Why are all the flags still at half-mast? Is this for Gerald Ford? Didn’t he die in December? Not to be a killjoy, but if that’s the case, um, why are they still half-mast? Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have an issue keeping them at half for like a week or so. Sure, president, big deal, drop the flag. But this is like weeks? Wasn’t the whole point of the founding of the nation and the creation of a term-limited presidency to remove the semi-deification of national leaders? How long to we have to mourn a dead president? And really, short of family and friends, is anyone actually mourning any more? Do we really need a national decree that a symbol must be erected for god knows how long to tell people that they should be mourning? This is morose and stupid.



Fuck the iPhone. I’m sick of it already, and no one even has one yet. It’s a phone with a big fat hard drive. Move along. It’s not going to revolutionize jack shit except a bunch of jobs for tech and marketing execs who now have a shinier benchmark for their plastic candy. And for everyone who used the word “revolutionize” or some derivative when it came out: fuck you double. Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone was revolutionary. Cellphones made on a mass-market level was revolutionary. A cell phone with a bigger screen, more bells and whistles, and more storage to hold your pictures of Paris Hilton’s indented, bony chest do not a revolution make.



True story. Sunday morning, I’m in the car, jamming to Shed 7’s “Chasing Rainbows,” sitting at the light to get on the highway, and a van pulls up to me. The driver asks, “Is Hillsborough back that way?” He just got off the highway and suspected he missed his exit.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just make a left back onto the on-ramp. Hillsborough’s your next exit.”

“Thanks,” he said laughing. “That’s what I get for daydreaming.”

I was on my way to scout locations for a photo shoot for The March of the Kitefliers.

Post-script: when I got off the highway into Downtown, Petula Clark’s “Dans le Temps” (her French version of “Downtown”) started playing.
I don’t know what it is about this show, but it’s always brought a surprising kind of serendipity whenever it nears the surface of things.



So, Obama announced he is authorizing an announcement investigation consulting team to investigate whether he should announce his consideration to announce his candidacy for president.

We can’t wait two months after the last election until some alleged fever whips up for the next election? Want to know why the political process is so fucked up? (This is for you Obama, so listen up.) Because politicians apparently spend all their time either running for office or gearing up for the next campaign. If the media didn’t publish this crap until it started to matter (oh, say 6 months before the election) then the politicians wouldn’t have a venue to pitch themselves. That’s why it costs a billion dollars (you laugh, but you just wait until the next campaign and see how much it costs) to run for anything. They’re not spending it all in the last month; it’s constant advertising for two years.

And apparently the big issue is whether Obama is experienced (he isn’t.) Because that was the ginormous issue du jour when George W. Bush ran in 2000, let me tell you.

I’m not getting into this because it’s totally irrelevant. You may as well start polling for 2050, because it just doesn’t matter right now.

But I’ll say this. About two years ago, I was having a political conversation with the kind of people I never get into political conversations with, and I opened my fat mouth and said that this country would elect a black man before it elects a white woman. That is not my personal choice – I’d be happy to see either in office. That’s just my analysis/speculation on how this great nation will vote. So there it is again. My gaping maw has widened again, and I’m sticking to that.

Hey, look at that. I just got apathy whiplash – that moment when you’re at work and you spontaneously don’t give a fuck about anything you’re doing there.

So, it’s been awhile since I posted a crapload of links.

Buy your tickets now!

It really is as great as everyone says it is. We sold out opening weekend for a reason. Do yourself a favor and get your tickets now while you still have a say on what night you can get a ticket. Or don’t take my word for it: check out the bazillion comments and reviews on the Pillowman Media page.

Turning Japanese
Y’know, for a culture with a reputation for being the biggest workaholics of the world, these people sure have a lot of frickin’ free time. Watch them apply their ninja tactics to descending a flight of stairs (among other things) and holding a pen.

Film
I must see this.

For all y’all independent artistic industry peeps out there – especially the Jobsite kids – you have to see how Terry Gilliam is raising money for his next film. This is great.

