But recently, as most TV junkies already know, a massive stick has been thrown into one of the most important, and overlooked, cogs in this machine. The Writers Guild of America has been on strike for over two months now, over writers’ shares of profits from Internet materials. Already we have seen the effects. The late night talk shows have only just gone back on the air, many without writers. Many shows, such as “Saturday Night Live,” have gone off the air indefinitely. With no writers writing, we have been experiencing a desolate wasteland of reruns and reality TV — even more so than before. I don’t even want to think of the worst-case scenario: no more movies. Although I have been enjoying the fact that the awards season has been effectively ruined by the strike. The less we have to witness Hollywood’s decadent, gross self-appreciation, the better off we are.

So the machine’s broken. Can it be fixed? Sure, it can. Executives for huge Hollywood production companies like Universal, Disney and all the others make more than enough money. Celebrities like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie make more than enough money. The writers, whose words fuel the production companies and are acted out by the celebrities, deserve far more money, attention and recognition than they currently receive for being the backbone of the industry. Maybe this strike will be a wake-up call to the bloated, exploitative fat cats in Hollywood, who ride on the work of people who are far more talented than they are.

But maybe this strike can be a wake-up call to the writers, and to the rest of us, as well. The Hollywood machine is self-perpetuating; it only works when everybody is doing their jobs, and will only continue to work so long as everybody continues to do their jobs within this system. But who, besides the production company executives, really needs this system? Whatever happened to people making movies or TV shows, writing or acting or directing or rigging lighting because that’s what they love doing?

Some of the best films made recently have been independent films, such as “Little Miss Sunshine,” or looking back further, “Clerks.” Indie films are made outside of the constraints of Hollywood, and seem closer to art than anything Hollywood churns out today. Maybe indie is the way to go. A similar phenomenon has been occurring recently in the music industry. With the advent of relatively inexpensive computer and digital technology that allows any musician or band to make studio quality recordings from home, and with independent labels popping up left and right, the music industry has been running to catch up and save itself. Many of the same technologies can be applied to movie- and TV show-making.

Hollywood’s writers have woken up, and they are pissed. And they have every right to be. And now that the entertainment industry has seen their power, maybe the writers will find a way to use that power to turn the industry on its proverbial head. I may sound naive, but hey, geeks can dream.

Thoughts, anyone?

Arlo Guthrie is no slouch, either, when it comes to songs of social and political protest. His career was basically launched with "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," an 18-minute long talking blues about escaping the Vietnam War draft in the 1960s.

So it comes as no surprise that Arlo Guthrie, when interviewed by myself, Bob Stannard and the staff of WBTN AM last Monday, had something to say about the present war in Iraq. Actually, he had quite a lot to say. What follows is an excerpt from our interview dealing with the War in Iraq, which aired on WBTN last week.

Arlo Guthrie plays his first show ever in Bennington on Sunday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. at the Mount Anthony Union High School. And if my past experience at an Arlo Guthrie concert is any indication, he will most certainly have a whole lot MORE to say when he performs.

See you at the show!

"That war in Vietnam was building for a long time, and it took many years for the anti-war movement to get going. And it really didn’t do much, until the vets came back from Vietnam themselves, and got up on those stages, and those platforms, and at those rallies, and said, ‘Here’s what’s going on, and here’s why we think it’s dumb.’ And when they started speaking out, that put an end to all the arguments about, ‘Oh, it’s just a bunch of hippies,’ or, ‘It’s just a bunch of old commies,’ or, ‘It’s just a bunch of these guys or just a bunch of those guys.’ When the vets came back themselves, and stood up and said, ‘This sucks,’ it ended all arguments.

"And we’re seeing that now. It didn’t take — I mean, we’ve been involved here now, what, four or five years. That’s nothing compared — that’s half the time that it took us 40 years ago to make room for these guys who had the experience, who had the knowledge, whose patriotism could not be questioned, whose service to the country was obvious. And now that we’re hearing from these guys, this situation’s not going to last very much longer, I hope.

"I think we’re beginning to realize now that the administration’s policy has been oil all along. That’s what it’s always been. It’s not any of these, building democracy stuff, it’s not any of these finding the weapons, it ain’t looking for this guy or that guy, it ain’t hunting down terrorists, or nothing like that. This is about oil.

"And when it first began, I didn’t want to believe that. I really thought, no, it’s gotta be something else, it’s gotta be more than that. And sure enough, it turns out that most people don’t really feel comfortable saying it, because it’s not politically correct quite yet. This whole thing’s been about oil, and I don’t know how many more Americans ought to be putting themselves in harm’s way for oil. That’s just dumb.

"So, I hope we’ll see an end to it soon, I hope the catastrophic results of us getting out of there are not the ones they’ve been predicting. I don’t think they will be, I think that’s just a bunch of B.S. I’d love to see people solve their own problems. That’s kind of like saying, if somebody came into this country and started telling us what to do, that if they left, it would be worse. But the truth is, we left out of Vietnam, and now we’re friends with them. And we lost over there. I think the best thing we could do is to lose over here, and become friends with them. Give them 10 years, they’ll be our buddies. That’s what we want ... All we have to do is lose and get out of there early, and in 10 years they’ll all be buddies.

