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Politics, film, pop culture, whatever I feel like posting is what you will likely find here. Originally started as the production diary for my first film, this blog has since taken on a life and death and rebirth of its own. Come for the opinions and stay for the sarcasm.
An Alaska state legislative investigator found yesterday that Gov. Sarah Palin abused her executive power when she and her husband engaged in a campaign to oust her former brother-in-law from the state police force. [read the whole sordid tale]
I am saddened to read that one of progressive rock's pioneering keyboardists has died today. Pink Floyd were an incredible band and Wright's keys were the glue that held it all together. Whether it was the understated organ lines, sweeping synths, beautiful vocal harmonies or amazing songwriting, it's easy to say that Wright contribution to the band's sound was huge. Need an example? Listen to the Final Cut, the only Pink Floyd album without Wright. It's an absolute piece of shit! So take the next 11 or so minutes to honor Rick by watching perhaps my favorite Pink Floyd moment caught on film:
OK, I stole the title of this post from Olbermann, but it's just too good not to use. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the republican presidential ticket are completely and entirely full of shit. Sure, everyone lies and distorts the truth in politics. But the republicans typically go for the most outrageous lies which rile up their intellectually challenged base and just insults the intelligence of everyone else. The original neocon laid out this strategy some time in the 1920's:
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies."
Those who have picked up his political mantle of hyper-patriotism, demonizing dissent, using security as an excuse to dismantle civil liberties, and attacking other countries unprovoked want to tell some big lies themselves so that they can get elected and continue this country's slide into fascism with a hefty side order of theocracy.
Now it's quite obvious to anyone who has managed to evolve past the knuckle dragging stage (whether they believe in evolution or not) that Obama wasn't referring to Sarah Palin as a pig. As a blogger and a humorist, it's my job to refer to her far more colorfully than that. Pigs are actually intelligent creatures and it would be an insult to them to compare them to this vapid fucking robo-bitch. Oooooh noooooo, I'm being sexist! But seriously, she robotically spews lies and talking points, and let's face it, she's kind of bitchy about it. I don't mean in the Hillary Clinton grating naggy tone of voice kind of bitchy, more like the girls at the beginning of Baby Got Back talking about that girl's butt kind of bitchy, only she's trying to talk about more important things than big butts. I doubt there's an original thought in that head of hers. It's all Jeebus freakery, intolerance, saber rattling and redneckery. How dumb is too dumb to be vice president? How about continuing to link Iraq to 9/11 on 9/11? This vile woman is just like a dumber version of Dick Cheney with more hair and a pair of tits.
But let's not make the same mistake as the mainstream media by focussing all of our attention of her and ignoring Johnny McBush. While she's going out throwing raw red meat to the scarier people who we are unfortunate to have to share a country with, the campaign is lying their right wing asses off in ads. Here are some of the more egregious lies debunked.
Happy Friday, people! I leave Sunday for a week and a half vacation in beautiful upstate NY where I'll be meeting my new baby nephew Gabriel for the very first time. I don't know if I'll have time to post anything while I'm there, but I might twitter, so check the right hand column from time to time if you really need to know what I'm up to at all times.
But not to leave my dear readers with nothing new, my brother in law just sent me this youtube video which you really need to watch. Really bad teenage band covers really cheesy 80's song. To say it's bad doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Just watch it.
I've got to admit, despite my extreme cynicism about the democratic party, I've been getting a bit excited the more I hear about their upcoming convention in Denver.
I got to attend the 2000 convention in LA. I was working at the DNC as a web and graphics guy, and my main job at the convention was to shoot a couple seconds worth of footage when the balloons dropped at the end, and then quickly edit it into a web fundraising ad. At that point in the campaign I was growing rather disgruntled with the Gore campaign. We had an incredibly intelligent veep of an extremely popular president going against a less than bright guy who had fucked up every opportunity handed to him by his powerful daddy, and he was doing horribly in what should have been at least a minor landslide. While many are quick to blame Nader, I was of the position that the Gore campaign was working tirelessly to drive so much of the liberal base straight to Nader what with his choice in running mate to his embrace of pretty much everything that the grassroots leftist movement that had grown in the 90's was against. Had he just mentioned that trade agreements needed to take labor rights and environmental standards into consideration, it probably could have gone a long way toward him squeezing out a victory. Choosing anyone but Lieberman as his running mate would have gone even further. Making me even less enthusiastic was the fact that the potential first lady was responsible for making my mother hysterical about the music I listened to when I was a teenager. I wrote a letter to Jello Biafra about that when I was 13, but that's a whole other story.
