MMM

"Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything."

-Terrence Malick on filming Badlands, which is set in the oft over-romanticized 1950s.

K, sorry to gloat when I'm right, but GUH-DUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

This is hypnotic...

Are you're a unabashed fan of Christmas/Holiday music, but you are sick and tired of hearing the same versions of the same songs over and over and over - especially when they're suddenly interrupted 2 bars before the end with one of those annoying "K-Earth 101!! Holiday Favorites on the Radio!!!!!" shockers?

Yeah. Me too.

Well, that's all over.

Tune into my favorite internet radio station, The 1920s Radio Network.

Every holiday season they play the best in little-known Christmas gems and obscure versions of holiday classics from the early part of the 20th century. You are always sure to hear stuff you've never heard before, and it's all wonderful.

Create a nice holiday environment in your place without having to hear that damn Wham song 19 times.

I'm in Cali now visiting my family for the first time in a year (!). It's beautiful outside, but Long Beach isn't exactly a Winter Wonderland, so I need all the old-timey Christmasin' I can get!

Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times has listed the JACK Quartet's Xenakis show at Le Poisson Rouge as one of "the most memorable classical music presentations of 2008":

The Jack Quartet, an ensemble of young string players devoted to contemporary music, played the club in October. I would never have expected to see a young crowd at a downtown nightclub erupting with whoops after performances of the four hypercomplex, cutting-edge string quartets by Iannis Xenakis. But in this setting these dense and kinetic works came across to this open-minded audience as just more hip, wild, out-there contemporary music.

Awesome, boys! Unfortunately, I missed this particular show. But I, and you, can catch them at their next NYC concert on March 1st at Tenri.

Click here to hear JACK killin' some Xenakis.

Here's a nice story (with video) about a doctor who is climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to increase awareness and funding for my medical condition, HHT.

There's more on HHT.org:

Scott is a part of a family of five generations of HHT patients, including his three children. Scott’s hope is that his climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro will help to increase the awareness of HHT. Currently, 9 out of 10 of the HHT population (68,000 US citizens) are not yet diagnosed due to widespread lack of knowledge by medical professionals and, therefore, are at risk of stroke, hemorrhage, and death.

Given Scott’s history of anemia and the presence of a pulmonary AVM, he debated whether or not to attempt this climb. “It seemed worth a try” states Scott. “The HHT Foundation and the doctors interested in this disease have done great things for people with HHT, including most of the people in my immediate family. Studies that have been performed have taught us a great deal about the natural course of the disease as well as treatment options for it.” Scott further commented.

Cool story. I definitely would not have the balls to rock Kilimanjaro, probably even if I didn't have da HHTizzle. Special Osler-Weber-Rendu props the the good doctor!

It's a snowy day in New York City, so I'm staying in for most of today. In honor of my voluntary convalescence, here's the original trailer for one of my new favorite films of all time. The Sergio Leone masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West:



I cannot recommend this film highly enough, especially for those skeptical of the "western" genre. Leone infuses the tradition with a heavy dose of classic Italian neorealism and good old late-60s grit and grime. I love it. It is the perfect example of an anti-western, so perfect in fact that it redefined the genre (in a way voiding the "anti" aspect!).

Finally. I have an RSS feed of their latest additions and having to watch films that literally noone knows (seriously, not even the directors) be added daily to the list was starting to, ya know, grind my gears or something.

But this snowy morning's list made me smile a bit. All the Back to the Futures plus Swingers. Nice.

Oh yeah, and Encino Man. Any, uh, Pauly Shore fans left out there? Brendan Fraser? Encino Man is available. Just putting that out there in case anyone wants to watch Encino Man. It's online. Netflix. Encino man is. Check it.

Now, y'all may know that I'm pretty deep in the Obama camp. I voted for him, I've written a lot about him, and I think he'll generally be a great president. But one of the major differences I have with him is the issue of gay marriage. He's against it. Let's not do the whole he's for civil unions bullshit, he's against gay marriage and that's all that matters. Well, in one of his recent hands-across-the-aisle gestures, he's invited Orange Country megachurch Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Aside from being a pastor at a megachurch - which I think is evil enough - Rick Warren is of course super anti-gay and rallied hard against Prop 8, comparing being gay to incest, polygamy, and pedophilia:



Look, I get that he's reaching out, that he's not only going to be the president of the blue half of America. I get that, I encourage it. But this is frankly a slap in the face to gay people, straight up. Picking this douche at a time during which gays are feeling increasingly persecuted across the country should be pretty insulting. One thing I'm getting the sense of with Obama: he is not afraid to take advantage of those with whom he is in good favor. Gay people by and large love Obama. He can afford to smack them around a bit to woo the fundamentalists. When it all comes down to it, he's a politician.

Ouch. This is gonna hurt:

If the authority does not receive new sources of revenue, it seems likely that the base subway fare could rise to at least $2.50, from $2, starting in June. A monthly unlimited-ride MetroCard could rise to more than $100, from $81.

There is also talk of reducing service, making express trains local, and increase tolls over the bridges. Personally, I think that drivers should bear the brunt of the costs. There are way too many cars in the city as it is, if they have to discourage a group of commuters, discourage the group that we need less of, not the group we need more of. Tolls baby. (Sorry driving friends!)

In my endless research (read: internet dickaround time) I've come across another, albeit significantly darker, Augie Rios Christmas song called Ol' Fatso.

Yeah... here's the song:

Augie Rios - Ol' Fatso.mp3

Check the lyrics, yo:

CHORUS:
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
No you can’t fool me because
There ain’t no Santa Claus
There ain’t no Santa Claus And I got proof.

There was a little fellow
Who just wouldn’t believe
There really was a Santa Claus
Even on Christmas Eve
And when one Christmas Eve he heard
A clatter overhead
He opened up his window wide
And this what he said:

[CHORUS]

Though Santa Claus had brought him
A big bag full of toys
Enough of Christmas presents
For a dozen little boys
Some choo choo trains and cowboys
And a whole Apache tribe
The boy looked up and said,
Oh no! I ain’t taking no bribes

[CHORUS]

Well next year Santa came around
And brought a favourite toy
To everybody but a certain
Unbelieving boy
The moral of this story
Is very sad but true
If you don’t believe in Santa Claus
He won’t believe in you

Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Oh you fool no-one because
There is a Santa Claus
There is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Yes, there is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Surprised this wasn't quite the hit that Donde Esta Santa Claus was?

