Special Note to My Three Readers

There are probably better ways to relieve stress than walking around with a meteorite, some chewing gum, and thin wire filament shoved up your rectum.

Link

...especially if you're trying to get through security at LAX.

...especially if you're a Middle Easterner -- an Iraqi named Fadhel Al-Maliki.

[ I'm not certain it's a meteorite. Al-Maliki claimed that the rock was from outer space. ]

Puckish

Here's Mando Diao doing "Welcome Home, Luc Robitaille."

This is to honor the fact that H-Bomb and I went to Staples last night and watched the Kings lose (barely) to the Quacks from Ana-fucking-heim. This was my first ever live hockey experience, and I've gotta say that it was totally awesome. And very white. The people, that is. The ice too.

Cheney, the Wrath of God

"If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees, the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God! The earth I walk upon sees me and quakes!"
- Klaus Kinski as Aguirre in Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)


















Jesucristo!

Te-Le

This is very cool.

UPDATE:
Shit. The above video has been pulled from YouTube.
Well, here's Te-Le's "Biomusicology" as the score to some geekdom. Enjoy.

I'm not drinking any fucking merlot!

I agree with the general thrust of what Markos is trying to get at in this post, which goes on to provide some very positive national poll numbers for Nancy Pelosi courtesy of Rasmussen:

It looks like people are realizing that it's not so bad having leadership that represents a corner of the country that has brought us the personal computer, iPods, Pixar movies, Star Wars, Google, eBay, Yahoo, the mass blogging tools (like Blogger, MovableType, and TypePad), NetFlix, TiVo, WiFi, Treos, Palm, Levis, Gap, LeapFrog, Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Ghirardelli, sourdough bread, the best wine in the world, redwood forests, and all kinds of other goodness.

I'll begrudgingly grant him Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo for the furthering of his point. But "the best wine in the world"? Sorry. Any even-wannabe oenophile knows that the California wine industry's willing catering to (or worse, collusion with) the dull-tongued masses' penchant for varietals has led to a dearth of truly fine wines coming out of the region. Maybe, and it's a big maybe, Sonoma County has by concentration the best wines in the country (Fuck Napa). But the world? Oh, Lordy. Let's just hope that not too many French folks read Daily Kos.

It reminds me of the "conventional wisdom" that New Yorkers espouse as to their city having the best Chinese food in the country. Even the New York Times concedes that it's not even a close call. The best Chinese food outside of China is right here in sunny Southern California in the San Gabriel Valley.

Boffo Borat

[ Note: I wrote this back in Novemeber when the movie was all the rage. I didn't publish it at the time for reasons that remain mysterious to me. I have to say, though, that at this later date, I haven't noted any particular hipster backlash against Cohen. ]

Now seems the appropriate time to gird myself against the hipster backlash that Sacha Baron Cohen's great success makes an inevitability. It's a tricky thing to like something so popular, a tricky thing that takes some guts. Only recently has it become properly hip to acknowledge one's admiration for Bruce Springsteen -- this largely, I think, due to his (relatively) advanced age and perceived irrelevancy. This perception allows one to look back (ever backwards) at his career and tip one's hat to that which one never allowed oneself to enjoy at the time of his (perceived) relevancy. Bob Dylan had it a little easier by way of his acid temperament and cultivated enigma -- plus, until recently, his lack of visibility. Kurt Cobain died, so he got a pass. I wasn't around, so I don't know what it was like in the sixties when the Beatles wore the two seemingly mutually exclusive hats of experimental artist and teenage sex idol. I know that for my generation, though, or at least my peer group, it endears you not to be overly successful. Oh, what sacrifice it takes to be cool.

This, though, is to be expected, and this I will endure. What I will not endure, however, is the type of critique that I found in an article by Richard Goldstein writing in The Nation, a meta critique wherein he admonishes his good and sensitive readers to dare to examine at what they laugh and why -- and, lo, if you find yourself laughing at/with Borat, you might not be the good liberal that you thought you were. As with so many like articles about Borat and other "controversial" artists, it is resoundingly clear that Goldstein et al don't get the joke. That's fine and dandy. But instead of accepting this simple fact, Goldstein throws accusatory insinuations at his readers and wraps himself in a cloak of faux sanctimony. Rather than admit that this form of comedy is not to his taste, he disparages the movie, and by extension, its creator:

This flimsy mock doc, in the spirit of gross-out shows like Punk'd and Jackass, might have faded into dating-movie oblivion but for the vehement reaction of the Kazakh government. It didn't appreciate Borat's references to a national wine made from equine urine, or his observation that "America is strange country: Women can vote but horses cannot." By protesting, the Kazakhs gave Baron Cohen a place on US news pages.

