasilia, parting ways, at least temporarily, with the Caravana Holidei. 

 Cidade Baixa.  More of an erotic low-key adventure film.  Two friends, white (Wagner Moura..again) and black, in Salvador, Bahia, are enthralled by the same girl, a blonde named Karina, and their friendship is warped and challenged by their competition for her affections.  This has a modest degree of violence and a better helping of nudity and sex.

 Station Central.  A more recent film, which starts off in Rio de Janeiro.  A young boy, living with his mother, sees her killed by a bus in front of him.  An older woman reluctantly takes care of him, only vaguely aware that the boy’s father lived up in the northeast.  Despite her cynicism, she takes pity over him and hitches rides up the coast to the dry deserts of Pernambuco and other such states (which remind me of Arizona).  Many of the small towns along the way resemble the ones in Bye Bye Brasil.  Eventually the boy does find his family – a very sad and rewarding scene. 

 Behind the Sun.  Same area (northeast desert) but back in 1910.  A family, the Breves, has a sugar cane farm – and a vendetta with a competing family, Ferreiras.  Their eldest son, Inacio, has been killed by the Ferreiras, so Tonio, the second oldest, kills the Ferreiras’ father.  This means their son, whats-his-name (played by Wagner Moura), will soon be coming to hunt down and kill Tonio.  In the meantime, a “circus” consisting of an eccentric scoundrel, Salustiana (no idea why the guy’s name ends in –a) and a beautiful girl, Clara, comes by; Tonio falls in love with Clara, and she with him.  However, Tonio is a marked man, so it’s only a matter of time before the Ferreiras come by to extract vengeance to keep the cycle of death and violence going so long as someone’s left to kill.

 House of Sand.  Basically a chick flick about a woman (Aurea) and her daughter (Maria) stuck in Maranhão, a province of Brazil in the far northeast on the coast with white desert sand.  The “kicker” is that the actresses switch roles.  When the daughter has her own daughter, the movie jumps about 20 years into the future (starting out in 1910, jumping to 1919, and eventually to 1940 and 1969, and the actress playing the mother, now plays the daughter, and the actress playing the daughter now plays the new daughter.  Anyhow.  Despite the switcheroo, it manages to avoid being confusing.  But it is a chick flick, and takes place 100% in this desolate but also beautiful part of Brazil.

 Mango Yellow.  This one takes place in the present time, in Recife.  It’s a bit offbeat and raunchy – some sex & nudity, plus some other disturbing images.  Various different colorful characters are here: Dunga, a flaming bicha, who has the hots for Wellington, a straight Romario-lookalike who works in the slaughterhouse and cheats on his attractive but superreligious wife Kika, with Daisy, a far less stunning but easy “puta”.  Isaac, another weirdo, has something for corpses (but he’s not a necrophiliac) for which he trades weed.  There’s an overweight woman, Aurora, who applies her oxygen mask to her second set of lips, and a pretty barmaid, who shows Isaac that (A) she doesn’t wear panties and (B) that her hair downstairs matches the set upstairs.  The locale is dingy, dirty, and rundown, but very bright and hot anyway. 

 The Middle of the World (DVD).  Nosso amigo, Wagner Moura, returns again – as the father of a family traveling from the northeast to Rio de Janeiro by bicycle.  They have to make money various ways – the mother makes hammocks in one city, she sings Roberto Carlos songs with one son, but more often than not they go hungry.  The father insists he needs R$1000 ($300 US) per month, but can’t seem to find anyone offering that kind of money.  Eventually they do make it to Rio; it’s a bit Kerouac-ish in a way, but with excellent views of northeast Brazil. 

God is Brazilian.  Antonio Fagundes (from “Bossa Nova” and countless novellas) plays God, who is tired and looking for a vacation so he can go off to remote parts of the universe and watch supernovas explode.  But he needs a saint to run things in his absence, and has one in mind.  Along the way tags Taoca (yes, Wagner Moura again), a ne’er-do-well trying to escape a particularly nasty creditor, and a girl Mada (somewhat of a provocative yet Virgin Mary figure) who helps them out.  They travel around the northeast of Brazil (it looks like the desert, Sergipe and Natal) discussing theology and ending up in various humorous situations.  In many ways, it’s a Brazilian version of “Oh God!”, that irreverent comedy from way back with George Burns and John Denver.  Leave it to Brazilians to be both deeply religious and irreverent at the same time.

