More tangential references to Friday afternoon blog-reading.

This is an article about how the McCain campaign dreamed up Sara Palin's line about Obama palling around with terrorists. (Shocking? Wait, but wasn't she on the campaign? At least sort of?)

But more important: the article references a book by a gentleman named Dan Balz.

DAN BALZ!

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This just in from the Department of Stretching Metaphors Way Too Far

Way too far.

Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view. Obama and Hitler use the "blitzkrieg" method to overwhelm their enemies. FAST, CARPET BOMBING intent on destruction. Hitler’s blitzkrieg bombing destroyed many European cities - quickly and effectively. Obama is systematically destroying the American economy and with it AMERICA.

To whit: Obama's steady stream of 'post-partisan" denial and mediocre policy non-stances is leading us to national socialism and, well, genocide?

As to the link itself, if you follow it: is the Baltimore Sun not the most bootleg-looking website you've ever seen? It is as bootleg as the Orioles mid-80's uniform, which I always thought was a gorilla holding a baseball bat.

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bad haircut

I have a job interview tomorrow, so I decided I needed to get a haircut. I head over to some spot on Beverly after work, and the guy is like, "Regular sideburns?" Yes. Regular sideburns please.


"I'm here for my job interview."



I want to take this moment to send a shout out to Gracie. Not that she reads this. But no one but Gracie has really cut my hair for about three years or so. Except once or twice, my ex-girlfriend did. And last winter, I cut my own, which was a disaster of its own, resulting ultimately in a complete shave of the head. Hence my reluctant trip to the barber shop today.

But now I have learned my lesson and I will never see a professional hair cutter again. I will only have Gracie cut my hair.

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Shock. Disgust. Horror.

I'm sitting here eating, reading an article, and I look over to the windowsill, and there is Rakim just very purposefully licking Eric B.'s ass for like, a minute and a half.

I felt like someone dropped me in the middle of a Nas album.

Fellow cat-parents: how to deal with this? Normal? Not normal? Creepy? Creepier still because as a result of MJ's death, I've realized that Eric B. has his eyes from "Thriller."


WHOA WHOA WHOA: While trying to find a link for the Nas reference above (and only finding pornography), I found out that Nas and Kelis are getting divorced.

Kelis, if you are out there, my phone number is 213 210 4683.

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Hating on someone else's President for once.

Via Feministing, I thought this was a good article on Sarkozy's desire to ban the burqa in France.

Excerpt:

So now we have a bigger picture: Muslims as a "misbehaving" minority group, an ongoing war on terror and related distaste for all things Muslim, wide-spread discrimination against Muslims (1 in 3 Muslims in Europe have reported discrimination), desire to maintain a culturally homogeneous society, and, finally, a fascination with another man's progress. Put together, the something else is revealed: by highlighting the oppression of Muslim women Sarkozy is giving people in France more reasons to do what France is already doing pretty well - marginalizing its large Muslim minority.

Anyway, I should admit that I find the burqa a bit unsettling by sight, but I also find this sort of religious censorship suspect, and wrong-headed.

Two other quick notes: If the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in modern history is tied in part to forced secularization in the Middle East and forced secularization mixed with underclass status in European Muslim immigrant communities, then this sort of move seems counterintuitive even if you can get around it being racist. (Obviously it goes without saying that the greatest contributing factor to the rise in Islamic fundamentalism is a hatred of our freedoms that God made for the United States of America on the Sixth Day of Creation, but I guess there are also other factors.)

Second, check out those staggering numbers on Muslim incarceration in France. They looked at our numbers on African American men and started feeling competitive. Truly appalling.

Also, the "sartorial hijab" page on Wikipedia is interesting to look at if you're interested in being able to distinguish between, say the burqa and the niqab.

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this is a non sequitir.

Works great as motor oil!

Tastes sort of like bread-paste, if memory serves.

Indeed, angry urinating man.

Ever just be in the port-a-potty at the Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola Prison Farm and just need to get something off your chest so bad that you write it in #2 pencil?



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This is what Louisiana is like.

Of course it's a watering bucket for the tree.

That makes perfect sense. A garbage bag-lined watering bucket for a tree.



Props to brother-in-law Matt for clueing me in to this one.

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I remember Halloween.

I guess a lot of Halloween costumes have to do with wearing boxes.

Joe Pulido: Gangster of Love

Anonymous Cayman Photo

Anybody else come across this on the Internet and download it back in 2005?

Leonard has seen better days.

And so has Fresno in some ways. In some ways not, I guess.

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Thinking of ways to appear really cool.

My ten year high school reunion is next weekend. While I don't typically get excited about expensive nostalgia trips handed down by the ages as compulsory, I gotta say this one brings out the joiner in me. High school was of course miserable at times, but after Catholic school for nine years it felt liberating every day to be around 2,000 people who weren't keeping track of how many times I wore the same shirt on free dress day. I miss a lot of those people, and why not say hi to who I can after ten years, right? After all, the event promises "heavy hors d'oeuvres," which sounds excessive and weird.

