Flaming Lips/Austin City Limits

If we're in for four years of political hell, I get some small consolation from the hope that repressive times make for good rebel art. The Flaming Lips have been making their nutso magic in Oklahoma, about as Red as Red States get, for >20 years now. And though I'm a late convert, watching them dancing around in bunny suits, tossing big balloons into the audience, and hymning Yoshimi who's brave enough to take up the resistance against the Pink Robots was enough to convince me that maybe the hippies had it right after all--we're gonna beat those sad-ass, scared-ass, Old Testament-poisoned losers because they are no fun at all.

But even better, at the halfway point Wayne Coyne brought out the lovely and talented Chan Marshall to sing with them--then called out "War Pigs." You'd think Sabbath would be about as far as far from the psychedelic wonderland the Lips inhabit as those Robots. But then Wayne said, "Wait a minute--if we're doing 'War Pigs,' where's the blood?" and then splashed fake blood all over his forehead. And the band and Ms. Cat Power tore into a version that sounded a galaxy away from Ozzy's wall of doom (which originated, you oldsters may recall, during a time just as despairing as the one we're in now)--if Sab can be gleeful, these guys (and gal) were. Damn, it was exhilarating to hear Chan yowling like Exene in her prime! (The woman may be missing her calling as a rocker, bigtime.) Along with all those guys in animal suits!

And The Shins were just beautiful, too.

More on Iraqi election

This story seems to strike the right balance: hopeful, but not mindlessly cheerleading. (Unlike, say...oh, never mind.)

And Juan Cole has more, too. (I ought to bookmark him!!)

Whoopsidaisy! 2

Just pocket change to our brave liberators and Great Leader!

We'll be outta there in no time!

President
Bush ... promised the United States will continue trying to prepare Iraquis to
secure their own country.

Boy, talk about success!!

Election Day in Iraq

A Mixed Story

I'm just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news
coverage of the so-called elections in Iraq on Sunday.

One of the few people writing about Iraq who knows what the hell he's talking about--complete article (and ongoing coverage) here.

RIP Jim Capaldi

I always thought Capaldi was an underrated drummer. It took me years to figure out that Traffic began with a template (organ-drums-horn) borrowed from American jazz (think: Jimmy Smith, among many others). Because it was the Sixties, they mixed their origins with some psychedelic effects (especially on their first album, titled Mr. Fantasy in the States, after their first FM hit) and a lot of then-novel world music influences (especially Spanish and Middle Eastern) and created an original (and unique) sound. Capaldi's drumming was right at the center of that sound. He played as economically as a classic soul drummer (Al Jackson, say), but with great swing. And much as people love Traffic's albums from The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys onward, I always thought their music lost that swing when classy pros like Jim Gordon and Roger Hawkins took over the drum chair and Capaldi moved to tambourine (and, as Stephen Davis once wrote, "standing around looking blitzed").

That Liberal Media

This article on the Christers' efforts to teach their religion as "science" perfectly illustrates mass media's willingness to bend over backward to "avoid liberal bias." First, you present both sides of an issue (one based on facts, one based on a right-wing, "faith-based" worldview) as two views of a big controversy. Then you spend a page and a half giving each side their say. Finally (if then), you present the facts that support (duh) the fact-based worldview. So it is with the so-called theory of "intelligent design." The underlying assumption is that a lot of Americans are prepared to believe in superstition over science, so this somehow legitimates teaching that belief as science--or, worse, that teaching the facts as we're able to test them (over the past four hundred years of scientific inquiry) is somehow "controversial."

Well, I'll be damned...

Even the king of Red State retailers can't fight the march of tolerance. Just like I said...

Great Leader reaches out to Negroes

Josh Marshall has quite the entertaining link. I mean, how can you argue with logic like Great Leader's?

The Future of Social Security!

Thank God most oldsters have as much $$$$ to lose as our Senate Majority Leader!! Oh, wait...

Feeling Safer? 5

Look what all our billions (and Great Leader's war) are buying us!

Some Dems Find Their Cojones!

Wish they'd managed this when there were 49 of them...

Politically hopeful

In deep winter, at least we have each other to help keep us warm. Also see the original article, here.

Bye bye Johnny

One of the nice things about being a boomer is knowing the experience of The Tonight Show in its prime--the most comfortable friend a lonely night owl could ask for to help make it through until dawn. And now the night owl's best friend is gone.

