Just for the hell of it -- before I sign off for the day in order to give myself time to get the bowl of cough drops ready for the trick-or-treating kids and drink a few glasses of Maker's Mark: Two videos perfect for Halloween, from two visionary directors.
One remains the most disturbingly chilling video ever made -- pure hallucinatory madness. The other hits a note of creepy unease that can't quite be explained but is undeniable.
Happy Halloween, folks.
Aphex Twin -- Come to Daddy (Dir: Chris Cunningham)
Nine Inch Nails -- Closer (Dir: Mark Romanek)
Friday, October 31, 2008
Listening Post: Bonus Halloween Edition
Fear of a Black Aura
In the immortal words of Dave Barry: I swear I'm not making this up. The following is an e-mail chain sent to me by an alert reader (thanks Jon Rey) after it was sent to him by someone he knows, and so on and so on. Normally I'd say that it's shocking in its hilariously jaw-dropping stupidity, except for two things: 1) we've seen this kind of thing over and over during this presidential campaign, and 2) not only are there people out there who believe horseshit like this, but unfortunately their votes don't count less than yours or mine. So without further ado -- behold what you should apparently really be terrified of this Halloween: BARACK OBAMA'S DARK, SATANIC AURA!
Dear Friends,
I also know this friend, and I feel like what she is telling is the truth. She has a remarkable gift, and I appreciate the fact that she has been willing to share this because it is a lot of the same feelings I have had about him although I can see no auras.
I love you all and pray that each of us will be making the right decisions in the voting that we do. Please get help from the spirit and vote as your heart dictates. So much depends on the outcome, but I guess in reality if we as a nation could return to righteousness that would be the best outcome of all.
---------------------
I know this person very well. She is a good friend of mine. She is very honorable. I have never known her to lie. She has indeed been blessed with a special gift.
---------------------
Dear Friends and Family,
The Lord finally gave me permission to share this. I hope it’s not too late.
As you know, I have the spiritual gift of seeing auras. When I look at people, my spiritual eyes see shades of gray, from white to black. Over the past two months, I have seen pictures of Barack Obama, from childhood to now, bleeped on various news channels. It has been interesting to watch his aura get darker and darker the older he got. I was definitely not prepared for what I saw during the last presidential debate. Senator Obama turned and looked directly at the camera while answering a question. I saw that his aura was black, not just the dark gray I have been seeing, but black. Superimposed on the black was a hideously evil face, like a gargoyle’s face, or the scariest evil monster you can imagine. Then the words “Pure Evil” came to my mind. This disturbed me so much that I began to cry. I didn’t cry out of fear of Obama, but out of concern for our country. Imagine having the devil himself run this great country. If Obama wins, Satan will be running the country.
Until that night, I was going to write someone in on the ballot. That night I realized that if I wrote someone in, I would be handing the election to Obama. I realized the only chance we have is to vote for McCain. He is the only candidate close enough in numbers to possibly win. If we don’t vote for McCain, we would essentially be throwing our vote at Obama. I would never tell people how to vote. We need to think about the repercussions of our vote. Pray to know who to vote for. One vote could make the difference, and with so much hanging in the balance, it could REALLY make a difference.
Take this message and do with it as you will. I hope you pray to know what I am saying is true, get your own confirmation. If you find out what I am saying is true, and I am sure you will, pass this message on. We only have a week to get this message out, a week to help people know what they are really up against.
Yup, she's absolutely right. This message needs to get out so that people understand what they're up against. Now if anyone needs me, I'll be sitting in the corner hitting myself in the head repeatedly with a phone book.
The Dumbfuck of the Beast
The following was originally published here two years ago, on Halloween of 2006. I'm resurrecting it mostly because it relays, in off-the-cuff fashion, a story concerning my brief time at Dade Christian School in Miami -- coincidentally where Rapture Ready dingbat Victoria Jackson graduated. It'll explain quite a bit about the origins of her inane beliefs.
I always found Halloween to be kind of a silly holiday. I certainly understand its pagan roots, but at this stage of civilization -- things being what they presently are and all -- I can't help but feel that the inflated emphasis on ghosts, witches, black cats and the like as objects of fear is, well, Rockwellian in its quaintness.
I mean, could any of Edgar Allen Poe's delusions -- even at its most brutally drug-induced -- ever have metastasized into something as perfectly evil as Dick Cheney?
Terrorists want to kill me; My President doesn't have a brain, yet still inexplicably walks, talks and smirks; His second in command is regularly seen growling, and shoots his elderly friends in the face; Human viscera line the streets of Iraq; and you're telling me the ranch-style house up the street with a couple of tombstones in the front yard, a vegetable with a face carved in it, and the all-night Monsterfest on A&E is supposed to scare me?
Sure thing.
That said, I'll relay a truly terrifying tale from my short time at one of the most frightening places on Earth: Dade Christian School.
The God-fearing men and women who run the place were -- and no doubt still are -- committed to making sure that all of their students have a Halloween that's happy, safe, and free from the torment of eternal damnation. That's why every year the school has its own Halloween party in which each child is encouraged to dress as -- wait for it -- his or her favorite Bible character. Needless to say, this typically causes some confusion, seeing as how the whole "beard and robes" thing was pretty much the only look going back in the day.
Upon learning the theme of the traditional Dade Christian Halloween-Without-Hell Extravaganza, I of course began peppering one of my teachers with question after ridiculous question about what my costume could and couldn't entail:
Could I pour salt all over myself and be Lot's wife?
What about water? Would dousing myself in water help me to stand out as obviously being Noah?
Could I just come naked and be Adam?
If I dressed as Pharaoh, could I cast the entire school into bondage?
Isn't Satan technically a Bible character?
These annoyances continued until the teacher finally ended them in the usual way: by sending me to the Dean's office.
Surprisingly, he wasn't expecting to see my face again so soon -- being that a few days earlier, an angry and frustrated faculty chaperone had deemed that I be exiled to his office for reading the novelization of Halloween III: Season of the Witch during the entire bus ride to and from our class trip to Disney World.
You know something? Now that I think about it -- maybe dressing as a Christian really is the scariest costume imaginable.
Happy Halloween kids -- and whatever you do, stay away from Old Man Cheney's house.
Scare Tactics
***NEW JOHN MCCAIN CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL***
TITLE: "Top Secret"
DISTRIBUTION: Nationwide
EMBARGO: None
RUN TIME: :30
MIXED AND READY FOR AIR 10/31/08
KILL DATE: To air only once, on all networks simultaneously at 9PM EDT
***TRANSCRIPT***
(Cue upbeat synth music. Fade in image of three faces pivoting back and forth in time to music: John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber)
(Singing:)
Happy, Happy Halloween... Halloween... Halloween!
Happy, Happy Halloween... McCain-Palin!
(Voice Over)
It's time, America!
Time for the big giveaway!
Gather 'round the TV all you lucky Democrats with your ironic John McCain, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber masks.
Make sure you've got those masks on good and tight.
Now...
Watch the magic McCain face.
Watch McCain.
Watch...
Watch...
Watch...
Listening Post: Halloween Edition
What else would you expect today?
Here's a pretty well-done montage of generally gruesome scenes from various horror movies set to Ministry's goth anthem, Every Day is Halloween.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Showless Joe
I guess he had to snake a drain or something.
The L.A. Times: McCain Calls Out to Joe the Plumber at Rally, Finds He's Not There/9.30.08
Quote of the Week (Honorable Mention)
"Is this really what it has come down to? We are fighting two wars, our economy is a disaster, and Senator Dole's message to voters is to falsely accuse her opponent of not believing in God?"
-- CNN's Campbell Brown, referring to the ridiculous campaign ad in which Elizabeth Dole accuses her opponent of being "godless"
Insolent Jest
A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to the legendary Friars Club here in New York City as a guest for its roast of ex-Star Trek star and current professional kitschy homosexual, George Takei.
If you've seen a Friars Club roast on television -- or any roast for that matter -- you probably think you have a pretty good idea of what it's like to attend one of these things. Suffice it to say, though, that whatever you can imagine, it's not even close to the actual experience of being surrounded by some of the funniest people around minus any sacred cows, sense of decorum, good taste, or general concern for the feelings of others.
My wife and I figured it would be funny.
We had no idea that we'd spend two-and-a-half hours laughing so hard that we wouldn't be able to breathe.
They made fun of tragedies. ("That joke was deader than Shatner's wife at a pool party.") They turned seemingly inviolable topics into punchlines. ("He's the most effeminate Jew in the closet since Anne Frank.") And of course, they mercilessly mocked George Takei's sexuality. (Gilbert Gottfried stepped up to the podium and did, no bullshit, ten minutes worth of "faggot" jokes.)
Was it offensive?
Oh, I have no doubt that most decent folk would've fled in horror.
Was it funny?
Absolutely.
Nothing was off limits, and that's what made the whole thing such a scream.
By now, regular readers of this site have probably figured out that I'm not very easy to offend. Sure, ignorance and stupidity piss me off to no end, but generally the kind of thing that will cause one group of people or another to demand blood, or at the very least an immediate public apology, will barely get a reaction out of me (and if it does, that reaction will usually be to laugh my ass off not only at the offending behavior itself but at those overly sensitive enough to take it so goddamned seriously). Don't get me wrong: Despite what you read here, I don't wander through my day wondering whose buttons I can push next. I may say some pretty obnoxious things from time to time, but rarely is any of it offered with malice or the intention of riling someone up just for the fun of it. That said, I'm a very firm believer that almost anything can be a legitimate target for a little ribbing -- myself included. What makes mocking or satirizing ostensibly untouchable cultural institutions like God, the church, political figures, and even, yes, Oprah so much fun is that they are held as sacrosanct by so many -- and that makes them, in a word, oppressive. There's a visceral thrill to be had going against the grain once in a while and defying the tyranny of political correctness. But more than that, it's necessary. Unassailable ideals and social mores are dangerous, and while holding something above criticism or ridicule, no matter the context or intent, may seem like the ultimate form of respect -- in fact, it's nothing more than the product of fear or idolatry. Just ask the editors of a Danish newspaper that dared to publish comic images of the Prophet Muhammed a couple of years back.
Which brings us to Denis Leary.
The acerbic comedian-turned-actor-turned-author has been buried under an avalanche of criticism lately in response to some of the comments made in his new book, Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid. First, Leary was pounced on by autism activists -- including shrill, militant mom Jenny McCarthy -- for supposedly implying that autism isn't a real disease.
He writes:
"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a fuck what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you -- yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both."
Although this is an unsurprisingly simplistic view of the problem of autism -- a statement I qualify because, needless to say, Leary's a comedian and not a doctor -- it's worth noting two points: First, that the above quote has provoked the ire of people who, for the most part, haven't read the rest of the book and therefore can't appreciate the larger point Leary's trying to get across; second, nowhere does Leary say or even insinuate that autism isn't a real and serious condition -- only that it's likely being overdiagnosed. And guess what? About this, he's absolutely right. Our media-saturated, scared-to-death culture ensures that diseases, like anything else, can become trendy -- that if you ram the idea of an "epidemic" down the throat of the American public long enough, certainly one involving a condition as mysterious as autism, it will almost surely become a self-fulfilling prophecy. While I've done several stories on autism during my journalistic career and have no doubt that outside factors have contributed to a rise in the number of legitimate autism cases, any idiot can see that autism has become the new ADHD: Edgy parents looking for an explanation as to why their kid can't function "properly" approach doctors with an idea already in mind that their child might be autistic. And who put that idea there? A media machine which understands that your fear translates into its revenue.
But if you think the whole autism thing was trouble for Denis Leary, you obviously haven't heard how some in the gay community are responding to a chapter in his book entitled "Matt Damon is a Giant Fag."
In an interview with the gay magazine The Advocate, Leary defends his right to call gay men "fags," insisting that despite whatever authority we've given the word, it's still just that: a word.
"I don't believe in the power of words. My parents came from Ireland, where 'cunt' is literally a word your mother and father would use to describe the weather or the car: 'That cunting car won't start!' And I come from a Catholic background where the nuns were always telling you, 'Don”t do this, dont say this.' So any time anyone tells me I shouldn't say something, my reaction is, 'Why not?'"
Leary points to the fact that there's another chapter in Why We Suck called "We'd Hate You Even if You Weren't Black" (which I suppose doesn't justify the former insult so much as prove that at least Leary's an equal opporunity offender).
Whether or not Denis Leary hates homosexuals I can't say for sure. I do know, however, that simply using the word "fag" doesn't automatically make someone a homophobe any more than simply using the word "nigger," irrespective of context, automatically makes someone a racist. I get that it's sometimes tough to tell a person's intent simply by his or her language -- and that the knee-jerk inclination might be to make broadstroke declarations banning anything that anyone may find offensive -- but that's when it's best to consider the source. Denis Leary, once again, is a comedian. He's made an entire career out of being an asshole; he even recorded a song in the early 90s proclaiming as much. Only a moron -- or, more likely, someone looking for something to be pissed about -- would pick up a book written by Leary and expect not to have his or her magnanimity challenged. Leary's stuff isn't designed to be everyone's cup of tea, but neither is it supposed to change the world. If you really think a book called Why We Suck should be filed under the self-help section at the bookstore, you need to have your head examined. It's meant to be funny. It's a fucking joke.
And if it's one you don't particularly appreciate, then by all means don't buy the book.
I certainly understand that the difference between a Friars Club roast and a mass-marketed book is just that: One is reaching a mass market, while the other is a private function in which everyone on hand realizes and accepts what they're getting themselves into.
But is a book, or a radio show, or a TV show aimed at a specific audience really all that different?
If you don't go looking to be offended, chances are you won't be.
Related:
DXM: The Nth Degree/11.21.06
DXM: Why So Serious?/4.25.08
Listening Post
These guys are the coolest thing to come out of Tennessee in a very, very long time.
This is Kings of Leon, doing Sex on Fire live on Later with Jools Holland.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Agit-Prop 8
Troublemaker Glenn Greenwald posted a little something earlier today on Salon.com that he expressed a pretty hefty amount of indignation over -- and with good reason I suppose. It's basically a video ad produced by a Christian group in California called Clay Music Ministry in support of Proposition 8. For those not in the know, that's the controversial referendum that would turn back the clock and strip same-sex couples of the right to marry in California.
The reprehensible thing about the video is that it features grade school-aged kids singing about the perils of gay marriage.
And yet watching it, somehow all I can do is laugh.
Asian kids?
Really?
Why do I get the feeling that the Christians are holding those children's parents in a shipping container down at the Port of Long Beach along with 120 other illegals who paid five grand a piece to be smuggled out of wherever?
"No singy -- no mommy. Understand, kid?"
(By the way, how much do you love that the little girl's t-shirt says "OBEY" on it?)
(Update: Apparently, the good folks at the Clay Music Ministry pulled the embedding on the video. Click it twice to see it on the YouTube site.)
In God We Trust (To Save Our Floundering Campaign)
Wow -- just, wow.
This is what Liddy Dole is being forced to stoop to save her senate seat: basically accusing her opponent -- who looks to be ready to whip Dole's ass next week -- of being "godless."
I wish I had a punchline for this, but it sort of makes its own gravy.
By the way, that last voice you hear in the spot -- the woman shouting "There is no God!"? Dole's playing that up as if it's the voice of her opponent, when in fact it isn't.
Sneaky and fucking stupid.
Yup, sounds like just another day at the office for today's Republicans.
Phoe-nixed
I stand corrected: Today is the greatest day in the history of everything.
The Huffington Post: Joaquin Phoenix Says He's Quitting Acting/10.29.08
Project Office Mayhem: Halloween Edition
Your assignment, as usual: Quietly put the following link up on every computer in your office, then crank all the speakers to full volume.
Mischief points: None -- just get out of the room as quickly as possible.