I've spent weeks lobbying for Joe Pulido to come with me and he has finally agreed to do so. And it occurred to me for the first time: maybe I should dress up like King Diamond just to mess with people who haven't seen me in forever. What happened to the thirteen year old kid who only listened to Eazy-E and Green Day and Nirvana? Oh, Melissa.

Too many words devoted to Robert Smith.

Been listening to Pandora Radio at work. I never really got into Pandora Radio before: you say you like the Misfits, you're stuck listening to the post-Danzig schlock that Jerry Only put together; you say you like Bob Dylan, eventually you're listening to way too much Mason Jennings; you say you like Eric B. and Rakim and suddenly every third song is from The 18th Letter album, which could technically be quite good, but are you prepared to make that assessment when all you want is to be passively entertained while typing a memo? But anyway, it's there on the Internet, it works for the temporary-ness of a job where I'm not going to load CDs onto my computer.

The other day it came up with "Mint Car" from the Cure's 1996 album Wild Mood Swings. I imagine this is the record that most once-fans associate with the end of their career, but there was a time when you couldn't escape "Mint Car," a short eight weeks after which radio play petered out, the song disappearing altogether after a year or so, never to be a part of the culture again. I really liked this song, I even remember where I was the last time I heard it: Coelee's old house, in the little space between the living room and kitchen, must've been about 1998. I've thought about the song off and on since then, and I have to say hearing it after all this time made me really happy.

So happy, in fact, that on my way out of town to Phoenix, I swung by Amoeba and picked up the album for five bucks. Trudged west to Hollywood in rush hour traffic, trudged back east through the hour-and-a-half of idling that you must do to get out of the LA area in the early evening. It felt triumphant, the sort of inconvenient and not-worth-it detour that still reminds me that I am an adult, I can waste two hours if I want to thank you very much.

I'm embarrassed by how much I like the somewhat maligned "Mint Car." I don't understand what a mid-period Cure fan can find missing in this track. It's a great example of the manically happy Cure songs ("The sun is up! I'm so happy I could scream!") where you think Robert Smith should feel guilty about writing songs that remind people how they never ever feel this way. It's got the rest too: the guitar sounds bright, the music during the chorus picks itself right up, his voice disappears into a wheeze when he hit the vowels mid-word. He makes the kind of sounds those Sesame Street nose-honker muppets made. It's close-to-perfect if you like this version of Robert Smith, and if you can accommodate the occasional lyric about vanilla smiles and strawberry kisses.

The video is something else too. An old-West high stakes poker game, and Robert Smith wearing a sheet underneath Magic Johnson's getup from the Michael Jackson "Remember the Time" video.

As for the rest of the album, well, it's a lesser version of Wish. There's the longwinded and dirge-y opening track. There's half of a lyric in "Round & Round & Round" that seems taken directly from "Doing the Unstuck," and "Mint Car" itself ends in a rush during the last two seconds of the song, this being lifted straight out of "Friday I'm in Love." There are a bunch of songs with one-word titles. He even does that from-the-throat "I'm absolutely mad" thing where he sounds like a bootleg Louis Armstrong and/or a bootleg Moz.

There are also more singles. "The 13th" falls a little flat and sounds too deliberately Latin. I think that was the follow-up to "Mint Car," and I like it too despite its flaws. "Strange Attraction" was yet another single, but I don't remember this one as well. It's growing on me, but it sounds like a mid-tempo Paula Abdul song. Something in the drums does it. "Gone!" was a single too, but the best thing about that song is that it has an exclamation point in the title.

This post sounds really album review-ish, and I don't like that. I think I just have a lot to say about the Cure, and when is there ever occasion to talk about the Cure in 2009? Sorry Lauren.

This blog is turning into an apologies-to-Lauren blog. Because Lauren is a the faithful reader.

So, for your trouble, here are photos of Robert Smith looking like a fat and confused Alice Cooper. The last one is priceless - he looks more like a Bob than a Robert. I think he's starting to disintegrate. Get it?

How are you? Fine thank you. See you later.

So I saw Le Tigre perform once and oddly, this is exactly how it felt at the time.



A few thoughts:

1. Does she really say "More crackers please?" "Linoleum floor?"

2. My sister Lisa liked Jem. I remember those earrings. The bad guys (girls) were called the Misfits if I recall. Is it a problem that my favorite Misfits songs are the misogynist ones? How appropriate is it that those were the ones that sounded extra-Phil Spector-y?

3. I love the parasol at 1:29 and 1:52.

4. That song from this album, "Les and Ray." I love that song.

5. Also, if I knew how to play any musical instruments, I would play them like these ladies.

6. If you play the video in two separate tabs, and start them 1/2 second apart, the drums sound all death metal.

7. Altogether this is the best thing I have seen in recent memory. This is like the best thing since Election Night.

Via Feministing.

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Joe Lieberman still sucks.

I liked Prez. B's comment on hijab in Cairo, but this article is worth reading anyway. Why? Because it points out things that Obama glaringly left out of his speech regarding women's rights, and because it pokes at Joe Lieberman, and we must not forget that he sucks.

This is also relevant to the Abu Ghraib photos question.

What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.