Mark Goes To The Movies

Million Dollar Baby (dir. Clint Eastwood) Hard to write about this one without spoilers--but say it starts out like a standard boxing/sports story and takes a couple of hard left turns from there, ending up a boxing/sports story like The Brothers Karamazov is a mystery story: posing and nowhere near resolving big questions about self-reliance and interdependence, success and failure, life and death, love and loss. Clint's been playing to the limitations of his acting ability for many years now, but he pretty much owns the soft-hearted curmudgeon role. And Hilary Swank is just plain amazing. (Not to mention easy on the eyes even when she's getting the crap knocked out of her in the ring.) Mark's rating: ****

Cali's "liberal Rethug" governor

Uh, wishful thinking Dems? Quit deluding yourself that Gropenfuehrer's support for reproductive rights makes him any less a shill for those (cry me a river!) poor, "overtaxed" multim(b)illionaires. I say if they really think California's too "business-unfriendly" for them, let 'em move to Utah and Arizona and leave the beaches for the rest of us.

Update: Kevin Drum has some relevant thoughts here. Way to pimp those SUV owners, Arnie!

Reggae Classic: The Congoes

Congos, Heart of the Congos
(Blood and Fire) It took awhile to get it back in print, but this now sounds to me like not only Lee Perry's most perfectly beautiful dub production but also like one of the five or ten best reggae albums, period. I'd been listening to reggae for 30 years and I'd never heard singing that sounds this ghostly, possessed, lyrical. And the songs are all killers. And Lee Perry is an insane genius.

Good Bad Movie!

Alphabet City (dir. Amos Poe) Quite the groovy pulp artifact from 1984, featuring a garden-variety young-gangster storyline plus direction that rips Mean Streets and Eighties videos (I forgot how much smoke they used in video shoots back then!) with Vince Spano a soulful zero-level dope dealer and bagman who runs afoul of the Big Guys and Jami Gertz looking like Madonna vintage '84 only nine times cuter. Mark's review (stupid points): ????

Hee hee hee...

Watch 'em try to make reproductive choice illegal. Watch 'em lose every non-Christer woman who thought the Rethugs hosted a big tent.

How about if Focus on the Family runs an ad for "The Joy of Gay Sex"?

Secular humanists at work undermining our Judeo-Christian heritage.

The hell with it, I'm going for a drive

I ask you: did dinosaurs drive SUVs?

We love Great Leader! 2

Happy In-hog-uration day!

Happy Inauguration Day!

Happy happy happy America!

Eat This, Fox

You, too, Rush.

We love Great Leader!

Uh, a few of us do, anyway.

Do the math...

So let's see--if respondents were evenly divided...???

Reaching across the partisan divide....

...with a PITCHFORK!!!!!!!!!!

Voice of the People, King County, WA

Sure, it's letters to a Seattle newspaper. But it's the Seattle newspaper that makes it a point to spend an equal amount of time covering stories in the King County suburbs surrounding our Blue haven. So if these letters are representative, it's nice to see that some folks are at least questioning the Rethugs' aggrieved accusations of cheating (which, coincidentally enough, all came up after the hand recount they lost) and ready to move on.

Please Kill Me!

An excellent use of the Social Security Trust Fund, wouldn't you agree?

Mr. Accountable

This from the guy whose biggest mistake in the last four years was expressing himself too undiplomatically. As if accountability (except the reverse kind) ever counted for anything in his administration.

But why should I blather when Pandagon pretty much says it all.

Liar In Chief

What will we tell the children??? (How about, "We gave your retirement funds to our big-money donors"?)

Rock and Roll Heaven

This guy was an important part of a mostly-forgotten but really influential (and talented) band.

What--no rose petals in the streets?

Surprise, surprise. Also note that it's those darned Iraquis' fault for not stepping up--not Bush Jong-Il's.

Soccer moms' bodies

This column isn't really noteworthy--except for the fact that the author is a classic puff-piece features columnist who doesn't much get into controversial subjects. And, yeah, she's writing in deep-Blue Seattle--but I wonder how many women out there who otherwise support the Rethugs on "values" (or taxes, whatever) are thinking like this in the wake of Bush Jong-Il's assault on reproductive freedom. And what they'll do when he makes Scalia Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, appoints enough ideological twins to overturn Roe, and the shit really hits the fan. Can you spell "high risk strategy to pimp the Christers"?

And while the Rethugs are dancing around CBS...

...let's remember: just because one piece of evidence was forged doesn't mean Bush Jong-Il wasn't a scumsucking, yellowbellied deserter.

How Bush's SS plan worked in the UK

Just guess. (Pointed by Atrios.)

Update: Oh, and look here, too!

Mark Reads!

Across the Great Divide, Barney Hoskyns (Hyperion) It's amazing to think that it's been close to 40 years since Music from Big Pink brought The Band to most listeners' attention. In the same year that brought us Wheels of Fire, Electric Ladyland, and White Light, White Heat, this album by a bunch of mysterious Woodstock musicians felt like a present delivered from way, way back in time. I read about it in Sing Out (being a dutiful aspiring folksinger at age 11), which raved about the album, and musicians from Eric Clapton to Lowell George to Fairport Convention were blown away by the rich, soulful, rootsy sound of the album. Although it was clear The Band could really sing and play, they sounded antivirtuousic, rarely soloing, rarely stretching a song out past the length of a standard 45 rpm single.