Now Watch the Magic Pumpkin
Listening Post: Fear of a Black Rock Planet Edition
The latest issue of Spin magazine features a fantastic retrospective on the birth of the Black Rock Coalition. For the uninitiated, the BRC was founded in the mid-80s by Vernon Reid of Living Colour; it was an organization aimed at helping black bands and artists who dared to do the unthinkable as far as record producers and promoters were concerned -- that is, play guitar-heavy rock and roll -- get a leg up in the industry.
Early members included, of course, Living Colour, as well as 24-7 Spyz, King's X, Bernie Worrell, and Nona Hendryx, but the bands they helped push into the relative mainstream were as diverse as Fishbone, Bad Brains and early Faith No More.
Today, the Black Rock Coalition continues to thrive. Here in New York City, TV on the Radio and Pillow Theory (whose frontman, Kelsey Warren, has been one of my closest friends since college) are members officially and in spirit.
Here now, the mighty music of early Black Rock Coalition.
Living Colour -- Type
24-7 Spyz -- Don't Break My Heart
King's X -- It's Love
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Premature Ejection
Interesting little item from the Iowa State Daily -- the official student newspaper of Iowa State University: According to a report in the online version of the publication, several people in the audience for John McCain's RNC-sponsored campaign rally at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls last Sunday were escorted out of the building before the event even began. The reason appears to be simply that they fit some generic description of potential troublemakers -- in other words, they were of college age and, I'd assume, didn't smell like stale Coors light and chewing tobacco and weren't chanting "USA! USA!" every couple of minutes.
What makes this interesting is that, if you believe the report, a few of those arbitrarily ejected by police at the request of the McCain camp were in fact McCain supporters (although perhaps not anymore) and are now demanding to know why they were forced to leave the rally when it hadn't even started and they hadn't done a damn thing wrong.
They're essentially saying that they were profiled by the McCain people.
That's one possibility.
Another is that John McCain just wanted those kids to get the hell off his lawn and didn't care whose kids they were.
Read on:
Iowa State Daily: Audience Members Removed at McCain Rally in Cedar Falls/10.28.08
(Thanks to alert reader Michael Yeager for the tip.)
Quantum Physical
Today is the greatest day in the history of everything.
The Times of India: Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko's Sex Film Leaked/10.27.08
Quote of the Week Month
"I don't want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ and I'm scared to death that un-educated people will ignorantly vote him into office."
-- Former Saturday Night Live castmember and current nobody Victoria Jackson, on her blog
Tuesday is Recycling Day
For whatever reason, quite a few people consider this to be one of the best things that's ever appeared on this site. I actually think it's a bit of a mess -- which I guess makes sense considering the subject matter.
The Dreams In Which I'm Dying (Originally Published, 12.19.06)
During most of the trip, we listened to BBC Radio One, which as good fortune would have it is one of the 653,287 channels available on Sirius satellite radio -- a special feature my friend Chris was sure to request when he rented the car we would be using to cruise around Las Vegas. The music on Radio One is generally very good (a lot of material not heard here in the states). The DJ's are, well, to co-opt an appropriate phrase, bloody brilliant (Scott Mills spent one afternoon buying Christmas presents for those on his list by calling QVC and ordering whatever happened to be on-screen at that particular moment, despite not being able to see exactly what kind of God-awful crap he was purchasing). The news being reported by Radio One at the time however, was ominous (a prolific serial killer was working his way through Ipswich's prostitutes, evoking memories of another legendary British murderer with a taste for women of the night). These snippets of carnage from eight time-zones away provided a strange contrast to the neon-lit, sugar-coated, overglossed surroundings in which we had chosen to immerse ourselves for five days. Vegas after all, in spite of an undeniably malevolent underbelly, is still America's playground -- a place where people come from miles around to indulge in gambling, $5.99 prime rib and the comedic stylings of Carrot Top, who as it turned out was annoying nightly in our very hotel.
There were moments though that I couldn't help but wonder if the fictional forensic detectives of the Vegas CSI wouldn't somehow be able to assist the overwhelmed DCIs in Ipswich with their hooker killer -- or at the very least turn down the lights in their squad room to make it look less like a police station and more like a lounge with a $20 cover charge.
Needless to say, I tried to put the serial killer out of my mind and go on about my way enjoying the massive hotel suite my wife had secured for the two of us -- with its whirlpool bath and unrivaled view of the strip; the days driving out to Red Rock Canyon and beyond; and of course the nights eating venison at Bobby Flay's and caviar at Red Square, losing money at the Hard Rock casino, drinking beer by the gallon and dancing on the tables at the Hofbrauhaus, and the highlight of the trip -- hosting an impromptu party in our room which involved several bottles of Makers Mark, a deck of cards, Cuban cigars, and watching Jackass Number Two on Spectravision.
Good times and good friends, making good memories. It's tough to ask for much more.
Despite an excellent turn of events which deposited our tired asses on a flight back to New York that was practically empty -- allowing us the comfort of stretching out and relaxing -- mine and Jayne's return to reality was marked by the kind of general malaise we've come to expect whenever one of our mini-vacations comes to its inevitably abrupt end. Neither of us was ready to return to the day-to-day drudgery of our lives here in the Manhattan meat-grinder -- she with her very long hours, me with my very bad hours -- both of us slaves to an unpredictable subway schedule and a pathetic wage. For me personally, it was a situation made worse when I in fact returned to work to find that the "big story" holding the rapt attention of my superiors centered around three missing mountain climbers who'd gotten themselves lost somewhere on Mount Hood in Oregon. It seemed nothing less than an attempt to create and perpetuate a national obsession with an ongoing incident that in my mind merited no more than a passing glance or two before each weather segment -- one which had been blown so far out of proportion as to become an infuriating waste of time and resources, both for the overworked rescue crews forced to put their own lives in jeopardy to help find these three idiots who were selfish and stupid enough to take the risk of going up the mountain in the first place, and for the network news crews covering the search. My first day back however did yield at least one hilariously Darwinist moment which helped to put the possible mindset of the missing climbers into quick perspective: with cameras from around the country trained on her, the mother of one of the hikers made an impassioned plea to Mother Nature herself, saying, "I want the mountain to release our sons. The mountain has no right to keep our sons." It was at this moment that I realized that the cost of the search -- whatever that may have been -- was money and effort well-spent.
Later, during that first day back at work, it was announced that an arrest had been made in the case of the Ipswich serial murders.
I read over the incoming wire reports carefully, then purposely ratcheted my focus away from them -- well aware that my co-workers might consider my fascination with the case to be unduly morbid and probably a little disturbing.
I chose instead to concentrate on the surprising fact that I, yes I, had been chosen to receive the honor of being named Time magazine's "Person of the Year."
And I hadn't even prepared a speech.
As the magazine described in tones both glowing and effusive, I had apparently changed the world over the past year by taking control of what I and those around me saw, heard and felt. I had changed the political landscape through blogging. I had taken record executives out behind the figurative tool shed with a figurative rifle by downloading whatever kind of music I wanted to hear -- callously and insousciantly tossing aside their notions of what should and shouldn't be popular. I had become my own network executive by ordering television shows quite literally "on demand." I had made myself seen and heard through sites like MySpace and YouTube and through that, had become the single most powerful person in the world -- master of my own little info-tainment universe. I was the king of all I surveyed.
My immediate reaction to this, the official coronation of the new "Me" generation, was to feel a smile curl at the sides of my mouth. Certainly the editors of Time had made a choice which was not only assuredly clever, but one with which no one reading the magazine would dare argue. It was the ultimate crowd-pleaser, slyly cast in the form of a desire to appeal to no crowd whatsoever.
My second reaction was to agree that indeed, in some ways I was worthy of such an honor. Over the past year, I had, after all, started my own website which I continued to use to air my views, hone my skills, promote myself as a writer and develop a surprisingly extensive fan-base. I had staked out a virtual apartment on MySpace which I used to promote my other site and further increase my visibility; I had also made a few new "friends" in the process -- one even being BBC Radio One DJ Scott Mills, from whom I fully expect to receive a set of QVC's Fenton Art Glass Legacy Bell figurines at any moment. I had contributed to the financial ruin of one of my old haunts, Tower Records, by downloading my music on-line and, in a somewhat ironic twist given my chosen profession, had even thumbed my nose at the television ratings system and the advertisers it kept in business by opting to watch Battlestar Galactica on its new Chez-approved, on-demand time of 10am Sunday mornings.
These quiet musings led me to wonder whether I'd be a just king or an iron-fisted demagogue -- whether I'd rule my domain with justice and mercy, or oppressive brutality. I had been single-handedly responsible for killing off the old world and shrugging off its bonds, I deserved to wallow in the spoils, didn't I?
But then came another reaction -- one I've grown far too accustomed to lately -- and it brought my dreams of avarice crashing down around me.
I felt tears begin to pool in my eyes, and I was forced to get up from my desk and surreptitiously make my way to the bathroom where I found an empty stall in which to sit and quietly cry.
This is the way it's been for some time now.
This is because I suffer from severe depression.
There's a difference between being melancholy and being truly, clinically depressed. I've always reveled in a certain amount of melancholy, and mined that territory to fuel my artistic endeavors throughout the years. It's a well-worn stereotype that writers have an inherently sad streak -- being that the very act of writing is one done in isolation, far outside the scrutinous realm of polite society. This, however -- the way I feel these days -- is different. Despite my wish to believe otherwise, I'm forced to acknowledge that the brain surgery I underwent back in April of this year changed me fundamentally -- both physically and mentally. I've mentioned before that the face I see in the mirror no longer resembles the face I've been staring at for years into decades, and I've come to realize that this is not simply a natural product of the aging process. The pinball-sized tumor which lived in my head for God-knows-how-long warped my brain chemistry and destroyed a good portion of the gland which regulates my hormones. The result is that my skin -- once a supple and oily indicator of my Italian heritage -- is now dry, cracked and papery-thin due to a lack of testosterone. The lack of that same hormone has also decreased my sex-drive to practically nil, and although I admit that it's somewhat refreshing to be mercifully free from the tyranny of my own penis for the first time in my life, it's put a strain on the desire of my wife and I to start a family.
I'm constantly exhausted. I rarely have the drive to do anything other than sleep. I have painfully vivid dreams from which I typically wake up sobbing. I feel desperate and alone, even when I'm surrounded by people I love and who love me. I'm a walking pharmacy of pills and hormone replacements.
I sat in the bathtub in Vegas, crying to myself, when no one was looking.
I have no doubt that there are outside factors contributing to my current state-of-mind: turning 37 and being forced to take stock of a life which bears little resemblance to the one I had hoped to make for myself and my loved ones; the continuing pressure of a career which I lost a hunger for years ago; the long, cold nights and short days of winter; as I recently stated in no uncertain terms, the overwhelming feeling and punishing belief that I'm damaged beyond repair; and then, most recently, the last-minute collapse of what would have been a stellar and potentially lucrative book deal. It's all been a lot to swallow whole.
At the core of it though, is the tumor, and its lasting effect on who I am -- on my sense-of-self. It's a disconcerting feeling beyond description to simply not feel like the person you've been for so long. It's also a feeling that can't be put into words in any meaningful way. How do I feel? I can't explain it; I just don't feel like me.
The most portentous by-product of this feeling -- the very recent weight of it -- is the effect that it's had on my writing. I promised long ago that this little experiment of mine would never become so self-indulgent as to be an ongoing description of what was happening to me right now, at this moment. To put it succinctly, this blog would never be a "blog," in the traditional sense. I wanted to write about universal themes and voice my admittedly worthless opinion on a host of issues and, aside from a few rare occasions when I've felt the absolute need to wear my heart on my virtual sleeve, I hope I've done just that. Anything else wouldn't make for any sort of good reading by anyone -- not even myself. That's the problem I now find myself faced with though: I've used this site not so much to help me cathartically work through my own personal tragedies as I have to spin some of that pain and discomfort into gold in the hope of landing an audience, and in turn, a career as a writer. This is a different situation if only because it's caused me -- for the first time since starting this site seven months ago -- to be an unfocused mess who can't seem to string together a series of clear thoughts, much less perform at my usual level of semi-hilarious pithiness.
So where do I go from here?
To a counselor of course and -- despite advice to the contrary from internationally-renowned neurologist Dr. Tom Cruise -- to a psychiatrist.
The one promise that I'm willing to make is that I will do my absolute damndest to make sure that my output on these pages doesn't suffer. Over the past seven months, this has been one of my few true joys -- one my wife has recognized and encouraged -- and I refuse to allow it to suffer, even if I do occasionally. The show must go on, and it damn well will.
On my second day back at work, after spending an evening pondering whether or not I was worthy to be crowned "Person of the Year" by the gentle mental giants over at Time, I learned more about the suspect in custody in Ipswich.
I learned that he was 37-years-old.
I learned that he had a site on MySpace.
I learned that he too, had been named Time magazine's Person of the Year.
Listening Post
South's 2001 album From Here On In was one of my favorites in the days immediately following 9/11.
And this song should easily explain why.
Here's Paint the Silence.
When Teddy Met Sarah
So does this mean we can now say that Sarah Palin has spent time "palling around" with a convicted felon?
Monday, October 27, 2008
CNN: Comedy News Network
I've gotten a couple of emails inquiring as to why I'm not commenting on CNN's new "satirical" news show, D.L. Hughley Breaks the News, featuring occasionally funny but somewhat culturally irrelevant comedian D.L. Hughley, uh, breaking the news (get it?). It premiered this past Saturday night and I have to be honest: I had a thing and didn't manage to catch it.
I could easily run down the reasons why the show is likely doomed to fail, regardless of its quality, beginning with the fact that it's the partial brainchild of the most unimaginative, reactive man in television news -- CNN President Jon Klein -- and that he and the rest of the powers that be at CNN will never truly take the reins off the show for fear of tarnishing the network's reputation as a serious news outlet (as if Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace don't already do that in spades).
But instead I'll leave it to my good friend and fellow ex-CNNer Jacki Schechner to explain, in a quick little quote e-mailed to me today, just what's wrong with D.L. Hughley Breaks the News.
"Nothing about TV news surprises me anymore. But I guess what struck me here is that CNN’s been looking for the answer to The Daily Show for years. And they just don’t get it. The Daily Show succeeds because it points out the absurdity of networks like CNN. CNN can’t repeat that success without acknowledging its own idiocy. But for Jon Klein to think they can is indicative of just how not in on the joke they are."
Yup -- that about sums it up.
Go! Buy It
After an inordinately long wait, Bob Cesca's book, One Nation Under Fear, looks like it's finally about to hit the market.
Do yourself a favor and pre-order a copy since Cesca's a good guy and deserves it and if you've read any of his Huffington Post stuff you know the book will be well worth reading.
Bob Cesca: One Nation Under Fear (via Amazon.com)
A Series of Bars
In prison, the term "Bridge to Nowhere" has an entirely different meaning.
The Huffington Post: Ted Stevens Convicted on All Counts/10.27.08
Everything to Lose
David Frum is a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, an avowed neo-con, and an all-around Republican heavyweight (albeit a hugely wussified one) -- and he's just written the most daunting, defeatist article to come out yet on the GOP's hopes at the polls eight days from now.
"There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.
I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it's too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP.
In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first."
While this is shocking in its candor, what Frum has to say about the possibility of a Democrat-controlled executive and legislative branch is shocking for another reason: its hypocrisy.
"The political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There's a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC's evening line-up -- and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington. Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named "fairness doctrine"; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not."
I would hope that Frum was forced to stifle a chuckle as he typed these words, since it's positively laughable that an apostle of the neo-con gospel could actually claim the high ground when it comes to the enforcement of petty grudges and the suppression of opposition. I have to assume he's hoping that everyone forgets that it was the GOP who, at various points over the past several years, attempted to disqualify the votes of many underprivileged, redistricted areas to create a Republican majority, invoked executive privilege to keep its own dirty secrets, and generally kept the Democratic minority securely underfoot -- laughing its ass off while doing it.