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"credible based on supporting evidence provided by other witnesses"

I initially was down on Obama about not releasing the Abu Ghraib photos - it's easy for me to be down on Obama after all: he's the president of a shitty shitty government during a time when our moral failings as a nation are painfully obvious pretty much across the board, and so his hands are tied I guess, in terms of exercising his much lauded shiny shiny goodness. For example, not prosecuting criminals in a nation of laws simply because to do so would be a huge pain in the ass and might, um, spend too much "political capital" or whatever.

Or maybe I'm an asshole, and I digress either way.

So here is a relevant article in the NYT. It's by Philip Gourevitch, who wrote We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which is a book about the Rwandan genocide, as necessary as reading gets. He's a smart and thoughtful guy. If Obama's position will inevitably require him to compromise his decency (and let us keep killing innocent Afghani people with drones, and lie about his position on gay marriage, and so on) then Gourevitch is a person whose decency is not compromised, and he agrees with Obama on this one. And he's seen the pictures in question, and he doesn't think they need to be released.

Via Cogitamus, here's an article that talks about the "potential street consequences," that "Baghdad will burn" if the photos are released. That means more dead Iraqis, which is a bad thing, so this is the most convincing argument I've heard in favor of Obama's reversal on the issue.

I'm still not sure I actually agree with Obama. I'm not in favor of painting all American soldiers as criminals - it's not productive, it's overly simplistic, and it's not true. However, I do bet that there are a ton of My Lai Massacres hiding behind our little disaster over there, things that would cause some needed soul-searching if we found out about them. Maybe it's a good time to be reminded of how badly we should hate ourselves for what we've visited on that country.

Case in point: the photos in question apparently show evidence of "every indecency," including rape committed by American soldiers against female and male prisoners:

"Allegations of rape and abuse were included in [Maj. Gen. Taguba's] 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph."

So I have to say: if the pictures have to be released to teach us - if nothing else - that rape is an inseparable part of war and so we shouldn't allow ourselves to be deceived into war, then I still disagree with Obama on this decision.

Sorry for the downer post, Teresa and Lauren and whatever third person visits this blog. Not in love with the world today. I should add that I basically still like Obama, just that now that he's Prez we occasionally need to take more of an adversarial position, just to be consistent and, well, correct.

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got my mind made up

I'm applying for a job tonight, I've applied for so many jobs that I realize this is in itself my basic vocation in life these days. It's hard to figure out an artful but not redundant way to say that you shower every day and people like you and you know how to type several dozen words a minute, especially when this is all I would want to know about myself: "I like David Bowie and half a dozen Bad Brains songs, and pictures of 2Pac wearing awkward leather outfits. The older I get the more I hate the zoo. I am fanatical about maintaining proper grammar when confronted by obscure plurals such as 'data' and 'criteria'."

Based on those things, I would hire me. But no one else would. So this is why I will never be in charge of hiring anyone for anything, and more importantly for the present, why no one will hire me.


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In which a rock band makes fun of Bakersfield.

Just got back from the LA Propagandhi show, which surprised me because it was actually a better show than the Pomona show. Usually big-city rock crowds are all self-aware scowling, but people seemed really excited to be at this show. I internalized the first wave of Propagandhi records without really sharing my enthusiasm with anybody, so it was cool to be around a bunch of people who were listening to the same things I was in 1996.

Highlight of the evening: "So, this isn't as daring to say here as it was in 1993 in Bakersfield, California, but we're a gay-positive band." I still love it when people talk bad about Bakersfield. I don't care if Danny is from there, it still makes me laugh.

Lowlight of the evening: the inevitable segue from Bakersfield-bashing into Proposition 8 - somehow it never occurred to me that people from other countries know about this and are thinking about it, and it made me more ashamed to be from post-Prop 8 California. The whole thing seemed like such a flip of the coin, I'm hopeful it will be overturned next year. Cross your fingers, I guess.

Other highlights: "Back to the Motor League," "Dear Coach's Corner," "Rio de San Atlanta, Manitoba," "A Speculative Fiction," and a rad version of "Fuck the Border" sung by a member of the opening band, the unfortunately named Bridge and Tunnel. (Despite the name, they are also pretty good. They play Hot Water Music-era hardcore-ish stuff, and the lead guitar player is cool because she plays like Eddie Van Halen.)

As a teenager this band was so intimidating, a mountain of radical politics I would never live up to. But what struck me seeing them Friday and tonight was that they are really just hicks with no pretensions. There's dignity to what they do because they do it as well as you'll ever seen it done, but they don't seem to think very much of themselves. They obviously love it - Todd Kowalksi in particular is a giddy, fist-pumping teenager up there - and you can tell they grew up doing it together. It left me feeling sort of sad that I've never really found something that I love doing like that.

Check them out when they come back in four years. They are still getting better after more than fifteen years, almost unheard of among the 90's punk bands that are still around.

Related: despite being from Bakersfield, Danny is also pro-gay. He sent out the following video today, which makes fun of Prop 8 and Pat Robertson, and looks oddly like a fake rap video if you watch it without the sound on.



One-half of this duo played at the same show as Jessica's new band, Old Lumps, yesterday. That show was also great, and I like Jessica's new band even though the name makes me uncomfortable, and this duck-video lady is obviously also talented and funny.

