we're going through a hole in the sky

no matter how many times i see robyn hitchcock play, i always feel like i've seen a show made for that night, not a repeat of the same show he played the night before in the next city over. and i know this to be true because when i worked for a&m records a while back, and worked the "globe of frogs" record to retail and college radio, i saw him play a 4 times over 6 nights in nyc, boston, trenton and philadelphia. what struck me then was that each night's between-song patter was different, extemporaneous riffs on the absurd that only robyn can pull off. the set lists changed enough each night, anchored around selling the record (they were on their first major-label tour, so were playing it somewhat safe).

so seeing him at slim's tonight was yet again a new experience. his backing band this time were the minus 5, led by young fresh fellow and part-time r.e.m.-er scott mccaughey, and including peter buck on bass (during the minus 5 set) and guitar (for robyn).

i'll have to admit that i've never been a young fresh fellow fan, and the minus 5 don't really do it for me. that said, mccaughey's a good singer and a fine instrumentalist. for whatever reason his songs have never been my thing.

but robyn has always been my thing and tonight was no different. he bounded on stage with a big smile, a drink and greeted us with a hearty "hello groovers", then began an acoustic set led off by syd barrett's "gigiolo aunt" and including "one long pair of eyes" and "beautiful girl". buck, mccaughey and the minus 5 drummer then joined robyn for the remainder of the set, featuring a smattering of new and old, including "madonna of the wasps" and "if you were a priest". the between-song highlight was a 5-minute run through the plot for magnum force, the movie that inspired the song "a man's gotta know his limitations, briggs". a wonderful set, proof that i can see robyn countless times and he'll never disappoint. all that and i made a new fan for robyn.

"i wanna destroy you" was the crescendo piece of the night and though it's, what, 20 years old (?), robyn's dedicating it to george, condi, donnie et al, made it as relevant as ever.

so, a reminder...

I wanna destroy you (4x)

I feel it coming on again
Just like it did before
They fill your mind with boredom
And they lead you off to war
The way we treat each other
Really makes me feel ill
And if you're gonna fight
Then you're just dying to get killed

I wanna destroy you (4x)

A pox upon the media
And everything you read
They tell you your opinions
And they're very good indeed

I wanna destroy you

And when I have destroyed you
I'll come pickin' at your bones
And you won't have a single atom
Left to call your own

can we get a panda?

please? please? i promise to take care of it.

(thanks, ian)

little decisions are the kind I can make

...how i imagine our white house at work...

the inspiration...

blind acceptance is a sign, of stupid fools who stand in line

the flilthy lucre tours aside, the sex pistols have pretty much always told the music industry to go screw itself, so it's no surpise to see this headline:

"Sex Pistols Flip Off Rock Hall"

yes, they've told the rock and roll hall of fame that they won't be at the march 13 ceremony, and have done it with their usual sense of overly self-conscious rebellious iconoclasm.

the hand-written note on the lydon/pistols website reads (spelling/grammar errors left in tact):

"Next to the sex Pistols, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. We're not coming. Were not your monkey and so what? Fame at $25,000 if we paid for a table, or $15,000 to squeak up in the gallery, goes to a non-profit organization selling us a load of old famous. Congratulations. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons. Your anonymous as judges, but your still music industry people. Were not coming. Your not paying attention. Outside the shit-stem is a real Sex Pistol."

johnny lydon may often be full of shit, but you gotta admit that he does most everything with some style and flourish.

it's not cheating if i'm with you

say you're eating dinner while watching a cooking show and lusting after the food being prepared...is that like making love and fantasizing about someone other than the person with whom you're in bed?

mystery achievement

back when i was in 7th grade i wrote an essay about wanting to be an olympic athlete. something about the thought of reperesenting your country as a top athlete really got to me, even though i was a scrawny (though reasonably athletic) kid. my english teacher, mr. bundy, commended me on the piece. since i can remember, i've been entranced by the idea of the olympics, as much as the competition (and this was before i found out the the athlete's village was one giant pick-up joint, the hooking up apparently enabled, if not encouraged by the ioc and sponsors.).

anyway, i love watching them, especially sports that i wouldn't necessarily be all that into were they not part of the games -- swimming, track and field, luge, bobsled and of course, curling (and admittedly, yes, this helps). oh and moguls, but then this helps as well.

this year, though, it's been a giant bore. i watched a few hours of it during the week, and with the exception of a few curling matches, the canada-swizerland hockey game and any of the hockey games in which finland played, it's been bleh.

well, not totally. snowboard-cross was awesome, and short-track speedskating is fun, and not just for the spill-factor.

but there have been no compelling stories featuring winners. the big stories have been about the over-hyped who for various reasons, couldn't deliver and were less than sporting or gracious about it. though to be fair, weir has taken the gold for "Best Use of the Games to Become A Bigger Celebrity", narrowly edging out the flying tomato.

though come to think of it, the french guy who won men's downhill gold...that was a thrilling moment. last guy down the run, not expected to do much as he's still recovering from a knee injury, and steals the top spot with a daredevil run. that was a good story, even if it had a short shelf-life.

those surprise moments were just too few and far between. yeah, it was great that the japanese girl won her country's first gold in that sport, i mean, competition. but she did it because the favorites fell. if they'd all stayed on their skates, she's 3rd at best.

usually i find myself at the end of the games almost not wishing they were over. this year i keep wondering when they're finally gonna end.

{addendum...watching the games makes me want to go to torino. looks like an amazing place for a winter vacation}

that said, i still would love to be an olympian. 2010 is far enough away to get together a danish bobseld team, right?

lip service is all i ever get from you

For a guy who's supposed to be the guardian of our nation's secrets and intelligence, CIA Director Porter Goss seems to be out of the loop.

In this piece in today's NYT, a whinefest about intelligence leaks, he is both outright lying and disingenuously lying, committing lies of commission and ommission.

His point is:

Revelations of intelligence successes or failures, whether accurate or not, can aid Al Qaeda and its global affiliates in many ways. A leak is invaluable to them, even if it only, say, prematurely confirms whether one of their associates is dead or alive. They can gain much more: these disclosures can tip the terrorists to new technologies we use, our operational tactics, and the identities of brave men and women who risk their lives to assist us.

The head-shaking comes because of an example he uses to make his point, and an example he ignores, which would have more on target.

One example Goss uses to stress the importance of keeping secrets is:

Recently, I noticed renewed debate in the news media over press reports in 1998 that Osama bin Laden's satellite phone was being tracked by United States intelligence officials. In the recent debate, it was taken for granted that the original reports did not hurt our national security efforts, and any suggestions that they did cause damage were dismissed as urban myth. But the reality is that the revelation of the phone tracking was, without question, one of the most egregious examples of an unauthorized criminal disclosure of classified national defense information in recent years. It served no public interest. Ultimately, the bin Laden phone went silent.

Only one problem...this story has been pretty much discredited in this WaPo story from December 2005, Goss's whining to the contrary. Moreover, it wasn't any US press agency that was responsible for the leak.

President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device.

The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president.

But it appears to be an urban myth.

The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.

The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself.

Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him by hours.

Not only that, he seems to have completely forgotten about a rather egregious leak that outed a covert CIA agent. And now it seems that Libby was ordered by VP Cheney to disclose classified info. Makes you wonder how likely it was that the Plame leak was done at the Veep's behest. Then of course there's this little gem from the Post today:

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Until BushCo I was under the impression that the CIA was supposed to be above politics, not an agency at the beck-and-call of the President, not part of the army of spin doctors that the administration needs to cover its ass and make up slam-dunk certainties.

say what you will

Though he's considered the dean of Beltway pundits, David Broder's toolery has been exposed before, most effectively by Eric Alterman.

So while it's a disappointment, it's hardly a surprise to read this little gem from his column today:

Every Democrat on the committee signaled in the hearing a readiness to make needed adjustments in the FISA statute, as Congress has done five times since 2001 to provide more flexibility. The Democrats clearly had heeded Karl Rove's recent speech to the Republican National Committee, signaling an intention to tag them -- once again -- in the 2006 campaign as being soft on terrorism.

They went out of their way to avoid that charge, with Ted Kennedy even applying some reverse English to the argument, by suggesting that al Qaeda suspects might beat the rap in court by their lawyers' successfully challenging evidence obtained through surveillance conducted under questionable legal authority.

I love how he frames this as "Rove speak, Dems jump", as if the Dems were the obedient dog. Broder puts them in the passive, reactive mode. God forbid he frame it as "Rove once again exploited national secrurity for politics, falsely accusing Dems of..."

Look, we do have issues with the party not being effective at crafting a message and for sure the party has, since the Cold War, had to fight the perception that it is weak on national security. However, reality shows us that most Dems are quite serious about real and effective solutions to protecting the country from terrorism. It's discouraging then, to read more b.s. "conventional wisdom", framed in a way that puts Rove in charge, and doesn't call Rove on this disgusting campaign tactic. I would like to think that Broder knows better, but sadly he doesn't.

Perhaps it's time for a few firm but cordial e-mails to the dean, to let him know that people are tired of lazy punditry.