Weeks before we arrived at our mobile office in the LA Convention Center to find our work area without any internet access (remember, we were the DNC's WEB team!), I was between the rock of selling out what I believed in and the hard place of realizing that this shitty candidate wasn't as shitty as the really shitty candidate. Two weeks earlier, I was in Philly at the republican convention where we had set up a war room and had daily press conferences blasting the republicans on the particular theme of the day of their convention, and that was a blast. I always enjoyed my job when it was bashing Bush and the republicans (and doing it in the city that invented the cheese steak was like a high cholesterol heaven to me), but feigning excitement for our candidate was a struggle that I did not always win.
So what's a disgruntled guy to do at the convention with full credentials, a video camera, and a great deal of free time on my hands? Document, of course! And you can watch that at the end of this post.
Four years later, there was nothing all that exciting going on with the convention to make me even want to watch it on TV, but this year is a different story. We've got a historic candidate who has gotten people more excited than any candidate in my memory. And we've got major behind the scenes drama! Will John and Elizabeth Edwards be there together or at all? Will there be a controversial event, like in 2000 when Loretta Sanchez almost lost her DNC vice-chair status because she was going to have a fundraiser at the playboy mansion? What kind of outrage will Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton come up with in order to hustle up some money or power? And if that's not enough, Detroit's totally gangsta mayor will be attending, sans the court ordered ankle bracelet, a news item that an emergency damage control team team has probably been assembled to work hard to keep buried. A real and honest documentary of the nitty gritty inner workings of one of these events would make people's heads spin. What I wouldn't give to have a camera on the Clintons at all times during this one! And with all the talk of trying to make this a "green convention," something is bound to go wrong and hilarity will ensue. And of course, outside the convention will be the usual gang of protesters, up to their usual exercise in extremely fun futility, once again wanting to re-enact Chicago '68 without really thinking remembering how that protest splashed on the news terrified the electorate into electing Nixon.
And I wish I could be there to experience every last bit of it!
Now, as promised, here's the piece I put together from my convention footage:
About 10 years ago I started writing a semi-autobiographical novel about some of the crazy things that went down in my post-college slacker years in the early 90's. Had I written more than just 60 or so pages, I think it could have been one of the great pieces of Gen X literature. There was a wild assortment of characters who played in bands, dealt drugs, lied pathologically, DJed, squatted, wrote zines, collected records, surfed an early net on incredibly slow dial-up, worked crappy service jobs and awkwardly fell into unrequited love. I hadn't given any thought to these stories in years as my life has moved significantly on, until recently.
A few weeks ago I read a music review for a band called The Hold Steady. I was intrigued enough to start listening. The review called their latest album "the soundtrack to the great American road trip," great rock riffs with sweet guitar riffage and sweeping keyboards behind some of the most amazing lyrics I've heard in ages. To say that these lyrics tell a story is an understatement. These lyrics plunge the listener into a world of the underbelly of the rock and roll Gen X life. There's a recurring cast of characters spanning all 4 albums, and they go disjointedly through their lives as part of one scene or another, hooking up with each other, going on road trips and trying to find some kind of meaning out of all of it as they get older, all of which is fueled by enough drugs to make Hunter S. Thompson jealous. I went from just casually listening to some great rocking music to all of a sudden realizing that this was the soundtrack to the story of my early 20's. The Springsteen comparisons abound and I can't argue them. Bruce's early stuff was all about young people in New Jersey with no prospects and nothing to do but drive fast cars, and the Hold Steady just jump ahead 20 years with even more detailed stories. And they pay tribute to rock and roll storytellers like Springteen and Billy Joel with lyrical snippets about "tramps like us" and "Catholic girls" who start much too late, as well as name dropping everyone from Led Zeppelin to Youth of Today to the Bones Brigade.
Now, I know whenever I post about music or movies I rarely can get so much as a comment, but I would really like it if any readers would take a few minutes, listen to the following two songs, and share their thoughts.