New Jersey

[Originally written in 2009.  Updated in 2021.]

Prior to graduating from college in 1990, I had no experience with New Jersey.  We had been to New York City a few times, Long Island a few times, and upstate New York a few times, but New Jersey was simply a transit area between the Washington DC area and New York.  When my friend Ken moved to New Jersey to study for his masters in psychology at Montclair State University, living in Bloomfield (Exit 148 from the Garden State Parkway), I visited him several times.  This gave me most of my experience in New Jersey.

From 2009 to 2018 I was going up to New Jersey fairly regularly, to Fort Lee, which is on the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge.  These adventures put me in Edgewater fairly often, Hackensack (county seat for Bergen County), and Paramus with its Garden State Plaza.  Fort Lee is also next to Palisades Park, where my buddy Ken, Dave, and I saw Blue Oyster Cult in 1992 at the Soap Factory, a club that isn't there anymore.  

I started by driving up the Turnpike, then started taking Chinatown buses, private buses which left DC near Bethesda and dropped off across from Madison Square Garden, with the 158 bus from Port Authority taking me through Edgewater to Fort Lee.  Then towards the end of that chapter, I was driving again, this time avoiding tolls by driving due north from Baltimore up to York, PA, then over northeast to Lancaster, Reading, Allentown, then on I-78 over into NJ, 287 north, then I-80 east to 95 and 46, a five hour drive from Northern Virginia to Fort Lee.    

 

Bloomfield.  Bloomfield is fairly run down, with old houses, and no less than 3 strip clubs.  It’s fairly close to New York City and Newark. Close by are Newark, Lyndhurst, and Giants Stadium (in East Rutherford).  Newark has a high population of Brazilians.

 NYC.  Forget driving in Manhattan – that’s for fools and masochists.  What we did was drive to Hoboken (where the Hindenburg crew lived in the 30’s, as the Nazis didn’t trust non-Germans to service the zeppelin) and park there, taking the PATH train into the city, specifically Greenwich Village.  Near Fort Lee there is a shuttle which takes you into Manhattan at 175^th Street.  For much of northern Jersey, the NYC skyline is visible, especially the Empire State Building (now that that World Trade Center is gone).

 Mid-Jersey.  This part includes Trenton, Princeton, and Hillsborough.  On the more recent trips to visit Ken, I visited him here.  The voyage from my area completely avoided the New Jersey Turnpike, instead driving up 95 past Philadelphia and crossing over into New Jersey somewhere close to Trenton, and driving through Princeton.  My friend Jim was married in Princeton (his wife was from there, though she went to Cornell) in 1995.  Since northern New Jersey is pretty much a suburb of New York City, and southern New Jersey is very much a suburb of Philadelphia (particularly Camden and Cherry Hill), central Jersey is really the only part of Jersey that is more or less an independent suburban area in its own right.  Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, could be considered in this area.  I ended up visiting its main campus in New Brunswick fairly often for a four year period, though not as a student.  

 “Mentertainment.”  New Jersey has an impressive array of strip clubs.  The law says that if the venue serves its own alcohol, the girls have to wear bikinis; one specific club, Frank’s Chicken House, had no alcohol on the premises – just soda and greasy chicken – and completely nude dancers, many of whom were porn stars.  The state has a guide to the clubs, called the “Mentertainment Guide”, which I joked was the “New Jersey Tourism Guide”.  I suggested to Ken (over 10 years ago) that we hit every strip club in the state, to which he reacted in horror: in his county, Essex (when he lived in Bloomfield) alone there must have been 10-15 clubs, and 3 in Bloomfield alone.  As mentioned in my magazines blog, NJ’s convenience stores can be trusted to offer a wide array of porn mags in plain view.  Definitely convenient!

 Jersey Shore.  This starts at Sandy Hook in the far northeast, and runs down the coast to Wildwood.  Asbury Park and the boardwalk are included in this area.  My experience with this is very limited (Sandy Hook and Atlantic City), but to me beaches are pretty much the same everywhere except the south of France or Rio de Janeiro. 