I’ll be what I am, a solitary man

The overriding focus of discussion about Brokeback Mountain has naturally been about the love affair between two men. To be sure, a major motion-picture telling the story of a love affair between two men spanning the 1960s and 1970s in the big sky country of Wyoming is worth talking about. But the film is not just about “gay cowboys eating pudding”. There much more going on.

Mostly I saw it as a character study of a man, Ennis Del Mar, who has a profoundly sad inability to get out of his own head and connect with other people. People are drawn to him – his lover Jack Twist, wife Alma, eldest daughter Alma Jr., bartender Cassie Cartwright. Yet Ennis struggles to reciprocate their attraction, subconsciously but overtly keeping people at a distance, never deliberately showing his true self. When he does open up and flash a bit of unabashed emotion (excitement over going “fishing” with Twist), it takes his wife and the audience by surprise.

To be sure, it is beautifully shot and the acting is first rate. The landscape shots are lush and spectacular and stand in sharp contrast to the interior scenes that Ang Lee frames in a way that's evocative of the American realism period of painting of Eakins and Hopper -- stark images conveying loneliness and empty space. Heath Ledger plays Del Mar with just enough reticence and vulnerability to make the character a tragic hero. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Twist is a bit less fully realized. He's definitely trying to be a young romantic, wanting to seduce everything in his path, but there's something about Gyllenhaal the actor...he doesn't carry the emotional weight that Ledger does, and seems small and meager by comparison.

the sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine

The owners of the mining company should be brought up on 12 counts of negligent homicide. From the Washington Post:

Time and again over the past four years, federal mining inspectors documented the same litany of problems at central West Virginia's Sago Mine: mine roofs that tended to collapse without warning. Faulty or inadequate tunnel supports. A dangerous buildup of flammable coal dust.

Yesterday, the mine's safety record came into sharp focus as officials searched for explanations for Monday's underground explosion. That record, as reflected in dozens of federal inspection reports, shows a succession of operators struggling to overcome serious, long-standing safety problems, some of which could be part of the investigation into the cause of the explosion that trapped 13 miners.

In the past two years, the mine was cited 273 times for safety violations, of which about a third were classified as "significant and substantial," according to documents compiled by the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Many were for problems that could contribute to accidental explosions or the collapse of mine tunnels, records show.
<...>

**********

The media, this so-called anti-business, anti-Republican liberal media, is almost as much to blame for the deaths, and that's as much a deal as the idiotic and unprofessional reporting that told the world that the miners were all alive.

Good investigative reporting -- of the likes of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis, Jack Anderson and pre-fame Woodward and Bernstein -- has gone the way of the rotary phone. And it's this kind of reporting that exposed a meat-packing industry that was killing people, exposed life in NYC slums, exposed corrupt politicians from Boss Tweed to Nixon. They were in full-throttle during the Lewinsky thing, but only in it for the titillation. "Reporters" dig for the next missing blonde chick but don't work to expose real problems like the Sago mine.

These miners died because of a lack of enforcement of safety codes and a lazy press. Its OSHA, the EPA, FDA and other agencies that should be there to protect us. When they fall down the Fourth Estate (the press) needs to be there to call them into account.

Let's not let the union off the hook. They're as complicit in the deaths as the mining company and the press. They should never have allowed their rank-and-file into that mine and should never again allow workers to go to demonstrably unsafe mines.

These miners died because of a business climate that falsely proclaims how burdensome safety regulations are and because the press has left its balls and vigilance at the door in a trade for access and glamour. China allows its citizens to be expendable cannon-fodder for industry and "progress" (dam failures, chemical plant explosions). The Soviet Union did the same (Chernobyl) The number of deaths is astounding -- do some research on it. The level of government complicity and the callousness of government response in these and other nations we condemn for human rights abuses is even more astounding. We should be better than that.

some kind of monster

i'll start this by saying that i'm not a metallica fan. have never dug their music. so why use netflix rentals for the documentary "some kind of monster", which details the making of metallica's "st. anger" album? because the reviews were pretty good and i have some experience in the music biz, including in the studio and dealing with fucked up band dynamics.

i'd read the stories about how hetfield and ulrich were major assholes -- control freaks who didn't let kirk hammett or jason newstead have much in the way of creative input, how they mercilessly hazed newstead after he took over for the dead cliff burton. if you read the rock press you read the 'alcoholica' stories, you read about the groupies. ulrich makes news going after napster. but you also read about an incredibly successful band.

so it's quite a shock that the movie starts with conflict, newstead leaving the band just before they commence recording what would become "st. anger". also, the band has brought in a $40K/month life-performance coach to help them with their issues. the sessions begin with nothing demoed, evidently a departure for them. but hey, they're rich, they can afford to dick around in the studio. also, the plan is for everyone to contribute both musically and lyrically, again a new thing.

the sessions aren't yielding much but fighting between hetfield and ulrich, with hammett playing his usual peace-maker. after a particularly bad fight, hetfield storms out of the studio. he doesn't come back for a year, going into rehab. upon his return the band slog thru recording and finish. they also hire a new bass player, rob trujillo, from ozzy osbourne's band.

the crux of the film is not the artistic process itself, but the interplay between the art and personal reconciliation. simply put, these guys have major issues in how they deal with each other. their lives having come to a crossroads of age {they're all at or near 40} and their material wealth great and musical legacy strong, they need to find out how to be challenged to create and how to get out of the dysfunctional rut that will keep them from moving forward artistically.

there are some powerful scenes from therapy sessions and meeting, scenes that make the viewer feel like an intruder. but they resonate with real pain and emotion. notable is a meeting between dave mustaine and lars ulrich. mustaine, kicked out of the band almost 20 years ago, *still* harbors major resentment towards hetfield and ulrich for the way they dumped him {though he acknowledges he deserved it, given his alchoholism..which is saying something considering how much these guys drank}. despite that mustaine's band megadeath sold millions and millions of records, he still acts like a wounded child, his self-esteem stuck at being measured in terms of his relationship to metallica's success and that he wasn't there for it.

hetfield's post-rehab change is remarkable -- he emerges as this sensitive, caring family man who openly professes love for his bandmates. the directors do a great job of developing his character.

it's a layered and complex film about real relationships. and from experience i know that being in a band is very much like a marriage or other romantic relationship. you put so much of yourself out there, you're so vulnerable and the only ting that keeps you going is your trust in your partner{s}.

so get the movie. make sure to also get the bonus disc {shipped separately if via netflix}. it's an amazing piece of work. this non-fan still doesn't like metallica's music that much, but i came away with a fair amount of respect for them, in the sense that they embarked on a risky path of personal and artistic change, and doubled that risk by letting cameras chronicle every minute.

new year's in vegas

photo set...

for my first time in vegas, why not during the new year's holiday? if you're gonna do over-the-top sensory overload, no time like when it's as crowded as possible. it's supposed to be second only to nyc/times square in terms of number of people gathering.

anyway, first day+ was hanging with a friend who lives in henderson. mellow, just eating, drinking, watching hockey.

the vegas experience starts the next day, thursday. meet up with my friend j (knew her in miami, now she's a photography student at parson's in nyc) and get to the hotel, the excalibur. there's a medieval theme that's definitely played out in the architecture, and to a point in the entertainment and a few of the restaurant names. the rooms themselves were fairly generic. just a small faux medieval tapestry hanging on one wall, and the bedframes had vaguely gothic/olde englishe style carving.

anyway, the strip hotels, especially the newer ones (bellagio, wynn, venetian, paris, new york new york ,mgm grand luxor, mandalay bay, cesear's palace) were HUGE. some were set a good 3-5 minute walk back from the sidewalk.

each had a different vibe (theme aside). the mgm grand felt old-school/old money. dark lighting, wood paneling, chic (almost deco) design. across the street, the tropicana goes for middle-brow cheese. slot machine noise is all you hear, there's $5 blackjack with a lively crowd. played a few hands and had the coolest dealer -- a laconic and world-weary asian dude. great counterpoint to the boisterous crowd at his table. playing the same game at the $10 or $25 tables at luxor was stuffy and boring. at new york new york somewhere in the middle.

the bellagio and wynn are going for super-high end style. nice touches in each...marble flooring with cool in-lay, luxurious pool areas. at wynn it was almost defeated by this gigantic animatronic frog. the mirage (home to sigfried and roy) has a jungle theme augmented by a beautiful (live) tiger on display in a zoo-like area as you walk towards the main casino floor. felt kinda bad for the cat...smallish area, people gawking. at one point he was pawing at the door to get back to his secluded area, but the keepers must not have seen or heard him. looked just alike a housecat trying to get past a closed door -- on his hind legs and pushing/pawing.

the eating was good and (surprisingly) expensive. at the newer hotel restaurants you get good food, but for more than you'd pay at a conventional restaurant in a city. but then, this on a major holiday weekend and without any comps. but good sushi at a place in cesear's palace, and a good new year's dinner at wolfgang puck's restaurant in the mgm.

we took one day and hit lake mead and the hoover dam. awesome, especially the trails around the lake and the colorado river leading towards it. the hoover dam is an awesome engineering marvel. the design of the buildings and statues reflects its deco-era construction.

the older part of vegas, the downtown, is decidedly unglamorous. very bright neon lights flashing quickly. it's the golden nugget, four queens, glitter gulch strip joint. much more down-to-earth vibe. the fremont street experience light show is ok...more a technical marvel, but worth seeing. also, per usual, i found a good dive bar (at the art bar) and a good mexican place (casa don juan). kinda places locals go to, decidedly non-touristy.

new year's eve itself was ok. lots of events in every hotel. the strip (las vegas blvd) is blocked to traffic and people can walk on the street. by 11pm it's packed, to the point where it's impossible to walk all that far. fireworks up and down, including a synchronized display from new york new york, the mgm, and excalibur (they're each at the corners of the strip and tropicana ave).

getting anything done takes forever. it's a long walk to anywhere from inside the hotels. getting out is a chore (a design feature to keep you in) and with the crowds and the urban design it's like a quarter mile to to get from the hotel lobby to a street corner.

verdict -- worth going for the experience. i'd like to go back when it's less crowded and when room rates aren't at gouging levels (our rate for the 31st was 3x the rate for the 29th). might have spent more money on dinners and shows if the room hadn't set us back so much. but they still got lots of my dough.

let them read cake

the headlines on the cnn website, as of 2pm today...