Three-rock show weekend gets a thumbs up.

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Abortion Doctor Killed at Church

Today we hear that Dr. George Tiller, who survived a shooting (1993) and a bombing (1985), was shot dead at church in front of his wife.

It seems to me that there are two ways to think about this from a cultural perspective: one, that periodic waves of violence against abortion doctors reflect very little about how pro- or anti-choice our society is. Two, on the not-so-bright-side, that you have to consider the role of the Creeps with Airtime in raising the negative profile of Dr. Tiller and others to the point where they are targets of violence carried out by maniacs.

Maniacs of a less violent nature applaud Tiller's death all around the Internets. See, for example, "Why is the death of a satan worshipper tragic?"

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Where are these green shoots they are talking about?

Check out this on the continuing depressing state of the world: Paul Krugman gives some other famous schmoe what-for, Bill Bradley sounds like he should take Geithner's job up from under him, and George Soros shows up because if you're that rich apparently you are de facto. A good read, but where are the ladies on the panel? Not sure if you've noticed, but Obama's been talking a lot about how he wants to encourage men to go into professions like nursing . . . from the looks of it we could maybe use some women in the profession of explaining why and how the world is falling apart too.

Really, Bill Bradley is quite impressive here.

Anyway, off to Pomona right now to see Propagandhi. I'm not even going to bother going into how excited I am because I've been wanting to see this show since I was thirteen years old. And I love going to Pomona, it scares me, and I haven't been there in several years. Big night all around. Again, I know it isn't fashionable to say this, but it's hard to think of a better punk band around these days.


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Souter intends to retire, sort of looks like he'd be good in a Western

Justice Souter today announced that he's moving on to greener pastures, wants to "return to his native New Hampshire." This on the heels of the NH General Assembly legalizing gay marriage (possible veto pending) this morning.

Maybe it's not a coincidence, maybe he too has been waiting to gay marry?

Anyway, this is sort of ambivalent news I guess, since we're still a few retirements from changing the composition of the stupid stupid Supreme Court. However, I am really excited about the Republican circus that could result from this week's newly filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Assuming that Barack gets through his first choice, I think it's obvious that soon all marriages will be at least 65% gay by law.

Have you seen Souter recently, by the way? I'm used to this photo, which makes him look sort of sprightly, if a bit gray.
Well, apparently this photo is circa 1990, because today he looks like he has been partially reconstructed from pieces of an old baseball mitt.

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Awkard Internet transaction follow-up

Being completely broke, I am cancelling my subscription to eMusic. Looking back, I guess I've never gotten much out of it anyway. So I'm downloading my last 40 songs, and I decided to download Ma Rainey's Black Bottom because it has "Shave 'Em Dry Blues" and I like that song.

Three days later, I get an email in my inbox: "How did you like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom?" Um, just fine, thanks?

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What's the 211?

For my own odd reasons I am calling LA County's 211 service today . . . and the first thing you get on the menu is, "For information regarding Swine Flu, press . . . "

Is it just me, or is the constant stream of pandemics both completely boring and sort of suspect? I mean, I know people have died, but people die of all sorts of things all the time. Including communicable diseases. You know? I may be proven wrong: I felt the same way about natural disasters until the huge typhoon, followed by Hurricane K. Felt like a real creep back then.

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Arlen Specter Specter leaves Republican Party

Arlen Specter just made the switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. How does this read? The Republican Party has gone so far outside of the mainstream that their fogeys are starting to abandon ship? Or the Democrats, by virtue of the two party system and the Republican Party's insanity, is forced to cast such a wide net that it will never actually manage to come up with any sort of real political philosophy?

Also does this mean Specter will change his mind on the Employee Free Choice Act? Or will he still oppose it and use EFCA to demonstrate his continued independence from party politics?

Arlen Specter is really really old.

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No Way Miss USA

So, in the year 2009, why is it even acceptable to parade young women around in an extra-fancy dog show on television? Right?

Anyway, in case anyone didn't see this, Miss California weighed in on the gay marriage debate during the Miss America pageant. As the various Misses always seem to do, Miss Golden State began her answer by indicating her own fundamental misunderstanding of the way the world works: she says that she is happy to live in a country where people can choose gay marriage or "opposite marriage." So either Miss California lives in Vermont or Miss California is technically quite stupid.

She follows up that gem with the assertion that, "In my country, in my family" marriage is between a man and a woman. No disrespect obviously, that's just the way we do things in my country/family.

Miss California is from San Diego. And this is what happens when you let people from San Diego out in public. I've said it for years, folks: Fresno-by-the-Sea.

One other thing: the person who asked the question was Perez Hilton. Props go to the guy for forcing a salient and important question onto the Annual Vapid Bullshit Parade, but honestly I had no idea he actually counted as a TV-worthy celebrity. I thought he was a mid-level Internet celebrity, somewhere between the Goatse guy (don't worry, no photo) and the Obama Girl. You know, way down in the lower echelons of fame, next to Malt-o-Meal in the cereal aisle.