(Found via PopArchives)

Dear friends, two years ago I lost the fight against Christmas music. I realized that resistance is futile and began collecting weird and unique versions of classic Christmas songs. Well, now I've created my own.

I just completed a cover of the classic mexploitation hit Donde Esta Santa Claus?, made famous by Augie Rios. Not to be a genre whore or anything, but the cover has elements of Yé-yé, lounge, dancehall reggae, punk, hip hop, and death metal. But yet, I try and stay true to Augie's vision.

It's a free download, so click this link to listen or right/ctrl-click to save:

Donde Esta Santa Claus?

Here's the original if you are unfortunate enough not to know this classic:



Hope you enjoy it and Snappy Holidays!

P.S. extra points to anyone who spots the Herbie Goes Bananas reference!

As long as I'm in rant-mode, I might as well rant about a pro-environmental subject, just to, ya know, be fair and balanced and everything.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. named " Wall-E," Disney/Pixar's animated film about a little robot who falls in love, the best film of 2008 on Tuesday afternoon.

Yay.

You notice I didn't say "Yay!". I'm not exactly gunning for Wall-E for the Best Picture Oscar or anything, but it's just so nice to see it win a major award, and I do hope it gets nominated in the Best Picture category in the Oscars. I know it probably won't win the top award, but here are my thoughts on why it should be considered:

Ok, so it's probably going to go to Milk, for a couple reasons. One, the Academy loves Sean Penn. Two, the Academy loves biopics. Three, the Academy wants to make up for its egregious snub of Brokeback Mountain in 2006, which was obviously politically motivated and, frankly, homophobic. (Btw, Crash? Really??) I haven't seen Milk (The Times of Harvey Milk was good though), but word around the campfire is that it is very well-made, and very Oscary. Milk FTW.

But Wall-E deserves to be in the running. The other likely Best Pic nods - Milk, Frost/Nixon, possibly The Dark Knight - are all based on nonfiction or preexisting stories. Wall-E is a genuinely original story - despite the fact that he really looks like Johnny 5 - which is something sorely lacking in film today (see my recent post on film remakes). Pixar - who I'm not usually a fan of, for the record - came up with a completely original story, not based on tired Hollywood stereotypical plot-lines (see Finding Nemo and Cars), and set it against a sharply socially-critical background. Wall-E wasn't afraid to piss some people off, and it wasn't afraid to be overtly sentimental. To me, that is the essence of courage in art. The story was built around environmental themes, they weren't added into the mix during production, and these themes were unspoken but apparent. The humans in the story were both hero and villain and - much like Hayao Miyazaki's anti-villains - they contained the capacity for good and evil inside them, Wall-E was just the unwitting catalyst of this internal struggle.

Above all, the film lacked a sense of regret. There was never a sense that the humans in the story deserved punishment for their past digressions. They came to the realization that they had fucked themselves over, and they began to build their world anew, with the added knowledge of what the consequences of said digressions are. I think it is one of the best environmental films of all time, and a great example of social activism and art in a successful fusion.

Don't you miss that golden age of film when all movies had a heaping helping of thinly-veiled upper-middle class guilt? Of course you do. Well, it looks like those days are back:

When the alien Klaatu stepped off his spaceship the first time, in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, he had come to warn us that man's constant warring against itself had become a threat to other civilizations and we had better stop it -- or else.

In director Scott Derrickson's respectful, perfunctory remake, Klaatu once again comes to visit us with a warning, although he's apparently been hanging out with Al Gore, since it's what we're doing to the environment that now has the extra-terrestrials wringing their hands (tentacles? pods? suction cups?)

Guh... Do we really want the days of this to come back?



(Btw, am I the only one who had a thing for Linka?)

This kinda shit ruined the ending of The Abyss, it probably ruined this (although probably already dead in the water) remake, and it will ruin countless more works of art by promoting the mandatory fusion of social responsibility and art. Fuck that. Social activism and art can coexist, but forcing your art to be activist or forcing your activism to be artsy usually creates sucky art and ineffective activism.

And PS, has anyone else noticed that this guilt-in-art trend always tends to coincide with economic recession? Interesting.

From Imeem.com:

Travis Barker's "Jockin' Jay-Z" remix is rumored to be the last project he worked on before surviving a tragic plane crash back in September. The end result is a monster remix with huge drums and grungy electric guitars. Put this on your playlist today.

Wait, what? "The last project he worked on before surviving a tragic plane crash"?? Who in the world gives a fuck about that? I mean, I get that they are milking his near-death experience, but is this gonna be a thing now? Shia Lebouf acted out this scene from his latest John Grisham adaption just before he almost drank a glassful of spoiled milk? Tina Yuthers did this infomercial just before almost opening the driver door of her Geo Prism to oncoming traffic?

Senate Abandons Auto Bailout. Sigh. Ok, I get why we wouldn't want to bail them out. They absolutely do not deserve it. But, where in the holy Jesus was this level of scrutiny when we were deciding to bail out the financial industry, for nearly a trillion dollars?? They denied the auto industry 14 billion! What in the holy hell is going on here? I will never really understand it, I guess, it's all so complicated, but does this make any sense to anyone? It doesn't even really seem like the "experts" in charge understand what in the world is going on? Guh. Fuck it. This scene is dead anyway.

Newsflash! Mafoo's blog official Stupidest Website of 2007, Blackle, is in fact full of shit:

LCD screens ... are lit via fluorescent tube lights located above or behind the LCD screen. The screen scatters the light, creating the picture. When an LCD screen is on, the lights are also on. "Black is not created by the absence of electricity or by turning off the light," explains Gray. "In a lot of cases, a black screen looks purple because the colors are created by mixing the right pixel elements in the LCD together at the same time

Look, I may be somewhat of a nihilist, but I don't really wish the planet any ill. I think protecting the environment is a wonderful thing. But the recent "green" trend nauseates me, to be honest. It is just such a fad. People get caught up in the vanity of making themselves appear as "green" as possible by using Blackle and talking about their "carbon footprint" and shit. Fuck that. You know how I save the earth? I turn off my lights when I'm not using them, because I'm poor as shit and I don't want a large electric bill. There is simply no way Americans are going to willingly inconvenience themselves on a mass scale to save anything. There will have to be some profit in it. Let's hope Obama's plan to invest in environmental jobs does something for the environment and the economy. Who knows though, because there seems to be a very large appetite for bullshit environmental solutions - maybe he'll just give the public what it wants and appoint Ty Pennington the head of the National Greenwash Department.

Meow.

Why excessively, of course.