MORE NEWS
• Lawyer in Saddam Hussein case kidnapped
• DeLay all smiles in booking photo | WATCH
• Teen arrested in slaying of TV legal analyst's wife | WATCH
• CNN/Money: Retailers ready to bet on deep discounts
• Search resumes for kids in San Francisco Bay | WATCH
• Watch: 'The shark pulled her completely under' | Read
• Jennifer Aniston photographed kissing Vince Vaughn
• Behind the Scenes: Toppled cemeteries add to woes
• Watch: Revelry returns to Bourbon Street
*************

yes, that jennifer aniston and vince vaugh were photographed smooching is news on the order of hussein's lawyer being kidnapped and the kids thrown into the sf bay.

and cnn (and the rest of the media) wonder why they get slammed.

clap your hands say overrated

ok, i've tried to like clap your hands say yeah, i really have. i mean, the singer's from philadelphia, so i have a hometown stake here. they play decently melodic songs (though the vocals leave a bit to be desired for such blatantly pop material), there's the verse-chorus-verse thing that gets me every time .

but really, i can't do it.

kexp can play them all they want, the music press can jizz over them, but sorry, they just don't do it for me. i'm not worried about losing the few hipster cred points that i have, so i'll say it...OVERRRATED. they're not bad, just, i don't know, not worth the hype.

all the news that's fit to stink

how fun must it be to be a ny times employee right now? you've just recovered from jason blair and now judith miller has shit the bed in epic style. others have already done the topic great justice, so go here and read (see in particular the linked wapo and e&p stories linked therein):

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/9/1447/51937

and then there's thomas friedman. i've held on reading him, mostly out of habit and inertia. but then we wrote this (accessed via lexis/nexis, not times select {which is another rant in and of itself}):

****
The president's speech on terrorism yesterday was excellent. He made clear, better than ever, why winning in Iraq is so important to the wider struggle against Islamo-fascism. But it only makes me that much more angry that he fought this war as though it would be easy -- never asking for any sacrifice, any military draft, any tax hikes or any gasoline tax -- and that he tolerated so much incompetence along the way.
****

ok, i know his isn't exactly a ground-breaking observation, but the depths of his toolness has sunk to new lows. this is just staggeringly shameless hypocrisy. he wants to have his cake and eat it too, only to turn around and tell you that he never had a slice of cake to begin with.

i wonder how much of this rah-rahing now is to cover his ass for his apologies for supporting the war. i'd respect him so much more if he'd just come out and admit that the premise of the war was wrong, not just that the execution has been faulty.

he is an utter tool, and is fast becoming an irrelevant read for me.

on the bright side, david brooks, who i consider a hack mainly for his, uh, hackneyed approach to dichotomizing the world has written a couple of decent columns of late discussing the role of education in the social order. it helps that he's come around to my way of thinking about the college access question in terms of "college capital", but i like that he's taking on the issue in a substantive way. i also like that he's starting to realize that even his own side is bereft of a moral center and has sold the american ideal down the river for the benefit of holding onto power. keep it up, david, you'll be a progressive liberal before you know it.

sing me spanish techno

it's been a few weeks of musical excess, which is the point for right now. in a fit of conspicuous consumption that would make veblen cringe, i've bought maybe a dozen cds of late. the quick and dirty...

somewhat newer (well, newer since i last posted) stuff:

* this post's title namesake album. twin cinema from new pornographers. the best of the three np records so far debuted at #44 on billboard's album charts, a rather astonishing feat for an indie power pop record. their show a couple of weeks ago had me in a good mood for days (and reaffirmed the fact that i want to marry neko case...not only does she have a great voice and write good songs, she looks great in a short, black cocktail dress). "sing me spanish techno" is one of my favorite songs of the year

* oranger -- new comes and goes. san francisco band which has apparently been "on the verge" for a long time. bass player matt harris is also in the posies, and the bands have been touring together to support their new records. "crooked in the weird of the catacombs" and "radiowave" are the highlights, and there's not a bad song on the record. the production's a bit too clean and in the midrange...a wider sonic spectrum for the guitars would be nice...makes it seem like they're holding back. live show is a bit like that as well...good, but just a bit too clean and controlled. still, a very good record.

* the hold steady -- separation sunday. apparently a concept album about a teen girl in suburban Minneapolis, torn between the allure of drugs and sex and the pull of her Catholic upbringing. craig finn's talk-singing about the dark side of life evokes a velvet undergound vibe, but with big classic-rock power chords. the perfect soundtrack to a stroll thru the lower east side or the mission.

* maximo park -- a certain trigger. british power pop with arena pretensions. "gone missing" and "apply some pressure" stand out. between these guys, arcade fire, franz ferdinand and bloc party the 80s new wave scene lives on. i just saw a listing for a mudhoney show, so the 90s grunge revival is just around the corner.

out for a while, but for whatever reason (laziness, working too much, moving cross-country) i just got around to them now:

* joe strummer & the mescaleros -- streecore. it came out almost 2 years ago and somehow i just got around to getting it last month. listening to it is both enjoyable and depressing. "coma girl", "get down moses"

* superdrag -- last call for vitriol. last album from the knoxville band, made as john davis was undergoing a life change which included sobriety and getting religion. too bad, but probably time. only so long you can keep on making good records to little or no attention, but by this point they were starting to sound tired. "baby goes to 11" is the best of the set.

the big pink

so the posies kicked off their tour here the other day, and it was quite a show.

the setlist was pretty much what you'd hope for. most of the hits and a good selection off the new record. i realized that the last time i had seen them live was at the exact same club about 12 years ago when i was in town for the gavin report music conference. how odd then, that a few songs into the set they start to list all the times they'd played at the club, and asked who had been to the shows.

ken stringfellow got ripshit drunk during the set. overdid the rock-star bit too much for a small club. spits all the time, rock star poses. at the end of the regular set he takes off his shirt and plays the last song with his pants half-way down his ass. the last song also featured him trying to smash up the keyboard.

comes out for the encore wearing only underwear, and pink briefs at that.
they had to be his gf/wife's. at least i hope. they brought up a ton of
people on stage (including scott miller of game theory/loud family) for the last couple of songs. didn't trash equipment but tossed stuff around. it was first night of the tour, and i can only imagine their stage tech guy thinking "it's gonna be a long fucking tour".

openers death ray davies and oranger were pleasant surprises. hadn't heard either band before (though a friend told me i'd like oranger) but loved them.

on the way home tonight...

...stopped by an ostensibly normal looking guy...

him: excuse me, is there some kind of ordinance?
me: huh?
him: the squirrels, along delaware street. they're marching right down the street.
me: [quizzical look]
him: i mean, i'm from colorado and i've never -- is it some kind of ordinance, the squirrels running wild?
me: this is berkeley, everything runs wild here.
him: oh, ok.
me: [quickly walks away before he can start in again]

this is news?

Courtney Love Fails Drug Test

I figured this is a calendar entry for her, not a newsworthy happening.

It's about as much a surprise as TO's meltdown.

because susan said i had to

updates of randomalia...

* i recently had my green card renewed, during the process for which i had to be fingerprined. by ins. now, i'm applying for citizenship. and during the process i need to be fingerprinted. by ins. why can't they just use the ones on file? the lady on the phone didn't know, but i need to go back to the ins office and have them done again. so they waste my time and their money (which is kinda my money too).

* is there anything that can make you feel more single than going (without a date) to four weddings in five months? plus the pressure of living up to the model of the owen wilson wedding crasher?

* it's a longer story in itself as to what happened, but suffice to say that when on the day of a long plane ride you get asked if you've recently had any horrible travel experiences, do not blithely say "nah, for the last 9 months or so, no problems at all...all flights on time". you're sure to that very day spend hours in a plane on a tarmac and not get home until 1am.