So here's an important question about the United States circa 2009: how do we feel about Perez Hilton being a national pop culture figure? Keep in mind that this man is notable for only one reason - his website posts photos of drunk celebrities who have accidentally flashed their vaginas on the way out of the limo.



Apparently Perez Hilton later called Ms. Killer Cali a "bitch," and here she responds on MSNBC. The whole thing has the catty, gossipy feel of late high-school. Miss California is praying for Perez Hilton, Perez Hilton unapologizes to Miss California about calling her a bitch, only to up the ante by dropping a c-bomb on her startled ass. Then, Miss California is all like, "Well I have 4,000 friend requests on Facebook!" I am not joking. We later learn that an authority figure in the form of some higher-up at the Miss USA Ranch steps in and chastises Miss Blue Eyeshadow for being, you know, a prejudiced ass.



It bears mentioning that Miss Meth-Hub of Southern California looks like a freeze-dried weirdo throughout both clips.

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David Simon of The Wire on print journalism

David Simon was on Bill Moyers for an entire hour last week. I was listening to the podcast of it this morning while doing some tidying up around the house. I've heard David Simon twice before on NPR, and these interviews convinced me to check out The Wire after everyone told me "it's the perfect show for you" for two years. The man is smart - I'm not sure how the popular culture shitfunnel turned out someone quite this good. Maybe the popularity of serialized TV on HBO in the last decade incrementally improved the format to the point where it could accomodate such an intellect? Just a guess, I know nothing of these things.

But check out what he had to say on Moyers about the fate of print journalism. I think his perspective as a former journalist really rounds out the conventional wisdom, particularly in noting the pre-Internet shortcomings of the major newspapers' approach.

And this is not all the Internet . . . the general tone in journalism right now is that of martyrology: "We were doing our job making the world safe for democracy and all of the sudden terra firma shifted, new technology, who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us?"

I would buy that if I wasn't in journalism for the years that immediately preceeded the Internet. Because I took the third buyout from the Baltimore Sun. I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left - in 1995, long before the Internet had its impact . . . . Those buyouts happened when the Baltimore Sun was earning 37% profits. We now know this because it's in bankruptcy and the books are open. Thirty-seven percent profits, and all that R&D money that was supposed to go into making newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world, it went to shareholders in the Tribune Company, or the LA Times-Mirror Company before that.

And ultimately when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it. I mean, the guys who were running newspapers for the last 20 or 30 years have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. I mean, it's even more profound than Detroit making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car in 1973. It's analagous up to a point, but it's not analagous in that a Nissan is a pretty good car and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it's great for commentary and froth, doesn't do much first generation reporting at all . . . The economic model doesn’t sustain that kind of reporting.

And to lose to that . . . they had contempt for their own product, these people, I mean how do you give it away for free? Listen, for twenty years . . . the ads were the God. And then all of a sudden the ads weren’t there and the copy they’d had contempt for, they’d actually marginalized themselves by the time the Internet had its way.

Here's an interesting series on the future of urban journalism, from a urban problems blog called Where: "Notes on the Future of Urban Journalism," Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Anyway, Jessica and I are making our way through the entire The Wire series, courtesy of Netflix. We're in the first third of Season 2, so if anyone wants to coordinate watching it with us, head on down to the 730.

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If you're cast on thin ice you may as well dance.

If any of the four people who still read this have any interest, I wanted to say that the new Propagandhi record, "Supporting Caste," completely destroys, as expected.

No one out there on the Internet will tell you, so I thought I'd mention it. Punk music too earnest to be even noted by the Pitchfork crowd, music made my metalheads who were metalheads long before it was ironically cool to wear a token Venom t-shirt around Williamsburg/Humboldt Park/Echo Park/(insert your favorite "urban frontier" here).

It's an extension of their last two records for sure, and at times it sounds like straight-up crossover thrash. Also, even though Todd Kowalski joined the band more than ten years ago, this is only their third record since then, so his contributions to the band are still becoming clear. Not totally sure, but I think his songs are the compassionate ones about refugees and immigrants and junkies and middle-school outcasts, and you sort of get the sense that this band would have ended years ago without his enthusiasm.

Also, they've added a second guitar. Second guitar!!!

And finally, they're playing Pomona and Los Angeles in late-May. Who's coming with me? I've been wanting to see this band for literally 14 years, and I don't think they've come anywhere near me, geographically, during that time.

The last thing I will say to this album's credit: my cats spend a lot of time with loud music of different types, and nothing really phases them at all. But when the big huge riffs come in on this record, it totally startles Rakim, who is sitting in the window next to me right now.

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I'm An Elvis Impersonator . . . Get Me Out Of Here

So originally I was really excited when not one but two people told me that Rod Blago is going to have his own reality TV show. Then I found out that he's just playing some bit part in a bootleg Survivor ripoff called, "I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here." The court has to give him permission to go to Costa Rica for filming. Failing some sort of confrontation with Flavor Flav, I don't see how this could be remotely compelling television, but either way Blago isn't going anywhere soon. If MC Serch shows up, I'm plugging in the HDTV conversion adapter box thingy.