Den of Geeks lists the 55 movie remakes currently in the works, including:


The Karate Kid

They Live

The Incredible Shrinking Man (with Eddie Murphy attached, shudder...)

Meatballs

Metropolis

The Dirty Dozen

Conan

Clash of the Titans

Akira

Death Wish

Footloose

The Taking of Pelham 123 (which recently filmed in my neighborhood!)

The Last House on the Left

Oldboy

Poltergeist

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Short Circuit (!)

The Birds

Logan's Run

The Thing

Westworld

Barbarella

My Fair Lady


and a whole bunch more...


I used to think that film remakes were a relatively recent thing - a facet of Hollywood's depleted imagination, but apparently they've been around since pretty much the dawn of film. Still, it seems it used to be done much more tastefully. For example, Howard Hawks' classic His Girl Friday is a remake of The Front Page from '31, but it is done so originally and tastefully. It's hard to think of recent remakes that actually do something new and unique.

Here are a few successful remakes IMO:

Rintaro's anime version of Metropolis (2001): a beautifully unique departure from Fritz Lang's original masterpiece. It creates a wonderful new world that's based more on the shadow of the original than the actual story. Contains the best apocalyptic scene in film, set to the music of Ray Charles.



The Fly (1986): I mean, I'm of the opinion that Cronenberg can really do no wrong. He embeds this mediocre classic with his own themes of transmogrification, bodily intrusion, moral decay and somehow makes it very entertaining to watch. All hail DC!



Scarface (1983): DePalma imbibes the early Hawks classic with the rampant greed of the 80s, while retaining the grittiness of the 70s contemporary gangster classics. I've always thought this was more of an homage to Scorsese than Hawks, just as The Untouchables was his homage to Coppola. He severed any connection to the original's Al Capone references, as well as its grace, favoring a lowbrow Cuban immigrant as its antihero over the legendary gangster.
(Not the trailer, but just as good)


Ocean's Eleven (2001): I don't want to like this one, if only to discourage Soderbergh from doing anymore remakes (Solaris? Really??), but it's very entertaining. He placed himself comfortably within the mainstream by making a tight, clean, beautiful big-budget Hollywood film. And it works. The scene at the end with the fountains and Clair de Lune is legendary, providing a nice antithesis to the Hollywood trend of the thin fleeting gratification of a crime well done. It's one of the best heist films period.




So, what do y'all think? Any additions to my very small list of successful remakes? I can probably think of a few more, once I've had a few more cups of coffee...

Josh Martinez - Rainy Day

It's a fan-made video, but actually not bad, just a bunch of stock-footage of rain.

Jon Stewart is smokin' in this interview. I must say though, despite the wrong-headedness and subtle facism of his viewpoint, I still have to give it up to Huckabee for being one of the few calm, reasonable socially-conservative voices out there. The man knows how to have a respectful debate. Watching these two men talk makes me wish all left/right debates had this much class.

Some more love from NY Magazine:

8. Alarm Will Sound
The energetic ensemble Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson, doesn’t hop from program to program but develops its shows over months. Its last undertaking culminated in an evening called “a/rhythmia,” where they played an orchestration of a player-piano piece by Conlon Nancarrow— one that couldn’t be performed by human hands.

Word up NY Mag, we love you too!

Finally, 7 years after the fact, we hear of some good that came out of the tragedy of 9/11:

[Eric Roth] whipped up a [Forrest Gump] sequel back in 2001, one that would continue with the story just two minutes after the original ended, and handed it in on September 10, 2001. Then came 9/11, and it was decided that the sequel was no longer relevant. "The world had changed. Now time has obviously passed, but maybe some things should just be one thing and left as they are."

God bless the cigar-chomping executive who made that fear-based, but exalted, decision.

Yay no more bad John Lennon overdubbing!



(disgusted shiver...)

I think this pop-up banner, over the music player, of classmates.com (what is this, 2001??), really highlights what Myspace is secretly trying to say to people: "We're the new Friendster. We're at the point where we've begun losing money and we will make your experience progressively more sucky until we consist only of teens from Indonesia. Thanks for playing. Enjoy Facebook for the year or so until it too joins the social networking purgatory.

Gurf points to conservative criticism of Obama's cabinet appointments as being 'too elitist':

The Ivy-laced network taking hold in Washington is drawing scorn from many conservatives, who have in recent decades decried the leftward drift of academia and cast themselves as defenders of regular Americans against highbrow snobbery. Joseph Epstein wrote in the latest Weekly Standard -- before noting that former president Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College -- that "some of the worst people in the United States have gone to the Harvard or Yale Law Schools . . . since these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead."

The libertarian University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who is not related to Joseph Epstein, worries that the team's exceptionalism could lead to overly complex policies. "They are really smart people, but they will never take an obvious solution if they can think of an ingenious one. They're all too clever by half," he said. "These degrees confer knowledge but not judgment. Their heads are on grander themes . . . and they'll trip on obstacles on the ground."

If you'll excuse my zeal:

Fuck. Off.

If there is one dumbass notion in America that needs to die a painful fucking death it's that the people in charge of our country should be expected to have a healthy amount of 'street smarts' or 'small town cred'.

No.

No, they don't.

They could have handlebar moustaches, monocles, and a glass of cognac worth more than your family surgically grafted onto their fucking jewel-encrusted hands for all I care. If they are the most qualified to lead the country then they should lead. I don't want a White House Chief of Staff I could have a beer with. I want a White House Chief of Staff that will pour a fucking beer on my head, tell me I'm an insignificant nobody, and then go help fix our messed-up-ass country, get it?

Maybe I've been listening to too much Webern recently but look, populism has its place. Sometimes I want a greasy meal at the Waffle House, sometimes I want to listen to bad radio pop, but down-to-earth populism has little relevance past communication for matters involving the governing of our massive country. I want geniuses running this country, straight up.

We tried the average Joes.

Didn't work out so well, did it?

Keeping the same theme as my last post. Hey, it's Saturday. You don't want anything serious, do you?

-via TheBrownDump

I suppose I should feel excited about the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps it is just my overbearing cynicism that overshadows any true optimism about this, but there's just something vaguely unsettling about it. It's hard to place a finger on, but I'll give it a shot.

It's kinda like Grandma making a YouTube video. It's cute, you appreciate she figured out how to work the thing, but there's something faintly depressing about it. Yes, it's nice to see Grandma up on the internets, but does she belong there? Wouldn't you rather see her just making cookies or something? Ya know, something Grandma-ey?