Media Tech
Since iTunes (one of my all-time favorite software apps) released 7.x, it’s been both very impressive and a major pain in my machine’s ass. It only agrees with my iPod about 10% of the time, and it’s a fucking memory pig, randomly jumping from 40Mb to 150Mb, not including the 3 startup side programs that are set to remain active from the moment you boot.

So, some indy’s got a program coming out called Songbird. It’s in dev-mode (pre-alpha?) but you can download it anyway, and it’s made me very curious. Despite that its logo is a fat farting bird, it’s got some groovy functionality that’s worth checking out. At the very least, check out this features video and this one too. And since it’s Firefox based, there will be extensions (like an iPod sync.) Someone want to give it a shot?

The Miscellaneous
Highly entertaining – the concert rider for Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

A great remedy for telemarketers.

A very cool little web toy that enables you to compare what you’re buying online to a relative visual reference. Even if you don’t use it, worth playing with it for a minute.

Sure, you were born in the year of the yak, but what other useless minutia don’t you know about the day you were born?

Dig the groovy illusion: Maggie Thatcher’s a cow no matter how you look at her. MAGIC!

Here’s something interesting. My weekly list of links, while albeit longer than usual, is filled with cool, artistic, or groovy stuff, and not a whole helluva lot of politics. That’s a nice change. Well, it’s a whole buncha links, so I’ll get to it:

Mmmm. Original works. Sketch Comedy. Jobsite. Opening weekend.


Shopping
I’m not really sure why I like to own and display weird crap in my house that fucks with people, but it’s the only reason I want something from here.

Blog o’ the Week
Kathleen Reardon wrote a spot-on blog nailing the Bush Admin’s diplomacy and negotiation style (and lack thereof). It’s a quick read and highly recommended.

Cool Web Stuff
Ever want to know what that song is on the radio? Well, you certainly can’t depend on the DJ anymore, because there isn’t one. However, you can go here.

Rather simple, and nearly pointless, but a cool concept and a nice 3-minute timekiller.

Word on the Street
“Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them ‘because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.’”

Groovy Art
I can’t say anything but “cool” for this site. Check out the Bazantar.

A part of me really wants to understand how this works. But a bigger part of me just wants to look at the pretty colors. Scroll down to see the video.

Well… the artists makes really cool stuff. Out of paper. And I’m not talking origami either. Click the A4 Papercut link to start.

Drroooool
I want this. And I don’t even know what I’d use it for. Probably porn. You can probably skip the first minute of the girl who looks a lot like my first grade teacher.

Video Coolness
This is the second funniest thing I’ve seen all month. The first is Jason Evans throwing a baby at a camera, but that video is still in production. So, until then, you must watch Darth Vader Being a Smartass. And no, there's no reason the video why it's flagged as inappropriate. You could show it to a 3-year-old.

And if you’re pants are still tight and wet from that Star Wars goodness, check out the Omen-quality eerieness that was with the very first preview for Star Wars. Tres chic nostalgia goodness.

UPDATE: I was going to wait to post this, but Kevin Smith deserves the press before Clerks II opens, so the link should be spread. Kevin Smith talked to Joel Siegel on the radio. Smith's updated his post, and you can hear the interview from his site. Click here and scroll down. Very entertaining. Totally worth a whole listen.

Back again with collected links of note from the past week.

Proof that not all politics suck
On Thursday, "a [New Hampshire] judge gave state Democrats the go-ahead Thursday to question high-ranking Republicans in a civil suit over the jamming of Democrats' phones on Election Day 2002." This is a brick in the Reps' rigged election wall, and with any luck, and it could point back to the White House. Quick thought: didn't tricky Dick get busted for wiretapping DNC rooms prior to an election. Hmmm.

And this just in. Criminal fuckwad and morally corrupt assjackyl Ralph Reed screwed the pooch in Georgia and lost the Lt. Gov. primary. The primary. The Christian Coalition whore couldn't win a Republican primary in Georgia. Guess all that Abramoff/scandal stuff isn't just a bunch of fluff that people will ignore after all.

The Decider Continues to Shock and Awe
The Great Uniter continued his shock and awe campaign at the G8 summit. First there was the weird creepy obsession with eating a pig. Then, of course, he discusses foreign policy secretly into a reporters microphone and says the word, "shit." (I can actually look past that one.) And now, he's fondling the Chancellor of Germany. Click here, and then click the Video link on the left. I think he's actually scored more points this month for being a weird creepy fucker than Kim Jong Il.