Does anyone else find the "let's come up with a plan to battle the pirates" thing really lame? It just seems sort of like we got caught unawares and are pretending to be on the ball now. Hillary has a "four-point plan" three days after the attack is over? That seems a bit rushed, no? I mean, they've been slapping new names on the Bush/Paulsen bank bailout for three months now - we might as well just be going into the Treasury and setting new bills on fire at this point. But less than a week after some broke down Somali pirates take over an oceanliner, we have a comprehensive plan? Not a good look.

Seems like the original plan was pretty effective: wait until some pirates take a vessel, then kill them all and have warm and fuzzy press events since no Americans died. Doesn't make me very comfortable ethically but I have a sinking suspicion that this could be the end result of Hillary's plan too. Or am I totally off on this one?

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Immigrant Services Hostage Situation; Gay Marriage Everywhere But California

Woke up today to this frightening news: Over a dozen dead in a hostage situation at an immigrant services center in NY state. They don't seem to know anything yet on the news, motive included, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is proof that The Ass Holes are dangerous.

In sunnier news: while we Californians will forever be shamed by our anti-gay marriage amendment and the state Supreme Court that looks set to uphold it, Iowa's Supreme Court today legalized gay marriage. They cited, you know, basic human rights: "The supreme court justices drew explicit parallels to civil rights struggles by blacks and women, holding that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the equality promised in the Iowa constitution."

I assume this is the sort of thing a journalist would ask the President about at a press conference, no? Would love to hear him try again to recapitulate his totally incoherent stance on gay marriage.

Vermont also took steps yesterday, passing a bill that sent gay marriage to the Governor's desk. The Gov plans to veto it, and I don't know anything about the politics of the vote, so who knows if the General Assembly will override the veto.

Still, it calls into question California's inane system of amendment passing: whip everyone up into a frenzy of lies and confusion, then get us to pass something we probably don't even really agree with. The old-fashioned branches of representative government seem to have won out this week in VT and IA, Californian "direct democracy" just sort of an embarrassment again.

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Dear Lauren: I am sorry.

I would like to officially apologize to Lauren Ahkiam for insulting her favorite Joni Mitchell songs. If it makes you feel any better, me and Eric listened to "A Case of You" yesterday afternoon and I like that song.

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Gitmo: "Soooo beautiful!"

Apparently Miss Universe toured Guantanamo Bay last week and just did not have enough good things to say about the place. Creepiest quote: "We also met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills." Geez. Someone please kill us all.

Related: it has come to my attention recently that many people have not seen Miss Teen USA 2007's rambling discussion of why we Americans don't technically know anything about where anything is in the whole entire world. Please watch this. Special guest appearance by AC Slater.



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Stakes Is Weird

Went to Fresno this past weekend to visit the family. Sold a million CD's I never listen to anymore, and armed with a princely sum in store credit, I went on an Elton John binge. I also bought the Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist album because I have not heard "MTV Get Off the Air" since I was a fifteen year-old of much smaller physical frame and much larger optical frames. Frankenchrist is still really good and the intro to "Soup Is Good Food" still sounds weird and great. And as every last person in this country loses his/her job and finds no safety net, the words are disappointingly relevant again. It's officially the '80's, but worse. We're dying again folks.

But on to more important things. Brother-in-law Matt stumbled across something strange at the used record store: an LFO record. You know, "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch." The Lyte Funky Ones. Those guys.

Or rather, these guys:


They had another album, post-Abercrombie & Fitch. Three high-profile cameos. Sit down for this. The following all actually did verses on an LFO album.

De La Soul

Kelis, "the loud screaming chick with the hair."

And the ever-scary M.O.P. Huh? (This means they went into the studio with LFO right around they went into the studio with Pharaohe Monche for Internal Affairs. Simon says think about it.)


The weirdness crown obviously goes to the MOP appearance, but these are all sufficiently horrifying to ruin your day one by one. I remember this period of time well, from about 1997 to 2002, where everything in the entire world went insane. Does it surprise anyone that a country that could produce such an unsettling musical collaboration would be sending innocent men to Syria to be tortured indefinitely within a year?

P.S. I just put tags on this post, and it earns six: photos, hilarious, politics, celebrities, hippy, music. This is probably two or three more tags than any other post I've done, and I think only a musical-collaborative-nightmare of this scale could cast such a wide net.

P.P.S. I just reread this post and I think only Eric will be even remotely interested, and he's probably not aware that I'm still updating this here weblog. Apologies, but it's already done.

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Only welcome for our drink and smoke.

Related to the last post.

Turns out that Neil Young plays harmonica on Joni Mitchell's Hejira, "Furry Sings the Blues." I find this strange. Why try to coax a perpetually messy and unpleasant circa-1976 Neil Young out of his puddle of vomit and down the hill from Topanga, just to play his shakey-at-best harmonica? Seems like it'd be easier to just learn the harmonica part yourself.

The lesson here is that 1960's and 1970's LA scene rock acts were essentially rappers: "Hey, let's find an excuse to get all our friends in the studio to phone-in some completely unnecessary cameos. Then we'll get high."