Ok, my analogy is stretching a bit, but here's the deal. I'm often wary of sensationalist actions and events that seek to thrust classical music into the mainstream, even though many of them are made with the sincerest best of intentions. Similar attempts were made with The Disney Orchestra (which many of my friends were in) and Mr. Holland's Opus. What did they do? They made a bunch of people feel warm and fuzzy, but their actual effect is questionable. These projects seem aimed more at stirring the guilt of the public for its glaring lack of support than they do at attempting to produce great art or creating a lasting effect on the consciousness of our society, a consciousness that - perhaps unconsciously - views classical music as something arcane and elitist.

Still, I felt kinda warm and fuzzy reading about Tan Dun's and MTT's efforts, two genuine forces for good in the classical music world. But you know what else made me feel warm and fuzzy? Charlie Bit My Finger.

My optimistic side tells me that the culture of YouTube is the perfect thing to encourage art and music in young people. As kids, my generation (and all before mine) grew up relatively isolated with our artistic endeavors. Young people now have endless avenues to explore, share, and learn about theirs; it's the kind of encouragement we could only have dreamt of. Whereas I grew up hiding my classical music side from my friends, young musicians can now seek friends and support in their musical lives with YouTube as their primary tool.

So is it a movement or a Google P.R. move? Or both? Can the classical world be saved by a serious of stunts? I mean, we can pretty much rule out any great art coming from this project, yes? Something tells me Tan Dun's "Internet Symphony No. 1 — Eroica" (yes, that's the real title) ain't exactly gonna be something for the music history books.

What I'd rather see is a long-term investment. A site connecting students and teachers via video, or live-streaming. The creation of an online infrastructure connecting young musicians who could support and collaborate with each other. Something that would benefit many as opposed to the few.

My worry: thousands of young musicians are going to make videos of themselves for this project. 99% of them are going to be assed-out. About a hundred people are going to have a badass time playing a big show at Stern. How does this help the classical world as a whole, aside from publicity? Wouldn't a better project be something that would help the culture - the musicians, not just the winners of an audition?

Maybe it's just the classical music world's first shot at finally doing something with this crazy internet thing. Yes, at its core the whole idea is very old-fashioned. But maybe it'll be good for Grandma. Maybe just what Grandma needs is to get herself up on her feet to dance around for a bunch of people. Maybe that will get her confidence up so she can actually do something worthwhile. :)

Attention shopping assholes:

Try Amazon. There's less death involved.

I suppose I could go on a long rant about how consumerism in this country is tearing us apart and turning us against each other. But I don't really believe that. At the risk of sounding simplistic, some people are just dicks. There is simply no reason too sleep overnight at a Wal-Mart and then swarm the store at 5am risking other people's lives. I don't care how poor you are, there are better ways to save. Do your shopping from from home, it'll take less time, take less lives, and leave you with plenty of energy left over to, um, leave glittery embedded comments on your friends' Myspace pages or something.

Oh yeah, and purely from a desire for revenge, I really hope they find and prosecute as many of those Wal-Mart tramplers as they can.

Ok, normally I don't like just reposting silly stuff I've found from Reddit, but there is just so much to love in this. The inanity of the responses, the hats, the symmetry, their faces! Pure Reddit gold:


(click image for larger version)

Rob Horning of PopMatters posted a really thoughtful response to a Peter Suderman post on the inherent positivity of music criticism (in response to a Joe Queenan article, aaaaa! blogosphere!). First, Suderman's claims:

Scan the sidebar of Metacritic’s music page. Nearly all of the review averages are positive or very positive, and almost none of them are straightforward pans. In fact, right now I don’t see a single album with a review average that gets a score categorized "generally negative reviews." Contrast this with the movies page, which contains more than a dozen films with low averages. Even the limited release indies — the "artsy" films — are often given low marks.

Is contemporary pop music really that much better than contemporary mainstream filmmaking? I think not. Instead, it’s just that the music reviewing culture has developed in such a way that most everything scores a "pretty good" or a "not bad."

Horning responds:

Unlike films, many many records get released, and just noticing one and running a review of it already marks it as significant. The substance of the review itself is almost beside the point. Acknowledging its existence is already an admission that it’s “pretty good,” so it would be strange for the review to suggest otherwise.
...
It might amuse some readers to see well-established artists attacked, but who wants to read negative reviews of stuff they haven’t heard of? There’s no point, and the reviewer just comes across as mean. I certainly felt this way about myself when I was writing the negative reviews. It seemed dumb for me to be discouraging these performers, who had no chance of making it, really, no matter what I wrote about them. It’s no fun pissing on people’s dreams. In fact, it made more sense to try to champion all bands, so I could potentially claim some of the glory for helping one of them make it.

Exactly. In general, films are massive undertakings with insane budgets and scads of people involved to make it happen. For example, I recently watched 2004's Primer, an amazing lo-budge sci-fi film that was made for an insanely low amount, around $7,000. But it still required a set of actors, a crew, tons of gear, etc. I am currently producing an album using solely the computer with which I am writing this blog. For, um, $0. For every indie film produced there are hundreds of indie albums. Why review one just to crush it? It would be rather sadistic (although most reviewers do display a hint of sadism, IMO).

I have a point of contention with this though:

Readers often want hype, not evaluation, because it gives pop culture a sure-fire context, whereas a review that traces musical influences and parses lyrics only helps a select few readers. Besides, there are no established criteria for what’s good beyond popularity or fidelity to genre expectations. Maybe Suderman thinks it’s possible that music reviews could be objective evaluations of quality, as defined by some unimpeachable universal standards, but I don’t believe these exist for pop music (or for much of anything in culture—aesthetic criteria are political creations). The pop music people consume is typically a tribal thing or a means to participate in the zeitgeist, and it’s hard as a reviewer to shape the zeitgeist from the margins.

I think what plagues much music criticism, both from professional reviewers and in the minds of listeners, is the lack of objective criteria from which to judge a work of music. The apparent criteria has become almost purely social: work is judged by its supposed "honesty", self-consciousness, unpretentiousness, and authenticity rather than by traditional musical merits. The question becomes: is this rapper/singer actually from Brooklyn/Manchester or does he just say he is; it's not about the musical product, it's about the narrative. The highest rated albums are often the albums that are the most fun to write about. Yeah, you might feel like a douche praising a young white-boy rapper from Hempstead whose daddy bought him a record contract, but if the product is good, suck it up.

The most obvious example of this need to sustain narrative is J Dilla's album Donuts. The story goes, he wrote the album on his laptop in the hospital whilst dying of cancer. Now, who wants to write a narrative about his sad, valiant efforts culminating in an album that's, well, a piece of shit? More importantly, who wants to read that?