Their second album, The Band, was the one that really sold it for me. The production was drier and clearer, the songs both hookier and more rockin'. I was soaking up a lot of off-center guitar influences at the time, and Robbie Robertson's playing showed me how to say a lot with a little and to use the guitar (like the other instruments in the band) to fill spaces in the musical tapestry rather than step out front solo. Their vocal approach really rubbed off on me, too, especially the idea of assigning different lines or verses of a song to different voices, setting up musical conversations, dropping different parts and harmonies in and out of the mix. Only later (when I finally found a record store in Phoenix brave enough to sell bootleg recordings) did I discover what The Band sounded like backing their most famous employer, Bob Dylan, and why people like Greil Marcus were awestruck--like a carnival spinning out of control into a riot, with Robbie's guitar sounding (as one reviewer put it) like a crowbar dragging nails out of railroad ties. And, as Dylan instructed them on their recording of "Like a Rolling Stone," they "play[ed] fucking loud."

What I didn't know was that those first two records were more a culmination than a debut. They'd been touring for years already, raising hell and playing raw honky-tonk blues and country music with people like Ronnie Hawkins in dive bars throughout the South and Toronto (talk about polar opposites!). So the sound of their first two records was as much a counterreaction to that lifestyle and the music they'd been playing the previous five years as it was to the revolutionary attitudes and superamplification that defined "hip" music at the end of the Sixties.

All of this is in Hoskyns' book (unfortunately, now out of print though you can find it used), along with the usual sad denouement into fame, decadence, and dissolution (climaxing with The Last Waltz). It's doubly sad reading it now that the band's two most soulful singers, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, have gone to Rock and Roll Heaven. But for my money, these guys are every bit the godfathers of art-roots bands like Wilco and Los Lobos that Gram Parsons was.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch

Watching the neofascits squabble--more fun than Paris Hilton!

With (R) friends like these...

I mean, when Newt, Bill Kristol, and Robert Novak start talking like this, it's clear Bush Jong-Il's second term is off to an interesting start. (Linked by Matthew Gross.)

Give me a f&%@*#g break!

Gotta protect the Great Leader's reputation as a warrior-king at all costs. Otherwise, the rabble might start getting peeved about him sending their children off to die for his hard-on war.

And thank God they're applying the same scrupulous standards to stories about our Deserter-...I mean, Commander-In-Chief that they're applying to the stories the Rethugs are feeding them about our Social Security "crisis."

Why The Bush Administration Sucks

Okay, here's the bottom line: it's not just that Bush is (by most definitions of the term) a hardcore conservative, and I'm the opposite. It's that, unlike Ronald Reagan, he's a liar about it. For example, he can't just come out and say "Social Security is an obsolete relic of the New Deal, which we must excise so our economy can grow." Or "Of course 80% of my tax cuts went to the richest 1% of Americans. I believe in supply-side economics, no matter what my dad said about them."

And everyone in his Administration is just the same.

When you think it couldn't get worse

Guess it must be because the current occupant of the White House is too liberal.

Can you believe this dude???

At age 79?? I want to be him when I grow up!

Whoopsidaisy!

Dude, we are so bummed out. But aren't you glad you're free now? Uh, dude?

Mad Dog Enquirer

Even Hollywood's most golden couples get the blues.

I thought he supported Saddam!

John Kerry--enemy of Americans in uniform. Oh, wait...

On Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib

This piece pretty well sums up my feelings--except for the one that our future Attorney General should be tried as a war criminal.

Right On!!!

The Stranger has a way of being contrarian for its own sake on political matters. But this article on the Rethugs' shameful attempt to overturn an election conducted by the rules (what a concept!) is right on the money.

Mark Goes To The Movies

6ixty9 (dir. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang) This one was kinda fun--a noir comedy, set in Thailand during Asia's financial meltdown in the late Nineties, about a young woman who loses her job right before a none-too-quick bagman mistakenly leaves a box full of illegal money (from her ex-boss) outside her apartment door. The direction is Hitchcock by way of De Palma, and the jokes pile up right along with the bodies. Colorful characters include heroic policemen, antiheroic criminals, drug-addled kids, nosy/voyeuristic neighbors, a sentimental masseur/thug, and a really beautiful bird. And the survivors (i.e., those who don't get blown away) not only live happily ever after, they Do The Right Thing in the end! Mark's review: ***

Come again?

Why Republicans need to get on board and support a vote to gut...I mean, privatize Social Security:

'The president is going to go ahead. He cannot afford to fail. It would have repercussions for the rest of his program, including foreign policy. We can't hand the president a defeat on his major domestic initiative at a time of war.'"

- Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), quoted in the Wall Street Journal

BTW, if you're interested in the real story on SS, read this. And to keep track of who's in Bush Jong-Il's corner and who's not, read this.

The Fascists Are Here

This blogger sometimes scares the crap out of me. But he's worth reading, especially by conservatives who dismiss the implicit or explicit threats of violence against non-conservatives by the likes of Ann Coulter and Michael Savage as just "hot talk." (Yeah, I know, fat chance.)

Blue Bitch-Slaps Red In Orange!

No bout adoubt it--Cali rules.

Sweet!

As a cultural phenomenon, I'll sure take this over Passion-mania.

Well what do you know...

Women are actually capable of making informed, sane decisions about their sex lives on their own? Who'd have thought it? Somebody call James Dobson, stat!!!

Listening

Madvillain, Madvillainy (Stone's Throw) Beloved wacko MC MF Doom meets sampler mastermind Madlib in an amazingly stoned, laconic, bent recorded party. My favorite hip-hop album of '04.

Washington State Follies

As usual, Rethugs trying to restage an election via talk radio that they lost at the polls. Say--weren't they the ones advising us liberals to quit complaining about voter fraud in FL in 2000 and get over it???

The Anti-Samba

Like most non-aficionados, I first read about what Brazilian ghetto residents call "funk" music in an article in Spin a couple of years back. It was like reading about how reggae came up from Jamaican shantytowns to the States 30 years ago (cf: The Harder They Come): rude-ass dance music played at quasi-legal gatherings where the main idea was for rival gangs to pound the crap out of each other. Anyway, I haven't had much success finding this year's anthology, Favela Booty Beats, at Amazon. But thanks to this article in the Village Voice, I did find this site, which offers up a lotta tunes for free. Boogie on.

Royal Trux-->RTX

Royal Trux was always one of the more interesting Nineties bands. They started out as an offshoot of NYC scum-rockers Pussy Galore and became junkie icons while they scuffled in San Francisco. The result of that sojourn, Twin Infinitives, is a great candidate for the Weirdest Albums Ever Hall of Fame, a double album filled with incomprehensible moaning, bleeping synths, wah wah guitar, paranoid sci-fi lyrics, and production that made Exile on Main Street sound like Dark Side of the Moon. Then they cleaned up and released albums that ranged from the damaged-but-heartfelt (Cats and Dogs) to pastiches of Grand Funk-styled stupid-rock (Thank You, their most visible album when released on a major label) to actual ass-kicking southern-style dirt-rock (Accelerator), all centered around Jennifer Herrema's Keith Richards snarl and Neil Hagerty's twisted guitar heroism. Then they imploded when Jennifer's dad was diagnosed with cancer, she started relapsing behind her dad's painkillers, and she and Neil split up after 13 years as a couple and seven months as a married couple.

Neil went on to make a bunch of albums for the Trux's final label, Drag City, after moving to New Mexico. Jennifer dropped off the map until the past year, when she moved to California, took up surfing, and formed a new band named RTX, with a bunch of 12-years-younger kids. (She explained that she'd left Neil the O-Y-A-L-U part of the original name.) From the sound of it, she's also taken up some serious boozing--but that's rock and roll, right?

Los Aguilares: The Final Chapter

The conclusion to Celeste Fremon's beautiful, heartbreaking series in the L. A. Weekly.

Mark and Barb Go to the Movies

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (dir. Wes Anderson) Wes Anderson is a moviemaker (like the Coen brothers) that polarizes moviegoers. Either you find his cinematic universes overstylized, precious, and annoying, or you happily surrender to live in them for 90 mimutes-plus. So fans, don't believe the (anti-)hype about his newest, the story of a Jacques Cousteau-like oceanographer gone deeply to seed. It's no Royal Tennenbaums or Bottle Rocket--missing the melancholy heart that deepened those comedies. But for two-plus hours of sui generis giggles, it beats the hell out of Christmas with the Kranks. Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, and Owen Wilson are never funnier than in Wes' confections, and this time the repertory company also includes Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Seu Jorge, who sings a half dozen David Bowie songs in Portuguese to bossa nova guitar. Mark's review: ***½

The Aviator (dir. Martin Scorsese) This good, old-fashioned Great Person Biography is being hyped as Scorsese's "comeback," and I'll admit it's surer-footed than Casino or Gangs of New York and richer than Bringing Out the Dead. As with all those movies, it has some wonderful sequences, including the most horrifying plane crash I've ever seen on film. But what the hell Leo DiCaprio is doing in the same movie with John C. Reilly, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, and Alec Baldwin is beyond me--he sucks the oxygen out of this movie as surely as he and Cameron Diaz did in Gangs. And adorable though she may be, Gwen Stefani shouldn't quit her day job just yet. Mark's review: ***