Tangent: Brother-in-law Matt and I went to the Hollywood Cemetary in Memphis last summer to find Furry Lewis' grave. We walked around in the mid-southern hot-ick for over an hour looking for the tombstone, while a man with a hole in his throat did general weed-whacking. He had no idea where Furry Lewis' grave was, but assured us that his brother would know. His brother was off fixing a punctured tractor-tire, but "should be back soon," which in the South means, "eventually, or not at all, or we'll see, or let's have a beer." The man sounded like he was speaking a foreign language, but he was in fact speaking English.

We gave up and got back in the car and turned on the air-conditioner. Worried that the unpaved and rocky cemetary roads would puncture my tires, we drove slow. For reasons I don't actually remember, we soon rolled to a stop . . . right in front of the final resting place of "Walter 'Furry' Lewis: Blues Man."



I think the story is that Furry Lewis hated Joni Mitchell's song and maybe even sued her. To be memorialized in song is to be treated like a dead man, of course, but presumably Furry's beef was less that and more the fact that "Furry Sings the Blues" is an incredibly boring Joni Mitchell song. Not being about California and all.

Here are some other gravestones from the Hollywood Cemetary. Cemetaries down there remind you that in some ways, the American South remains a developing nation even today.



And the prize for most depressing tombstone ever:



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Couldn't let go of L.A.

This is the was the coolest person I met when I was at Lago Atitlan.

S/he was obviously completely uninterested in hanging out.


This dog wanted so badly to sleep with me the next night that I had to go find another bed.

This is Linda, she was my host-sister-bird for three weeks. She is a cotorro, not a parrot, but she does do some mimicry. I wanted to teach her Neil Young songs because I thought it would be funny, but soon I learned that she really only mimics the chickens. Which is boring.

Auri, the lady who ran the hotel across the street from the school in Xela, has an actual parrot. She took me and Joel, another student, to her house one day to meet the bird, and dogs, and two guinea pigs, and other things too.

It was a big hateful bird. It called me a whore and then laughed like a man.

Listening to Joni Mitchell this morning. I always like Joni Mitchell in theory but get bored with her very quickly. Really I only love her California songs where she talks about missing LA and stuff. But some of the other songs clicked this time, too.

Here's something though: did you know that Cheech and Chong did background vocals on Court and Spark? Picture Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Robbie Robertson, and Cheech and Chong all in the studio together making mediocre half-jazz. OMG. The song Cheech and Chong are on, "Twisted," is actually the worst song on the album. They do sort of faux-scat: "Man the chick is twisted . . . crazy boop shoobee hip flip city." That's actually Cheech's line. It's horrible, the stuff of nightmares.

Jose Feliciano sings too. Weird. I really like living in LA, but I would've preferred to live here thirty or forty years ago. Or twenty. Or whatever.

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"totally uncivilized"

I don't know who made this flyer, but it was something of a constant companion while I was at the language school. In Xela, the school had at least three identical signs up around the building, and there were more at the mountain school. This is a reference the Iraqi journalist-hero who threw an oxford at a phoning-it-in-at-this-farcical-press-conference George Bush. "Another for Guatemala!"

It's funny the first time, less funny the second time, and eventually a lesson in the difference between "por" and "para," those tricky word-cousins that discourage all spanish-learners for, I imagine, their entire lives. Before this sign, I would have said "Otro para Guatemala," and whenever I'm trying to think of which of the two words to use, I think first of this sentence to see if it tells me anything.

Related: Here's a picture of the departing asshole moving to suburban Dallas in an airplane.

The dying LA Times brought news this week that prosecutors in the Phil Spector trial closed their arguments by calling Spector a "demonic maniac." I would love to see this phrase enter into everyday use for people like Bush, or that crazy Sheriff from Arizona, or, yes, I guess Spector too. "Demonic maniac" is a near-perfect phrase, both descriptive and fun to say. Who is with me?

Listening to Mecca Normal this morning. Is it acceptable to consider the following a song-lyric, let alone a fitting album-closer? "It's a truly uncivilized nation that treats medical care as a commodity to be sold; take it, it's yours." If so, I guess that is one part of punk's legacy, which is neat neat neat.

Clearly I'm all over the place today. I'm putting photos from my trip on Flickr over the next couple weeks, so I'll probably still post some to this here weblog with my half-formed thoughts about them.

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18th Street Gang, Los Angeles, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

No, really, there's a Los Angeles in Guatemala too.

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"Everyone there is a terrorist."

Haaretz started publishing testimonials from IDF soldiers involved in the Gaza attack last month. They say they will be publishing accounts for the next few days. It's worth reading.

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

You can catch some of it in the LA Times today also.

At first the specified action was to go into a house . . . with an armored personnel carrier . . . and start shooting inside. . . . I call this murder. . . . We were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified, we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself, "Where is the logic?"

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Help me make a new turntable housing?

Once I get an income rolling in again, I think I'm going to make a new housing/plinth for my old record-changer turntable. (I also need to fix the return on it, but whatever.) Anybody out there secretly work with wood and want to help me? We get to take a field trip to a gunshop in the San Gabriel Valley to buy lead shot.

"There may be a kennel somewhere, or the dogs may be coyotes."