 Atlantic City.  Along the boardwalk and shore, on the southern end.  Remarkably, there is no direct connection between the Atlantic City Expressway and the New Jersey Turnpike: you have to drive through Camden (or is it Runnymeade?) to get to the Expressway.  AC is very much like Las Vegas, but with a beach & boardwalk and nasty weather in the winter.  To my experience, though, the only thing to do in Atlantic City is gamble, whereas Vegas is far more versatile.  On the other hand, if you’re in my area (DC/Baltimore), AC is only 2-3 hours by car, compared to a plane trip for Vegas.  The Viets love to gamble, and love Atlantic City.  And of course, Monopoly was originally designed here: is there an Atlantic City variant of Monopoly?  Go figure.

 Roads.  Aside from the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, the roads in Jersey are… unique.  There are a confusing array of state, local, and municipal roads, and the exits are poorly marked: typically they’re posted 5 feet ahead of the exit itself, so that by the time you see it, you’ve already passed it.  Then you have to turn around at a jughandle – because of the concrete barriers running across the median – and go back again.  It really seems that the roads are set up for the benefit of people who live there, at the expense of anyone else: if you can’t figure it out, tough shit, that’s your problem. 

 New Jersey Turnpike.  This opened in the 1950s and serves as a high-speed conduit for traffic coming from Delaware over the Memorial Bridge, all the way to New York City (Final Exit 18 & the George Washington Bridge).  Oddly, it does not hook up with the New York State Thruway.  Most of the traffic on the Turnpike seems to be out-of-state.  There are various service areas which – until recently – had Roy Rogers restaurants, at a time when McDonald’s had bought out and closed most of the ones down here.  There are 18 exits, but they are not evenly spaced apart: the southernmost exits are far apart and then they get closer and closer in as you get closer to Newark and NYC.  The Turnpike also divides into cars-only lanes and truck lanes, changes from being surrounded by forests down south to surrounded by chemical plants further north.

 Garden State Parkway.  This serves as the primary conduit of traffic within the state itself, and most cars on the GSP seem to have NJ tags.  There seems to be a toll plaza every 10 exits or so.  NJ natives tend to orient themselves by GSP exit numbers, though I recall when visiting Hillsborough that the GSP was rarely part of our travel plans – in that part of the state it runs far to the east, near the shore.

The two cross in upper-middle New Jersey, exit 11 on the Turnpike, exit 129 on the Garden State Parkway.  South of the interchange, the Turnpike winds through the middle of nowhere, and the GSP goes east over to the Jersey Shore.  North of the interchange, the GSP goes up in the middle of highly populated areas, and the Turnpike goes up parallel to the river, with exits for the Outerbridge Crossing and Goethals Bridge (to Staten Island), the Holland Tunnel (to downtown Manhattan), the Lincoln Tunnel (to midtown Manhattan), and finally ends at the GW Bridge.  

 Celebrities.  Bon Jovi are not only from New Jersey, they named an album after the state.  Bruce Springsteen makes much of his Asbury Park origins.  Danny DeVito grew up there; and Joe Piscopo was very much in-your-face about his home state.  Frank Sinatra is from Hoboken.  Kevin Smith is from Red Bank, and sets most of his movies there.  Zakk Wylde (Ozzy’s guitarist), the Misfits (who we saw at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park) and Glenn Danzig are from Jersey.  The Seton Hall University radio station, WSOU (89.5) played an impressive array of metal and obscure rock (e.g. “Sabbra Cadabra” and “Megalomania” by Black Sabbath).  What all these celebrities seem to share is a consensus that “New Jersey is f**ked up, but it’s our home and we’re proud of it.” 

Vs. NYC.  My father's side of the family is from Brooklyn, and many of my relatives have that distinctive accent - though for some reason my father didn't.  It seems New Yorkers look down on those from New Jersey, bragging that "we're better than them,"  as if everyone from New Jersey - at least the northern half - is trying to bask in the glow, glory and notoriety properly the exclusive domain of true New Yorkers.   But once you leave that area, the rest of the country makes little or no distinction between Jersey and NYC.  To everyone else, everyone from that area has an attitude problem.  

Magazines

As anyone who knows me well knows, I read a lot of books.  But I also read magazines – of various types.

 Cars.  Since I’m into cars, I’m obviously into car magazines.