While waging an angry vendetta against those who gleefully oppressed them for so long would be a terrible idea for the Democrats should they take a good portion of the government on November 4th, their outrage would certainly be understandable given the behavior the Republicans exhibited when they had the unequivocal majority.
For the right to not realize this -- or worse, to play the victim -- is ridiculous.
The Washington Post: "Sorry, Senator. Let's Salvage What We Can." by David Frum/10.26.08
Listening Post
The visuals in this homemade clip come from the 2002 Tom Tykwer film Heaven, starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi.
They don't necessarily create a flawless pastiche, but to be honest I could watch pictures of traffic lights changing to this song -- which I consider one of the most alluring and perfect pop songs to come around in many, many moons.
From last year's Under the Black Light, this is Rilo Kiley, with Dreamworld.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Joe the Punter
At the beginning of the third season of Battlestar Galactica, most of what remains of the human population has been forced into an uneasy communal relationship with the Cylons after their surprise invasion of New Caprica. "Communal relationship," however, is a gross euphemism, as the reality is that the humans are little more than slaves to their Cylon overlords: they're under vigilant watch and forced to live in constant fear; they're subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly threatened with overwhelming force should they conspire against the military state; they're tortured in prison camps if they get out of line.
During this period of subjugation, a few humans -- either through rank opportunism or simply a resignation to the inevitability of the situation -- choose to cooperate with the Cylons and the puppet government they've created. They serve in office, join the secret police which is tasked with hunting down and "dealing with" insurgents among the population, and work in administrative positions.*
After the humans are freed in a daring rescue and are finally back with the fleet, those who collaborated with the Cylons on New Caprica are systematically hunted down by a secret tribunal, "tried" and, if convicted, executed. This sentence is carried out by putting them into a launch tube and firing them out of the air lock into space.**
Why do I bring this up?
Because Joe Lieberman is now talking to anyone who will listen about how much "respect" he's always had for Barack Obama.
No doubt sensing which way the political winds are blowing and hoping not to be rendered utterly irrelevant by them, the one-time Democratic vice presidential candidate turned full-time GOP attack dog seems to be trying to hedge his bet in the final days before America goes to the polls. For months Lieberman has played John McCain's sycophantic Renfield and led the charge against Barack Obama, accusing the Democrat of not putting "country first" and insinuating that he may be a Marxist. But now that the McCain campaign looks to be headed for an embarrassing defeat, Lieberman -- feckless little weasel that he is -- may be looking for a way back into the fold that he so categorically turned away from. It's one thing to think independently and put conscience above party; not only is this generally the correct way to behave -- it's the only way for anyone who considers him or herself to be intellectually honest. Lieberman didn't do that though -- not by a long shot. He used his position as someone who was nominally an insider within one political party to work toward the goals of another, basically taking on the role of double-agent. And what's worse, despite his claim of "respect" for Barack Obama, he helped mastermind a series of vicious attacks on the man he now fears may wind up being president and worked as hard as just about anyone to ensure his defeat.
So, what should become of Lieberman on November 5th if Obama wins the presidency?
Three words: Suck space, Joe.***
*I realize that the profiteering confederate is pretty much an archetype by this point and that a stronger analogy would've been, say, those very real people who cooperated with despotic regimes during wartime, but I'm all about pop culture and happen to like Battlestar Galactica, so deal with it.
**I'll overlook the fact that, in the context of the show, the secret tribunal is supposed to be a nefarious entity -- a vigilante group which does more harm than good -- and that Gaius Baltar is eventually acquitted of collaborating with the Cylons. I can do this because it's my blog -- so once again, deal with it.
***No, of course I'm not suggesting that Joe Lieberman be shot into space. It's a metaphor. For sending him somewhere he'll never be heard from again. Like space.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Listening Post (Bonus Saturday Night Edition)
This song is flat-out bad-ass in every possible way.
Crank the volume to 11 -- it's new music from Shiny Toy Guns: Ricochet.
Picture Photoshop of the Week
From independent filmmaker Lee Stranahan:
"Details are still sketchy, even to me. I am thirsty and I need a hug. All I know is that I drove into the 'right' side of town with an Obama-Biden sticker on the back of my car when I was approached by thugs riding snowmachines. They said they'd seen my YouTube videos. I could feel the hot breath as the short one threw me to the ground and said I was dressed like a trollop and he was going to 'spread my wealth.' Then I blacked out. (No pun intended.)"
Quote of the Week (Honorable Mention)
"I'm going to be as restrained and measured as I possibly can about this. But this is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize."
-- Newsweek's Richard Wolffe on Countdown, reacting to Sarah Palin's offhand dismissal of fruit fly research which, apparently unbeknownst to her, has already led to advances in understanding autism
The Speed of Lies
Once again, it's rare that I repost something originally published within the past couple of months, but I feel the unfortunate need to resurrect this piece simply because the story it concerns has once again reared its ugly head. Over the last couple of days, professional buffoons Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Jerome Corsi have all alleged that Barack Obama's trip to Hawaii wasn't actually about visiting his ailing grandmother but was instead a stealth mission aimed at quietly dealing with the "ongoing rumors" that his Hawaiian birth certificate is phony and that he's not, in fact, a U.S. citizen. Here now, my column from August 28th of this year.
If you believe Philip Berg, Barack Obama is unfit to be President of the United States; his candidacy is nothing more than a dangerously specious house of cards that will almost surely collapse if allowed to continue.
According to Berg, Barack Obama harbors a secret which disqualifies him outright from running for the office of president -- and it's only a matter of time before the truth comes to light and the resulting embarrassing debacle leaves the entire Democratic Party in chaos.
See, If you believe Philip Berg, Barack Obama isn't a U.S. citizen.
Last Thursday, Berg -- a Philadelphia attorney who's something of a notorious presence within that city's legal community -- filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania demanding that an injunction be issued against the official nomination of Obama. The suit charges that the Illinois senator is constitutionally ineligible to become president on the grounds that he has yet to produce a valid U.S. birth certificate -- Berg claiming that the current one on file from Hawaii is a forgery, proven so by "three forensic experts" -- and that he maintains an unresolved dual-citizenship and owes allegiances to both Kenya and Indonesia, where his father was born and where he lived as a child, respectively. Berg says that he has access to copies of Obama's Jakartan school records which show the candidate registered under the surname of his mother's 2nd husband, Lolo Soetoro, and listed as an Indonesian citizen; as if to hedge his bet, he insists that even if Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is indeed shown to be authentic, the school registry should be enough to keep the candidate out of the White House.
If these allegations sound familiar, they should; in one form or another, each of them has been bandied about the internet or bullhorned across conservative radio for months now in an ongoing effort to paint Barack Obama as "different."
Oh yeah, and they're all basically bullshit.
A couple of weeks back, the Annenberg Political Fact Check -- an organization whose credentials are pretty much bulletproof -- set out to settle once and for all the debate over Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate. The word "debate" deserves no small amount of qualification because, in reality, there never was a legitimate claim to be made that the document was phony -- simply a lot of fantastical conspiracy theorist innuendo, perpetuated and amplified at lightning speed by a million far-right dolts with computers and delusions of Sherlock Holmesian cleverness. Annenberg dispatched staffers to examine the birth certificate and ruled, to the surprise of no one with a modicum of common sense and two brain cells to rub together, that it's 100% legit; Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. As for the claim that Obama holds a dual citizenship or is in any other way beholden to a foreign country -- that was exposed as nonsense months ago.
And yet Philip Berg filed his lawsuit anyway. He filed it knowing full-well, one would have to imagine, that most of its claims are bogus -- that they already had been or easily could be debunked.
So why? What the hell would possess someone to willfully propagate claims that are tenuous at best and outright false at worst -- even going so far as to do it in court?
Because these days, when it comes to politics particularly, the truth is negotiable -- and there's value in the lie.
Whereas once there were a select few sources of information, and those sources were generally deemed credible by all but those on the furthest fringes of the public, now anyone can be his or her own news source. And while -- as this site, ironically, has advanced -- the rise of citizen journalism and hyper-connectivity has been good for the ethics of media as a whole, it's also created a treacherous wasteland of journalistic mini-fiefdoms, each spouting its own version of reality and together making it impossible, at times, to tell honest, well-researched fact from made-up crap conjured out of thin air to further an agenda. Whether the message comes in the form of an e-mail forwarded to your inbox by that paranoid uncle with the survival bunker in his basement who you're always hoping skips Thanksgiving, or as a bitter flamewar on every news aggregation outlet across the blogosphere, the internet has replaced television as the most effective and least regulated tool for political propaganda in America.
Which is why, ironically, it's now become the partial responsibility of television to help keep the corruption in check. It's too bad the good folks in the TV news media are usually unwilling to do it.
Mainstream media managers, as a whole, subscribe fully to the notion that bloggers and their internet realm are of an inferior journalistic stock; they see them as pests constantly circling the carrion of stories already broken by TV, radio and print; they condescend to them, dismissively painting their ilk as pasty, overweight losers, futilely raging against the machine from the comfort of a Middle-American basement, hopped up on Red Bull and basking in the post-orgasmic bliss of an afternoon spent masturbating to Asian porn. Those who adhere to the Mega-Media ethos believe that when a blogger does break a story, the quality of that piece of information can be judged by whether or not it rises to the level of inclusion in a mainstream broadcast, newspaper or magazine. In other words, only those above the radar can make the decision as to what's worth pulling up from under the radar. The problem is, the good stuff -- the powerful investigation, the sometimes penetrating insight -- gets passed over by the larger media outlets because it's, well, boring. It doesn't make for good TV or a quick, sharp read. Meanwhile, unfortunately, the garbage -- the rumor, conjecture, and misdirection -- is often picked up and elevated to the level of "real news" simply because it's so damn juicy and such a sure-fire ratings or circulation enhancer. A crap story thrown out by a few official-sounding blogs -- like the story of Obama's "phony" birth certificate -- can suddenly be granted validation simply by virtue of the fact that the "controversy" surrounding it is being discussed on national television. The lie is amplified inside the 24/7 cable news echo-chamber and, presto, it's suddenly palatable and worthy of serious consideration by 90% of the population.
It would be one thing if mainstream media outlets faced this kind of bullshit head-on and said, "No, this story isn't true, and if you believe it you're a lunatic." But it's better for ratings and revenue to instead ask, "A lot of folks are saying (insert spurious assertion here), but is it true?" (For the record, nobody does this vaguely referenced end-run on responsibility better than Fox News; see "Terrorist Fist Jab.") It goes without saying that this is how political propaganda is perpetuated; by reporting the rumor as its own story -- without sharply and decisively denouncing it -- you're validating it, giving new life to it, and ensuring that enough people will believe it that the very future of the country could wind up eventually hinging on it.
Ask yourself this: How many people still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim?
Or this: How many people still believe that Iraq was connected to 9/11?
Very few within the mainstream media came right out and unequivocally shot down these ludicrous rumors before they could take root within the consciousness of the masses -- or at the very least, the minds of those who wanted nothing more than to have their preconceived biases confirmed.
There are thousands of Americans who will still claim that they "don't trust" Obama -- and yet they'll base this lack of trust on their willingness to trust an e-mail that got forwarded to them by a friend of a friend of a friend of some guy somewhere.
It's the responsibility of respectable news media everywhere to bring truth to propaganda and refute the fiction proffered for the sole purpose of sowing discord and confusing the electorate. It's incumbent upon the mainstream media, particularly if they value their stature as strongly as they claim, to shine a bright light on the lies, rather than fueling the fire by debating the merits of a story that they know perfectly well has no merits.
Should you believe Philip Berg?
It's a question that doesn't need to be asked, because it's already been answered.
Saturday Morning Cartoons
From 1954, it's Bugs Bunny vs. Yosemite Sam on the high seas in Captain Hareblower.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Quote of the Week (Honorable Mention)
"I guess this means we've officially buried the hatchet, but if he pulls that fucking shit again, I will drop a building on this guy."
-- Matt Lauer talking about Tom Cruise, who participated in a roast of the NBC anchor at New York's Friar's Club today
Quote of the Week (Honorable Mention)
"This is on the record... It is a fact that Barack Obama was palling around with terrorists. It was a fact before Governor Palin said it in a fully vetted speech and it is fact today. It is bullshit to claim or write anything else."
-- McCain Foreign Policy Advisor and monumental asshole Randy Scheunemann, proving that snakes strike out when cornered
Insult to Injury
Well, it's finally happened. We've been leading up to this for months and everyone assumed it had to occur sooner or later, and now it has: We've reached the very bottom of the barrel.
Just a little while ago, police in Pittsburgh confirmed that a 20-year-old McCain campaign volunteer named Ashley Todd -- a white girl from Texas -- confessed to making up a shocking story about being beaten by a supporter of Barack Obama. Todd had originally claimed that while canvassing Pittsburgh, a place she volunteered to travel to in support of John McCain, she was confronted at a bank ATM by (wait for it) a tall black man who noticed the McCain '08 bumper sticker on her car and, as such, proceeded to beat the hell out of her -- even going so far as to cut an ugly "B" into her cheek.
Needless to say, every right wing mouthpiece in the country immediately jumped on the story, salivating at the prospect of a possible game-changer of such monumental proportions less than two weeks before election day. Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody even wrote that, if proven true, the item had the potential to make undecideds across the country revisit their support for Barack Obama.
It looked like a dream come true for the GOP faithful.
Unfortunately for them, Ashley Todd is a fucking retard.
First of all, there were reportedly holes in her story you could drive a truck through. Secondly, she neglected to consider the fact that bank ATMs almost always come equipped with surveillance cameras that can easily be checked (which is one of the first things police did; Todd was nowhere to be found). Finally, and most amusingly, the "B" carved into her face was, in fact, backward -- which meant either that police needed to be on the lookout for a tall, black dyslexic man, or Todd cut the damn thing into her own face in front of a mirror.
As it turns out, the latter of the two possibilities is the correct one. Ashley Todd, criminal mastermind, now admits that she mutilated herself.
The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren't so staggeringly horrifying.
So this is it.
This is what it's come to.
This is what the most extreme faction of McCain and Palin's supporters are capable of in a desperate 11th hour attempt to ensure that Barack Obama gets nowhere near the White House: the most despicable kind of race-baiting. These are the people praying for John McCain and Sarah Palin to win -- the people who will literally do anything, even mutilate themselves, to make it happen. They're vicious, evil fuckers who are too goddamned stupid to see the irony of pulling off a vile hoax in the hope of making the other guy's supporters look dangerous and batshit crazy.
The worst part, though?
That, I swear to God, McCain and Palin actually bear some responsibility for this crap.
They've spent the past month fomenting unspeakable hatred and ignorance, inciting violence by refusing to denounce the vitriolic rhetoric of their most mindless acolytes, and insidiously casting their opponent not simply in adversarial terms but as a mysterious figure who consorts with terrorists and whose election could bring about the end of America as we know it.
Saying this kind of garbage to a bunch of easily suggestible, self-styled patriots with the collective IQ of a herd of cattle is like yelling fire in a crowded theater.
McCain and Palin have been proclaiming the clear and present danger involved in Barack Obama's quest for the White House in terms subtle and unambiguous for weeks; they can't really be shocked that somebody would actually take the matter into his or her own hands. They talked and young, impressionable and galactically stupid Ashley Todd listened -- it's that simple.
By the way, Fox News's John Moody, in that post I mentioned earlier, went on to say that if Todd's claims were eventually proven false -- if the whole thing turned out to be, in fact, a hoax -- that "Senator McCain's quest for the presidency (will be) over, forever linked to race-baiting."
For what may be the very first time, I really hope Fox News is right.
Et Tu, Charlie?
That sound you hear is John McCain's head exploding.
Talking Points Memo: McCain Campaign Advisor Endorses Obama/10.24.08
Thrill Baby, Thrill!