* in charlottesville on saturday i picked up chuck palahniuk's book "invisible monster", which came out in 1999, after fight club the book, but before the movie. i started and finished it sunday on the plane from dulles to dallas (including the *two* hours on the tarmac in dallas). anyway, i notice that mr. palahniuk seems to like jaws getting shot off (don't worry, this isn't a spoiler, it's on the back cover as a plot teaser) and other issues of double-identity. i haven't read anything else but fight club and some story excerpt, but these two things repeat in these books. kinda like how in a john irving book there's always a kid who dies or is disfigured, adultery and pets with odd habits. recurring leitmotifs are great, but please, shake things up once in a while.

i'd write more but we have a fire drill in a few minutes.

come to fibber island and strum rubber guitars

on the whim of my roommate we took in the later afternoon showing of "the island" on sunday. normally i wouldn't go near a michael bay film, mostly because he was responsible for shutting down the macarthur causeway to miami beach for an entire week, causing all manner of headaches for those of us who lived on the beach and worked on the mainland. well, that and his films are about as intelligent as a pile of steaming dog shit.

anyway, i went because it was a nice respite from unpacking the shitload of stuff that i finally had moved out of storage on saturday.

from what i'd heard about the movie, it was first offered to steven speilberg, but he was a bit busy. so it went to michael bay. now, word is the original story was a bit more brainy, more asimov than smash-em-up. and you can see thoe elements in the story -- there's some phillip dick, asmiov and other influences. and it is a good idea -- though to say much more about it would be spoiling things.

the film starts off promising enough, very character driven, ewan mcgregor is very good and scarlett johansson is not only hot, but for once her acting measures up to her attractiveness. odd that it would happen in a film like this. if nothing else, she may have learned that she doesn't have to do the laura prepon deadpan delivery with eveyr line, and should actually emote. but i digress...

after a while, though, bay's desire to blow things up and stage incredulous stunt scenes overpowers the film. how he gets his characters to the reveal is clumsy and too obvious...happens in a split second and is very forced. from there things go downhill. it's almost redeemed by a few other things, but i left feeling as if i saw something that could have been much better had the disbelief quotient not been ramped as high as it was.

there was what seemed to be a reference to terri schiavo that i won't write more about; suffice to say that it didn't seem an purposeless reference.

do it to me one more time, once is never enough..

rght then, how to put it....hollywood product sucks. yeah, obvious insight, i know. but really, with so many talented people capable of so much original work, what the movie-going public has had shoved down our collective throats for some years now has been a spate of remakes and movie-ized tv shows and comic books.

ok, so what't the difference between a movie-version of a novel versus a tv show or comic book? nothing i guess, though a novel typically warrants movie-making if it tells a good story to begin with. shitty novels are rarely made into movies.

but here we have product with no redeemable quality, and made it seems not to tell a story but to further a brand, sell toys, sell mcdonald's food, etc.

my roommate and i have been feasting on a bunch of movies from the 1970s recently -- chinatown, the godfather movies, the conversation, dog day afternoon, midnight cowboy, (yeah, from 1969, I know, but...) and more -- and it begs the question as to why the major studios have all but abandonded good stories for commercialized crap.

yeah, indie filmmakers are the best place to look for "good" films, but why should the market be bifurcated like this? why can't the majors make more of an effort to be original and good...movie audiences will go to see good films if those films are given the chance to find an audience. i am encouraged that box office revenues are down -- it tells me that maybe people are tired of $10 tickets to see shit movies in noisy, dirty mega-plexes. souped-up home theater set-ups are nice, but there's something powerful about seeing a good movie on a big screen with a couple of hundred or so other people. that sense of community that comes from having been witness en masse to something that moved the entire audince in collective and individual ways.

inmate bites the hand that feeds him

A vegetarian? In prison? ok...

**************

Inmate sues after biting into fingertip in jail meal

Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writer

A Florida food packager that lists “convenience at your fingertips” as one of its top qualities has been sued by a California prison inmate who says that he bit into a real human fingertip when he consumed one of the company’s vegetarian meals.

The company, G.A. Food Services, said in a letter to Pelican Bay State Prison that the ¾-inch fingertip accidentally had been sliced off the right middle finger of one of its workers when the employee was cleaning a filling machine on the frozen entree assembly line on July 14, 2004.

The department manager mistakenly thought all flesh had been flushed from the machine, the letter said. When workers couldn’t find the fingertip, they assumed it had been washed down the drain.

<...>

i got a date with my tailor now...thanks for putting me so straight

for years i prided myself on not having jobs where i was required to dress up (save for a year or so at red cross, but that was just shirt and tie, no jacket required {ooof, accidental phil collins reference}). working in the music business, in academia...you generally don't need to do more than hipster or business casual (if that).

but now, this job...i always need to wear a tie, and generally need a jacket if not a suit.

and you know what? i like it. i like looking sharp. it feels good to look good and i'm starting to get a handle on my sartorial aesthetic.

you spin me right round baby, right round...

As seen in Howard Kurtz's Media Notes today...

Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush writes fini to the story:

"It's over, folks - there is no scandal involving Rove; and there never was. This thing was made up out of whole cloth by Joe Wilson, who also made up a story about not finding any evidence of attempted uranium purchases by Saddam. . . . I don't know if Wilson is just insane or a con artist, but in either case he's not a man anyone should be listening to. And yet, our Democrats bought his scam hook, line and sinker - and they bought it because they stupidly believe that if they just keep up the drumbeat of scandal talk that President Bush will be destroyed."

******

Ok, seriously, does he write this crap with a straight face? Wilson's credentials as a diplomat and foreign service worker are impeccable. He's served Democrat and Republican administrations. But because he's called into question the credibility of the White House he's now not worth listening to. noonan didn't just drink the kool-aid, he's got it running through his veins.

The more important question of course is why Kurtz would choose to repost the comment and only add a slightly snarky one-liner. How about, Howard, you do some actual media critique?

so who brought you to the dance?

quick question...first, the situation...strangers next to each other on a plane. get to talking, hit it off. one party never mentions a significant other, leading the other party to assume that when they both get back to the city in which they live (but had not previously met) that there might be something happening, this due to a lack of any evidence (rings, the word "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" used in conversation).

is the attached person obligated to somehow weave into the conversation the word "boyfriend" or "girlfriend"?

i say yes, if only to clarify things in case there's a possibility of misunderstanding. there's nothing wrong with flirting, and there's nothing ostensibly wrong with flirting when both parties know the deal and neither plans on taking it beyong the flirting. but if there is, to borrow an economics term, an asymetry of information at work, then it's not really fair.

and yes, something like this happened on the plane to the wedding. not that it was a big deal, as the person in question is pretty cool, would make a fun friend and probably knows some cool single women. getting to know people when you're new to an area is fine regardless of the outcome. still...

goin' to the chapel

ok, maybe not a chapel, more like an historic house owned by the city. that's where my brother and his wife had their wedding. much fun, and to them, the best of luck for a life of mirth, merryment and connubial bliss.

the data grunt talks movies

a quick break from learning the data and relearning sas stuff like proc tabulate (nested tables...wooohooo).

thanks to my roommate's netflix subscription it's been an orgy of films lately at the casa. the quick rundown...

* godfather, pts I & II -- i've seen both before, many times. but never in the presence of a person who'd never seen them (as well as a person who'd only seen them once). so it was, a bringing to life of the roger ebert quote about the joy of being able to be in the room with someone seeing those films for the first time. they don't lose power for the fan, and you get to think about the films in lots of different ways while tryng to explain the various inter-connections, references, allegories, etc.

* dog day afternoon -- you forget how good this film is, even if a bit dated. al pacino in the first of his manic al pacino roles. it's clearly here where he learned how to totally chew up a scene. the late, great john cazale is his usual understated brilliance. how lucky was this guy, making only 5 films in his career (well, not lucky as he died at a young age of cancer) but every one of them amazing.

* straw dogs -- peckinpah's classic doesn't hold up. sorry, but that's the way it is. dated 1960s camera techniques, inexplicable plot turns, hoffman's character is not believable in how he moves from nice guy to asshole. most noteworthy for the trademark peckinpah-ian violence, exit wounds and all. the rape scene is the one thing worth talking about, as it easily makes for good conversation about what they meant to convey.

* motorcycle diaries -- awesome in its awesomeness. a moving picture about friendship, the awakening of a social conscience in a well-heeled young man, the real meaning of a road trip. gael garcia bernal is quite a gifted actor, as well as (and i say this with full confidence in my sexuality) pretty damn hot. if i were gay or a chick, i'd want to do him. i'm jealous of never having been able to make a trip like this. not that it would have made me into a che-type revolutionary, though.

* napoleon dynamite -- the last 5 minutes were hysterical. the 5 minutes before that mildy funny. the rest of the movie? tedious. overrated. ghost world did it better.

* anchorman -- complete and utter unwatchable shite. will ferrell wastes a good idea that goes nowhere fast. turned it off after 35 minutes. the deleted scenes made me laugh more than the movie.

