Short, Grey & Angry In Israel

Twitter’s an interesting little bird. Who knew there was such a large market for yet another social networking system, let alone one that is nothing more or less than a slightly more advanced version of Facebook’s status updater. It’s been an interesting neo-anthropologic lesson of sorts for me. I personally don’t feel the need to turn my life into an online reality show for the world to watch, but I do find it useful; It seems that while two or three artists / persons of note have active blogs through which they can communicate directly with fans, the rest of them only have time for a sentence or two at a time. So those folks (again, everyone else) are using Twitter to alert followers the very second that something interesting happens or is scheduled to happen.

…And occasionally to remind us about something that happend a long time ago. Such was the case when @NotHenryRollins twittered (tweeted?) a link to some clips from his 2007 Uncut From Israel IFC special yesterday, currently out on DVD.

I’m a huge fan of Henry Rollins. Not his music so much as his spoken word CDs & DVDs, and his show on IFC. I’ve got 36 hours of him talking in my iTunes (all of which I’ve listened to intently), and I’ve read several of his books. The day I moved to California, I flew into LAX just so I could see him speak at the Henry Fonda Theater that night, before heading south to Johnny’s couch in San Diego. Still, I haven’t seen every episode of the show, and I think I’ve fallen behind on the DVDs a bit. So I’m not sure when Uncut From Israel hit shelves, but if it’s new to me, then chances are it’s new to you too. As may be Henry’s speaking.

In my opinion, the spoken word portion of Uncut From Israel isn’t among Rollins’ best material. He talks about how the Middle East Crises could be sorted out with a couple of planes full of Ramones CDs, gets his digs in on Bush, and closes with a touching plea for the type of anger required to solve problems once and for all. It may be earth-shaking to the uninitiated, but my bar has been set rather high. On the other hand, the in-between segments, in which photojournalist Ziv Koren is guiding Henry through the Holy Land are intensely captivating. Koren is an amazing guy.

After checking out the clips on the IFC site I found myself on a trip down Rollins’ memory lane. I scoured YouTube for classic bits of his older material to tease you with, and wound up near tears not just once while watching the closing monologue from the Israel DVD, but also while watching an old seventeen-minute monologue I hadn’t seen before, where Rollins tells one of his most shocking stories, in detail, from start to finish: In 1991, his best friend Joe Cole was shot and killed in a robbery in the house the two shared.

In the end, I decided to start you off light with a mostly funny track from Rollins’ 2000 CD A Rollins In The Wry, recorded the evening after the Columbine High School killings. It’s called Future Parents:

If it draws you in, there are a few stories of Henry’s that I say without exaggeration changed my life. Or at least my perspective on it. If you can find them, I strongly recommend:

• Decoration & Donate Your Bodies To Science, You Fools! from Human Butt
• Strength Pt. 1 from The Boxed Life
• Boy On The Train from Big Ugly Mouth
• Marius from Think Tank
• The epic Eric The Pilot saga
• The bigger than epic Get In The Van Black Flag memoirs book / CD