Now, not to get all conservatory-trained-musician on y'all, but why not focus on the product? Yes, a good back story can enhance the appreciation of music - Beethoven's deafness for example, or Brian Wilson's mental illness - but to ignore technical criteria in music, even pop music, is asking to be lead around in a fog of subjectivity and ambiguity.

Here's a few objective things pop reviewers should listen for:

1. Originality: Not for its own sake, of course, but the band/artist should sound like itself. If the R&B singer sounds like Stevie with a hip hop beat, or the garage band sounds like The Velvet Underground with auto-tune, it is not original. Of course, originality for its own sake can be just as tedious, so keep an eye out for extra-musical distractions: costumes, romantic back-stories, different colored eyes...

2. The Singer: Can the singer get the same effect live as on the album without the album's effects and auto-tune. This doesn't mean the singer has to be classically trained, or even good. It just means he/she has to be a real performer. Also, as stated earlier, the voice should be original, if I hear one more Blink 182-influenced pop-punk singer I think I'll open my veins.

3. Production: I dig gritty production, but there's a big difference between lo-fi and bad. I can also appreciate intensive production, but not when it becomes glossy. Also, knowing some basics about electronic music can easily help you sift through the hordes of house and trance tracks built around presets and simple filter tweaks. Learn your gear, it is far more important to know the basic varieties of effects, synths, and editing techniques than it is to have heard of every last indie band to come out of Ann Arbor in the late-90s.

4. Musicianship: I can appreciate Teenage Jesus and the Jerks for what they are, but that doesn't mean that the bar should be set at their level of technical proficiency on their instruments. If an artist or band is lacking in technical skill, they had damn well better make up for it tenfold with originality, creativity, and their lyrics. Yes, Meg White is kind of a sucky drummer, but she also amazes me at the same time (how can she drag the and-of-3 the exact same way every bar??)

5. Lyrics: The rhyming of the words "fly", "high", and "sky" in a sequence should be a federal crime. I don't care if you're being ironic. Lyrics that sound as if they were written on a pad of paper and then forced into some chord changes are nicht güt.

6. Composition: It doesn't have to be symphonic - in fact pop albums can easily sound overwrought when inundated with orchestral instruments and weighted with complex 8-minute tunes - but there should be commentary on the craftsmanship of the songs by the reviewer. Structure, pacing, arrangement, and the overall vibe should be taken into account, much more than the off-microphone lives of the musician(s).

7. Authorship: Did the band/artist write their own tunes, or were they written by a professional song-writer? I think it is utterly hypocritical for many reviewers to lavish importance on the extra-musical elements of an artist's life and how they supposedly enhance the musical experience for the listener, while the songs themselves were written by some old white dude living in Brentwood.


PopMatters is actually one of the music review sites I respect (and not just because they gave AWS a great review...). They do their research and for the most part their reviews are pretty down-to-earth. Contrast them with Pitchfork, the leading bullshit-driven review site. Pitchfork has a cadre of fantastic writers. Really, I'm in awe of their skills. But a review should not be a place to display your skill of writing, a music review should be an arena to display your musical knowledge and your talent at objective critique. If a reviewer's 'musical knowledge' consists of the names of thousands of bands and the names of the thousands of members of those bands and their respective histories, then their knowledge is - to borrow a word from Horning - political. It is not musical. The increased prevalence of non-musical experts in music critic positions has turned the role of the music reviewer into a analyzer of the sociology of music rather than the art of music.

I watched the classic noir The Big Sleep last night. It was pretty great. As with many of the old Howard Hawks films, I find myself sitting up in my chair to catch all of the lightning fast dialog.

Here's a great collection from IMDB of some of the best tidbits:


Carmen Sternwood: You're not very tall are you?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.

---

Eddie Mars: Convenient, the door being open when you didn't have a key, eh?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it. By the way, how'd you happen to have one?
Eddie Mars: Is that any of your business?
Philip Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Eddie Mars: I could make your business mine.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.

---

General Sternwood: Do you like orchids?
Philip Marlowe: Not particularly.
General Sternwood: Ugh. Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, and their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.

---

Philip Marlowe: Oh, Eddie, you don't have anybody watching me, do you? Tailing me in a gray Plymouth coupe, maybe?
Eddie Mars: No, why should I?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I can't imagine, unless you're worried about where I am all the time.
Eddie Mars: I don't like you that well.

---

Vivian: How did you find her?
Marlowe: I didn't find her.
Vivian: Well then how did you-...
Marlowe: I haven't been here, you haven't seen me, and she hasn't been out of the house all evening.

---

Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Marlowe: Who's he?
Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.

---

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or comefrom behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

---

Vivian: You go too far, Marlowe.
Marlowe: Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he's walking out of your bedroom.

---

Marlowe: You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.

---

Vivian: You've forgotten one thing - me.
Philip Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.
[last lines]

---

General Sternwood: How do you like your brandy, sir?
Philip Marlowe: In a glass.

---

[after a kiss]
Vivian: I liked that. I'd like more.

---

Philip Marlowe: She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.

---

Vivian: I don't like your manners.
Marlowe: And I'm not crazy about yours. I didn't ask to see you. I don't mind if you don't like my manners, I don't like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I don't mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.

---

Philip Marlowe: My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains! You know, you're the second guy I've met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.

---

Vivian: Why did you have to go on?
Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.

---

General Sternwood: You may smoke, too. I can still enjoy the smell of it. Hum, nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. You're looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life, crippled, paralyzed in both legs, barely I eat and my sleep is so near waking it's hardly worth a name. I seem to exist largely on heat like a new born spider.

---

Vivian: So you're a private detective. I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?

---

General Sternwood: If I seem a bit sinister as a parent, Mr. Marlowe, it's because my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian hypocrisy. I need hardly add that any man who has lived as I have and indulges for the first time in parenthood at my age deserves all he gets.

---

Philip Marlowe: You made a mistake. Mrs. Rutledge didn't want to see me.
Norris: I'm sorry, sir. I make many mistakes.

---

Philip Marlowe: Hmm.
General Sternwood: What does that mean?
Philip Marlowe: It means, hmm.

---

General Sternwood: You knew him too?
Philip Marlowe: Yes, in the old days, when he used to run rum out of Mexico and I was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.
General Sternwood: My respects to you, sir. Few men ever swapped more than one shot with Sean Regan.

---

Philip Marlowe: I know he was a good man at whatever he did. No one was more pleased than I when I heard you had taken him on as your... whatever he was.