 High Performance Pontiac (HPP)(subscription).  By far my favorite.  There is a snobbery in the Pontiac community against ’82 and later Firebirds, because they came from the factory with small block Chevy V8s, instead of the Pontiac V8s the 1955-1981 models had.  HPP does not share this – they will discuss TPI (tuned-port injected) Formulas, LT1 Trans Ams, Bonneville SSEIs, or ’04-’06 GTOs, in addition to the articles on tuning the Quadrajet in your older Firebird, Trans Am or GTO.  A given issue might have features on a ’66 GTO, a ’74 Trans Am, an ‘88 Formula 350, and a ’02 Trans Am all in the same month.

            Another funny thing: unlike Hot Rod and Car Craft, which are based in L.A., and have a “sunny, surfer” attitude, HPP is based in the NY/NJ area, so they have this “forgettaboutit” Sopranos style – and can relate to cars rusting and snow in the winter. 

 GM High Tech Performance.  This focuses on late model EFI (electronic fuel injection) cars – ’82- later Camaros and Firebirds, the occasional Buick Grand National, ’94-96 Impala SS, Bonneville SSEI and newer Grand Prixs, and Corvettes.  Many of the articles are on tuning with laptops, replacing injectors, passing emissions, fixing trouble codes, which us late model guys have to deal with instead of pesky Holleys and Quadrajets.  It seems to be written by many of the same guys who do HPP, so often times there is an overlap.

 Hot Rod.  This is the premier high performance magazine, and I used to subscribe, but after a point it became tiresome.  Much of the features were on fancy, overdone ’69 Camaros with interior work which cost more than some entire new cars, shaved door handles, no A/C, etc.  The tech articles usually featured grotesquely expensive crate engines no one short of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or Ross Perot could afford.  And with any performance upgrade, the modifications were simple and easy to install, and did exactly what the aftermarket company promised – completely at odds with the reality as us car crafters know it from real life.  The magazine is essentially targeted at gearheads with unlimited budgets – or those hoping to be someday.  ZZZ.

Car Craft (subscription).  Car Craft used to be almost identical to Hot Rod, to the point where I couldn’t remember whether an article I’d read came from one or the other.  Then some time in the late 90s, David Freiburger took over, and completely changed the slant.  Instead of $15,000 crate engine reviews, it was now “how to get 400 HP from a junkyard 350” and a fantastic article on how they got a ’68 Plymouth Satellite they’d bought for $200 to drop 6 seconds in the quarter mile without spending any money at all – ok, they fudged a little, spending $10 at the hardware store for dryer duct (!!!) to make a crude, home-made cool air system.  In other words, Car Craft had turned into a magazine for the REST OF US.  Since then, it’s reverted back to something in between.  Every now and then they’ll do a piece on third generation F-bodies (’82-92 Firebirds and Camaros), which keeps me happy.  In fact, they’d feature so many Camaros that some readers accused the magazine of being “Camaro Craft”.  I actually had two items published: one a tech question on carbs vs. fuel injection in a 1998 issue, and the other was a humorous “bite”: “Pontiac DID invent everything!” 

 News.  I tend to get my news by osmosis: off the radio, TV, newspaper, the Internet, etc. passively without any conscious effort at seeking it out.

 The Economist.  I like this English news magazine, published weekly.   I even used to subscribe to it, but I found that it was too much information; I couldn’t consistently read each issue before the next one arrived, so I’d accumulate a stack of them.  Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report have a very narrow view: if the US isn’t bombing the country, it’s nonexistent as far as those three are concerned.  The Economist brings us news about Brazil, Cambodia, and lots of other countries which are off the US news radar for whatever reason.  The writing is very good, and even the captions for photos are clever and tongue-in-cheek.  I’d classify the politics as centrist, with a very slight pro-capitalist bend.

            As for Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report, I’ll buy them when they have a particular cover story I’m interested in, but that’s fairly rare.  If anyone had the idea that Americans are insular and provincial, these magazines would be potent support for that view.

 Music.  Of course I’m heavily into music, so of course I’ll read music magazines.

 Classic Rock.  This is by far my favorite.  It’s an English magazine.  They’ve heard of bands like Hawkwind and Opeth, and aren’t afraid to cover them, though for some reason they’re fixated on Axl Rose and Guns N’Roses – to the point where someone complained it should be called “Velvet Guns Monthly”.  They have a “Buyer’s Guide”, reviews of new albums and reissues, and tons of great stuff each time.  It’s reached the point where every issue induces me to make 3-4 purchases, the majority of which I’m highly satisfied with.  I’d subscribe, but the subscriptions are horrendously expensive: $100-124 for a year.