A friend of mine used to regularly warn of the dangers of "men made dumb by pussy."
Although this notion may seem crass as hell at first glance, there's truth in it, unfortunately.
Just ask John McCain.
The Washington Post: "Something About Sarah" by Kathleen Parker/10.23.08
The Meta-Metamorphosis of Sarah Palin
Remember Sarah Palin's hilarious appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
The truth is that Palin's SNL cameo was, by almost any reasonable standard, entirely uneventful -- shocking only for its complete lack of shock. I'm not sure what most people were expecting, but given her reputation for self-satisfied feistiness I think it's safe to say that Sarah Palin-as-barely-there-window-dressing probably wasn't it. Think about it: the woman who's been a weekly punching bag for a bunch of New York City wise-asses who can barely hide their disdain for her finally gets a chance to turn the tables and take a few shots of her own on national television and what does she do? Nothing. She talks to Lorne Michaels, shakes hands with Alec Baldwin, doesn't even speak to Tina Fey -- who's been personally responsible for the merciless mocking which many believe has helped to cement her image as a worldwide laughing stock -- but instead allows Fey to shoot her a look of absolute contempt, and throws her hands in the air for an "Alaska Rap" that makes MC Rove's little dance a couple of years back look like Chris Brown.
Sure, the writers likely had plenty of say in just how Palin would be used on the show -- but she's a candidate for the second highest office in the free world. Don't think for a second that she couldn't have flexed some muscle to ensure that she'd come off less like a wallflower and more like the kick-ass Vice Presidentrix holding her own in the lion's den against the snooty liberal onslaught she regularly rails against in small towns across America.
She could've done that. She had the chance -- not to be rude or vicious, but to be sharp and assertive -- and yet she didn't take it.
Why?
Simple.
Because no matter what she says to the robotic throngs of Joe Six-Packs who show up at her rallies -- no matter how strenuously she demonizes the so-called elitism of those Times-reading pseudo-intellectuals on the coasts -- make no mistake: She loved every second of being on Saturday Night Live.
Loved it.
She couldn't get enough of hearing the audience laugh.
It thrilled her to no end to shout, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"
She got wet when Alec Baldwin stroked her hand and spoke to her in that soothing tone.
Sarah Palin was, in a word, starstruck -- both by those around her and, yes, by herself and how far she'd come. There she was, living out her Small Town TV Reporter/Miss Alaska Pageant fantasy of being on one of the biggest entertainment stages in the country, surrounded by celebrities. And she was the hottest thing there -- the belle of the ball.
We know this because according to SNL costume designer Tim Broecker, Palin was somewhat of a prima donna, upset that producers wanted her to wear the same kind of red skirt suit that Tina Fey's dead-on impression of Palin wears each week -- the kind Palin herself wore when she first hit the campaign trail. As it turns out, however, Fey's parody may not be so dead-on anymore, at least not when it comes to the way she dresses. Put simply, Tina Fey's version of Sarah Palin's fashion is so September, and Palin saw no reason to go back to that frumpy look, even for a comedy bit -- not when she'd worked so hard and spent so much of the Republican National Committee's money over the past few weeks to carefully cultivate a new image as America's Next Next-to-Top Executive.
By the way, now might be a good time to remind yourself of that whole Obama-Paris Hilton comparison that John McCain shamelessly pushed earlier this year and marvel at how the entire McCain campaign has become one constantly constricting Ouroboros of bald-faced hypocrisy.
Sarah Palin honestly thinks she's a star -- a pop culture icon. She now believes her own hype.
That pandering and sloganeering and droppin'-her-g's garbage? That's all a means to an end. I have no doubt that Palin actually buys into the crap she's shoveling -- that she's a True Believer in the power of Joe Six-Pack and a lockstep warrior for nonsensical neo-con values. It's just that over the past several weeks, it's become glaringly obvious that Sarah Palin's primary concern throughout this campaign has always been Sarah Palin. Like the proverbial ingenue, she was plucked from relative obscurity by a sad, aging once-great looking for that last shot at glory -- a guy convinced that her youth and vitality would be just what he needed to finally thrust him into the big time. And like the Hollywood ending that you could've seen coming a mile away, the ingenue quickly outgrew the one-time father figure and realized that he was actually nothing more than an obstacle on her own road to fame and fortune. Just like John McCain now at least partially blames Sarah Palin's shallow ignorance for his spiraling political fortunes, make no mistake that Sarah Palin -- in a breathtaking lack of gratitude -- likewise blames McCain's doddering buffoonery for hers, which is why, if you pay close attention, you can see that she's already subtly distancing herself from her running mate in what some are saying is an effort to sow the seeds of a personal run for the presidency in 2012.
As he often does, Bob Cesca cranked out a pretty entertaining piece for the Huffington Post recently in which he heralded the death of what he calls "Larry the Cable Guy Politics"; the idea being that for years Republican mainstays like George W. Bush have been playing dress-up, pretending to be just your average uneducated dumb-asses in an effort to ingratiate themselves to the real uneducated dumb-asses they rely on to keep them in power -- the same way comedian Dan Whitney has assumed the entirely fraudulent persona of "Larry the Cable Guy" because it's made him really, really rich. Cesca likens it to the meta-performance of Mark Wahlberg playing Eddie Adams playing Dirk Diggler playing Brock Landers in Boogie Nights. But now comes this little twist: that Sarah Palin, despite actually being a hockey mom and working off the premise that she's just Jane Six-Pack when trying to sell herself and her "vision" to NASCAR America, in reality doesn't think of herself as average at all. She in fact sees herself as a fashion plate, some hyper-hottie in a tight leather blazer and knee-high black boots, someone worthy of a $75,000 shopping spree at Neiman Marcus. Sarah Palin is now everything she ever dreamed of being: Sex and the City, right down to the "city" part. Sure, publicly she rebukes and ridicules those cosmopolitan urbanites in their bustling elitist hubs, but she knows damn well that she can't buy Valentino and Louis Vuitton at the Wal-Mart in Wasilla -- and if you don't think that Sarah Heath Palin has always fantasized about wearing Valentino and carrying Louis Vuitton, I've got a bridge to nowhere I want to sell you. She may still be a backwater dingbat, but she's now a very well put together backwater dingbat -- which I'm willing to bet has convinced her that she's no longer a backwater dingbat. If this is true, then it would mean that Palin has essentially ascended to the same position as George W. Bush and her GOP benefactors: she's only playing the part of the rube and is, in fact, secretly talking down to every one of those pick-up-driving Toby Keith fans who show up to her rallies -- the Dickies-clad folk not lucky enough to have won the Miss Vice Presidential pageant and been scooped up to a life of charter jets and appearances on Saturday Night Live.
But the new and improved Sarah Palin is more than just a simple case of someone taking on a part or putting on airs -- "lipstick on a pig," as it were.
I don't think Charlie Kaufman himself could've dreamed up a more Victor/Victorian mobius strip of meta-fiction than Saturday Night Live sticking the real Sarah Palin into her old red skirt suit to play Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.
It would be enough to make your head spin were we not already talking about a woman whose willful Extreme Makeover had transformed her, ironically, into the very thing she purports to despise.
Of course, I'm not sure that -- as with everything Sarah Palin has shown us to date -- all the folksy indignation wasn't just bullshit anyway.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Walking the Plank
Think the cringe-worthy tap-dance that followed Sarah Palin's inability to correctly identify the Bush Doctrine was a hoot? Take a look at how she does with the Republican Platform.
The Huffington Post: "Sarah Palin Might Not Know What a Platform Is" by Chris Kelly/10.23.08
The Old Man and the C-Cup
They say politics makes strange bedfellows, and, at the risk of drawing a truly gruesome mental picture, I'm not sure any two bedfellows are as strange as John McCain and Sarah Palin. Since day one of their startling marriage of political expedience, they've never quite gelled as running mates -- not surprising given that they have almost nothing in common other than an apparently breathtaking measure of craven ambition.
From the start, their pairing never should've worked -- both as a cohesive ticket and a means to an end -- and now that it in fact isn't working in the latter sense, the cracks are seriously beginning to show in unmistakable ways in the former.
All anyone looking for proof of this fact has to do is watch -- and by "watch" I mean "endure" -- the study-in-uncomfortable that is McCain and Palin's interview with NBC's Brian Williams.
The network's political director, Chuck Todd, has already commented that there's an undeniable "tenseness" between the two candidates throughout the interview, but honestly, that's akin to saying that the Titanic suffered some "minor structural damage" when it hit the iceberg.
The reality is that the interaction between McCain and Palin is so forced, so phony, so occasionally unnerving, that about halfway through the thing, I actually had to remind myself that I wasn't watching a Christopher Guest movie.
If you haven't seen any of it for yourself, clear a few minutes from your schedule and click the video below. Make sure to pay special attention to Palin flubbing the number of past secretaries of state endorsing John McCain. If you have trouble locating it, let me help you out: It begins at about 8:00 and it's the part where McCain seriously looks like he wants to reach over and smack Palin in the mouth.
After witnessing such an uneasy exchange, there should be almost no question that McCain regrets choosing Palin as a running mate and at least partially blames her for his spiraling political fortunes.
For God's sake, the man looks like he's being held hostage -- again.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Agree to Disagree
Honestly -- it's not even funny anymore. If McCain were a horse, someone would've humanely shot him by now.
Child Rearing for Dummies
Chances are you've noticed a relative dearth of substantive new material around here lately. Unfortunately, my little girl is now at that stage where she demands my undivided attention pretty much every minute of every day (word has it she should grow out of this in about 18 years) which means that I barely have time to think, let alone write.
Once I get a little more acclimated to her new schedule, I'm sure I'll be back to my usual level of productivity.
Project Office Mayhem
Your assignment, as usual: Quietly put the following link up on every computer in your office, then crank all the speakers to full volume.
Mischief points: 277
Arnold Ends Stephanie (For All Those "Fans" of the Hypnotic Insanity that is Lazy Town)
Listening Post
This is one of the best songs to drive to you'll ever come across.
Here's Kasabian doing Club Foot, live from last year's Glastonbury Festival.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Northern Exposure
If you need any more evidence that -- ironically, sadly -- The Daily Show is responsible for some of the best, most necessary journalism of this entire presidential campaign, just watch this:
Mac vs. P.C.
The internet is a series of tubes -- which can be grabbed with both hands and used to beat John McCain's ass repeatedly.
"The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics" by Arianna Huffington/10.20.08
Tuesday is Recycling Day
"Veruca Assault" (Originally Published, 10.29.06)
As much as my passion -- not to mention my respect -- for the news business has plummeted over the past several years, there is one fact about the job which I never take for granted: for the most part, it requires very little contact with the general public. Field producers are often called upon not only to interact with the average man on the street, but occasionally to placate, cajole, strong-arm, sweet-talk or perform whatever other action might be necessary to get him to say or do what will make their story work so that they can get it done and return to the important business of drinking themselves to death. Show producers on the other hand don't typically have this problem; for the most part -- barring mammoth stories like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina or the Runaway Bride -- we're lucky enough to stay safely locked in an air-conditioned building with hot and cold running coffee, a constant supply of Fritos and the obligatory secret bathroom tucked away in some remote corner where you can sit for hours undisturbed should it become necessary to do so.
One of the more memorable moments from the infancy of my career, in fact, involves a particular morning when I sat with one of my managers in an empty conference room and watched him delete -- one by one -- every single suggestion, rant, complaint and compliment which had been left on the station's viewer comment line. His words to me when the speaker-phone finally proclaimed that the message box was empty: "If they have the time to call us, we don't really want them watching anyway." Although the extreme nature of this point-of-view was specific to the newsroom in which we worked -- you'd have to see the on-air product to truly understand -- for someone who had always believed Sartre's claim about hell being "other people," this was nothing short of a revelation. It was the moment that I felt as if I had finally found a brotherhood which would accept and laud my misanthropy, rather than look upon it with the usual amount of scornful disapproval.
I had found a home among the assholes.
Despite the fact that I'm often accused of proudly exhibiting the interpersonal skills of a 13-year-old runaway, I admit to a certain envy of those who have the ability to deal with people they don't much like without having every interaction with those people end in a fist fight. This is one of the reasons -- one of the many -- that I hold my wife in such high esteem; unlike me, she has the ability not simply to deal with people in a perfunctory fashion, but to actually make it seem as if each individual she interacts with is the only person on the planet. A cynic like myself would see this kind of behavior as a natural talent for manipulation, and would admire it as such; normal people would just say she's incredibly nice. Whether it's the Jedi Mind Trick, genuine concern for others or some combination of the two, her ability to put people at ease and her desire to make them comfortable is preternaturally unparalleled.
This is important, being that she's in the hospitality industry.
Jayne is a manager at one of New York City's most stylish, hip and expensive hotels. This means that for ten hours a day -- sometimes more -- she willingly caters to the every little whim of a clientele which generally sees nothing ridiculous about the entire concept of chihuahuas in handbags. She does this with style, grace and a sense of responsibility that I sometimes find perplexing, and other times flat-out horrifying. There's no shortage of irony to the fact that many of the celebrities I thoroughly despise and openly skewer are the same ones my wife bends over backward for, in an effort to ensure that their bottled water is specifically Fiji and is always chilled to exactly 43-degrees.
Many an evening has Jayne come home, kicked off her high-heels to reveal scarred and inconspicuously bandaged feet, and regaled me with stories of the obscene demands of one spoiled, self-obsessed uber-celeb or another -- and the figurative mountains she and her staff are forced to climb to make sure those demands are met. One hugely popular female singer refuses to allow anyone other than her manager to look at or address her, books a separate suite for her dog and insists that the entire menu be reworked to reflect her incredibly exacting tastes; one young TV star will settle for nothing less than having an entire upper floor to himself, while his staff of handlers is forced to double-up in a pocket of smaller rooms far below. Some throw angry fits if they find unapproved colors of M&Ms in their complimentary Nambé bowls; some lock the cleaning staff out for a week and leave the room looking as if they'd exploded a hand-grenade under the bed. They have fifteen pages of requirements; they have a thirty person entourage. And they expect nothing less than unwavering compliance from my wife and her staff of underpaid and overwhelmed wage-slaves.
Although heaping the requisite amount of derision on it in private, my wife rationalizes the acceptance of -- and acquiescence to -- such an offensive sense of entitlement by reminding herself and others of the obvious: these people are paying good money for the right to demand anything they want, and it's her job to ensure that they get whatever that might happen to be.
It would be a purely Quixotic gesture to suggest that anyone capable of making such juvenile stipulations -- anyone so psychotically intolerant of even the most infinitesimal inconvenience -- is inherently undeserving of having those stipulations met; of course it's true -- and of course the realization that it's true changes absolutely nothing. It does however bring up a fact which becomes indisputable when you consider that not every celebrity who walks through the doors of my wife's place of work insists that the entire world -- and everyone in it -- accept that reality is his or her own private fantasy and act accordingly.
That fact: making a lot of money doesn't make you a bad person -- making a lot of demands does.
The other night I showed up at the end of Jayne's shift to meet her for dinner. As we walked out the doors and away from the hotel -- safe in the knowledge that in the penthouse high above us, the hugely popular singer's life would be free of the catastrophe of sub-standard chicken salad for at least one more night -- there was an old woman sitting on the sidewalk. She was hunched over silently with her back against a wall.
In her hand was a small and worn hand-written sign; it read: "Lost job. Have three children. Need money for food. Anything will help."
Listening Post
This was song was cooler-than-cool to begin with, but as remixed by French electro-legend Alan Braxe, it's just plain mindblowing.
From the tragically defunct Canadian duo Death from Above 1979, here's Black History Month.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Witchcrap
I rarely reprint outside material word for word on this site -- but holy fucking hell is this just too good (read: batshit crazy) not to crib wholesale. The following is 100% real. It comes from an online community called "In Jesus" and warns of an imminent and perilous threat against John McCain and Sarah Palin from -- well, just read for yourself.