---

General Sternwood: I assume they have all the usual vices, besides those they've invented for themselves.

---

Philip Marlowe: Thanks for the drink, General.
General Sternwood: I enjoyed your drink as much as you did, sir.

---

Norris: Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?
Philip Marlowe: No, just having fun trying to guess what they are.

---

Vivian: Do you always think you can handle people like, uh, trained seals?
Philip Marlowe: Uh-huh. I usually get away with it too.
Vivian: How nice for you.

---

[in a bookstore]
Philip Marlowe: You do sell books, hmm?
Agnes Lowzier: What do those look like, grapefruit?
Philip Marlowe: Well, from here they look like books.

---

[making a prank phone call]
Philip Marlowe: What can I do for you? I can do what? Where? Oh, no, I wouldn't like that. Neither would my daughter.

---

Philip Marlowe: I can do what? Where? Oh no, I wouldn't like that. Neither would my daughter.
[hangs up]
Philip Marlowe: I hope the sergeant never traces that call.

---

Philip Marlowe: You wanna tell me now?
Vivian: Tell you what?
Philip Marlowe: What it is you're trying to find out. You know, it's a funny thing. You're trying to find out what your father hired me to find out, and I'm trying to find out why you want to find out.
Vivian: You could go on forever, couldn't you? Anyway it'll give us something to talk about next time we meet.
Philip Marlowe: Among other things.

---

Taxi Driver: If you can use me again sometime, call this number.
Philip Marlowe: Day and night?
Taxi Driver: Uh, night's better. I work during the day.

---

Eddie Mars: Your story didn't sound quite right.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, that's too bad. You got a better one?
Eddie Mars: Maybe I can find one.

---

Philip Marlowe: Did I hurt you much, sugar?
Agnes Lowzier: You and every other man I've ever met.

---

Philip Marlowe: How'd you happen to pick out this place?
Vivian: Maybe I wanted to hold your hand.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, that can be arranged.

---

Philip Marlowe: You the guy that's been tailing me?
Harry Jones: Yeah, the name's Jones. Harry Jones. I want to see you.
Philip Marlowe: Swell. Did you want to see those guys jump me?
Harry Jones: I didn't care one way or the other.
Philip Marlowe: You could've yelled for help.
Harry Jones: If a guy's playing a hand, I let him play it. I'm no kibitzer.
Philip Marlowe: You got brains

---

Agnes Lowzier: Is Harry there?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, yeah, he's here.
Agnes Lowzier: Put him on, will you?
Philip Marlowe: He can't talk to you.
Agnes Lowzier: Why?
Philip Marlowe: Because he's dead.

---

Agnes Lowzier: Well, so long, copper. Wish me luck. I got a raw deal.
Philip Marlowe: Hey, your kind always does.

---

Philip Marlowe: What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a gun before? What do you want me to do, count three like they do in the movies?

---

Philip Marlowe: Let me do the talking, angel. I don't know yet what I'm going to tell them. It'll be pretty close to the truth.

---

Carmen Sternwood: You're cute.
Philip Marlowe: I'm getting cuter every minute.

---

Carmen Sternwood: Is he as cute as you are?
Philip Marlowe: Nobody is.

---

Philip Marlowe: Somebody's always giving me guns.

---

Vivian: So you're a private detective. I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?
Philip Marlowe: I'm not very tall either. Next time I'll come on stilts wear a white tie and carry a tennis racket.
Vivian: I doubt if even that will help.

---

Vivian: What will your first step be?
Philip Marlowe: The usual one.
Vivian: I didn't know there was a usual one.
Philip Marlowe: Well sure there is, it comes complete with diagrams on page 47 of how to be a detective in 10 easy lessons correspondent school textbook and uh, your father offered me a drink.
Vivian: You must've read another one on how to be a comedian.

---

Philip Marlowe: I collect blondes and bottles.

---

Carmen Sternwood: You're cute. I like you.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, what you sees nothing, I got a Balinese dancing girl tattooed across my chest.

Check em out:

AWS Russia Tour

I'm back from Alarm Will Sound's Russia tour, taking a day to rest and recoup. I haven't been this exhausted in a while. I think I'll stay in on this nice rainy day and watch a horror movie. Or maybe an old noir... Horror, noir, horror, noir... Pulse (original, natch) or Double Indemnity... Oh, the choices...

Anyway, I'm gathering all of my photos and videos online to share them with the world, if you be so inclined to view them. But for now, I'll leave you with my favorite footage from my Russia trip.

Inexplicably dancing girls in St. Petersburg:

I'm off to Russia for a few Alarm Will Sound shows in Moscow and St. Petersburg, so there'll probably be nothing here for a week or so.

In the meantime, if you are or find yourself in the Miami area, please go check out my good friend James Moore's Banjo Recital at The Harold Golen Gallery. He'll be premiering a new piece of mine, Like A Prayer Remix for Banjo and Track. As you may have guessed it's a remix of the Madonna song with the banjo playing the main part. It's pretty zany. Also on the program are pieces by such awesome NYC composers as Wil Smith, Paula Matthusen, and Laine Fefferman.

And to hold you tight for the week here's something to mull over:

This is fucking insane:

Whoolery and his wife couldn't believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying.

"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," said Whoolery. "They were chanting on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama.'

The only thing that could remedy this is an appropriate response from the school to address this problem:

After the incident, the Madison School district superintendent (Rexburg, Idaho) sent an email to all teachers, principals, and bus drivers saying that all students should show proper respect for elected officials.

Hand slaps forehead.

I realized I've been neglecting to use this blog to let y'all know when I have an interesting performance. I guess I've been so caught up in the election season and everything, I didn't even think to post about my concerts...

Anyway, tonight I'm playing with Luke Rathborne, who is a really cool young singer/songwriter, kind of in the folk/country vein. Here's a video of one of his songs:



Also playing in the band are some of my best friends, so it'll definitely be a good vibe. Stop by tonight if you want to hear some really nice, chill music.


Luke Rathborne's In Search of the Miraculous with Bowery Boy Blue & Cameron Hull
Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street
8pm

Featuring:
Luke Rathborne - Guitar, Piano, Vocals
Steven Bard - bass
Todd Cohen - drums
Matt Marks - French Horn
Gina Valvaso - Bassoon
Eileen Mack - Clarinet
Kelli Kathman - Flute
Christa Robinson - Oboe

Tix are 11 bucks I believe.