 Kerrang!  This used to be the premier heavy metal magazine, but they used all sorts of horrible typefaces and offset colors.  Moreover, the writers were REALLY full of themselves.  One, Mark Putterford, spent several paragraphs of a piece on Zeno Roth (Uli Roth’s brother) going on about how he had this huge responsibility, which he took extremely seriously, to be generous to new rock stars otherwise the readers would turn off on a bad review by yours truly and the poor would-be rock star would then be condemned to oblivion.  On the other hand, they turned me on to Faith No More back in 1989.

 I really don’t like Rolling Stone.  Occasionally I’ll buy an issue if they have a cover story on AC/DC or Metallica, but my experience and impression has been that like MTV, Rolling Stone considers itself not merely a magazine about rock music but more of an overall arbiter of all things cool: what we should wear, listen to, read, watch, and even think.  It doesn’t help that when it comes to bands I like the most, Rolling Stone either at best ignores them or at worst tends to bust on them.  Whoever runs it really is not someone I’d hang out with.

 Cream was a bit the same, but I haven’t seen them around recently.  I used to pick this one up at the Stars & Stripes (PX bookstore).  Like Rolling Stone, they’d tend to bust on the bands I liked the most.  One writer referred to “the two black-haired goons who used to flank Ozzy in Black Sabbath” [Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler] not even knowing their names.  What a load of crap.

 Hit Parader and Circus I was never into that much.  Both seemed a bit too enthralled with mainstream metal and hair metal – as if they were written FOR and BY metal Neanderthals only mere IQ points above Beavis & Butt-head.  Revolver seems like a more recent version of these.  I couldn’t get into Alternative Press.

 Guitar World.  I used to subscribe to this.  It had tablature and usually focused on metal guitarists.  Most of the columns are by thrash metal guitarists – Dimebag Darrell once had a column, as did Zakk Wylde. I still buy it periodically when there’s a cover story or a song I’m interested in.  Sheet music is not specifically designed for guitars and does not translate directly to guitar, you have to be able to “read it”, which is fairly esoteric and far less practical than tablature.  Tablature is far more direct and straightforward: it has 6 lines, corresponding to the 6 strings, and fret positions for notes and chords.    

Guitar (For the Practicing Musician).  This doesn’t seem to be around anymore, but we used to buy it when it was.  This was the first magazine that had tablature in it, and I still have dozens of issues. They also had a few special editions and a few acoustic editions.  Its format and typeface were more conservative and less metal-oriented than Guitar World.

 Guitar (just plain “Guitar”).  This was the most conservative, oldest, and least interesting, mainly because it had no tablature.

 Politics.

Reason.  This is essentially the Libertarian opinion magazine.  I never read New Republic (slightly liberal) or National Review (slightly conservative) – and because they are both “N.R.” I get them confused anyway.  If I had to pick one where I find myself saying, “amen, hallelujah” (preaching to the choir) it’s this one.  Peter Bagge used to do cartoons for them, too bad he’s not active anymore, now that I finally have a subscription.

While not as flippant and casual as the Economist is sometimes, it’s certainly readable without seemingly like a textbook or manual – enjoyable to read.  Then again, that may be because I tend to agree with it 95% of the time.

 The Nation.  On the leftist side, here’s the voice of socialism.  Christopher Hitchens used to write for The Nation, until the Iraq War came by and he refused to apologize for Saddam Hussein simply to oppose the war.  My friend gets this as a gift subscription from an old friend of hers, whether she likes it or not, as do her daughters from the same benefactor – and none of these three ladies have any use for it.  I read it occasionally to see the other side’s arguments, but it’s difficult to digest, not only because I tend to disagree with it 95% of the time, but also the writing is terribly dense and affected.  Even the “social” parts (arts, books, movies, and music) are horrendously pretentious and verbose.  No one who writes for The Nation seems to have a sense of humor, and they all share the annoying intellectual snobbery that socialists (including Hitchens) seem to have.

 Men’s Magazines.   I’m a guy, so I like to see naked women – in various different contexts.   Back in the old days (which for me means, the 1970s), many of the lower end stores, like Dart Drug, used to have ALL of these out on racks in the middle of the store.  Not behind the counter, not in plastic wrap or brown wrappers, nothing.  Talk about a trip!  Now we have to go to New Jersey, where it seems every convenience store has an astonishing selection of the nastiest, skankiest magazines you could possibly imagine ever existed.  In my neck of the woods, even in liberal Maryland, this is unheard of.  Anyhow.