Back in LA, still dreaming Spanish lessons. Doing some Southern California reading - the first story in Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem is called "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream." In it she has this to say about San Bernardino County: "This is the California where it is possible to live and die without ever eating an artichoke, without ever meeting a Catholic or a Jew."

Elsewhere, "It is the trail of an intention gone haywire."

While nowadays you can't walk too far over there without stumbing over a Catholic of some sort, I think the latter part is still such a perfect and accurate description.

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If You Ain't Got the Do-Re-Mi

I'm flying into LAX tonight from Guatemala City.

I return speaking obnoxious Spanglish, having dreamed about the subjunctive tense three nights in a row. Addicted to mineral water in returnable glass bottles, more for the ritual than anything. Magically fifteen pounds lighter and according to one source, a little bit taller. Basically jobless. Missing my cats. Wanting to listen to hear the Minutemen Paranoid Time EP, excited to revisit that old Juvenile album with his huge single, Depeche Mode for some reason. Accustomed, once again, to upwards of eight cups of coffee a day. Perfect.

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"Rara y apestosa."

Here's what I've been up to the last week and a half or so.

Caught a production of the Vagina Monologues in teeny-tiny-town-Colomba . . . second and final presentation today in Xela. More on that later. It was really cool and I'm looking forward to it tonight.


A hard rain a-fell.

I went back to the mountain school for my last week here, since I like it so much that I want to die there. We all sang on the porch. This is "Lover Lover Lover" by Leonard Cohen, which nobody but me was really into at first, but this guy with the guitar, Kavour, made it singable. Kavour dresses like a Flying Burrito Brother and he lives in Lake Tahoe and he's just about as cool of a person as you'd want to meet.


Here we are during his 45 minute long ghost story with no point.


My spanish is at the point where there's not really much more grammar for me to learn, and it's more of a question of practice. I have shoved the four subjunctive tenses into the little remaining room left inside my head, and as a result, I have actually started having trouble with tenses I've known well for ten years. I consider this progress.

I'll be back in LA on Friday.

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Part 2: Pescador de Hombres, San Andres Xecul

On the way back down the hill from the chapel, we caught San Simon. San Simon is not a saint in the Catholic sense . . . but people are very enthused. I believe his more famous shrine is in a nearby town called Zunil, and another version named Maximon at Lago Atitlan.

Best I can understand from what people have told me, San Simon was an English doctor a few hundred years ago who helped a lot of people out. So for this, he is now venerated as something of a Catholic saint/Mayan deity. I forget the specific Mayan deity, and again, he's not an actual Catholic saint, but in San Andres the Virgin of Guadalupe appears to be quite comfortable up on the wall next to him. People bring candles . . . different colors for different things. I was told that red is love, black is for some variety of ill wishes, and purple is for prostitutes who want more work. Green and yellow were the most popular candles but no one said what they were for.

There were actually two San Simons in the same room at the spot in San Andres. This might sound weird until you consider how many crucifixes you'll see in any given Catholic church, or how many Steely Dan records I own. (All of them, thanks.)

Here he is:


Here's the more traditional and more important figure of San Simon. People bring him cigarettes and aguardiente and whisky. He has a permanent cigarette holder on a chain around his neck, so you can give him a lit cigarette if you like, and you can actually pour the whisky right down his throat as well.





Anyway, it feels dirty to take pictures of and make jokes about something that people really believe in, so I hope none of this lightheartedness comes of as disrespect. It's just that it seemed sort of surreal to me. When we got there, there was a family there. Dad/granddad was bringing each kid up to San Simon one at a time and twirling a cane around the kid's head several times. I really wanted to know what the significance of it all was, and I thought about asking. But then I thought maybe it would've been disrespectful to force someone to respond to my robotic "how's my subjunctive coming along" childspeak at that moment.

San Simon moves to a new house every year. At first I thought this made a lot of sense from a social welfare standpoint: at 5Q per visitor for 365 days, San Simon rakes it in for whichever family hosts him. If everyone in town got San Simon once in a lifetime, it could be a big help and sort of an economic bedrock of the local community. But ours is not that kind of world, and it turns out San Simon is basically owned by a group of rich people, and if you pay them enough money they will let you keep him around for a year.

There's nothing much to say about the actual church except that it's great. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill Catholic church for the most part, except that about 50 years ago someone decided it would be a good idea to coat it in primary colors. It's repainted every three years.


Again with the mix of religious tradtions: the jaguar is a Mayan deity (someone told me the sun deity), and there are jaguars hanging out near the cross at the top.


Inside they have really gone all out with neon, including Christmas lights on the various saints' halos. The neon banner above Jesus reminds me of the one at St. Sabina's in Chicago.



More Leonard Cohen: Check out this old PBS video of him and Judy Collins singing "Suzanne". There's also a good version of them doing "That's No Way to Say Goodbye," but I like "Suzanne" better because Judy Collins mispronounces the word "drowning" at the 1:50 mark. Supposedly there's a performance of "Famous Blue Raincoat" as well, but I can't find it. Incidentally, this non-sequitir YouTube link is actually relevant to the post, thanks, because Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water.


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