An interesting Slate discussion among (mostly) smart conservative voices descends into the Republican Party's achille's heel: futile abortion debate. Ross Douthat, one of the more sensible young conservatives loses his cool and crassly lambasts Douglas Kmiec's suggestion that conservatives relax on the three-decade-long abortion fight that has obsessed the party.

Douthat:

I am sure that Kmiec is weary of being called a fool by opponents of abortion for his tireless pro-Obama advocacy during this election cycle, but if so, then the thing for him to do is to cease acting like the sort of person for whom the term "useful idiot" was coined, rather than persisting in his folly.

Meow...

And Kmiec responds with a little condescending "grace":

While we have not met, so little of what you have written is in any way respectful or acknowledges that you are addressing not some abstraction but a fellow human that I can only pray that if any of your family or closest friends come into contact with this commentary that they reach out to you in the most gentle and understanding way, without precondition, to calm an anger that is harmful to the soul.

I picture that Family Guy episode where Stewie provokes a fight between fellow children, and shouts, "Dance puppets, dance!"

This is to be expected. It is apparent that the rift in the right wing will be between social conservatives and economic conservatives. But the division is stickier than it may appear. Douthat in a previous topic on the same Slate forum calls for conservatives to relax on the anti-evolution and abstinence-only rhetoric, but he easily gets snagged on that old hot topic. Look guys, it a losing battle. Social conservativism is a futile movement. Societies change. Ain't nothing gonna stop that, short of some sort of Taliban-style totalitarian state. This doesn't mean that any erosion of values or adoption of new values is well and good, but it means that we all have to be open to how values change, not reject them out of hand.

I was listening to this track on the subway coming home the other night. From a production standpoint it's simply incredible. Lyrics are pretty badass too.

El-P - Deep Space 9MM



Lyrics:
One two
Get behind the walls of new Roma, wanna buy the farm
But the land's not yours to own?
Who owns Police? Who holds floor grease on a sandy beach?
Blood beach
Dance with a man he starts clutching, he ugly
Punks hung halo teach
Hugged by the math with the cable reach
A hundred and sixty-six channels lit
To train that animal shit
Where the mind's eye redefined
Where's God?
Buy a car, Kick tires

Back in Eighty-Six I lived
With a four-course artistry
Metal ones took turns showin' off colors and shit
Like I invaded the mating dance ritual
Criminal now
Wild things defined beautiful under my power
El Producto flash-fest-iss
Motherfuckers be like, "Ow, why haven't we left yet"
Blithering sideway twang, the youth and brain management troupe
The man is like BOOOP
You can't touch the Krush Groove
I live by the lunch table
Touched fables
Ducked labels
Lookout for the one he'd abide with the terrible stables
Signed to Rawkus
I'd rather be mouth fucked by Nazis unconscious
Callin' all bomb threats
Radio re-activated, caress
Under hella-ified missle defense
Fenced in, better blame it on fame shit and grin
Walk with a bag full of kittens
Take it to the river and throw yourself in
In about four seconds the ether will begin to leak

Who wanna hold hands with this sicko malnutritionist
Soaked in newspeak?
Dissolve into the syncopated fragments of vinyl
splashed on loose leaf
We can embrace on the business end of my face first
Joe vs. the Volcano suicide beef
Dance with the vinyl monster
Devil in a blue skyline with clean conscience
Save the gesture
But can't save the children, weren't worth the effort
I'm a Caveman
Your modern ways frighten and confuse me
I watch your spirit box with the blinking lights and think
Are those little people trapped in that box? (No, Caveman)
But I do know converted mic digital 8-bus Mackie Avalon compression
Combined with 8-step effected
Dirty words paralyze words and infect shit
Infectious
Insofar as the ineffectual bed for elections
Development arrested
Trapped in the Cuckoo's nest
Looking for the nexus
If it's wild like that y'all found
infrared scope in the clutch of a tyrant
New World lullaby Sirens
Stuck migrants, bust 'em by violence
It's all bad timing
Getting merked on a Tram over Roosevelt Island
You think that's spacey?
Deep Space 9 millimeter, son, keep smiling

This is for the fringes and such
My generation just sit like dust
Feed 'em off of us and ask what I trust
Tell these stories, I'm right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts

This is for the fringes and such
My generation ain't friends with slugs
Thank god for the drugs and drums
Tell these to read it, I'll be right here hidin' from guns
Right here hidin' from guns
Right here hidin' from guns

I'd like to see an exit poll of Prop 8 voters, showing how people voting based on their level of personal relationships with gay people. I'm certain it would show that those with more gay acquaintances tended to vote against the draconian measure, and those with less for it. This is because it is easier for those without significant relationships with gays to dehumanize them, treat them as second-class citizens, literally.

Simply put, before I had gay friends I thought being gay was weird as fuck. It seemed so different than my experience that my brain told me that it must be wrong. Then, being a classical musician, I came in contact with a ton of them, and I realized, duh, there's exactly the same as me, with just a different sexual preference. Pretty damn simple. I'm not shocked that my home state of California decided to fuck over thousands of good, loving people. It makes me angry, sad, ashamed. I saw pictures of supporters celebrating and thought to myself, what a grotesque display? Rejoicing over the misfortune of others, people you don't even know, people you haven't taken the time to understand?

Tuesday night, in the two poles of our country - New York and California - we had people rejoicing the optimism of a potentially bright future in the streets of New York City; and we had people exalting in the ignorance and fear of the past in California. I'd never felt like less of a Californian and more of a New Yorker in my life.

David Frum:

A generation ago, Republicans were dominant among college graduates. Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics - and Republicans more conservative on social issues. College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats - but that their values are under threat from Republicans. There are more and more college-educated voters.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? This will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. It will involve even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarising on social issues.

It will definitely be interesting going forward and seeing how the right reacts to this trouncing. Frum is of the post-boomer generation Republicans, and is also one of its most conservative voices - for better and worse. This generation, and even more so the conservatives from Gen X/Y, seems to be much more willing to ease up on the social conservativism. Still, I don't see the boomers letting go of their culture war-loving strangle-hold just yet. Rush is still extremely popular and is not going to be easing up anytime soon, which does not bode well for the party. It will of course prove to be poison for them, which I suppose I should make me feel happy.

Still, I would like there to be a sensible economically and governmentally conservative opposition in this country. I'm not one of those worried that Obama and the newly blue congress is going to tax us to death and nail up a poster of Stalin on the door of the capital building. They'll probably spend at least two years undoing the damage of Bush before they can get anything done anyway. But there is something admirable about sensibly cynical conservative voices such as Frum, and I'm even more optimistic about the voices of my generation such as Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Megan McArdle and others. I disagree with them more often than I agree, but their views are most often unique, well thought-out, and independent of any sense of sticking to the 'party line' (perhaps the most dreaded relic of the baby-boomer age).