Block African witchcraft curses against McCain and Palin NOW!
Jim Bramlett
Sep 28 2008 04:12PM
Dear friends:
THIS IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS.
Minutes ago I spoke with friend Dr. Norman G. Marvin, M.D. and he is so concerned at what he has learned about Barack Obama's family in Kenya that he is calling a special prayer meeting in his home to pray against the witchcraft curses attempted by them against John McCain and Sarah Palin.
Dr. Marvin sent me the below e-mail from Flo Ellers. Flo is credentialed with the International Fellowship of Ministries which is based in Washington State. She is also a member of EndTime Handmaidens and Servants of Jasper, Arkansas.
IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, PLEASE PRAY TODAY AND CONTINUALLY THAT ALL SUCH CURSES BE BROKEN AND SATAN'S PLAN FOR AMERICA BE DEFEATED, IN JESUS' NAME. PRAY AND COVER MCCAIN AND PALIN WITH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, IT IS TIME YOU LEARN!!!
Jim
______________________________________
From Flo Ellers. Excerpt. (Emphasis supplied in bold and underlines.)
Two days ago, I listened to a 9-6-08 message by Bree Keyton, a young woman evangelist who had just traveled to Kenya and visited Obama's home village and what she found out about his relations with his tribal people was chilling. And his "cousin" Odinga was dreadful. She said the witches, warlocks and those involved in satanism and the occult get up daily at 3 a.m. to release curses against McCain and Palin so B. Hussein Obama is elected.
Bree Keyton told the tribal "Christians" you are NOT Christian if you practice "tribalism" where they do voodoo to conjure up a goddess spirit or a "genie" and then come to church on Sunday to worship Jesus! What she discovered there is apparent in most churches around the world; namely, mixture in the church. Some renounced their devilish practices of blood covenant by killing sheep, goats, humans to be inducted into the tribe or to get a wife or to get revenge.
She said the current president of Kenya is a Christian. However, Obama's cousin Odinga ran aganist him and said he rigged the election and stirred up the masses to rape woman and boys, kill and burn and torture Christians, etc. until Obama contacted Condeleeza Rice and she granted Obama the right to contact Odinga and other ruling elders and he "convinced" them to stop terrorizing the Christians. Bree Keyton said the current Christian President was forced by our government (!) to "create" an office for Odinga (to make "peace") so he was made the Prime Minister (!) to make peace between the Christians and Odinga's Muslim religion!
Bree Keyton went and visited Obama's tribal people and she found out Obama is 75% Arab and his family are Muslims. Odinga is strill trying to become the President of Kenya. If he does, he will make a law forbidding all public preaching and institute Sharia Law. Bree K. said Odinga has made a pact with satan.
Bree K. also said when Obama visited his tribe in '06 and as late as Jan. '08 he went to every elder's home which has a "shrine" inside to worship the genie and asked for their blessing. She was told Obama and Odinga were both "destined" before they were born to be president/leader of their nation. They say "he is the chosen one". She said Obama's grandmother sacrificed a black and a white chicken to the "goddess of the river" so both whites and blacks will vote for Obama. All Islam loves and worships Obama. The world is mesmerized by him. Oprah's 200 million followers are out to elect Obama. Also, Dick Morris of Fox News was sent to Kenya to help Odinga run his campaign! I find that unbelievable.
The occultists are "weaving lazy 8's around McCain's mind to make him look confused and like an idiot". Bree K. said we need to break these curses off of him that are being sent from Kenya.
I read a portion of "Obama Nation" book and looked at several websites and found most of this information to be true, all except the curses part, of course....
End of excerpt.
(Thanks to Tony for the link; I'll be sending you my therapy bills.)
Both Ends Against the Middle
I don't usually repost something so soon after it was originally published, but with Sarah Palin once again fanning the flames of discord in this country by pitting "Small Town America" against, well, everyone else, I thought I'd revisit this piece from September 11th, 2008.
“To read the papers and to listen to the news, one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads. The small towns do care about their country and wish it well.”
-- Charles Kuralt
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay. You know... morons."
-- Blazing Saddles
A few years ago, my wife and I, along with a close friend of ours, set out to do something we'd each dreamed about since we were in our late teens: We packed up a vehicle, grabbed a map, and hit the road with no clear plan in mind other than beginning at one ocean and ending at another. For almost a full month, we satisfied our Kerouacian wanderlust along the vast highways and off the beaten paths that run like veins and arteries through the heartland between Miami and Los Angeles. We spent obliterated nights crawling from one dive bar to another in New Orleans and Memphis; toured Graceland and marveled at every possible permutation of Elvis memorabilia available at every gas station a thousand miles in either direction; ate a steak the size of a regulation first base bag at the Big Texan Ranch in Amarillo; stood in awe at the edge of the Grand Canyon and stared silently across the seemingly endless void of White Sands; stumbled upon a group of Navajo children dancing at sunset just outside the Petrified Forest in Arizona; lost our asses in Vegas and partied like rock royalty at the Standard in L.A.; began the 4th of July at the annual UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico and ended it at something called the "Firecracker Fandango" in Odessa, Texas.
We bought a souvenir coconut head in Okahumpka, Florida.
To say that our little cross-country expedition changed me fundamentally would be the grossest of understatements; the fact is that the things we saw, the people we met, and the ground-level view of the country I'd lived in since birth but had never truly come to know opened my eyes and allowed me to better understand what it means to be an American -- the pride that should unequivocally go hand-in-hand with being able to call yourself one. To this day, I consider the entire adventure to be one of the most profound and cathartic experiences of my life.
I wouldn't trade it for anything.
And one of the main reasons why is that it allowed me -- a guy who'd been raised in Miami and had chosen to live in one big city after another as he grew into adulthood -- to fully appreciate the singular and simple beauty of the small town.
While the heavily populated areas along our route provided plenty of entertainment, it was the barely-there blips on the map that seemed to stay with me. The quiet pull of places like Erick, Oklahoma and Holbrook, Arizona was undeniable and somehow resonated inside my head long after we'd moved on; these little towns, most of them sleepy pockets of stunted civilization marked by not much more than a water tower, left me feeling as if I were missing out on something indescribable by living in a metropolis; something unspoiled; something that spoke directly to a secret desire of mine -- to exist in perpetual slow-motion -- in way that was, for lack of a better word, magical.
I ended our journey believing that there was wonder in small town life.
I realize that my romanticism of the rural milieu probably stems at least slightly from the grass always seeming greener on the other side of the cow pasture (or these days, the Wal Mart). Whether I could fully succumb to the charms of small town living and not feel stifled by the lack of unadulterated crazy in my day-to-day existence, who can tell. But I know better than to automatically assume that anyone who does choose to call the sprawling American outland home is an uneducated rube.
I'm not sure the same can be said for the people running the John McCain campaign right now.
On the contrary -- they must think that small town America is overflowing with idiots.
That's the only explanation I can come up with as to why they're lying to it, pretending to give a damn about it and, worst of all, exploiting it: its people; its preponderance of faith, not all of which demands to be brandished like a weapon; its sense of patriotism.
A long list of clever opportunists, both Republican and Democrat, seized on the idea of using the little guy as the main prop in a carefully stagecrafted piece of bullshit political theater long before McCain took up the mantle -- but I'm not sure anyone's narrowed the culture war down specifically to a battle between small town and big city with the kind of assurance that he and his people have this election. They've raised not simply pitting the classes against each other but actually undermining the infrastructure of this country to an art form.
And they've done it by trumpeting a single dubious claim over and over: "Our vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is from a small town and can therefore speak for every American in every rural area across the country; her God, guns, and guts belief system, along with her folksy "hockey mom" style, is not just what this nation needs, it is this nation -- far more than any of those overeducated elitists in the big coastal cities."
To say that this is presumptuous, if not flat-out ballsy-as-hell considering that it excludes and even demonizes a substantial portion of the country, would be like saying that John McCain isn't a kid anymore. What's worse, though, is just who the architects of this strategy are -- the campaign coordinators drawing up the battle plans centered around ingratiating their candidates to Little Town, USA.
They're basically K-Street lobbyists -- Washington neo-aristocracy.
They're Beltway-savvy future oligarchs using their Ivy League educations to cynically craft talking points written in faux-yokelese proclaiming the unassailable goodness of small town life.
They're the furthest fucking thing from the people they're pretending to give a crap about -- real elitists using the unwashed masses as pawns in a war against phantom elitists. 
While no one would deny that the Democrats can be staggeringly adept at populist political manipulation, I've yet to see their own ability to divide and conquer through misdirection and outright bullshit come close to matching the GOP's. And this particular gambit -- claiming to hold the monopoly on "small town values" -- reaches new heights of lowness. It does it, first and foremost, by way of an underlying subtext with slyly racist implications. Even the densest of far-right acolytes understands that when he or she follows the talking points and parrots the virtues of rural tradition, there's another half of the equation that's left unsaid: that the opposite set of American values -- those of the country's "urban" areas, if you get my drift -- just don't measure up. Sure, when that white woman in the funny hat at the Republican National Convention last week spoke so highly of small town mores she meant "in comparison to those of the cosmopolitan 'elitists'"; but make no mistake, she was also subtly implying: "in comparison to those, you know, them -- Obama's people."
Back in 1992, the GOP attempted the same kind of crafty, nudge-nudge wink-wink sloganeering by appropriating the term "family values," blasting it as a suburban battle cry, and co-opting the meaning behind it as the exclusive property of the Republican party. George Bush and Dan Quayle couldn't make a public appearance without dropping the phrase at least three or four times, in tones ranging from scolding to triumphal. The problem, of course, is that even though the tactic worked as it was intended to -- as a means of energizing the conservative religious base -- it couldn't be recycled for the current Republican efforts; the unborn baby in Bristol Palin's belly pretty much shot that possibility all to hell. It's tough to claim that you're the party of old-fashioned family values when your vice presidential candidate's unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant by the local bad boy. That would require a level of hypocritical chutzpah even the Republicans don't possess.
So instead, they fashioned a similar call to arms around that vice presidential candidate's most notable characteristic (besides having a pregnant teen daughter): her small town background.
In the alternate universe that a phalanx of GOP operatives have conjured out of thin air in some Georgetown boardroom, Sarah Palin's small town charm and backwoods resourcefulness -- to say nothing of her "cute little filly" looks -- are all the qualifications she needs to succeed on the world stage and potentially take control of the most powerful nation to ever exist. She's been smartly packaged and sold to the common folk as one of their own -- a celebrity among those who claim to despise celebrities. What's more, it's not just Sarah Palin but what she supposedly represents that's cast as the cure for this country's ills. Like that laughably stupid grass roots push back in 1994 to "Elect Forrest Gump " -- only with a far more malevolent undertone -- voters are being asked to buy into the idea that provincial simpletonism, when thrust into the right situation by nothing more than circumstance, will not just prevail but will do so honorably. And the voters specifically being manipulated into swallowing this nonsense are those who supposedly share a special kinship with Palin that's based on nothing more than her having spent most of her life outside an urban center.
But as I've mentioned before, this election isn't about small town and big city; it never was -- regardless of what the GOP mouthpieces are encouraging you to believe. Not all who live in a small town are the same. They may have plenty of common social and cultural touchstones, just as those who call any particular place home do; however, to say that Sarah Palin and the Republican party is the one true voice of rural America is insulting -- especially when this claim is little more than a political parlor trick designed to get a guy elected. Besides, pitting one half of this country against the other based solely on where each happens to live isn't politics at all -- it's civil war. And it's wrong.
I live in the largest metropolis in America, and to assume that I know what every one of my eight-million neighbors is thinking would be ridiculous and presumptuous. I can't speak for them.
I've traveled to dozens of small towns across America, and I wouldn't dare try to speak for the residents of those places either.
And neither should John McCain.
Quote of the Week (And It's Only Monday)
"She said that small towns, that's the part of the country she really likes going to because that's the pro-America part of the country. You know, I just want to say to her, just very quickly: fuck you."
Jon Stewart, referring to Sarah Palin while speaking in Boston last Friday
Value Mealy
Over the weekend, Todd Palin -- ruggedly handsome tough guy husband of Sarah Palin -- spoke to 75 members of a gun club in Pennsylvania. He told them that it's important for the U.S. to have a president and vice presidential team which "supports our core values -- hunting & fishing." Witnesses say that, in context, the "our" Palin was referring to would be U.S. citizens in general, as in: "hunting & fishing are core American values." Before you laugh or roll your eyes or cycle through any of the dozen or so derisive responses this story is sure to elicit from anyone who reads this site regularly, understand that Palin arrived at "hunting & fishing" after whittling down an extensive list of values he considers intrinsically American. Here now, that list:
Todd Palin's Kick-Ass U.S.A. Values, Hell Yeah!Pickin' & Grinnin'
Big & Rich
Brooks & Dunn
Peanut Butter & Jelly
Meat & Potatoes
Nickelback & Daughtry
Jesus & Christ
Beavis & Butthead
Brown Sugar & Maple Syrup
Snow Mobilin' & Hot Chick Feelin'
Tits & Ass
Sour Cream & Onion
Wal-Marts & Wet Farts
NASCAR & Old Milwaukee
Billy Ray & Miley Cyrus
Pork & Beans
Tom & Jerry
Trailer Parks & Tornados
Maury Povich & Paternity Tests
WWE & GEDs
Dickies & Chukka Boots
Drillin' & Grillin'
Crystal & Meth
Slips & Falls
Lynchin' & Cross Burnin'
Truckin' & Fuckin'
'91 Goatees & '82 Trans-Ams
Cole Puffinburger
Huntin' & Fishin'
Cole Case
From the AP: LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 6-year-old boy abducted from his home at gunpoint was safe in his father's custody Sunday as police tried to untangle any ties the youngster's family had to the Mexican drug dealers suspected of taking him. Police were interviewing Cole Puffinburger after he was found by a bus driver Saturday night on a quiet street outside a Methodist church in Las Vegas.
The Bad News: Nancy Grace doesn't get to say "Cole Puffinburger" over and over again for weeks into months on end.
The Good News: Lou Dobbs gets to blame Mexicans.
Listening Post
Brand new music from Snow Patrol.
Here they are performing Take Back the City live on Jools Holland's Later.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Obey the Cheerleader
This is worth watching for no other reason than to hear Hayden Panettiere say the words "get fucked."
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Written in 1893, The Cat Came Back was originally a minstrel song.
In 1988, an infinitely more politically correct version of it was used as the basis for a memorable cartoon centered around one high-strung man and one very tenacious yellow cat.
Here's The Cat Came Back.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Can You Hear Me Now?
My day-to-day activities don't usually involve anything of great significance.
It's true that writing holds a lot of meaning for me and, certainly, looking after my little girl is one of the most rewarding jobs I've ever had -- but by this point both of these have been fashioned into a daily routine which, if performed correctly, winds up being just that: routine.
My days, these days, are pretty predictable.
Today, however, stands out.
Today I did something truly important; something that matters; something that will have a lasting impact not simply on my own life and the life of the child whose care is my great responsibility, but on the very future of this country and the world in which I'll grow old and she'll grow up.
I voted.
I filled out a ballot, sealed it in an envelope and, with a sense of pride and purpose like almost nothing I've ever experienced, walked across the street and dropped it into a mailbox.
I had my say.
I took a tiny amount of control of this nation's destiny and in a voice even stronger than the one I'm using right now, I said that I will not cede the future to the forces of ignorance and arrogance; I will not surrender the country I love to the craven cynicism of those who would use fear as a weapon against anyone who longs for a better, more just world for our children.
I will put my vote where my mouth is and take a stand in the name of changing the direction that America has been barrelling along in like a runaway train for eight tumultuous years.
And you know something?
It felt good.