* beyond the sea -- if you get past the fact that it's a total vanity project for kevin spacey (so that he could sing and dance the songs and moves of his idol bobby darin) and that it's kinda told like a tv movie of the week, it's not half bad. the musical sequences are fun, the production numbers reminiscent of 1940s hollywood. spacey can actually do a damned good darin impersonation. kate bosworth does well as sandra dee. the movie-within-a-movie opening thing takes a minute to sort out, but if you just accept it and move on, it's not a bad way to spend 90 minutes. plus, if you don't come away with at least half the songs stuck in your head for days after, well, you just don't like melody. the big-band/crooner/nightclub era was pretty cool. us indie hipsters are the logical progeny of the crooner hipsters who begat the beat hispters who begat the beatle-esque hipsters who begat the mods and so forth.

london's burning

so is this it? the one (or the one that starts the tide) which puts us into 1984-style police states ruled by leaders who play on fear? or is this an opportunity for the muslim world to finally get serious about confronting the culture of death that is a distinct minority in islam but holds inordinate sway over the direction and perception of the faith and its people?

is reza aslan correct in his thesis that the muslim world is in the final days of a century-and-a-half long struggle between the forces of modernity and the forces of fundamentalism, much like christianity was 500 years ago (and seems to be going thru again, at least in the us).

so is it fear or progress? modernity or regression?

no va

so the dead battery thing? yeah..well, what happened was friday morning, 5:30am no less, i find the car not starting. this is a problem as i have a 7:30am flight to seattle and it's a 20 minute ride to the airport.

the first problem is that the remote doesn't unlock the car. no lights flash, nothing. i think it's a dead battery in the remote. key into the car, put key into ignition....nothing. no click, no hum, nothing. shit. it's early, public transport is a pain for this specific airport, plus the station is at least a half mile from my apartment.

so, go back inside, call one of the cab companies listed that does credit cards and is open 24 hours..."friendly cab company". 20 minutes later a cab arrives, and the driver is pretty friendly. get to the airpot, check in, walk down to the next terminal to avoid that ridiculously long security check-in line (stretched in a long loop thru the terminal and out the door and down a ways. terminal 2 was much shorter.

anyway, get a jump from my roommate on monday, drive around a bit to recharge the battery.

apparently no long enough. had an appointment at the dmv today for new plates. have taken the afternoon off from work for the appt. come home, remote unlocks the car, i think "good sign". no so fast...key in ignition and nothing but some clicking.

have to walk to aaa office (see so much for technology) to make sure membership is transferred, come home and wait 20 minutes on hold to secure a road service call. guy comes, charges me up...i go to the firestone station around the corner and an hour+ later, i have (the) power.

and i still need the new plates that i was supposed to have done within 30 days of moving here. but at least i have a new battery (the old one was original to the car and was due to go soon anyway).

so much for technology

three weeks after signing up i'm wondering why my health insurance cards and new member info hadn't arrived by mail yet. well, turns out that despite my following the the on-line benefits sign-up process (confirmed by the fact that the benefits portal indicated i was siged up) and despite that the money was taken from my paycheck and that my employer's share was paid, i'm not in the system. some lady in the benefits office had to send an e-mail to the company to get me in their system (a call to the company had revealed that i wasn't in the system). she also had to indicate who my primary care doc was. yes, i had made that choice when signing up.

also? aaa auto club hadn't gotten around to sending me the info that repeated e-mails confirming my on-line actions indicated was coming, this 4 weeks after i used the aaa website to switch the membership from aaa south to aaa here. necessitated a visit to the office, which mercifully is a few blocks from my apartment. no record of the switch being requested.

so why did i bother? i only ended up having to make the very same calls and visits that the on-line processes were ostensibly designed to eliminate.

what i've learned to learn after a month here

* when clouds gather on the hills to the east of town, it's just fog, not rain. someday it may be rain and i'll be caught thinking it's fog. but right now it's fog.

* when you want to cross the street, cars will stop for you, especially if you're at a painted crosswalk, and even if that painted crosswalk is not at a corner with a traffic light. for someone who grew up in the northeast and lived in miami, this is quite the courtesy. i'm used to drivers barely deigning to stop at red lights, and *never* looking to the right when making a right turn on red, meaing a pedestrian coming from the right is liable to bet run into. but not here.

* this town has the highest per capita numbers of cyclists and pedestrians (so says the guy at the bike shop). also has an inordinate number of cycle accidents, mainly with pedestrians. i haven't checked out either number, as they each seem reasonable.

* there's a different quality to the sunlight here that's hard to explain. it seems sharper. maybe that's due to the relatively less humidity than where i spent my previous four years (of course, the average sauna has less humiity than miami). maybe it's the latitiude (or longitude, whichever one measures how far north or south you are). whatever, it's just different.

* it's in the mid-50s most mornings when i walk to work. in july. warms up later, but damn, that's cold for july. though i don't mind it so much.

* speaking of walking to work, that means I don't drive every day. when that's the case and when i inadvertantly leave my car dome light on and it stays on then it stays on for days on end. which kills the battery. so my gas savings for june were pretty much wiped out by the new battery i had to buy today.

* people here call san fran "the city". you don't go across the bay "to san francisco", you go "to the city".

* trader joes rocks. didn't have one in sofla, have two within 5 miles of me here. la boca malbec wine for $3/bottle? awesome.

* trying to bike up the hill to the lawrence labs is a tough climb. didn't make it on try #1, may not make it on the next couple of tries. but soon...soon.

no, really, i'm alive

so much to say, so little giddayup to say it

cross country trip log

Ok, here's the nuts and bolts of the trip. More description comes later, this is just the facts.

The route:
Miami, FL take I-95 to Florida Turnpike (@ Golden Glades junction)
Coleman, FL pick up I-75 North.
north FL pick up I-10 West.
Mobile, AL pick up I-65 North to US-98 West.
Hattiesburg, MS pick up I-59 North to US-49 North.
Jackson, MS pick up I-20 West.
Arlington, TX pick up TX-360 North to TX-183/121 West to I-820 West
Forth Worth, TX pick up I-35W North to US-287 North.
Amarillo, TX pick up I-40 West.
Barstow, CA pick up CA-58 West.
Bakersfield, CA pick up CA-99 North.
Chowchilla, CA pick up CA 59/152 West.
past Los Banos, Ca pick up I-5 North, take to I-580 West to Berkeley, CA.

When	What	Where	Miles
Wednesday, May 25 9:49am	LEAVE	Miami Beach, FL	0
Wednesday, May 25 12:25pm	gas	Okeechobee, FL	162.9
Wednesday, May 25 2:32pm	rest	near Ocala, FL	294.7
Wednesday, May 25 5:20pm	gas	Tallhassee, FL	476.8
Wednesday, May 25 7:20pm (CDT)	rest	1st rest stop in Alabama	678.5
Wednesday, May 25 8:30pm	stop for night	Mobile, AL	733.8
Thursday, May 26 7:58am	start day	Mobile, AL	735.8
Thursday, May 26 9:07am	gas	New Augusta, MS	801
Thursday, May 26 11:50am	rest	1st rest stop in Louisiana	958.2
Thursday, May 26 2:24pm	gas	Bossier City, LA	1117.4
Thursday, May 26 5:45pm	stop for night	Arlington, TX	1327
Friday, May 27 8:09am	start day	Arlington, TX	1329
Friday, May 27 10:38am	gas	Iowa Park, TX	1464.9
Friday, May 27 2:49pm	gas	Adrian, TX	1727.1
Friday, May 27 5:45pm (MDT)	stop for night	Albuquerque, NM	1964.5
Saturday, May 28 11:45am	start day	Albuquerque, NM	1967.4
Saturday, May 28 12:55am	gas	Grants, NM	2040.4
Saturday, May 28 4:45pm (MST)	stop for 2 nights	Flagstaff, AZ	2283.7
Monday, May 30 6:57am	start day, gas, coffee	Flagstaff, AZ	2372.3
Monday, May 30 11:57am (PDT)	gas	Ludlow, CA	2674.4
Monday, May 30 3:39pm	gas	Tulare, CA	2913.5
Monday, May 30 4:35pm	stop for night	Fresno, CA	2962.9
Tuesday, May 31 9:00am	start day	Fresno, CA	2975.6
Tuesday, May 31 11:57am	ARRIVE	Berkeley, CA	3158.3

and away we go...

almost all packed, movers arrive in <9 hours. despite having thrown/given away and sold tons of stuff, i still have, uh, tons of stuff. books, cds/lps of course the bane and joy of my existence.

so, what then? a route that takes me north and west thru fla, into alabama where i hope to hit mobile wednesday night. dallas/ft.worth is thursday night, hopefully with time for bbq at railhead and catch the rangers game.

friday is albuquerque...catch the isotopes and get food at frontier (sense the theme here?) and maybe wander a bit thru town. since the haul to flagstaff is a shorter one (4-5 hours per mapquest) then there's no rush to get up and on the road too early on saturday.

spend the weekend in flag, tuesday night central cal, wednesday i hit town.

this is a great opportunity and i'm very excited to move there and all, but man...packing and moving sucks.

road trip v2

ok, forget the great american west trip, as things have changed. i'm moving from the sweaty sub-tropics to the bay area. which means a 3,000 mile trip, a few stops here and there. trip most likely to take place at the end of may, with an arrival in ca around may 30 to june 1.

so again i ask...who's with me?

questions from a c(an)ard carrying liberal

Here's a question to which I've never gotten a satisfactory answer...