Geek Tools
For all y'all that appreciate this kind of geekiness, here's a very cool list of Google operators - apparently Google isn't just a common search engine.

General Entertainment
This poor guy. I want to laugh so badly at the great Jenga sculptor, but then I feel so bad for the poor guy who ruined it. Summary: a short video on a reporter who destroyed someone's Guinness Record effort.

As I said to maladr1n, Kevin Smith found a critic who rivals the assholery of Tampa theater critics. Definitely worth the read.

Entertaining and Geeky?! Tres Cool.
A very cool toy, with very cool design, for music junkies. Just check it out.

True story:
I’m driving by Vinyl Fever Tuesday, and I’m thinking: Does the new McCartney album come out today or tomorrow? I think it’s coming out Wednesday, so I keep driving. Even if I’m wrong, it won’t be a wasted stop because I’m coming back Wednesday anyway and I had places to get to Tuesday.

So Wednesday, I look up the release date and realize I was wrong: it came out Tuesday. Whatever – no biggie. So I go to Vinyl Fever and look at the new release section. No album. Well, it’s McCartney. Who cares about him, except for geeks like me? He’s probably just going to sell himself nominally in the regular album section. So I go there. No album. What the hell? So I go up to the counter.

“Do you have the new McCartney album?” I ask.
They respond in tandem, kind of dumbfounded, “We sold out yesterday.”
“You SOLD OUT?!”
“Um, yeah. I guess it’s really good.”
“You SOLD OUT?!”
“Yeah. It’s getting great reviews.”
“When’s the last time he sold out?”
They look as flabbergasted as I do and shrug their shoulders.
I continue, “The last two times he released an album, I called you to reserve copies and you laughed at me.”
They laughed at me.

So I reserve a copy, which kind of worked out, because through that process I discover there’s a special edition, which I probably wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

In the meantime, I start getting e-mails from people like maladr1n who’s telling me about the mad reviews… for an album I’ve been waiting months for, but can’t listen to.

Finally I get my copy and start listening to what the big deal is.

First, two very fine and accurate reviews from AMG Music Guide and Rolling Stone.

( My Review of Chaos and Creation... )

What’s surprised me more than anything isn’t the album, but how much attention it’s gotten, whereas Flaming Pie sounds like an album that people are going to notice, but didn't. Many people are amazed that McCartney plays almost everything on Chaos and Creation. Not a surprise to me. Admittedly, he did that more here than on Flaming Pie, but he did it more on Flaming Pie than critics realize. And while Flaming Pie has some songs that are definitely weaker than anything on this album, Chaos and Creation doesn’t have anything that reaches Flaming Pie’s high-points – namely “Somedays”. Flaming Pie also has a great sense of humor in places. This album does, but in fewer and darker ways.

Perhaps people are just impressed to see cute ol’ Sir Paul being darker and more sophisticated than they’ve given him credit for. Again, not a surprise to me. But it’s clearly evident on Chaos and Creation. Maybe people who’d been shrugging McCartney off in the past finally can’t deny it after hearing this album.

I agree with Wikipedia: “after delivering Flaming Pie, Run Devil Run, Driving Rain and this album - all in an uninterrupted succession - McCartney is in a late-career creative peak.”

If that’s the case, then I hope Chaos and Creation makes more people realize that. The respect is certainly long overdue.

( In other news, guess who I’m seeing tonight? )

Just came back from seeing Sarah McLachlan. Holy crap, what a great show.

Bit of backstory. About a month ago, I got her new release, Afterglow Live. I thought the tour was over, because, well, I own a recording of the concert. That usually happens when the tour is over. AMG’s review of the album wasn’t that far off. McLachlan and her band are so good and tight that the concert sounds a lot like the studio versions, especially the songs from Afterglow.

So, I was rather surprised that she was still touring, and also that that the show I saw tonight was much better than Afterglow Live, and not just because I saw it live. I think the tour album was released when the show first started, which was probably not long after Afterglow was released. It would make sense that the Afterglow songs are similar on Afterglow Live. But after a year or two away from the studio album, the live versions have really grown and varied.