That ballot in my hand felt like nothing less than the Sword of Damocles itself, striking at those who've attained and held onto power within our government through divisiveness and the most reprehensible of underhanded machinations. That ballot felt like a ticket to the kind of history I always imagined was possible. That ballot felt like it was made of gold leaf and inscribed in blood.
That's because my hope rides with that ballot, and within it is my voice.
It's a voice that will not be silenced.
So, what did you do today?
Listening Post
Martina Topley Bird cut her teeth providing the breathy, narcotic vocals for Tricky.
Here she is on her own, with Carnies.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Picture of the Week Year
These are not photoshopped.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you U.S. Senator and the potential next President of the United States, John McCain.
His Own Worst Enemy
I'll make this quick since I'm trying to write while simultaneously fending off the hypnotic insanity of Lazy Town (which, although not as good as Jack's Big Music Show, is still infinitely less annoying than that bossy bitch, Pinky Dinky Doo).*
I think I've been pretty honest and even-handed when it comes to this election season's debates, presidential and vice presidential: I considered the first showdown between Obama and McCain a draw; thought Biden cleaned Palin's clock; and gave the second presidential face-off squarely to Obama, but didn't walk away from the thing thinking that anyone had hit hard or scored big.
Last night, however, was a blow-out -- a thorough decimation by any applicable standard.
Put simply: Obama destroyed McCain.
Or, more appropriately, McCain destroyed himself.
I've made mention of McCain's deficiencies several times in the past -- as have others -- so there's no sense repeating them verbatim once again, but last night every negative quality that's ever been ascribed to John McCain was on display from the first question to the closing seconds. He was angry, disdainful, condescending, erratic, surreally confusing (and confused), openly hostile and, a few times, just plain batshit crazy -- or at the very least inadequately medicated. By contrast Obama, who's naturally calm and gentlemanly anyway, looked like Jesus Christ. He respectfully knocked back McCain's carpet bombing run of horseshit with a kind of rarefied and, yes, presidential dignity that had to be seen to be truly appreciated. The difference between these two men and, by proxy, the futures they promise for this country couldn't have been clearer. McCain is full of bile, rage and ill-advised arrogance, and speaks with a smug certainty that betrays the kind of hallucinatory thinking that's nearly put this nation asunder during the past eight years; last night, more than at any point previously, he exuded a near-lethal combination of overly-entitled adolescent jock swagger and shameless crybaby petulance. His exaggerated smirk never looked like anything less than a mask, hiding his unfettered fury and overwhelming desire to just reach over and punch Obama in the mouth.
As of last night, it should be official.
McCain and Palin have shown their colors to this nation; America knows just what it's getting if it stoops to put them in office for the next four years.
We've seen the kind of pettiness and bluster they represent -- and likewise, the kind of august thoughtfulness exhibited by Obama and Biden.
The choice is -- well, there is no choice.
Not if you really give a damn about this country.
(*Only parents of small children will understand any of this.)
Project Office Mayhem
Your assignment, as usual: Quietly put the following link up on every computer in your office, then crank all the speakers to full volume.
Mischief points: 1,553
If you happen to work at McCain campaign HQ: 39,461
The Master Debater
Here's Johnny!
After last night's unrestrained bile-fest on the part of John McCain (and in keeping with today's apparent derogatory-term-for-female-anatomy theme), I figured I could resurrect this amusing little gem from earlier in the year -- right around the time it was revealed that McCain had once called his wife Cindy a "cunt" in front of a bunch of reporters.
***NEW JOHN MCCAIN CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL***
DISTRIBUTION: Nationwide
EMBARGO: None
RUN TIME: 1:00
MIXED AND READY FOR AIR 06/21/08
KILL DATE: TBA
***TRANSCRIPT***
(Cue patriotic music, standard oversized billowing American flag background.)
Hi, I'm John McCain.
You know, recently, there's been some talk floating around the interwebs about how I once called my beautiful wife Cindy, well, a "cunt" in public. I'm here today to set the record straight.
I did in fact call her a cunt... but I'm afraid that the true meaning of the word is being misconstrued.
You see, "cunt" is just old white man lingo for "woman." In the same way that nigg... uh, I mean, blacks... sometimes say "bad" when what they really mean is "good," or when they say "dope," or "fresh" or "funky soul makossa" to mean that they like something... that's what I'm doing when I call my wife a cunt. In fact, Cindy and I have even taken it a step further and made that sort of my pet name for her. Not a day goes by that I don't turn to the love of my life and say, "God, you're such a fucking worthless cunt, and if I weren't running for office I'd kill you in your sleep... now go make me a sandwich."
See? It's just the kind of thing old white men say to their wives.
I don't believe it's fair to criticize cultural differences, especially ones that so many out there and in the media seem to misunderstand. I mean, think of how silly it was when Fox News called the "pound" that Barack and Michelle Obama share a "terrorist fist jab." That's a cultural thing among nigg... uh, I mean, blacks. You wouldn't come down on them for doing something that's popular within their world, would you? No, of course not. But just like a lot of Obama's culture seems strange and foreign to normal people, some of the customs and language of old white man society must also be confusing to those few unimportant voters who won't eventually become old white men themselves. For instance... Cindy and I have our own version of the "pound," and it really is more of a fist jab... like when she wears too much make-up like a cannery row whore and I have to jab my fist into her eye socket.
Once again, it's just something bitter, crazy old white men do... although I learned a couple of "improvements" on the technique during my years being slapped across the face while having "DI DI MOW!" screamed at me and a revolver put to my head.
So before you criticize me for calling my wife a cunt... or criticize any surly elderly man you see engaging in behavior that became unacceptable in decent society a century or so ago, just remember...
It's an old white thing.
You wouldn't understand.
(V/O Track: I'm John McCain, and I approved this horseshit.)
Talk Dirty to Me
I briefly dated CNN anchor Kyra Phillips.
She and I went out for a few months back in the mid-90s, while we were both working at KCBS in Los Angeles. Given the Kafkaesque nature of daily life at KCBS, it could easily be argued that our little fling was nothing more than the natural and understandable product of trauma -- kind of like two people trapped in the same prison camp coming together simply to provide some measure of comfort in the madness. But the truth is that Kyra and I just hit it off and, greased by a steady diet of weekend alcohol, wound up seeing more of each other than either of us had probably planned.
It was never exclusive. It was never very serious. It just was what it was.
I bring this up as a means of saying that I really do have a special place in my heart for Kyra. She's an incredibly cool chick and one who somehow manages to pull off the impressive feat of being equal parts intense and completely laid-back.
Which is why I may chuckle every time she winds up doing something mildly embarrassing on television -- screwing up a line; taking an open mic into the bathroom with her while on the air -- but it's never out of any kind of spite.
Still, you can imagine the certain kind of laugh I'm getting out of hearing Kyra Phillips inadvertently say "cunt" on national television. It happened yesterday while she was introducing a guest contributor. She stumbled over the first syllable in "contributor," which doesn't seem like a very big deal -- until you hear it.
I have to figure it was an innocent mistake.
Right?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Send in the Clowns
I know it's last minute, but if anyone's interested I'll be pseudo-Twittering tonight's third and final presidential debate via my Facebook page's status bar.
If you're a "friend" of mine, feel free to join in the fun. There's no way in hell I'll be as entertaining as Patton Oswalt -- who's just a freakin' riot when he does this sort of thing -- but I'll do my best.
Chez Pazienza on Facebook
Duel Personalities
This is seriously the most entertaining thing I've read all week: Matt Taibbi handing the National Review's Byron York his ass over the current economic crisis.
New York Magazine: Matt Taibbi and Byron York Butt Heads Over Whether McCain Deserves Blame for the Wall Street Meltdown/10.14.08
Listening Post
This still stands as one of my favorite debut albums from a singer-songwriter.
Here's Duncan Sheik, doing She Runs Away.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Shrill Baby, Shrill
Just in case you didn't yet believe that Sarah Palin's campaign isn't really about anyone but Sarah Palin:
The Huffington Post: Palin: "I've Got Nothing to Lose" in Attacking Obama/10.14.08
Grandma Got Run Over by a Redneck
See what happens when you don't put your senile grandparents someplace where they can be looked after?
The Huffington Post: Woman Who Called Obama "Arab" at GOP Rally Cites Library Books, Secret Information/10.10.08
Angel of Death
I'm apparently very bad luck for celebrity types or something.
The last time I was out in Los Angeles, Lindsay Lohan plowed her car into a tree and wound up checking into rehab and Charles Nelson Reilly died. Just a couple of months before that, I was in South Florida on vacation when Anna Nicole Smith collapsed on the floor of the Hard Rock in Ft. Lauderdale and never regained consciousness.
So, as it turns out, what happened last Thursday in L.A. -- just a few hours after I arrived there?
Marilyn Manson's former bass player, Brad Stewart (better known as Gidget Gein), was found dead in his Burbank apartment of a drug overdose.
What's weirder: Manson came up through the South Florida music scene at the same time my band did and I even went out with Brad's on-again-off-again girlfriend, a stripper named Trish, a couple of times in the very early 90s.
Cue the Twilight Zone music.
Oh, and I'll be taking requests as to where I should vacation next -- I'm thinking wherever that Michael Bublé guy lives sounds lovely this time of year.
Tuesday is Recycling Day
There's No "I" in Oprah (Originally Published, 10.25.06)
***INTERNAL MEMO//NOT FOR RELEASE***
From the Law Offices of Jeremy, Jameson, North and Hartley
Beverly Hills, California
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
RE: Oprah Winfrey/Harpo Inc. Copyright and Trademark Rulings
We are pleased to report that as of 9:00am PDT this morning, the proposed copyright and trademark implementation initiated on behalf of our client has been ruled official and legally binding (O. Winfrey Petition, Case #0598672, CA Superior Court/Part 53). As discussed, being that a favorable designation from the client (or authorized association with the client) carries with it certain benefits -- both social and financial -- and said designation lends the recipient an unparalleled level of legitimacy with a vast market which would otherwise be untapped by the recipient, from this point forward the following is true: said recipients of this "hallowed blessing" (the official term to be used forthwith) will be considered the intellectual and industrial property of the client and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harpo Inc.
The current breakdown -- which can and will be adjusted for time, favored status and general rises to and falls from grace -- is as follows:
Oprah's Friend Gayle(c)(tm) // Gayle King, who for some time has been familiar to the general public strictly by the designation "Oprah's Friend Gayle" will now be known by that name and only that name, both professionally and personally. This will replace any previous monicker which may have been applied to her -- including but not limited to: "Oprah's Girlfriend Gayle," "Oprah's Lesbian Lover Gayle," "That Bitch Who Looks Like Whitney Houston Fresh Out of Rehab," "The Sycophant," and "Who?"
Note: if at any time the client chooses to admit the truth about her sexuality, Oprah's Friend Gayle's(c)(tm) name will immediately and legally become "Gayle, the Woman Who Makes it Okay for You to Admit that You're a Lesbian and Leave Behind Your Family and Constricting Life in Suburbia, Girlfriend(c)(tm)."
Oprah's Favorite Chef(c)(tm) // Henceforth, this copyrighted and trademarked label will be applied to the woman formerly known as Rachael Ray and will be exclusively used by her in all professional and personal interactions. It has been brought to this firm and its client's attention that the beneficiary of this hallowed blessing recently began taping a talk show which bears her erstwhile monicker. As a concession, the client will allow the name of the show to be changed to "The Rachael Ray Show, Which Owes its Entire Existence to the Good Nature of Oprah and the Fact that Miss Ray is, in Fact, Oprah's Favorite Chef." It is also the client's wish that Oprah's Favorite Chef(c)(tm) be reminded by this firm that her contract remains legally binding and that the client is under no obligation to return her soul.
Oprah's Designer(c)(tm) // From this point forward -- as a matter of simplification -- the designer who most recently has been known to the general public as "Nate Berkus, Oprah's Designer" will relinquish the proper-name portion of that title, as it barely matters anyway. Oprah's Designer(c)(tm) will also agree to be addressed simply as "Girlfriend" by the client for the remainder of his existence or until the client tires of his bold use of Feng Shui, whichever comes first.
Barack Obama, Oprah's Candidate(c)(tm) // The client acknowledges the unfortunate necessity for the future presidential contender currently known as Barack Obama, the Junior Senator from Illinois, to retain his proper name. However, the client wishes for this firm to remind the Senator -- upon his inevitable election -- to whom he owes his political fortunes. The client expects an appointment to a cabinet post in the Obama administration befitting her role in his incredible appeal to middle-class soccer moms across the country; it is her wish that she be granted the post of Secretary of State or higher, as this rise to power will be necessary to facilitate the coming of the Christ-Child and the client's eventual war with the Nazarene.
He Who Has No Name // Henceforth, the author and blasphemer formerly known as James Frey shall cease to exist in a figurative sense and shall be banished from public consciousness.
Tom Cruise // It is the client's prudent decision that her name in no way be associated with Tom Cruise. This decision is legal and binding.
Dr. Phil, the Ingrate(c)(tm) // The client acknowledges a lapse in oversight which has allowed the one-time recipient of the hallowed blessing to succeed despite having no continued attachment to her. She will not make the same mistake again, and wishes for the firm to take measures to ensure that Dr. Phil, the Ingrate(c)(tm), his wife and son are all "dealt with" at the firm's earliest convenience.
Caveats and Codicils
The client officially lays copyrighted and trademarked legal claim to the following:
* The term "Girlfriend," and all sassy uses of it.
* Weight-loss of any kind.
* The entire depth of human experience, as the client insists that she is not only understanding of any and all interpersonal situations, but is in fact the progenitor of said situations and can provide unequalled validation to those who experience them subsequently.
Any unauthorized use or application of the preceding will result in immediate legal action, which this firm is empowered to take on behalf of the client. Punishment will be swift and without mercy.
Listening Post
The soundtrack to Alex Proyas's 1994 inadvertent classic The Crow remains one of the best movie albums ever released.
These guys actually performed live within the film; here's the produced video for the song they did.
It's Medicine, with Time Baby.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Quote of the Week (And It's Only Monday)
"My friends, we've got them just where we want them."
-- John McCain at a rally in Virginia, referring to the Obama campaign, which has increased its lead over McCain to a full 10 points according to the Washington Post poll
A Note from the Management
I'm back from my little jaunt out to L.A., but I've got quite a few things to get done in the wake of the trip -- contacts I need to follow up on, calls I need to make, etc. -- and equally as much to do around the house, so I'll probably still be down for most of the day.
There may very well be something new up this evening, but if not, look for things to get back to normal around here tomorrow.
That is all.
Listening Post
These guys got pegged as Coldplay also-rans here in the states, which is really unfortunate since they've made some damn good music.
Here's Travis, doing Side.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Only a fool would go after the singing sword.
From 1958, here's Friz Freleng's Knighty Knight Bugs.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Listening Post
In honor of a very good day spent in L.A.
Here's the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Dani California.
Sound and Fury
This is nothing short of terrifying.
The Politico: Panic Attacks: Voters Unload at GOP Rallies/10.10.08
Fail (Literally)
Media Takeout claims that this is a copy of Sarah Palin's actual SAT scores.
Sorry folks, I don't have a joke for this one -- it's pretty much its own punchline.
Our Guiding Blight
I'll make this quick.
There's a great piece in the most recent issue of Esquire by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind in which he talks about the lessons to be learned from the spectacular failure of George W. Bush's presidency.
While reading it, I was struck by that one word -- the simple yet dauntingly powerful descriptor that, as much as it really does pain me to say it, sums up Bush perfectly: failure.
He is a failure in every sense of the word.
This morning, as the markets continued their downward spiral and anxious Americans once again awoke to fears of a complete economic collapse, George Bush stuck his head out of the White House, issued a quick statement that was more of a perfunctory pep talk than anything else -- one overflowing with platitudes but startlingly lean on actual substance -- then vanished back inside. He couldn't even muster his trademark cockiness or pinheaded swagger; he inspired no confidence whatsoever. In fact, he looked like a high school kid whom the teacher had made get up and address the class against his will. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but standing at that podium, talking to the country.