 Playboy.  Supposedly the classiest, but we still get full frontal nudity.  I can’t recall the last article or interview I read.  The cartoons are a hoot, though.  The women can be counted on to be stunning but often classy as well.  I suppose you could consider it upscale, respectable porn, even if it is a bit dull sometimes. If a mainstream celebrity (e.g. Victoria Principal or Kim Kardashian) wanted to pose nude, she’d do so “tastefully” in Playboy.  Each issue would have an initial pictorial (usually the celebrity one), then the famous centerfold – 80% white, 20% black or Asian – and finally a second pictorial, which was frequently one of these “Girls of the [College Division]” things.  The second pictorial could be counted on for some full frontal nudity.  Unfortunately there would be a “guide to sex in films” which I found less satisfying as a pictorial, per se, but sometimes informative as to certain of the more racier films – these were artsy R rated films and not run-of-the-mill porn.

There was also a so-called Playboy Advisor, to which various dolts and idiots addressed their concerns.  They would alternate from sexual questions to “how do I set up my hi-fi” or “what Porsche model should I buy?”  I found the former to be more pertinent, and the latter would be better served had they been addressed to the magazines which specialize in those areas, NOT Playboy.

 Penthouse.  Ramping up the raunch yet still pretentious in terms of “articles”.  The women are somewhat hotter than Playboy and pose in far more provocative ways, definitely designed to appeal to prurient interests with a minimum pretention of class.  The women look like porn stars or strippers who work on the high end – pretentious porn movies or expensive strip clubs.  It’s debatable whether PH managed to reconcile the two.  PH would have 4 pictorials, and one would frequently be lesbian or guy & girl sex, considerably raunchier than Playboy but still with excellent photography for some pretense of artsiness and “class”.  The Forum featured various erotic stories of dubious plausibility – well written and very imaginative and entertaining, to be sure, but not representative of the social life of anyone we knew personally or even remotely. 

 Hustler.  Ok, this magazine has no illusions of class whatsoever.  The cartoons are gross.  The models are attractive but skanky, and it’s hard to enjoy it without feeling nasty.  The models look like low-grade porn stars. I never liked it.

 Mayfair.  This is more like it.  The girls here are natural, busty, and almost (but not quite) “girl next door”, if by next door you mean some town in England.  They struck me as “approachable” (unlike the perfect goddesses in Playboy or L.A./Las Vegas porn stars of Penthouse or Hustler) and normal, but very attractive and very friendly.

The Vladimir Ilyich Code

Recently I caught “The Da Vinci Code” on DVD at last, followed up immediately by seeing “Angels & Demons” in the movie theater.  Having seen “National Treasure” (both of them) earlier, the similarities were striking.  I suppose you could call “The Da Vinci Code” the Catholic version of “National Treasure”, or “National Treasure” the American version of “The Da Vinci Code”.

 Maybe expand the franchise to include a communist version, the “Vladimir Ilyich Code”.  Putin has been murdered, and to solve the crime, the Moscow Militia calls in veteran Kremlinologist – but non-communist – Richard London.  If anyone can get to the bottom of this crime, it’s him!  No one knows more obscure communist mythology, trivia, and minutiae than this man – even veteran Politburo members can’t remember half the stuff this man has forgotten!  Plied with vintage Stolichnaya and some rare Lenin pamphlets, he agrees to take the case.

 He starts in Moscow, but wait – he has to borrow Lenin’s embalmed body to find a crucial clue…

 Which leads him to St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, where some Rasputin-oriented clue leads him to….

 Sverdlovsk, formerly Ekaterinburg, where the Romanovs were murdered by Ermakov and his henchmen, which leads him to…

 London!  To Karl Marx’s grave, and the tombstone provides the obscure and counterintuitive hint to another clue in…

 Beijing!  It turns out something to do with Chairman Mao – oops, can we borrow his embalmed corpse for a bit? – will lead us closer to the answer, in…

 Hanoi! Something Ho Chi Minh wrote way back when, before he died in 1969, will tell us to go to…

 Paris!  Where he helped form the French Communist Party in 1920, but wait, his clue leads us back to….

 Moscow!  And the killer is….