Great set, great performance, great lighting and great sound (minus the twin douche bags yabbering through the first half until I asked them to “like, not talk”).

I expected a good show, but I didn’t expect it to be as great as it was. She has the best vocal ability of anyone I’ve ever seen live. To say any song was more notable than others isn’t really fair, but “Perfect Girl,” “Push” and “Answer” were stunning. She also brought back a few things like “Solsbury Hill,” which I don’t think she’s covered since ’89. I already knew she’d cover “Blackbird,” which is quite nice once maladr1n stops singing a bad parody of it in your ear during the performance of that song (shithead). Best part is she encored with a version of “Hold On” which she hasn’t done since the Fumbling tour. She’s done that song very differently a few times, but she returned to the hard bluesy version this time, and it just has so much more balls (or I guess ova as the case may be). And just when you thought the concept of encores was a farcical absurdity (you know they’re coming back onstage), she came back solo on the piano and did a second encore with “Dirty Little Secret”. It was just a very lovely show.

And she makes me want to buy rubbers by the truckload.

I think Sarah inspired trufflesfl to consider the sisterhood of bitter estrocentric womyn or whatever it is that women with a “y” belong to. (Frankly, I’ve never understood it. Sarah’s so loving, and... well, she’s very heterosexual and married to a guy, but I’ve nonetheless seen this effect on women before.) Doesn’t matter though. I think trufflesfl’s plans to be absconded into the dykehood got a bit dampened when we saw two women who defied even the most basic fundamentals of fashion and donned quite possibly the most absurd mullets I’ve ever seen. Sarah attracts some very strange fans. I think it’d be great if Sarah and Ben Folds did a show together. Not only would it be solid, but I’d love to see the confusion ensue between his fans and hers.

Anyway, this was her last Florida show, but if you can check the show out before the tour ends, I highly recommend it.

Since I like to claim that one of the reasons I have a livejournal is to keep people not in my frequent and immediate circle abreast of what I’m up to, and since I’m drinking coffee at midnight, I suppose I should do one of these little updates.

…

…

(Sorry, I was thinking of breasts.)

Oh yeah, so the latest. Um, the latest is nothing. And everything. I’ll preface this now by saying that if it’s not included in this update (e.g. love life, my New Year’s resolution to learn voodoo, etc.) it doesn’t exist, hence no update on that subject.

Currently, I’m simultaneously rehearsing ( for this )

( for this )

and ( for this )

That’s the gist of it. I show up, someone tells me which script I’m performing that day, I pretend to know what I’m doing, I go home, and I wonder where my day went.

Also, I’ve been periodically bouncing Kitefliers stuff back and forth with trufflesfl, and I’ve been bouncing a new creative project back and forth with some other kids. The latter is so conceptual and new, that’s it’s too new to even bring up.

That’s about it. To the outside perspective, it looks like I’ve got nothing but one creative project after another going, which now that I think about it, I suppose I do. I dunno. It’s a forest and the trees sort of thing. It goes back to something Dave Foley said: you go through so much shit in this business that by the time something great happens, it just seems normal and unimpressive.

The good news is that everything is going pretty well. Girl’s Guide was the least of my concerns, because I’m not a third of the show. Ironically, this appears to be the one that’s changing the most. If someone told me this would happen, I would not have recommended it. It’s not usually a good idea on paper to fuck with a sauce that did so well a year ago that we had to add shows. However, we all seem to have a great perspective on this show, and we’re all coming up with ways to make it even better than it was the first time. The trick now is retraining all of the muscle memory for what I used to do. The added benefit is that it feels fresher, cleaner, tighter and more fun to own this newer work than to simply reclaim what we embedded into our heads last January. And for those of you who saw the first Girl’s Guide, you may now have a chance to see a revised, enhanced, and improved version.

One more note on Girl's Guide. For those who don't know, it's also touring to Fort Lauderdale, so I'll be down there for a weekend in April.