Today we lost the elder statesman of comedy, George Carlin. I remember first seeing him host Saturday Night Live for the debut of the Billy Crystal/Martin Short cast. My friend Alan had a bunch of old records and we would listen to some of George's old albums where he'd go through a list of sports and say why each one really wasn't a sport. Carlin was not only a really funny guy, but an incredibly intelligent critic of society.
While it's far too early in the morning for me to get out a halfway decent blog eulogy for George, I think it more fitting to post a bunch of his great clips.
Here's possibly his most famous one, Seven Words:
Stuff:
Drugs:
Education, Critical Thinking and Wage Slavery:
White People:
Religion is Bullshit:
Touched by an Atheist (Mad TV):
And Lastly, Carlin on Olbermann on the ridiculousness of our society today:
I don't have time to offer a full post today. We just got back from a long weekend with the in-laws and missing just one day of work has the potential for a backlog o' crap for me to deal with today. Plus I'm still working on getting into a band, conceptualizing a couple of different music videos and finding an extra hour so I can see the last frakkin' episode of Battlestar Galactica. So instead of any original content, here are two posts from other blogs that I really enjoy. First is the story of Creepy Johnny from Politi-Gal. Next is a video for those of you who are unsure how to vote in November (via Couchmouse's Corner). Just watch it.
I've been really into Joy Division lately. I'd been a casual fan for years, mostly through a compilation CD I had and the brief segments of the film 24 Hour Party People that told the abbreviated version of their story. Now there are 2 movies about this band, one documentary and one biopic. The documentary is simply called Joy Division and it features interviews with the surviving members of the band (for those living under a rock for the last 20 years, they are now New Order) and others from the Manchester post-punk scene. It also features lots of great performance footage. The biopic is called Control, and it was directed by one of Joy Division's photographers and written from the memoirs of Ian Curtis' widow (who did not participate in the documentary). Both films did an excellent job of highlighting the timeless music of this incredibly influential though tragically short lived band. The documentary helped flesh out some of what you see in the biopic and the biopic helps put the viewer back into the time and place where it all happened. If you know anything about this band, you know it didn't end well. Whether you're familiar or not, I highly recommend these films to anyone who likes music.
My first introduction to Joy Division was Nine Inch Nails cover of Dead Souls on the Crow soundtrack which you can see here. And below is Radiohead covering Ceremony (which was later re-recorded by New Order).
Today are the dental board exams, and I will be spending 4 hours in a chair with somebody like this...
So far this will be my forth and last time going to this student. It all sounded like a great idea at first, get free dental work and help a student become a licensed dentist. But so far it's been incredibly painful and all I'll have to show for it is that a quarter of my teeth will be cleaned. This is so not worth it.
I don't usually do memes, but I saw this one on another blog and I thought it would be right up my alley and a nice break from the politics. It's pretty simple. Here are the rules:
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag other people to see what they’re listening to.
I have kicked it up a notch by including a YouTube link if there's one available. Enjoy the music!
Bud Buckley - Let Me Go- Please use the link at the bottom of that page to vote for that song and help make my dad huge in England.
As you can see, I'm on a big prog rock kick. I probably could have just filled the whole list with Opeth songs as they are my latest musical obsession, but I wanted to branch out a little bit. My policy for memes is voluntary tagging, so if any of my few readers decides to take this one on, please mention it in my comments. Thanks, and rock on.
Given that my post on bipartisanship got 23 comments and my music posts typically get zero, I'm obviously not giving the people what they want. But I'm kind of burnt on politics and pining away for the days of playing music live. Yesterday I put myself out on craigslist looking for people to play with (music you pervs, not casual encounters!). I got a couple of promising responses and hope to be dusting off the Fender electric within a few weeks.
So here's another video of my musical past. This is one of the final performances of the Washington, DC incarnation of Captain Paradox. The Captain is currently rocking Pittsburgh, PA, but for a couple of years in the early 21st century, we rocked the Beltway. This gig was at the holiday celebration of the local progressive activist crowd which explains why there is the silliest looking hippie mosh pit you will ever see in front of us. One person on YouTube asked if this performance was at a loonie bin. You've just got to see for yourselves.
For those familiar with my film of the same name of this blog (and for those of you who aren't familiar... upper left hand column of the blog, people. It's not going to watch itself!), you might recognize both the song and the singer.