Let's say we accept the canard about the liberal bias in the media, judiciary and academe (and the piss poor definition of liberalism put forth by conservatives). Why is it that the people who make up the three institutions most pilloried by the conservative movement -- the press, the judiciary, and college professors -- are the ones who've spent their lives in careers dedicated to the production, interpretation and dissemination of knowledge and information? Why is it that these people, who have spent their lives going to (generally) the best schools, tend to lean liberal? What does that say about the salience and validity of the liberal viewpoint even as defined (poorly) by Conservatives that very well educated people, the best minds in the country, lean towards liberal viewpoints?

Also? On Meet the Press, Richard Land of the Baptist Convention, started blathering on about how decisions like the Schiavo case shouldn't be settled by "unelected judges", yet if he'd done his homework instead of parroting GOP talking points he'd see that a fair number of judges in America are in fact selected or retained by popular election. Many in partisan elections, and in both red and blue states. In fact, some of the FLA judges who presided over this case were elected.

http://www.justiceatstake.org/contentViewer.asp?breadcrumb=4,277

The other dumbass thing about his point is that when judges are selected they are put there by elected officials. So ultimately the elected officals are accountable to the people for the selections made to fill the judicial benches. Which, by the way, makes ridiculous the whole threat by Bill Frist and the Senate GOP to make illegal the filibustering on judicial nominees -- putting aside the fact that the 107th and 108th Congresses approved a greater share of Bush's judicial nominees than did the 103rd-106th Congresses under Clinton, the Senate's role is to advise and consent, not to "roll over and consent".

Land's point was also undone by the fact that Scalia didn't take up the case for the US Supreme Court. So the moral and ethic dimensions of the Schiavo case aside, it was pretty clear there was no legal standing for the Schindler family. That's a shame, but is something that needs to be fixed in legislature.

Another funny thing about the whole judicial activist thing is the blatant hypocrisy...rule for a conservative and with strict adherence to statutory or constitutional law and you're praised as being a "strict constructionist". Rule against a conservative and with strict adherence to statutory or constitutional law, and you're vilified for being an activist.

So crazy.

I feel horribly for the Schindlers, but I find it sad that they lit into Jeb Bush when he, a very conservative governor, decided to stay within the boundaries of the FLA constitution and statues. It may very well be that the law itself needs changing -- IMO, if there's this big a dispute between family members over the wishes of someone like Schiavo (in her condition, no advanced medical directive) then it may be that you err on the side of keeping the person alive. How to work that out legally I don't know, but it's hard not to have misgivings about her being starved to death.

But the law's the law, and once you declare a body of government null and void and usurp powers, well, it's a slippery slope to fascism and dictatorial, unaccountable rule.

All that said, I'm getting a living will done soon.

gotfuggingdamnit

twice i had a very long entry wiped out thanks to some oddity of trying to copy and paste or whatnot. i'm debating whether or not to recreate a third time. maybe i'll have a beer and watch the ncaa game while rewriting it. or maybe not. i should be outside, it's gorgeous...but too much work.

ok, who's with me?

the situation...july 2, big social event in seattle. july 16 big social event in denver. barring change in circumstance i'll be still living on the east coast. do i want to fly back and forth and back and forth? if this doesn't scream out for a 2 week road trip/sojourn/kerouacian adventure thru the great american west, i don't know what does.

so i ask...who's in? who wants to play neal cassady to my jack (or maybe i'll play neal to your jack)? all or part of the trip? do you know people who've got space where i can crash? grand canyon, bryce, arches, rockies, vancouver, redwoods, vegas (baby), tahoe...all there for the taking.

so again i ask...who's with me?

wouldacouldashoulda

scuba, salsa, key west, x, fairchild, the screenplays, day tripping, judo, any of 2 dozen books, every great idea i've ever had.

history never retreats

another year on the market, another year left on the shelf. or maybe not? switch of focus, from faculty to admin jobs, albeit admin jobs with a research angle. maybe a stretch but hey, my first face-to-interview in a while. and omens? four years ago i go to an interview on my birthday and in that cycle get a job. this year i'm flying on my birthday to an interview the next day. maybe something from this cycle? and for this interview i have homework! (and fuck me, why am i blogging when i should be working on that assignment?) but man, a cross-country flight for a one-hour interview. and while there are worse places to spend a day than ********, on my b-day? whatev. would be better if m could come up from mountainview, but she had to pick that day to fly to hawai'i with her parents. why is it i went 0-for every faculty job i went for? why did i go 0-for dc? why am i worried about it? next week? fuck it, it's go time, it's game on. westward, ho. i mean, westward ho!.

the list at the moment? lost; split enz; ****** (even mentioning the name would cause me to worry about fucking it up); spring training; getting outta *****; realizing i'm not as good at the **-******* thing as i used to be (not because i'm growing attached more like because i'm not i'm finding i'm not into it).

grammy musings

It was an entertaining show. One of the better Grammy shows in a long time, and excellent as awards shows go. Yes that may seem like damning with faint praise, but it was an entertaining few hours.

Queen Latifah? Excellent hostess.

The scripted stuff for presenters? Typically forced and not funny.

Adam Sandler? Dude, dress up a bit. Just a bit.

Melissa Etheridge? As annoyingly overwrought as I find her singing style, I dug that she had the guts to not wear a wig. At first I thought she was doing a Sinead O'Connor impersonation. I had forgotten she has cancer. An interesting moment came during the pre-show thing on E...she was being interviewed and along came Lance Armstrong with Sheryl Crow. So the whole cancer-survivor kinship thing was kinda cool.

Lesbians? Clearly the new music chic, as witnessed by Etheridge and her partner holding hands on teevee, Ellen DeGeneres sitting front row with Portia, and the Queen hosting the event.

Franz Ferdninand? Rawk. What a great fucking record that is. I hope they don't become one-hit wonders, but given that they ape the sound of so many 80s one-hit wonders, it would be poetic if they did flame out.

Kanye West? Who is this guy? 9 nominations? Never heard of him. But I loved the brain pattern of his hair cut.

J-Lo and Marc Anthony? Eh. He seems soulful. She seems too showbiz, even singing with her husband.

Loretta Lynn and her escort? (who was that?) Hysterical, and clearly unrehearsed.

Alicia Keys? Ahmagah....voice, hot. Wow.

The pre-awards show on E? Gawdawful. Kathy whatshername (Griffin?) is a no-talent whose schtick seems to be asking innane questions and saying mean things about celebs. Mean things that are supposed to be funny but aren't and make her sound jealous that she has no talent. And Star Jones? WTF? (close to) actual quote "the young people today, doing their own thing...it's great". And like 5 times talks about how music genres are mixing, as if it's never happened before.

The Southern rock thing? Well done. Only version of Freebird I've ever heard that I liked. And that redneck chick (forget her name) who sang the opening verses of the song...wow.

The Tsunami relief song? Not bad for a star-studded tribute thing. interesting means of making it go...very 21st century, rather than have them all gather at a studio afterwards (c.f. Live Aid). Why the hell is Velvet Revolver the backing band? Were Asia not available? The bass player (Duff McKagen) was hysterical, clearly stoned. Brian Wilson looked like the crazy uncle who crashed the family talent night. Nora Jones needs to wear a bra. Or at least more flattering dresses. The chorus, "nothing's gonna change my world" was oddly unsuitable for the point of the song, though they did switch it up a bit at the end.

the living elvis

It's been a few weeks of Elvis mania for me. Well, not continuous, but...during the Thanksgiving ride to visit the p's I took with me the newest Elvis record, The Delivery Man. Good record, his best pure rock record in a while. Then two weeks ago, for the ride to work I grabbed Armed Forces and This Year's Model. I spent a solid week with Armed Forces. "Oliver's Army" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" hit me in ways they haven't for a long time, mainly because of the Duhbya, Iraq and the general political tenor of the last 12 years. How can you not feel it inside when you hear Elvis ask "where are the strong, and who are the trusted"? I even came up with new lyrics for "Oliver's Army", now "DUH-bya's Army".

Then this past Sunday, while at B's house after the pose-tech running clinic, he put on the Austin City Limits show with Elvis and the Imposters (Bruce and Steve from the Attractions with Davey Faragher (from Cracker) on bass. I saw this line-up here a couple of years ago and got-damn were they good. And on ACL they were good. Excellent professional musicians playing with fire and piss and vinegar.

And speaking of 80s new waver icons? While getting my hair cut the salon folks were playing the Cure's greatest hits thing. Talk about college flashbacks.

playing catchup going upfield

Has it been that long since I've indulged my narcissim? What's going on? Oh man...lots. More adventures in adult dating (see later entry), too much sloth, just enough work to get by, curing an obsession or two that got in the way of work...

Reading tvdetective's rave about the Wrens makes me realize that I want to be in a band again (and not just because I want hipsterette bloggers to write virtual odes to freaking my shit). I miss making music. I do creative stuff now, but for me it's a more tortuous process to do academic writing than it is to strap on the bass and groove away. And the photography stuff is very amateur and I'm not certain I want it to be more than that, despite that I know I have a decent enough sense of composition and can find a good shit.