True, the Kazakhs' protests may have landed Cohen "a place on US news pages," but to say that this is the only thing that kept it from "fading into dating-movie oblivion" is quite a stretch. (Cohen also ended up in the news pages for singing a butchered rendition of the national anthem at a rodeo -- a scene that made it into the movie.) I'm quite certain that this is not a date movie. What it is is a very successful comedy -- so funny that the audience with whom I saw the movie seemed to be in a constant state of near asphysia, struggling to muffle the laughs so as not to miss the next one. And this comparison to Punk'd and Jackass is simply smug snobbery, a way to express his disapproval of the Borat movie by linking it with these shows/movies that he assumes are slightly higher on the grand minaret of taste than porn or soaps. There are some similarities in approaches, but that's about it. I love Jackass. But Jackass doesn't have as its centerpiece a very gifted comedian playing a fictional character.

And in homage to Atrios's "simple answers to simple questions" bit:

Sacha Baron Cohen is pretty much the hottest thing in sketch comedy now. One reason is the question his shtick poses: What are we laughing at?

Answer: A hilarious comedian... who puts himself in hilarious situations.

Situation Normal... All Fucked Up

Just a reminder:
Almost four years into this geopolitical experiment.
But, you know, we really had to do it, for reals.

Days: 1,420
Civilian Lives: Anywhere from 58,517 to 655,000+
Coalition Forces Lives: 3,357
Cost of War: Anywhere from $364,375,000,000 to $2,000,000,000,000+

The scales have fallen from the eyes of all but the most psychotically deranged and their ever-shrinking cult of obsequious fanboys. Unfortunately, that probably won't stop 'em from doing the same thing in Iran, what with the instant atavism that will surely possess the TV Heads as they engage in their ritualistic summoning of Joe Schmo's precious tribal and hormonal fluids.

And Joe Schmo won't care. He just got off.

And Some Fed

This is from a few years ago. Tony Roche recently said that this is the one shot in all of Federer's substantial oeuvre that he wishes he would have seen live. This was, of course, before Roche was Fed's sometimes coach.

Some Shred

Groundhog Day

It hasn’t been a very good last couple of years for me. I could go through a veritible laundry list of reasons for this downswing, but I’d rather just leave it at that. I avoid looking at this blog much like I avoid looking at old yearbooks, redolent it is as a reminder of my own idleness, not to mention my self-perceived impotence and creeping obsolescence. Perhaps it’s the effect of a psychological tic by which I’m afflicted that keeps me from doing this work, one that holds me hostage to a certain nihilistic vanity – “Why, oh, why should I jot down these meaningless musings… in this meaningless medium… in this meaningliess world?” Why, indeed?

Well, for one thing, because it’s there. And another: When I read through the archives of this blog, as I have just now done, I am reminded of another, happier time (and lest the D-ster protest that I wasn’t happy, let me just say: Believe me, baby, I surely was). Maybe, just maybe, I’d be happier if I were writing again. Maybe that would ease the throbbing dullness I feel throughout my dreary daily existence. Maybe it would alleviate my concern that I am regressing intellectually while rapidly aging physically – on death’s fast track, as it were. As we know, time ticks on and new wars are begun.

I don’t know whether or not there has been suicide in my family, but there has certainly been depression. But is it depression, really, to have no motivation to endure yet another early-morning wake-up to move the car for fear that it will be ticketed or towed; yet another day slogging away at this computer at which I am currently perched; another day spent in this windowless and inconceivably drab room; another day smoking far too many cigarettes, feeling the grease gradually accumulate on my scalp; another day working solely to collect my biweekly paychecks, checks which have diminished in their monetary value of late; another day to fear going home, a fear based as much on a very acutely experienced awareness of “it all” as it is based on simple loneliness? Perhaps it’s not depression, but rather sanity.