In music, I’m still digging Hooverphonic’s Blue Powder Wonder Milk, as well as The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.s, Turin Brakes’ The Optimist LP, and Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World (which I’m convinced McCartney does backup for “No Sympathy” and maybe “It’s Not the End of the World” and “Presidential Suite”.) There are other albums in my queue, but those are the ones I keep going back to. Also, just for kicks (and partially because of a conversation I had with broadwater) I just dumped two Hendrix albums and a Steppenwolf greatest hits album into the pc. It shakes shit up and brings me back to some very early roots.

Seen a few movies, too. I think I’ve officially reached the threshold of annoying the hell out of everyone I know with Dodgeball. It was just much better than I thought it would be. Sideways was okay – not worth the hype, but well done. I also had a weird perspective when I watched that movie, so it’s likely better than I think it is.

One last thing while I’m on the film subject. If you’re reading this, you – yes, you – should check out 1 Giant Leap. broadwater and littledorrit recommended this to me awhile ago. I Netflixed it and had it for about two months because I just didn’t want to part with it. I can’t recommend it for one specific reason. I can’t even explain it any better than saying it’s kind of the next logical step from Baraka, but better than that. Among very cool music, it features interviews with groovy people, including Dennis Hopper, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Robbins. Like I said, if you’re reading this, I promise you’ll find something redeemable and cool in this movie. Everyone will find something different to like in it, but trust me: rent it. At the very least, it’s a very nice break from anything you’ve been watching lately. Don’t think about it. Just get it.

So, I come home after a few pints of Young's and Rogue Chocolate Stout. I’m flipping channels, and I come across The Polyphonic Spree on Austin City Limits. I have one of their albums on my computer somewhere. I’ll admit there’s something about them that sort of gravitates me to their sound. I think it’s primarily their ability to exploit an aspect of sound that no one’s really explored since the Beatles. They have that orchestral sound behind them with a cacophony of vocals (think “All You Need is Love” and mix it with that mid 70’s Coca-Cola commercial where all the hippies are singing on that hill about smiles and world peace.)

But, I’ve never actually seen them, and as I’m watching them for the first time, there’s something strangely contagious about them. I can’t stop watching them. If you haven’t seen them, seriously, take all those people from that old Coca-Cola commercial, make them all white and somewhat talented, and dress them in solid bed sheets of various colors. That’s more or less Polyphonic Spree on stage.

Once I realized that, something occurs to me: they’re a fucking cult.

This, in and of itself, doesn’t make them attractive. However, I just spent the last few hours at the pub, and now I’m watching these people. I can’t help thinking these people can’t be getting paid much. There’s like 30 of them. Why pay them as much per person as you would a band with four or five people? So, they’re making the same blanket sum as say, The Thrills. That’s change in per capita gig money. If they’re not making much, they’re all probably traveling in a Partridge Family bus and eating bean curd. So what would be the appeal to being in this band? Bed sheets? Fun for a few minutes, but that’s about it. Are they all brainwashed? Maybe. I didn’t know brainwashed people could play trumpets and flutes, but I guess it’s possible.

Then the alpha-male in me realizes it. After a show, add a few tabs of white blotter, and you got yourself an old fashioned hippie orgy. There are at least 15 chicks in this group, most of which are extremely fuckable. Put these people on a road trip, and you’re basically just singing and fucking all the time. It rationalizes being a hippie, and you don’t have to join a drum circle and let your hair look like you washed it in the toilet to make people leave you alone. And you have random sex with one of 30 people on any given night. “I balled Amanda and Star at Red Rocks last night. I think I’ll play a little Mario Bros and then nail Big Rhonda after the Tucson gig tonight.” I can think of worse ways to spend your twenties.

Don’t get me wrong. This is still a fad band. At least I hope so, because in ten or twenty years, all of these people are going to be heavy, hairy, and gross. Imagine a convention of anthropology professors. All the bed linen in the world won’t hide that kind of repulsive swarthiness. So, I recommend after a few more years, if the novelty doesn’t end this for them, they should all quit and become the accountants and soccer moms they were destined to be.

Until then, I'm going to envy the fact that some other alpha-male had the brains to hit a trendy college, score a bunch of pseudo-hippies and form a cult that pretended to be a band to get fame and nookie.