And it was a reminder that -- as in those first few moments after learning of the September 11th attacks, as in the days following Hurricane Katrina -- when there's an honest-to-God crisis that needs immediate attention, Bush can be counted on to barely be able to hide the fear in his eyes. This is his legacy. This is what we'll remember about him: his bald-faced incompetence during the times when we most needed strength and intelligence emanating from the highest office in the land.
When America needed a leader, it got a failure.
Under no circumstances should we forget this as we decide who will take the reins of this country next -- and take on the monumental challenge of cleaning up George W. Bush's disastrous mess.
Quote of the Week (Contender)
"700 billion dollars is a significant amount of money, and as we act we will do so in a way that is effective."
-- George W. Bush
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Listening Post
Death Sentence, the revenge flick starring Kevin Bacon, wasn't anything worth bothering with.
Yet, as a backdrop for the the Black Angels menacing single Young Men Dead, it works perfectly.
This is a surprisingly inspired little amateur video.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Go West
Just a note from the management: I'll be heading off to L.A. first thing tomorrow morning to talk to a couple of interested parties about Dead Star Twilight.
I'll be taking the laptop with me and I promise things won't come to a complete stop around here (I won't be "suspending my campaign"), but by the same token it's not like I'm going to spend every free minute holed up in my hotel room trolling for material, writing out pieces, and otherwise slaving over this site.
Not when I could be sitting by a pool drinking or driving up the Pacific Coast Highway.
I'm sure you nice folks understand.
So look for recycled stuff, Listening Posts, and one or two links but probably not much else around these parts for the next few days (though I hope you'll still want to stop by since I've been known to lie on occasion).
We should return to full capacity on Sunday.
That is all.
Quote of the Week (Contender)
"He was really good for my family. We're hurting financially, but he shares our values... just like Sarah Palin does."
-- Elizabeth Dolan, 31, single mother and waitress, who says she counts George W. Bush among the great presidents in U.S. history (The New York Times/10.8.08)
Project Office Mayhem
Your assignment, as usual: Quietly put the following link up on every computer in your office, then crank all the speakers to full volume.
Mischief points: 735
If you happen to work at McCain campaign HQ: 403,098
If you happen to work at a Russian consulate: 1,300,000
Comrade Palin!
Quote of the Week (Contender)
"I've been in an underdog position quite often in my life."
-- Sarah Palin, surprising no one
All Over but the Flouting
I almost didn't watch the debate last night.
I figured I'd already made up my mind and nothing John McCain did short of looking into the camera and offering me, Chez Pazienza, a few hundred-grand for my vote would make me reconsider my decision, even for a moment. McCain's campaign is so dead-in-the-water -- I already know everything I need to about him: he's sunk to ethical and judgmental depths over the past several weeks that it would take a backhoe to dig him out from -- that forcing myself to listen to his desperate and shaky-voiced pandering for an hour and a half would be nothing more than an exercise in the worst kind of masochism. Anyone with a brain knows where things stand right now, and that last night wasn't likely to change minds either way. As much as the media play up the vast reservoir of prized "undecideds" supposedly still up for grabs, the reality is that most people -- not all, but most -- have already made up their minds which side they're on.
I know I have -- so why bother suffering through the debate (or one half of it, anyway)?
This was what I said to myself at 8:55PM last night.
By 9:03PM my curiosity had gotten the best of me and I was sitting in front of my computer in bed, watching the live streaming feed of the thing.
It turned out to be everything I'd expected.
As he did during the last debate, Barack Obama remained cool, focused and, yes, presidential. He had a strong command of the issues and delivered his points with commendable precision. You never for a moment got the impression that Obama didn't know exactly what he was talking about. My only complaint, and this is one that I've had from the beginning, is that from a strictly political perspective, he should allow the personality that his supporters know is such a potent feature of his -- the one that has convinced so many to both hope and fight for a brighter tomorrow -- to shine through more often. I say this because, when juxtaposed with McCain's grouchy-old-guy routine, nothing -- nothing -- would provide a greater contrast between the two candidates.
Speaking of Mccain -- well, there's really not much more anyone can say.
Except maybe this: From a purely physical standpoint, never before has his age been so apparent as it was last night. He looked not simply old but elderly. He shuffled stiffly around the circular stage; he rarely raised his voice above a silky whisper; he repeated phrases (and not just the drinking-game-worthy entreatment, "my friends"); he did an apparent impression of Tim Conway's "Old Man" character by inexplicably wandering around aimlessly during Obama's turn to answer questions; he looked, well -- feeble.
Feeble, but still bitter.
As I've said before, McCain truly believes that he's entitled to become president. It's what he's been working toward most of his adult life (a fact which proves that his Snow Bunny running mate doesn't have the monopoly on naked ambition within their ticket). McCain has run his campaign ineptly almost since the beginning; he's been a true believer in the kind of corporate ass-kissing, politics-for-profit, free-market-as-the-ultimate-good that got us into this economic mess we're currently in; he's made bad judgment call after strangely erratic and random decision; he's done all of this and more -- and on top of that, he's been petty, disdainful and condescending to his opponent -- and yet he still believes that America should roll over and give him what he wants. He still believes he's the best man for the job. He makes claims like, "I can win wars. I can catch bin Laden. I can fix the economy," and expects that we accept this on faith and take him at his word, when the reality is that if he really could do any of the above and hadn't attempted to do it yet in his role as a senator, he'd be guilty of, at the very least incompetence, at most treason.
Last night, he brought up all of these supposed skills yet again -- while not just dismissing the ideas of his opponent but insulting him by referring to him as "that one" (a special brand of exclusionary rudeness and incivility that I've never seen exhibited by a presidential candidate, likely because it doesn't belong anywhere in the thought processes or lexicon of a presidential candidate).
Add to that the fact that McCain blew off a handshake with Obama at the end of the debate and it's more proof that the former simply isn't in possession of the ideas, the skills, or the sense of decorum necessary to be President of the United States.
But then, we knew that going into last night's debate.
And John McCain did nothing to change anyone's mind -- as expected.
Listening Post
My pop jones continues for one more day.
If this song were any more infectious somebody would quarantine the fucking thing -- and if I still owned a car, this would never leave my CD player.
Here's Rihanna's Shut Up and Drive.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
He Can't Handle the Truth (Part II)
I rarely post comments, but God bless Adam (you know him as Votar) -- he really pulled an inspired little diatribe out of his ass in response to the post directly below this one.
That would be the piece that compared John McCain to Colonel Nathan Jessup from A Few Good Men.
He wrote:
"You see Barack, I can deal with the bullets, and the bombs, and the blood. I don’t want money, and I don’t want medals. What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty slick negro suit and with your Harvard Law School mouth extend me some fucking courtesy. You gotta ask me nicely.
There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me, gentlemen, than a running mate you have to salute in the morning. Promote ‘em all, I say, ’cause this is true: if you haven’t gotten a blowjob from your Vice Presidential nominee, well, you’re just letting the best in life pass you by.
I run my campaign how I run my campaign. You want to investigate me, roll the dice and take your chances. I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 tree-hugging pinko commie terrorist-loving hippie liberals who are trained to kill me, so don’t think for one second that you can come down here, flash those big monkey ears, and make me nervous.
Boy, we live in a world that has millionaires, and those millionaires have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Tom Brokaw? I have more houses and cars than you could possibly fathom. You weep for your retirement pensions and your 401-K's, and you curse the deregulators and mavericks. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the death of your insignificant college fund, while tragic, probably saved Robert Willumstad's trip to Barbados. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves Richard Fuld's Tibetan panda hunt. I know deep down in places you dont talk about at community organizer rallies, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like maverick, gotcha, six-pack. We use these words as the backbone of a campaign pursuing victory at any cost. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who fist-jabs and hip-hops under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said "Oh Lawdy Lawdy thank you Massa McCain," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a paper hat, and give me my chicken nuggets. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
You fuckin' people. You have no idea how to steal a nation. All you did was weaken a country club membership today, Obama. That's all you did. You put rich people's lives in danger. Sweet dreams, BOY."
Adam and I used to do a radio show together years ago.
You can imagine what it sounded like.
He Can't Handle the Truth
Last week I offered up a haiku-like "review" of the vice presidential debate by way of a quote from the movie A Fish Called Wanda. Well, as much as I kind of hate to continue boiling down the most important presidential contest I've seen in my lifetime to a series of pedestrian pop culture metaphors, I think one particular film reference seems pretty appropriate right about now.
There's a lot of talk going on this afternoon about what we can expect from tonight's second presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain -- about what Obama needs to do to seal the deal with voters and what McCain needs to do to turn the tide back in his direction. To be honest, I can't tell you what McCain's strategy should be because A) I'm not sure there's anything he can do at this point short of sacrificing a goat, chanting an incantation to Satan and magically turning himself into a completely different candidate, and B) we already know exactly what tack McCain will take tonight: he'll make a lot of baseless accusations and sling a shitload of mud because he has no other option.
Obama though -- that's a different story.
I'm beginning to get the feeling that all Obama has to do tonight is stay on message and keep his cool because, whereas with a normal, well-adjusted opponent it might not make much of a difference, with McCain it may be just enough to drive him completely over the edge.
Which brings me to the movie reference (and I hinted at this once before).
John McCain is Colonel Nathan Jessup, Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men.
He's strident, arrogant, antagonistic, and he can't for the life of him figure out why the hell he has to stand there taking crap and answering questions about his record and campaign tactics from the pussies in the media whom he fought to protect the rights of back in 'Nam, from the whining voters who want him to come down off his wall and actually help them during this economic crisis, and especially from some uppity black smart-guy in a faggoty Oxxford suit. McCain always looks like he's one irritating question away from screaming, "You're goddamn right I did (something unethical)!" at the top of his lungs.
Like Colonel Jessup, McCain doesn't want to be bothered explaining himself; he'd rather you just addressed him as "Mr. President" -- he believes he's earned it; he'd rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way.
And like Colonel Jessup, he wants to say this -- out loud -- tonight.
McCain wants to lash out at those he feels are yanking his destiny out from under him. He's already proven he'll say and do anything to get elected; all Obama really has to do is remain perfectly calm, not take the bait, and I promise you it'll frustrate the hell out of John McCain to the point where we may actually see smoke come out of his ears.
Or we may see him completely fucking lose it.
He wants to do it -- he wants to do it so badly.
Obama just has to shake him, put him on the defensive and lead him right where he's dying to go.
Tuesday is Recycling Day (Part II)
Sorry about the lack of new material, but I'm busy around the house right now and the vibrating seat isn't turning out to be quite the surefire infant pacification device I had hoped it would be when I bought it. (No crude comments please.) I have no idea why, but I was digging through the archives and stumbled upon this silly little gem from the holiday season of '06. Please, you enjoy.
"And Now, a Very Special Holiday Message from al-Qaeda" (Originally Published, 12.20.06)
In the name of Almighty Allah, and all praise is due to Allah, and may peace and prayers be on the Messenger of Allah, and on his family, companions and allies. Muslim brothers everywhere, peace be upon you and may you know the mercy of Almighty Allah and his blessings.
The rest of you can burn in hell.
Hah, hah -- no -- I kid, I kid.
It's me again, Ayman al-Zawahiri. You might recognize me as the co-star of the hit TV series Death to America, which airs monthly on al-Jazeera. I also had a big part on Extreme Makeover: New York and DC Edition a few years back, and -- well -- between you and me, I even tried my hand at doing a couple of music videos. Yeah, I edited a bunch of scenes together that really highlight the relationship between Meredith and Dr. McDreamy and set it to some of my favorite Goo Goo Dolls songs. They're on al-Qaeda's MySpace site now. Feel free to take a look -- I'm very proud.
But hey, enough about me, right? It's the holiday season for most of the non-Muslim world, or as we in al-Qaeda like to call it -- the Muslim world. So just to show you that we're not all streets-running-red-with-the-blood-of-the-infidels, we wanted to personally offer you all a special holiday message.
Why would we do something like this you ask?
Well look, it's been a pretty good year for us overall. Thanks to your dimwitted Imperious Leader, we've been able to swarm all over Iraq like teen pregnancy on a Birmingham trailer park. We now have more recruits to our cause than we know what to do with -- so many in fact that we're thinking about starting a new chapter of al-Qaeda. We're still trying to come up with a name for it, but so far al-Qaeda 2: The New Class seems to be pretty popular around the camel. We figure we might even be able to get Screech to do a commercial for us, seeing as how that guy will do anything for money these days.
Then of course we'd have to kill him because he's a Jew, praise be to Allah.
Getting back to what I was saying, it really doesn't matter to us that you good folks finally came to your senses and realized that the drunken idiot you sent to the White House twice is completely out of control. It's certainly a step in the right direction for you, but hey -- what's done is done over here. You can't put the genie back in the bottle -- ya know?
Get it?
Genie?
Bottle?
Sorry -- just a little Persian humor for you. Hussein the Hilarious, circa 1438. You should always respect the classics.
Anyway, lately we understand that the whole Iraq thing has taken a backseat to something truly Earth-shattering that's happened in America. Something which has dominated your headlines and held the attention of your entire nation, paralyzing every man, woman and child with anticipation and an unquenchable desire to have one question answered -- quite simply the most important question America has ever faced:
What will Donald Trump do with Miss USA, Tara Conner?
Look, forgive me if I laugh a little about this, but is this the freedom you people are supposedly "protecting" abroad -- the one your sons and daughters are dying for in Iraq?
The right to continue to worry about stupid, trivial garbage like this?
That's what this is all about?
I live in a cave for Allah's sake, and even I could've told you what an asshole like Trump was gonna do. He was gonna do whatever he had to do to make sure that the 20-year-old beauty queen from Kentucky never told anybody that he'd been boning her for the past six months. Still, come on. Rehab? Isn't that place getting a little crowded over there? How'd you manage to slip her in between Mark Foley and Ted Haggard?
No, seriously -- how'd you manage to slip her in between Mark Foley and Ted Haggard?
Think about it -- that Lindsay Lohan girl is never sober, never wears underwear and never lacks for a place to put down a rail of cocaine the size of the USS Abraham Lincoln -- and yet you people put her on the front cover of Vogue. This kid does what any kid would do if you swept her up from a debutante ball outside Lexington and dropped her simple ass on top of Chamillionaire in the TRL studios in New York and you decide that she needs rehab?
Wow, are you people hypocrites. And you wonder why we keep our women under sheets and hit them with rocks until they're dead when they misbehave, Allah be praised.
I've got a much better idea for you. Why not just have Trump build Skynet and send the Terminator back through time to kill this girl. Wait, that was Sarah Connor? Crap. What do you want from me? I live in a cave. Satellite reception's awful and our movie package only includes Starz! and Encore. You try making pop culture jokes when the most recent movie you've seen is Grumpier Old Men, or as we like to call it -- Two Old Jews Now Put Asunder by Almighty Allah, His Name Be Praised.
In the coming New Year -- 2007 on your calendar, 1373 on ours, again -- we in al-Qaeda expect to continue our campaign of terror against you for your continued insult and humiliation of our Muslim faith, the one true God, Allah, and his prophet Muhammed. I just figured I'd go ahead and be up-front about that. But that being said, we concede that there is one line in the Koran about being tolerant of "People of the Book," and as far as we can tell -- that means you Christians. So, with it being your Christmas season and all, we wanted to at least pay a little lip-service to the conciliatory spirit by wishing you all a healthy and safe holiday -- seeing as how, if we get our way, it will probably be your last.
And for our Jewish friends, Happy Hanu -- Channuk -- Chahn -- oh fuck it, just drive yourselves into the sea already.