I think we'll see a civil war in the right, with the old guard fighting an unwinnable battle, as the culture war inevitably is. It'll be a slow death, though, with its throes providing endless entertainment and headaches for the rest of us over the next few years.

I thought I'd share some photos from my amazing night.













Here are a couple of videos I have found that effectively display the vibe in the East Village last night:

Tonight has been one giant sigh of relief. I attended the Newspeak concert and as the announcement came over the large screen TV, the band (which has never sounded better) went into a bangin cover of The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again. Everyone in the place was screaming at the top of their lungs, people were dancing, bawling, clapping along, hugging each other, and I was fighting back the tears. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. A weight felt lifted off of my shoulders. I walked outside to a city in revelry: shouts, screams, cheers coming from all directions. People walked by carrying American flags. Horns were honking all around me. Pure raw emotion reigned tonight. I screamed, cheered, whooed. It was an incredibly sentimental evening.

Maybe tomorrow I'll feel embarrassed about how I feel right now: the innocent joy, the peace, the rampant optimism. But the buried grief and shame I feel for the thousands who have died for my country's mistakes, the thousands who have suffered from a failing economy, the years of totalitarian-style propaganda in the media, the elevation of ignorance as a virtue, everything that has sickened me and made me wonder why the fuck I would want to live in this country has bubbled up to the surface and seems ready for deliverance. In short, I'm tired of the people in charge of my country making me feel like shit. That we now have one that makes me feel great is a really nice feeling.

I feel calm, happy, and comfortable. It was a good night.

Vote.

I think we all know who he is talking about...

Finally, a get-out-the-vote video I can get on board with.

Two rich entrepreneurs. Each own a basketball team. Both have recently decided to use their powers toward causes in which they believe. One is an inspirational endeavor for the very well-being of this country. The other is a bat-shit insane exercise in misguided futility.

See if you can tell which is which:

Mark Cuban [owner of the Dallas Mavericks] has a new pet project: BailoutSleuth.com seeks to keep readers updated on how their money is being spent as part of the $700 billion bailout of financial institutions.

So far the early returns aren't looking good. Yesterday the site's editor, Chris Carey, wrote that the "Treasury Department put out an announcement about a major bailout-related contract with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. that fell short in the transparency department."

The problem? Nearly all the information on compensation was redacted, leading to less than illuminating lines like this: "The Financial Agent shall receive a monthly fee ---------------------------------------."

-link

or

Megaplex Theaters [owned by Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller] will not screen the comedy "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" when it opens nationwide Friday - once again opening the Utah theater chain to charges of hypocrisy for barring movies with strong sexuality but allowing films with graphic violence.
The movie, which stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as roommates who decide to make a sex film to pay off debts, received an R rating after director Kevin Smith successfully appealed an NC-17 ruling.

-link

Priorities...

:)

Anil Dash on the dangers of deliberately obscured semantics on the campaign trail:

Put simply, if Palin says "Barack Obama consorts with terrorists", she is making the assertion that he supports acts of violence against American citizens and the media will refute this obviously false assertion. If, instead, Palin says he "pals around with terrorists", she's used code-switching to mask the seriousness of the charge, obfuscating her meaning enough to get away with making an assertion that inevitably calls for the imprisonment or even assassination of a political opponent.

This clever use of language only hides Palin's meaning from members of the press. Because writers for traditional media are usually highly educated and pride themselves on their mastery of Standard American English, they can often look down on dialects like AAVE and North Central English. Instead these forms of language being seen as legitimate and interpreted in the social context where they've formed, they're dismissed as being the words of "people who don't even speak proper English!" In the cases where the ideas aren't outright dismissed, there is still rampant misinterpretation of meaning: Reporters wrongly see a term like "palling" as imprecise, when compared to a word like "consorting".

But these words are not imprecise to their intended audience. They are, in fact, clearer than using legalistic terms like "consorting". They amplify the urgency of the statements, and increase the sense for Palin's audience that they're on the same page with her, speaking a language too "plain", too full of "straight talk", for the press to understand. And they're right. Palin has consistently pitted herself against the media, depicting them as hostile and foreign to her campaign, and thus making it even less likely they'd take her less formal-sounding charges seriously.

I'm pretty concerned about the possibility of an assassination attempt on Obama's life, even if the recent neo-nazi "conspirators" seemed more like overly-ambitious idiots. I'm not the type to believe that people are malleable enough that they could be so easily incited to violence based solely on speeches, but the crackpot part of the right-wing could easily have its flames of hatred fanned. McCain and Palin should know better. If they are so despicable (as seems likely) that they require a selfish reason to stop, then they should understand that their legacies would be completely ruined should anything happen to Obama. The country would place the blame directly on their doorsteps.

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Ok, just a couple things on the whole "Spreading the Wealth" idea that seems to be the failed McCain tactic of the week:

1. Unless you are in favor of eliminating taxes all together, you are in favor of "Spreading the Wealth".

2. The main opponents of "Spreading the Wealth" are the red states, which would be hulking piles of cowpies if it weren't for the blue states "Spreading the Wealth" and supporting their sorry asses.

My favorite new meme.

I've seen some Facebook friends I know from my early days playing classical music around L.A., joining groups like "Protect Marriage - Vote Yes on Prop 8!". It boggles my mind. You're a classical musician. You are surrounded by gay people. Do you really want to deny your colleagues and supposed friends a basic human right? And if you are a conservative - which I'm sure most of you are - think of it like this: Voting Yes on Prop 8 increases government intervention into citizens' lives. It is antithetical to the idea of limited government.

Voting No on Prop 8 doesn't change anything. It won't force schools to teach the merits of gay marriage to your kids. It won't make anyone do anything. Voting Yes, however, does. It will strip rights from thousands of Californians. It will create a second class status for thousands of people, people you know and work with.

The idea of gay marriage offends you? Fine. Then talk to a gay friend about your concerns, write about your thoughts and sent an article to your local newspaper editor or start a blog, work on making your own heterosexual relationship an ideal one. There are any number of positive, societal things you can do that don't rely on the power of the state to force your beliefs onto other people. Skipping those and going directly to the government for support is lazy and cowardly, as well as futile. Government cannot change how people feel, love, and hate, so don't ask it to, it will only do more harm than good.