But with music it's a time thing. I don't have the kind of time I'd like to devote to it. I also don't know that I'd find a situation like I had back where I came from. I've only played in three serious bands and another thing as a semi-acoustic duo. In each case I played with very good to excellent songwriters. I'm sure there are good writers here, but where? And would they want a me who can only give a bit of time each week, who doesn't care anymore about "making it"? I've done the big record deal, done the indie thing, had musical if not financial success.

And soccer, what about soccer? My knees tell me that my days may be numbered, even inthe rec league thing I'm in now. The level of competition is high, but that's keeping my game sharp. I'm also learning a new position, sweeper. After years of outside mid and outside defense, now it's to the middle, cleaning up when everyone else is busy. Yelling for when to move up for offsides traps, encouraging and cajoling. But it's frustrating because thanks to the knee surgery and layoff, I've lost some touch on the ball and a step or two of speed. I've been responsible for goals against as guys have blown by me when I over-commit to the tackle. But I had a couple of good games as well. Solid, where the middle of the defensive line held it together. But I feel I'm on borrowed time now. Maybe the pose-tech running will as advertised help prolong the life of my legs. But got-damn if it ain't fun to get out there every week and run around for 90 minutes. Pain and frustration notwithstanding.

west winging it

I have to confess this as a guilty pleasure, The West Wing. It's the perfect show for the political junkie who appreciates well-written dramatic performance. Trouble is, of course, that sans Sorkin the show has suffered. Last season out and out sucked. John Wells has done to TWW what he did to ER, which is to say he's made it an overwrought, melodramatic passion play every single week. Even some of the casting is spilling over, with Mary Macormack and Alan Alda (each did ER stints) on TWW now. What next, Anthony Edwards?

Gone is the Capra-esque quality of the first few seasons when Aaron Sorkin was writing everything. Every single episode had multiple story arcs that played off each other even if they weren't related. Not every episode was "a very special West Wing" {jebuschripes, an *asteroid* next week?!?}. Some were simple stories that did nothing more than present the White House as a place where hope triumped over despair, even when things were desparate. He wrote a White House and government that you wished existed, a pefect antidote to what we have in reality.

There have been good moments so far this season, but invariably Wells succumbs to the cheesy (they're ramping up the MS and again, an effing asteroid) instead of staying with the more deftly and deeply compelling (the interplay between the Dem and GOP challengers for president that gave tonight some promise). I like the show, but it's time they ended it.

respectfully depressing

So there I am in the gym (student fitness center at my university..hey it's cheap {$5/pay period}). Mostly populated by undergrads, smattering of grad students and faculty work out there as well...a guy is just handed a set of 20lb weights and I see a pair of 15s on the floor at his feet. Exchange follows...

me: are you done with the 15s?
guy: yes
me: thanks
guy: no problem, sir.
{he says this as i'm bending over to get the weights. i stop amid bend and cast him a piecing glance, with eyebrows raised]
me : {very dry, flat tone} my dad is sir.
guy: sorry

Seriously, I look that old? Gotdamn. I'm only 29 (or so).

Also? I'm making cookies for my class tomorrow. Little tradition I have, making oatmeal choco-chip cookies the last day of class. The first step in making them sounds dirtier than it is..."creaming the butter".

Also also? Tomorrow night our Dean is hosting a holiday soiree. Open bar and stuff. Note to self -- do not get too shitfaced and try to dirty dance with the dean. Any other office party advice is welcome.

the list for 2004...update

First, the good. My first published solo-authored journal article. Not in a top-tier journal in my field, but still peer-reviewed by a good editorial board. And it's an SSI journal, so I get citation points. Of course they got my name wrong on the table of contents page (copy editor did it, for some unknown reason), but still, it's there. In print.

Ok then, among the bad for 2004?

Cars and driving. I've come to realize that I don't like cars or driving all that much. Well, to be specific, I don't like driving to work as the only option, I don't like the annoyance that comes with keeping a car -- the wear-and-tear and constant maintenance, high cost of insurance and all.

What's done me in on this is 3 years of living in a parking-deficient town and especially the last six months which have featured two hit-and-runs on my car (the trial for one happens on Thursday) and two parking tickets that shouldn't have been issued but I had to deal with nonetheless (go to the parking office downtown and apply for a hearing).

Seriously, I want a job where I can walk, bike or take a short pubic transport ride to the office. I want to use the car very sparingly.

from the uncool files

How is it possible that nobody I know can or wants to go to the Magnetic Fields show this Tuesday? Well, there are two people, but one is supposed to be at the same meeting I'd like to blow off to go, and I haven't been able to get in touch with the other. Still, that my pool of friends who'd want to go is that small...gah.

cuba libre

No, it's not about rum and coke...

So my friend N has a friend E, a curator and artist. E is curating a show by a Cuban artist. The powers that be at E's institution are now giving her some grief because they are either getting grief or afraid they will get grief from the Cuban politico mafia that runs things around here. To which I say to the hard-liners around here...

Shut the fuck up already. Seriously...shut the fuck up and ge over it.

We know that culture and commerce break down barriers. It's worked in Vietnam and it's worked in China. Things aren't perfect in either place, but they're arguably better than in Cuba. Yes, I know that you have friends and relatives who have suffered at the hands of Castro.

But guess what? Your friends and relatives aren't the only ones to have ever suffered from political repression. Your situation isn't special. What makes you special, different from Chinese and Vietnamese in this country, is that you're enough of a concentrated voting bloc that you weild disproportionate power. You beg for hard-line policies that just hurt those friends and relatives in Cuba but not in jail, people trying to work hard. Your reactionary and archaic political philosophy hurts people living in the US who want to help their friends and relatives in Cuba. You keep them from sending money, visiting...you claim that such revenue only props up Castro.

But guess what? That old S.O.B. will be around for a while. Like the miserable curmudgeonly old great-uncle who is an unpleasant jerk, he won't die. He'll be around for a while, and every day he breathes you fret and worry and sit and spin. And your hatred and irrational behavior just hurts your own countrymen.

I have Chinese friends who happily return to visit, who send money, who host their families here. They know that this makes better the lives of their China friends and relatives sill in China. The situation there is no less repressive than in Cuba.

All E wants to do is to stimulate dialogue. That's the point of art in situations like this -- to get people thinking and talking. Arts and sport are two effective means of transcending the bullshit pettiness of the modern nation-state political litterbox.

Commerce and culture break down barriers. We know this, and it's time to bring Cuba into the fold. Force change by giving people there a taste of the outside world. We know it works, even if the change takes a while, and there are Tiannemen-like hiccups along the way.

So please, shut up and get over it.

the list for 2004...

the good, the bad, the ugly, the fugly, the best of times, the worst of times, the shameful, the blameful, moments of beauty, moments of bliss, moments of hit, moments of miss, moments i'll want to relive, moments i'll never live down

I don't have any entries right now, just saying this may be how I organize it. And I'll take suggestions, both on entries and categories.

Actually, I do have the first entry...

moments of beauty? the falls at iguazu --
http://www.fotolog.net/dannebrog/?photo_id=8116602

art basel

Now in it's third year in Miami Beach, the Art Basel show opens this week. Well, opened tonight, and thanks to my friend N I got passes to the pre-grand opening opening. Not VIP tix to where the free booze was, but free tix nonetheless. Being the pre-opening night meant less crowds, a more serious crowd (as in people looking to buy stuff, and in fact buying stuff already) and more fun people watching opportunities. And the tickets were free.

I'd wanted to post a bit about some of the art, but there are 175 galleries showing tons of work, and after an hour or so it gets overwhelming. It's really hard to remember much. It's not really a venue for superstar artists, but there were a few Calder mobiles, a Warhol or two and a few Lichetensteins. N's friend E had one piece up, a photo series of stack of letters sent by her father in Cuba to her mother in Miami. There was supposed to be a voice installation as well, with E's friend JC reading from the letters. Sadly, the gallery owner hadn't put it up yet.

Some work that did stick out was a collection of landscapes using denim as the media. Yes, cut up pieces of denim, in all colors, substituting for paints. And the artist, So Young Choi, was able to get perspective, point, geometric pattern...pretty damned inventive. The best of the lot sold already, but there were more available, and one at only $2,000.

Go to,:
http://www.caisart.com/gallery/gallery_main.htm

...select "domestic artists" and "Chio, So Young"

This also pretty much marks the beginning of the tourist season. From here on out it's heavier traffic on the causeways, events almost every weekend...with a better economy it should be a busy season. The relative peace and quiet of summer is over. Bring on the snowbirds.

---update (11am, Thursday, 12/02)

Apparently, Tobey Maguire and Alex Rodriguez were there. Who knew?

the girl with crimson nails has jesus 'round her neck

At the risk of losing whatever remaining cool points I may have left, I'm going on record as thinking that U2's new album is pretty damned good. "Vertigo" is one of the best rock singles of 2004 -- great riff and melody, quick and easy chorus. What I love about the record is that there are no real clunkers like on Pop and All That You Can't Leave Behind. "Crumbs From Your Table" is perhaps a weak point, but it's the only one. It's a solid record with some songs that soar -- "Vertigo", "City of Blinding Lights", "All Because of You" -- to name a few. Lyrically it's overall more introspective and personal than most U2 records -- less grand statements and more "of the moment but my moment" songs. With "Miracle Drug" and "Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own", Bono uses the "One" device of addressing the listener mainly in 2nd person, which makes it seem (from the listener's perspective) less like being talked at and more like being talked to.