I stopped taking the antidepressant I was on sometime last year due to my impression that its flattening psychological effects were dampening my overall vigor. Nonetheless, I haven’t yet climbed out of that hole. I don’t see the light, folks. But I swear I’m looking. And here’s to future posting on this blog.

The Caption Jockey

I'm Turning Into My Dad

I fucking hate U2 too. They're impossible to like. But credit where its due: Achtung Baby! is an unqualified masterpiece. The funky, dance-rock riffs, the drums-as-drum-machine beats, the spit-polished production glint, and the cutting, astute lyrics about love and Judases. And I really like Loveless, an auto-erotic fugue in F demolished minor (Thanks, Booksie). My dad used to complain about Andrew Lloyd Weber and Michel Schonberg and the like by saying that you don't leave the theater whistling their tunes as you would a Cole Porter program, for instance. Well, I can't whistle, but after listening to Loveless, I invariably can't wait to put on some Ramones. All apologies to Kevin Shields for the tortured analogy that makes MBV out to be ALW.

$$$$----$$$$

[I'm not linking to anything. The Web is vast and friendly, like a crenellated vagina]

Lists. I can't resist. Yes, they make me insane, but I can't resist. After seeing Pitchfork's recent (and maddening) list of the top 100 songs of the '60s, I perused their site to see if they had any more lists to offer. Lo, they had a top-100 albums list each for the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I know, they make me insane, but read I must. Or skim. At least the '90s list. And it didn't fail to bring the bile. Okay, OK Computer was number one. Who can argue? It would certainly make my top ten of that decade's best. But the review of the record consists of little more than a defense of its placement above My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. In fact, the meat of the review is little more than a review of said penultimate pick. In fact, here, the Loveless review is a better piece about Loveless than their actual Loveless review. In fact, I can't tell what most of the reviewers are talking about most of the time. They seem to hate music. Or something. They clearly love to write. One reviewer/music-hater writes this about Slanted and Enchanted, their number 5 pick for decade's best (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain ranks eighth): "Pavement's most danceable and puzzling album contains segments of sassily oblique spoken-word, patches that go down like prog played at 78rpm, and jams that crucify humorless punk on a whittled Slinky." Or, in same review: "Meanwhile, frontboy Stephen Malkmus made the preemptive Stroke: a cute diva who could scream as if he suffered from womb envy, his meticulous apathy "paved" (har! oh shit!) the way for Julian Casablancas' blase ferocity." Wow! How reflexively cute. Two words later, the reviewer, William Bowers, henceforth known as Pedantic Cocksucker, affixes the adjective "crenellated" to the "toss-offs" (songs) that comprise the LP. I don't know why everyone grows up to be assholes. Meanwhile, the OK Computer review does allow this assertion: "It should be reiterated, however, just how much better OK Computer is than Loveless, and why people somehow forget this." They seem to forget this simple truism, the reviewer suggests (this, by the way, not Pedantic Cocksucker, but Dick N. Mouth), because inspired as Loveless's beauty, tension, artifice and art are, it cannot compare to "Thom Yorke singing on his back staring at Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman's castle ceiling." This last sentence is quoted in the piece, which seems to suggest that he ripped it from some press release or another (and Mr. Mouth obliquely suggests same). Its inclusion in this review is baffling nonetheless. I'll tell you what, though, "God Only Knows" is certainly not the best song of the '60s. And neither is Loveless the second best album of the '90s. And Crooked Rain is better than Slanted and Enchanted. I was relieved to see that no Oasis album made the cut. But so many other omissions, sinful omissions, remain. No To Bring You My Love. No Achtung Baby! (though it gets at least one negative reference in one of the reviews, probably P.C.'s). Alas, I'm not as young and cool as these whippersnappers at PF are. I'm a lowly caption slinger. If I had my finger on the pulse of cool, I would surely know that it will not be cool to like U2 for another decade or so at least. Though they will never be as cool as Daniel Johnston or Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett or Can or dead and/or disturbed people everywhere. Only one Polly Jean album, Rid of Me. And no Afghan Whigs. And about six Stereolab records. And at least 17 Aphex Twin records. And The Lonesome Crowded West ahead of, in order, Exile in Guyville and Summerteeth. I don't know. It's supposed to be fun. But I can't enjoy myself. Well, it's kinda fun.