Spook Country (NP) just putting a few facts together for fun

[Michael Bailey]

good book.  lot of fun.  more of many of his themes:
the sensitive lady researcher, wealth versus the street,
the voudoun pantheon (though now I'm missing the "poignant
tableaux" art theme of some of the other books)
and, in a development similar to _Pattern Recognition_,
(though, I think, new to Gibson's fiction before that): interesting
vectors emanating from the precincts where World
Communism was a strong meme.

gibson blog most recent entry on
Nov 27 about some "serious systema" --
http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp
gives a cool link to a Youtube video with amazing
(what he calls) "systema" (a practice which figures in the book)

checking for the rest of the story, I learned that apparently
the Dvinsk clan whose video it is, is practicing a combination of
Parkour and freerunning -- please, don't try those
particular moves @ home without a lot of practice* and a spotter,
I wouldn't think...***...though they are inspiring to watch
jumping from building to building, doing backflips and
so forth!

Parkour is resolutely non-competitive
(or at least there's a faction that is:
http://parkour.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=9539)
so that's cool...for those of us who like to
exalt the co-operative spirit (and avoid its opposite),
now there's a fairly extreme sport AND the gnu software
with that philosophy

(what does that have to do with Gibson --
well, the way I read his books it feels like
he is crafting a consensus wherein natural
class antagonism is quelled by the possibilities
of family loyalty, (or in some cases, isn't...)
and various power struggles among the elite
are resolved elegantly, with the oft-invoked, (& oft found wanting)
co-operative spirit being a big part of it --
at one point in SC, Marx and Lenin are soberly
equated with Jesus and God by a Marxist
Santerian (of course) and I don't go along with the
notion that Gibson just does this dystopian-ly to
point to failed philosophies, but to emphasize a
spirit common to capitalism and communism at their best)

Parkour is featured in the latest remake of
Casino Royale, which I didn't go see because
I heard he doesn't care whether his martinis are
shaken or stirred - when everyone ought to know
that the shaking activates the antioxidants in the drink

_Spook Country_ also made the Guerreros into vivid characters
for me, and reified, or further ramified or refined, the
frisson I get when hearing, reading, subvocalizing, or
mentating about Papa Legba*****

*** the rigorous practitioner on the parkour.net site,
a poster named hebertiste, alludes somewhere to the
Dvinsk clan person who made the video some years ago
now being in a wheelchair -

haven't been able to confirm this anywhere else but egad,
look at the jumps...you wouldn't have to miss many to
do some hard-to-reverse undesirable body-mods,
would you?

***** I took another look at _True Stories_******, and it
turns out that the fellow singing "Papa Legba" was
Pop Staples, of the Staples Singers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsbtAxGTAE4

(******which was not really by the Talking Heads so much
as by David Byrne)

* though that's puzzling, isn't it - how to acquire the practice?
I guess you just jump a 6 foot gap between rooftops instead
of a 10-foot gap?