I've gotta run now. I'm trying to figure out how to put my dick in a box as a gift for Osama.
Yes you infidels, we have YouTube, Allah be praised.
Zawahiri out.
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
The most loathsome part of this is that, should any of the GOPs daffy redneck acolytes actually ever make good on their angry threats, McCain and Palin will deny ever having fomented this kind of sentiment. They'll wash their hands of the whole thing.
The Huffington Post: Obama Hatred at McCain-Palin Rallies: "Terrorist!" "Kill Him!"
Listening Post
I'm past the point in my life where I have to apologize for liking a song or band, hence my unabashed enjoyment of the new Fall Out Boy single.
Sure, Pete Wentz needs to die, but this song has one of the catchiest choruses I've heard in a long time and I'm willing to cut myself some slack for liking it because somebody wise once said that there must be something in the water in Chicago when it comes to pop music. Liz Phair, Urge Overkill, Veruca Salt, Smashing Pumpkins and, of course, the great Cheap Trick all came out of Chicago and all have an uncanny mastery of the art of the great hook and the undeniable melody.
So, yes, Pete Wentz needs to die. But this is still a really good song.
Here's I Don't Care.
(And for a better understanding of why I actually "stooped" to choosing this for a Listening Post, read the piece directly below.)
Tuesday is Recycling Day
"Shut Up. Listen. Learn." (Originally Published, 11.19.06)
Just about everyone has that moment.
It typically comes during the formative years, and its sheer weight cannot be overstated, simply because -- upon reflection later in life -- it will always be held in the kind of esteem and spoken of with the kind of reverence typically reserved for a first kiss or a conversion to Christ. I'm speaking of course of that single, epiphanic event which inarguably determines if not the final outcome of your musical tastes, then at the very least the path that will be taken to eventually arrive at that point. It is the juncture which often decides whether you'll spend entire evenings passionately arguing the merits of the new Secret Machines album, or debating the necessity of Muse's existence were it not for the fact that Radiohead doesn't write actual songs anymore -- or think to yourself that you might pick up that new Mariah Carey record at some point; whether you'll seduce a potential lover with a mix playlist that includes Jeff Buckley, Marvin Gaye, Zero 7 and Protection-era Massive Attack, then inevitably have mind-blowing sex with that person to the Deftones' Change (in the House of Flies) -- or half-heartedly try to decide between Kenny G and Enigma should you actually convince someone of the opposite sex to spend an evening with you in a manner that doesn't involve chloroform and a tube-sock.
To put it simply, it will decide whether or not you suck.
As I sit here typing these words, I'm listening to the new Army of Anyone record. For the unfamiliar, the band features the DeLeo brothers (formerly of Stone Temple Pilots) and Richard Patrick (lead singer of Filter). It's the kind of album which will in no way align the planets, but as good, melodic rock records go, it more than serves its purpose. I owe the fact that this is currently being played in my home to one person, and one person only. His name is Robert Rivero. I haven't seen him since the sixth grade -- coincidentally, the same year I met him.
Up until the point that Robert Rivero entered my life, my music had come from the same source as my Toughskins jeans -- Sears. And as with those jeans, the authority deciding the specifics of what I would be listening to was my mother. Thankfully, my mother had pretty decent taste in music -- when it came to what she herself listened to. With the exception of the sage purchase of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album, however, the music she foisted upon me showed no such keen judgment. In fact, as I think back to a small stack of records that included Leo Sayer, Abba and a pre-ironically-hip Bee-Gees, I realize that my mother owes her current freedom only to that era's liberal child abuse laws.
When Robert Rivero stumbled into class on the first day of school in 1979 however -- eyes mere bloodshot slits, dressed in the ubiquitous stoner uniform of a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, torn jeans and suede chukka-boots -- everything changed. He and I made friends quickly and within a month or so, much to my parents' abject horror, Robert was influencing everything from the way I looked and acted to, most importantly, what I listened to. In an ultimately pathetic vision quest to be more Rivero-like, I would put my allowance toward the purchase of vinyl and beg regularly to be chauffeured to the mall to pick up AC/DC's Highway to Hell or Sabbath's Paranoid. I had fantasies of running into Abba on the street and setting them on fire in an effort to demonstrate my unwavering allegiance to Jimmy Page and, by proxy, Satan.
The irony, however, is that it was through the attempt to emulate someone else that I learned to make my own decisions; it was through an influential kinship with someone my own age that I learned to develop tastes and appreciations that were independent of my parents. It also, as I mentioned before and can't stress enough, started me down the passionate musical road which I continue traveling to this day.
The titular "Highway to Hell" perhaps.
About a month ago, I voiced my considerable like for the new My Chemical Romance album, The Black Parade. That opinion still stands -- in fact, after repeated listens I can honestly say that I like it even more than I did when I first wrote about it. As that post was quick and to the point -- as opposed to some which are long, rambling and take forever to make their point, like this one for instance -- I didn't expect much in the way of reaction. I was wrong. Given the responses that I received, both on the comment page and via e-mail, you would've thought that I had suggested replacing every other noun in the pledge of allegiance with the words "pee-pee pants." What surprised me most was the implication by many that the enjoyment of MCR was somehow beneath me -- that it was unexpected for someone who considers himself an independent thinker to support a band that was so unapologetically "popular."
And that's what led me to feel the need to make my musical tastes clear.
My first job in broadcasting was as a DJ at WVUM, the radio station at the University of Miami. Before finding my place as the host of a show which was essentially talk and opinion, I made the rounds in the general DJ pool, where I played a combination of my own choices and the songs and bands which the program director had deemed worthy of broadcast. I'll probably make my first pro-mainstream statement regarding my likes and dislikes (aside from my MCR jones of course) by saying that most of what the program director picked was shit. In fact, most of what's played on college radio in general -- then and now -- is shit. Although there are plenty of fantastic bands on tiny labels which certainly deserve to be heard, there are three times as many bands that are on tiny labels with good goddamned reason. A message for college radio kids: playing bands that are so far underground that they've never even heard of themselves doesn't make you cool, it makes you desperate to appear cool, which in turn makes you suck.
Likewise, abandoning a band simply because they evolve, get a major-label deal, or suddenly achieve some measure of success merely shows that you weren't half as interested in the band as you were in how the band made you feel about yourself. Once again, this makes you suck.
I look at music the way I look at politics: if an equal number of people from both sides of the aisle -- in this case, the pop-lovers and the indie kids -- hold you in the same disdain, you're probably doing something right.
So, without further ado -- and in appropriate stream-of-consciousness fashion -- here's the music that I love and hate...
My three "desert island" albums are, in no particular order: Radiohead's OK Computer, Jeff Buckley's Grace, and Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Buckley's Grace contains probably the most beautiful song -- and certainly best cover -- ever recorded: Hallelujah. OK Computer meanwhile is the best rock album of the 90s (yes, better than Nirvana's Nevermind). Although Nirvana are a vastly more important band than the Foo Fighters, they are not, in fact, a better band; when their bodies of work are compared side-by-side, Foo Fighters are an infinitely better band. There's a reason that pop music is pop music: it's pleasing to the ear; as such, I'd rather truly enjoy Neil Young's gorgeous Harvest Moon album than have to trudge my way through his nauseatingly self-indulgent Arc album, which consists of nothing but noise. Modern hip-hop is little more than noise -- unlistenable noise being shouted by ignorant Neanderthals with a lot of money, and I'd gladly give up the brilliant work of Mos Def, Public Enemy, Outkast, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice T, Slick Rick, the Beastie Boys and others if it meant that the cultural virus known as today's rap could be completely eradicated. If you think this is racist, you're probably a tool. Tool is one of the best and most instrumentally complex bands in the world right now, however, song-for-song I prefer A Perfect Circle. Perfect Circle is R.E.M.'s best song from Michael Stipe's pre-intelligible stage, Sweetness Follows is their best post-intelligible song. R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People is one of the 10 best albums of the 1990s. Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend is one of the top 25 albums of the 1990s, despite containing only three really great songs. Every Matthew Sweet album contains only three great songs, tops, but those songs are typically better than other artists' entire catalogs. People who claim that vinyl is better than compact disc or digital music should be treated with leeches and trepanation the next time they get sick. AC/DC should've broken up after Bon Scott died from choking on his own vomit. I'll never forgive Rick Rubin for turning the Cult into a latter-day AC/DC on their worthless Electric album. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Howl album, although brilliant, should've come from another band; their original incarnation, doing Jesus & Mary Chainian psychedelia, filled a much-needed hole in the musical landscape. BRMC -- then and now -- are one of the coolest bands on the planet; the others that come to mind are Girls Against Boys, Queens of the Stone Age, and the Dandy Warhols. I'm in love with the Dandys' Zia McCabe, and not just because she occasionally performs topless. Liz Phair's old material is great. Liz Phair's new material is average. Whether Liz Phair's material is great or average doesn't matter, because there's no one in rock n' roll that I'd more like to have sex with. Gwen Stefani used to be both adorable and the singer for a really decent band, No Doubt -- she's now a hip-hop anime character. Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl is one of the worst songs in the history of recorded music; it makes me wish I'd been born deaf. Fergalicious by Fergie is equally bad. Jennifer Lopez's disappearance from the music business is proof that there may in fact be a benevolent god. Despite the underlying Christian message of their music, Switchfoot are actually a pretty likable band. You can like a band's music but hate the band itself (Good Charlotte). You can like a band but hate their music (Happy Mondays). Oasis are music's biggest assholes who also write great songs; they also have the distinction of being the only band whose b-sides are actually better, by and large, than the material on their albums. The Red Hot Chili Peppers may be the last great rock n' roll band with any kind of longevity. U2 may very well contradict my last statement. Upon further reflection, yes, Green Day's American Idiot was that good. Billy Joel has recorded more phenomenal music than any other single artist working right now; although The Nylon Curtain is his best album, Zanzibar is his most underrated song. Cheap Trick are rock's most underrated band. The Grateful Dead are rock's most overrated band. I never get tired of hearing the Stones' Gimme Shelter, the New Pornographers' Use It, Crazy Town & Orgy's Black Cloud, Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, Fiona Apple's Sullen Girl, and Zero 7's Destiny (or the entire Simple Things album for that matter). I got tired of hearing the White Stripes midway through their debut album and actually believe that Jack White's new band, The Raconteurs, are far better. No one is better than Tom Waits. Elvis Presley has always been overrated. Elvis Costello cannot be overrated. Somehow, New Order released their best album two decades into their career; Get Ready is shockingly good. There is nothing, NOTHING, better than a playlist which includes Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Miles, Brubeck and Jimmy Scott. The one and only Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hoprisy album almost contradicts what I said earlier about hip-hop. Generally speaking, both blues and funk are types of music played by brilliant musicians who can't write a song for shit. Faux-punk music would probably be tolerable if it didn't try to bill itself as punk. When Avril Lavigne was labeled "punk," Joe Strummer, in a final show of defiance, died. Sid Vicious was an idiot; Johnny Rotten was anything but. The Pistols were gods regardless. Every night I thank God for Henry Rollins. I want Debussy to be the last thing I hear before I die; Clair de Lune is perfection. I want Nine Inch Nails to be the last thing I hear before I kill; The Fragile is a masterpiece. I loathe Missy Elliott. I miss Elliott Smith. I miss Husker Du. I miss the Replacements. I miss the Smashing Pumpkins while simultaneously not missing Billy Corgan. I will never, NEVER, be able to figure out why Jonatha Brooke isn't huge; stop reading this immediately and buy everything she's ever released. I will never be able to figure out why Ken Andrews isn't huge; buy the Year of the Rabbit album immediately. Abandoned Pools are the best band you've never heard of, besides possibly The Start. David Baerwald's A Secret Silken World is the best song you've never heard. Sloan rule. I believe that the Sneaker Pimps are actually better without Kelli Dayton. I believe that Brian Warner/Marilyn Manson is a fucking genius. I believe that Charlie Benante of Anthrax can drum circles around Lars Ulrich of Metallica. Buddy Rich can drum circles around both of them. Greg Dulli has never sung a bad song, whether it's a cover or an original -- whether he's fronting the Afghan Whigs, the Twilight Singers or solo. Surprisingly, Motley Crue's cover of the Tubes' White Punks on Dope isn't half bad. Unsurprisingly, Motley Crue's cover of Street Fighting Man is terrible. There has never been a good reggaeton song, and there never will be. Madonna should be killed on principle. Killing Joke's Night Time album is probably still my favorite record of the 80s. The Killing Moon from Echo & the Bunnymen is probably the best song of the 80s. The Cure was always better than the Smiths. You can tell a lot about a person by his or her preference in Cure material: my favorite Cure songs are Burn from The Crow soundtrack, The Kiss, and anything from Disintegration; I have no use for Friday I'm in Love. I loved Gang of Four the first time around, which is why I can't take two seconds of the wholly derivative crap that Franz Ferdinand churns out. Sometimes it isn't about the music, so much as where it takes you when you listen to it -- this is why I can listen to Trespassers William's Different Stars album and Thievery Corporation's The Mirror Conspiracy over and over again. Liam Howlett should've kept Prodigy intact. Big Audio Dynamite and Faith No More are both vastly underrated, and contributed more to the sound of modern music than anyone willingly gives them credit for. 1992 was the last truly great year for music. Were it not for the greatness of Pearl Jam, the death of Andrew Wood and the collapse of Mother Love Bone would have been one of the biggest losses to rock n' roll ever. Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash were too fucking cool to live. Prince, David Bowie, Trent Reznor and possibly Todd Rundgren may be the only musical geniuses still living. Perry Farrell isn't half the musical genius he thinks he is. Ritual de lo Habitual was Jane's Addiction's best album; their last album Strays was a good rock album, but not a good Jane's Addiction album. Ministry's Psalm 69 is the best non-metal metal album ever recorded. John Doe's Meet John Doe is the best non-country country album ever recorded. Everything you've heard about Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is true. Lou Barlow is indeed the King of Sadness. Steely Dan's Deacon Blues is one of the coolest songs ever recorded; Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street is as well, if for no other reason than the first note of one of the best and most understated guitar solos around. Five strings, ten fingers, countless great songs, one name: Van Halen. Earth, Wind & Fire are gods. Joni Mitchell's Blue is beautiful beyond words. Duncan Sheik has a place in my heart for covering Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark, Jeff Buckley's masterpiece, Lover, You Should've Come Over, and Radiohead's gorgeous Fake Plastic Trees. Nessun Dorma, from Turandot -- particularly when sung by Pavarotti -- always makes me cry, ALWAYS. The Beatles were, in fact, the best band in music history.
Yes, the new My Chemical Romance album is fucking great.
And no, I will never be able to repay Robert Rivero.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Hate White North
So there's an opinion columnist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website who's facing some harsh criticism over a piece she wrote recently comparing Sarah Palin to a porn star and implying that Republican men are sexually inadequate.
The backlash, as it turns out, didn't start until the professional patriots over at Fox News did a predictably indignant story on the column -- basically drawing the attention of every redneck in the contiguous 48 to something he otherwise never would've seen, since the American readership of the CBC's site is basically nil.
And how is the writer in question, Heather Mallick, responding to NASCAR America's sudden contrived outrage?
Brilliantly.
“My problem is that I have to write with a certain kind of reader in mind, and that person is always going to be my vision of an intelligent Canadian. I don’t write for Fox viewers,” she said in an interview.
In other words, it was a joke that wasn't meant for you -- so piss off.
And before the Fox Fans dare to argue that the audience a comment is aimed at doesn't matter -- that offensive is offensive -- somebody needs to remind them of that idiot John Gibson's crack about Heath Ledger's death back in January.
Let's Call It a Daze
Remember just a few years ago when the Republicans ruled the land while the Democrats, no matter how hard they tried, couldn't get it together to save their lives (or at the very least, their political careers)?
It's almost astonishing how swiftly and ab