Folks, there's been a story that has been keeping millions of us on the edges of our seats for over a week now. No, I'm not talking about that stupid primary tomorrow. I'm not talking about the child raping polygamist cult in Texas or the wackjobs who are defending their "right" to keep raping little girls for Jeebus. I'm not talking about gas prices going through the roof. I said important and I meant it. Artie Lange is still on the Howard Stern Show! We have at least another 2 and a half years of his personal trainwreck comedy to listen to 4 days a week, unless of course he goes and physically attacks somebody on the show again. Tomorrow this blog will be back to the same boring old politics, but for now, revel in this not even remotely safe for work Beer League trailer:
The man is working hard on keeping me down. Today I got an email from YouTube telling me that one of my videos was yanked due to copyright infringement. I figured it was probably one of my videos where I "borrowed" some music and the idea of that was annoying but not outrageous. When I realized that it was The Writers Room, my levels of rage went off the charts. The Writers Room was my response to the writers strike. It took place in a writers room for a real sitcom, The Office, and while character and company names from the show were mentioned (and half an NBC peacock is visible), the idea that there was anything remotely resembling infringement is laughable. This means that if you even talk about a TV show online somewhere and mention characters, some corporation can go after you for it, and this is chilling. Part of me really wants to fight this, but I barely have enough time to make a short film every now and then let alone getting myself involved in a court battle against an army of slick corporate bloodsuckers even though I know that I'm right on this.
But I don't get how a show that actively encourages fan created videos would take issue with a fan created video that pokes fun at fan created content more than anything else. The premise was that the producers of the office hired a bunch of fan fiction writers to write episodes while the real writers were on strike. And when I searched for other Office fan videos on YouTube, there was plenty of it still up. To me, this means that Sony didn't like the idea of their production executives being portrayed as clueless wonks and they flexed their corporate muscle to get it off of YouTube. You can still see it here for the time being, and if that gets yanked too, I will make damn sure it winds up in too many places for these bastards to do anything about it.
Last night we finally got around to seeing Once. Yeah, I'm something like a year behind the curve on this one, but it's harder to stay on the cutting edge of pop culture when you've got a little monkey to chase around. I'm always a bit leery about musicals, and I'm not sure why since I usually really tend to enjoy them. This one blew me away. I always expect the music in a musical to be a little bit on the cheesy showtune-ish side, but that couldn't be further from the case with this film. It was pure indie rock goodness. That they pulled off a low budget musical shot guerrilla style on the streets of Dublin is impressive to say the least, and the fact that one of the songs won an Oscar is amazing. Check out this scene where they're recording When You're Mind's Made Up.
Another example of me being incredibly slow on the uptake is my recent discovery of Marvin Gaye's 1978 album Here, My Dear. My cousin told me about this one a few years ago and although I've always known her to have impeccable musical tastes, I never got around to getting this one until last week when my neighbor reminded me of it. When Marvin Gaye got divorced from Berry Gordy's daughter, the settlement was that she would get half the profits from his next album. At first he considered just doing a lousy album, but instead he put out this heartbreaking and bitter double album of incredible soul, much of which is him singing directly to his ex. It tanked anyway. There wasn't even a hit single on it. But years later, it's now considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Here's a track called Anger:
Gnarls Barkley have a new album out and it's really good, but don't watch their latest video if you even think you might be prone to seizures. I'm not kidding. It's banned from MTV because it could trigger a seizure and I would feel really badly if somebody, even a republican, got one from looking at it on my blog.
And lastly, I may not have been a fan of his politics, but I am definitely a fan of his acting and I'm sorry to see him go. This one's for you, Charlton Heston:
I've really been wanting to write another post, but I'm having a real hard time channeling anything coherent that any of you might want to read. So instead I've got some links to other stuff that you might enjoy.
First up is a set of found photos from Flickr of a few kids in the 80's doing things that kids in the 80's did best. For that Wizard of Oz meets Dark Side of the Moon vibe, you might want to play the audio from this youtube clip while you look.
There's plenty of stuff going on in the world to get upset about today. Instead of worrying about all that, might I suggest spending an hour and a half of so to blow off whatever it is you have to do and immerse yourself into a beautiful world of music and vision with Sigur Ros. If you're not familiar, they are an Icelandic post-rock band who make music that is so mesmerizing that people literally faint at their live shows. I actually saw this happen to a friend of mine at the 9:30 Club in DC. We missed the whole second half of the show because of it. So in 2006, they went back to Iceland and played in some of the most remote, and visually stunning corners of their country before playing a huge show in Reykjavik. So clear out your schedule and watch it on YouTube now.