"The same thing is true, by the way, of Iran. They got tens and thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people in Iran who don’t like what’s going on over there, just the same way as there are tens and thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of young people in Iraq who don’t like what’s going on over there. They will solve their own problems the sooner we get out of the way and let them do it.

"What we should be doing is being the country that is the inspiration for all of these people around the world who want to just get along with each other, have the commerce that we’re talking about, have the dialogues with other people, and if they want to live their own way, talk their own language, do their own religious thing, that’s great. That’s what we’re all about. So I have great hopes that it will work out fine. I don’t care who gets the blame or the credit, it’s not about that, and it’s not politics."

Then there are people like Terry Dame and the rest of Electric Junkyard Gamelan, who take this experimentation with “found sound” instruments to the next level.

On Friday, Aug. 17, the Electric Junkyard Gamelan’s performance at Sage Street Mill at the Vermont Arts Exchange proved that all you really need to rock are a few clay and metal pots, bits of old furniture, wire and some rubber bands stretched over a wooden frame.

The aforementioned electric rubber band harp, or “Rubarp,” stole the show early on in the band’s opening number, “Drum and Barp.” “You’ve been barped now,” said Dame after the song was performed.

The Rubarp and its larger cousin, the appropriately named “Big Barp,” were the envy of anyone who has ever tried to create an instrument out of rubber bands (yours truly being among this group). The instruments, played with thin wooden sticks, created a surprisingly loud sound somewhere between a marimba and a xylophone. Throughout the performance the Rubarp and Big Barp provided the melodic backbone to the band’s pummeling, percussive assault.

The majority of the instruments on stage were invented by Dame using found objects, and included percussion instruments, stringed instruments and a woodwind instrument called the “Terraphone.” Dame and band members Julian Hintz, Mary Feaster, Lee Frisari and Robin Burdulis switched from instrument to instrument throughout the performance, sometimes doing so in mid-song.

Dame studied Balinese Gamelan music at the California Institute of the Arts as a composition and performance major. As Dame explained to the audience, Gamelan is a type of traditional music from Indonesia, involving metallophones, stringed instruments and bamboo flutes. This initial exposure influenced Dame to form Electric Junkyard Gamelan in 1998.

But Gamelan-influenced music is only the tip of the band’s musical iceberg. Compositions performed at Friday evening’s concert ranged from spaced-out progressive music (“Life on Mars”), to rollicking rhythms straight out of a Tom Waits song (“Big Barp”), to a combination of hip-hop and traditional Gamelan chanting (“Hipcak”) that had the audience clapping and grooving along. These varied sounds are due in no small part to the wide range of musical backgrounds within the group.

“[The band members] are all classically trained, they’re an amazing group of musicians,” said Dame after the performance. “[Hintz] has his own project, called Squeeze Rock, and Lee is a rock ‘n’ roll and punk drummer.”
Dame has been playing music since she was a child, having been influenced by her parents, who also played. “I grew up playing piano and trumpet, and started playing the saxophone when I was 26,” she said.

Dame first began building instruments in graduate school, as part of a thesis paper entitled “Woman’s Work,” in which she created music using objects found within “the traditional domains of women’s environments,” including office and kitchen supplies. Her first instrument was actually the Rubarp.

“After I graduated I moved to New York, and gathered mostly found objects,” said Dame. “One thing led to another, and I started making more.”

Dame uses two different approaches to writing Electric Junkyard Gamelan’s compositions. “Sometimes I’ll have a composition or a sound in mind, and I’ll create an instrument that makes that sound, and sometimes I’ll create the object first,” said Dame. “At first [the group] was very improvisational, then it was super-composed. Now we combine the two approaches.”

Electric Junkyard Gamelan has released two albums, their 2002 self-titled debut, and most recently their 2007 live album, “Live from HERE.” The band plans to just continue touring for a while.

“We have no plans for new instruments, we’re mostly focusing on touring, just spreading the web a little further,” said Dame. “I think we’re going to do our first cover soon, the ‘Fat Albert’ theme song.”

But first of all, maybe I had better explain the title of this blog. Or rather, thank the surviving members of Monty Python for the title of this blog. "Life of Brian" was the second of Monty Python's three full-length movies, and in my opinion quite possibly the best. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. If you have seen it, let me just say that the title of this blog does not mean that I am comparing myself to Brian of Nazareth in any way, shape or form, nor insinuating that anything I have done with my life is similar to the great deeds that Brian does throughout the film. In other words, it's just a really bad pun.

On a more serious note, this blog will give you, the readers, a chance to talk directly to me. So comment away. Let me know what I'm missing in Arts Weekend that you think should be covered, or fire away with any other suggestions you might have for me.