Their recent appearance on Saturday Night Live was impressive. Bono, for all his affected rock-star persona is impossible not to watch. I don't mind so much the over-the-top rock-guy stuff. He plays the part and it doesn't come off as too forced. He wears it pretty well, much more so than do the cookie-cutter angry-young-neo-punk bands. Musically U2 are playing as powerfully as I've ever seen or heard. "I Will Follow" sounded as good as any live recording I've heard. I like how Bono changed the wording a bit to mark the passage of time ("a boy tries hard to be a man, his lover" {used to be mother} "takes him by the hand").

Watching them reminded me of watching great athletes like Pele, Gretzky, Jordan, Montana, Carlton, and Schmidt when they were just past the mid-point of their prime years -- they had enough experience to make being great look easy, but they were still playing with enough of an edge as if they had something to prove.

Or it could be that my 20 years of fandom are blinding me to a once great band going through the motions. Is this how boomers felt when the Rolling Stones were releasing records at age 40? Will U2 hopefully hang it up when they get old enough that they have adult kids or grandkids?

No, that's not it. This is a very good record, and they are pretty much the one of the only bands that matter.

the first thing to go is the knees

Old...I feel old. Yet I'm only 29 (or so). Went for a run on the beach yesterday (well, tried to), and could barely start, much less finish. not 100 yards into it the left knee was a problem. During a morning walk through the antique/vintage/crafts fair along Lincoln Road (where I saw a cool seersucker suit) it had bugged me a bit but I thought it would feel better by later in the afternoon. No such luck. On top of that, my friggin hips were all balky and creaky. Seriously, this is depressing. Maybe it's from having sat on my ass the better part of the last two days, maybe it's my crappy sofa, bad posture while sitting, who knows. I'm sure it has to do with playing soccer on a hard artificial turf field, years of abuse from waiting tables, soccer, running, walking, the acl injury, genetics. But good lord, this sucks. And the glucosamine tablets aren't doing much to help, apparently. And of course it doesn't help that I need to run to work off the weight I gained during an extended period of interrupted workous and no running thanks to knee pain. A vicious circle, it is.

My kingdom for a fresh set of knees and hips.

touching the void

This past Sunday I watched a unique pairing of films on PBS. First up was Touching the Void, a docu-drama about the events of an almost tragic 1985 climb up Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes by Brit Alpine-climbing friends Joe Simpson and Simon Yates. The long and short of it is that on descent Joe broke his leg (drove the femur up into his kneecap...OUCH). During their attempt to descend that entails Joe basically sliding backwards on his belly while tied to Simon via a rope, Joe slides and ends up hanging off a ledge. Due to darkness and that they couldn't hear each other for the wind, this is unbeknownst to Simon. Simon, about to slide and (he's pretty sure) fall into something bad, decides to cut the rope. This rope-cutting came as a bit of a shock to Joe. They couldn't communicate due to conditions, so neither knew of the other's peril. Simon continues to descend, wracked with grief at having to cut the line and (he thinks) kill Joe.

However, it is Joe's story that is impressive and is the centerpiece of the film. Now, dude has a broken leg, broken in a way that must have been 100x more excurtiatingly painful than a typical break. Yet he manages to climb out of a steep crevasse and work his way down the mountain, hobbling, rolling, gimping and crawling, all the while severely malnourished and dehydrated. He ends up about 200 feet from the base camp, and his yells are heard by Simon. At that point he'd lost about a third of his body weight. But he is alive.

Next up was Secrets of the Dead: Tragedy at the Pole, a recounting of the ill-fated 1911-12 British expedition to the South Pole. The story of the Scott team's tragic demise is well-known. This docu-drama sheds new light on the event. Scott and his team had died 11 miles from their camp, supposedly being pinned down by a freak blizzrd that had lasted for days. What this films shows is that the blizzard may in fact have subsided, contrary to the notes Scott left and the notes of his crew. Scott had fallen victim to frostbite, fatigue and exposure, and could not carry on. Laready a member of the crew had died under similar circumstances, going as far as to leave his tent and sacrifice himself so that he wouldn't weigh down the rest. Scott's remaining crew chose not to leave their captain but to freeze to death with them. A reexamination of the weather charts and notes from a rescue team sent from camp indicated that the blizzard had stopped. Scott's crew put loyalty above life.

These two films, shown in counterpoint like this, raise a whole series of questions regarding leadership, comradeship, sacrifice and loyalty. Would members of a modern-day polar expidition lay down their lives for their captain? Would a Victorian-era Yates have cut the rope? Have these codes changed so much from the turn of the century? What would each of us do in similar situations?

the medium and the message

I've been hearing so much lately about how liberals are smug know-it-alls who talk down to others. I'm conflicted about this. On one hand I do see so much lack of reality amongst the far right that is is scary to try and have a reasoned discussion with them, all the more so because I make my living based on my command of facts.

But there may be something real to it beneath the Suskind type of reporting about reality and faith based communities. It could be that the left has lost the battle for hearts and minds of Christians by being derisive and smug. Which is too bad, because the message of compassion and tolerance is much closer to the Christian ideal than is the message of NO and intolerance that the political wing of the far-right wants to advance.

What the Dems need to do is take the message of compassion and tolerance and make appeals to the Christian grass-roots that this is the real face of America. Couple that with a more sensible fiscal policy and a progressive welfare system that rewards work, family and education and you may have a winner. But the message needs to be simple and you can't talk at the Christian voters but *with* them.

In a year the battles for the mid-terms begin in earnest. Now's the time to get moving on that message.

what kind of (election) day has it been

Election day 2004 was weird, weird weird...how and where do I begin? well, maybe I'll begin (at) the begin. (sorry, it's long...names changed to initials)

Start out early, 8am early, doing last-minute GOTV cavassing in Miami Shores. Pretty basic stuff -- get a list of people registered Dem who may or may not have voted early already. No teams today, it's all solo so as to get best coverage. Starts out great -- first lady tells me no way she'd vote for Kerry because his wife is too stuck up, he gets $500 haircuts, is snobby (too French?). Ramble, blather..whatever.

The rest of the morning goes by with some interesting conversations, some people who want no part of me -- 20-something guy who's not interested in voting -- some people voting for Kerry, a woman who's husband, a social studies teacher ferchrissakes, will most likely vote for Duhbya.

The big story happens at the end. Last house on the route...knock on a screen door. On the other side is a big courtyard with a pool. And a little tiny yip-yip dog. Little dog comes CHARGING across the courtyard and burtst through the screen door (which I hadn't noticed was ajar) and aims straight for my right calf, taking a chunk of flesh in his teeth. The little bugger comes back for more, so I use my clipboard to try and fend him off. See, I didn't know yet if the lady had voted and voted for Kerry. So as much as I'd have liked to kick the dog clear to Key West, I needed to make sure to get the vote.

So here I am, bent over, swatting at the yip-yip dog with my clipboard, he's running in circles around me so I'm spinning in place while swatting. At some point he gets under the clipboard and makes a nice gash in my right hand, on the meaty part below the thumb. So now I'm bleeding, not profusely, but not in drops. It's running down my wrist. Finally, along comes Ms. Dog Owner, in a towel (just out of the shower, and no, this is not turning into a Penthouse forum letter), apologizes, runs back in and gets me bandages and peroxide. Assures me that dog has had rabies shot. But hey, she'd voted early for Kerry, so it's all worked out, right?

Fast-forward to that night (forget the trying to get a tetanus shot at South Shore...they were stacked up with no docs and lots of patients, so 4 hour wait...I'll take my chances). Election watch party at the National Hotel. Meet my friend K and her ghost roommate T. He is a Bush supporter. Only one in the bar. They're drinking champagne. We do an electoral vote pool, and T is the only one taking Bush. We're either deluded by the exit polls and/or too optimistic.

The night goes by and the election slips away from Kerry. Once Florida was called for Bush, I knew it was over. All that work and he still lost. Still, I'm having a good time, drinking up...next thing I know T is being escorted from the bar by the bouncers. Huh? K is off talking to a friend, so doesn't see this happen. We find her, get the story and it's something about T getting into it verbally with some guy who objected to T's cheering the Bush victory. Whatever. I was having a fine time chatting up L, a lovely woman. Makes the night more than bearable.

We all leave, L walks with me and we hang out for a bit before my friend J, in Florida from DC covering the elections for a newspaper, comes over to crash before she flies out the next day.

Speaking of flying out the next day, I have a 9am flight to Kansas City for ASHE, and I have not packed yet. Shit. So, L's gone home, J's arrived and watching MSNBC. I'm packing, deciding to stay up all night. Which I do, save for a 30 minute power nap. Sleep on the plane (which for the first time ever I was on a one-stop flight where I didn't change planes...while waiting in Charlotte on the plane, clean-up guy asks if I'm stowe away. I say, dude...if I'm gonna stow away it's gonna be to Hawai'i, not Kansas City).

Get to KC and so far it's been like a wake. Everyone has a glum look, as if someone had shot our puppies.

Anyway, the next 4 years can't be that bad, right?