And if you still want more great full length music film on YouTube, there's also Radiohead in Scotch Mist.
Why should I write about hypocrisy when there's Glen Greenwald? Here he discusses the double standards of religious extremists and discussing Israel much better than I could ever even attempt to do.
And lastly, just watch this. It's totally work safe, I promise, and it's really really cool:
I had mentioned before that I was going to make a short film about the writers strike. Here it is. Info on how you can support the strikers is below:
As usual, we've got a situation of corporations finding new ways to make new money but without passing along a share of these new revenues to the people who make the products that they are selling. These writers deserve a piece of the new media pie, and whether you support that or not, unless you want to see your TV and movies written by dorky fans or even more of these bullshit reality shows, you need to support the striking writers. Visit their blog and watch their YouTube channel to learn more and see what you can do to help.
I don't get to see my dad very often, but he was able to come visit us this weekend. We had a great time and he got to spend some quality time with Stella. She's only met her grandfather twice before but she enjoyed his company like it was a playdate with one of her little friends. As we had her rattling off the various animal sounds she knows, he taught her a few new ones including a walrus (and just what does a walrus say? Goo Goo Ga Joob, of course). While she was napping, we busted out the instruments and attempted to play this Radiohead tune. While I'm about 5 years out of practice on bass and never really been much of a singer, my dad is spending his retirement as a professional singer/songwriter and music teacher in Florida, so you could say it's a tad uneven, but regardless it was really fun.
Check out my dad's blog. He's got a new album coming out soon and even the rough mixes sound great.
The Writers Guild of America is on strike. As the landscape of media changes, huge revenues are being made by producers, studios and networks through downloads, DVDs and other new forms of media that were unforeseen the last time that the writers renegotiated. It seems that everyone is getting a piece of that pie except for the writers, and they are trying to get what should be coming to them.
So what would TV be like without writers? You know all of those horrible reality shows? That's TV without writers. Even the most contrived and predictable episode of Desperate Housewives takes more talent to create than any given reality show. Shows where the entirety of the creative process involves putting together a mixture of attractive young people with a volatile combination of personality flaws, gallons of booze, sexual tension and possibly a washed up celebrity, turning on the cameras and seeing what happens (with a bit of manipulation and creative editing, of course) certainly can be just as much of a guilty pleasure as some campy dramas or sitcoms about fat guys and their incredibly hot wives. While we take the good with the bad with the so bad it's good, the casualties of a writers strike (besides the actual striking writers who are putting their lives on the line and the crews of these shows who are in turn being put out of work) are those of us who enjoy well written shows. Instead of new episodes of The Office, there will be heaping helpings of lowest common denominator trainwrecks. Just as long as washed up and broke people who once had a career in entertainment, rich kids with nothing better to do than act like idiots on TV, and other spotlight-hungry rubes looking for a shortcut to fame don't all decide to go on strike too, there will be plenty of crap to watch on TV.
So as an independent filmmaker, what am I doing about this? I'm writing a script, of course! No, I'm not trying to be a scab writer. But I am inspired by this strike to make a short film that might make people appreciate good screenwriting by showing them another possible worst case scenario than just replacing all scripted shows with reality drivel. That's all I'm going to say about it now.
In the meantime, if you're on the fence about whether to support the striking writers, here's what TV looks like without them:
Another Reason for Evangelicals to Hate Harry Potter
Apparently Dumbledore is gay.
But when the questions began — they had been submitted by audience members before the event — she came into her own. Finally able to talk freely about the end of a series that had been so long-anticipated, she left nothing out. The big revelation of the night came when she was asked if Dumbledore had ever found love. With a sigh, she seemed on the verge of saying no, but then revealed, "my truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." After a collective gasp, the audience roared with applause. Rowling was clearly astonished by the positive reaction and exclaimed, "if I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!" She went on to say that she thought Dumbledore had fallen in love with Grindelwald, a Dark Wizard he defeated in battle in 1945, which possibly made it forgivable that he had not seen Grindelwald's true nature, because "falling in love can blind us to an extent." [full story]
