Humbug, Bad News and Amps

Well Christmas is over and I seem to be suffering from zee blahs at the moment combined with end of year stress and a bloated feeling that I ate too damn much in the last few days so I’m sluggish and not feeling well.

Bah.

The news isn’t helping – the former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto leader of the opposition party has been killed – shot and then blown up.

This given the fragile hold on power the current Pakistan strong man is a big flaming torch tossed into a pit filled with explosives and gasoline. It’s a situation that is going to require hard work, perseverance, intelligence and diplomatic ability.

In other words we’re screwed.

This in some ways is more serious than Iraq because Pakistan does actually have the bomb. More than one – along with missile systems to drop them onto people they don’t like much (these were aimed at India with whom Pakistan has fought at least 3 wars not to mention border incidents and other unpleasantness.

The US Slid into bed with the current leader of Pakistan like many of W’s foreign policy ideas based heavily on wishful thinking, i.e.: he’ll be an island of stability for democracy yadda yadda yadda, he’d keep the pressure on Al Queda in the border country yadda yadda yadda – neither of which he really did – while billions of dollars of our damn money just vanished into the hinterland or more likely flowed into Switzerland.

Eh.

More madness out there than a man can shake a stick at – Rudy is sinking in the polls and as a result has released a TV that more or less says 9-11! 9-11! Over and over in shrieking hysterical voice.

It’s Rudy’s bang the table moment. Knowing Rudy’s course of actions over the years I suspect he will drop out of the race citing health reasons pretty soon – i.e. before all the money is spent – money I imagine he plans to keep for himself. Rudy loves money more than anything else.

Rehearsal tomorrow and then over the weekend we are buying an guitar amp for the band – lord little I like better than being in a music store – except maybe one of those shops that sell Japanese Anime and Monster movie junk – come to think of it I’m in the need for a new Godzilla figurine.

More tomorrow

Peace Love Fender Twin Reverb

Happy Boxing Day!

In England – the day after Christmas is a national holiday – the origins and the meaning of the name are a bit obscure – but the general consensus is that it came out of the habit of giving the servants the day off (cause they were busy Christmas) and with putting stuff in boxes to give to the poor (perhaps those self same servants). Not a day to whack each other with their fists.

Anyway it seems so civilized to have the day after off – I don’t but it does seem civilized.

Had a very lovely Christmas – received Help! On DVD – I don’t quite know what took so long for this to come out – but it’s out now thank goodness.

It’s not quite as good a film as A Hard Days Night – it’s more self consciously weird and the Beatles aren’t quite in the film as much and they really aren’t the focus come to think of it – but it still has the music and there are some wonderfully silly moments as well. (Where Leo McKern who is playing the head of a vaguely Indian death cult is sitting to tea with an English Vicar type lamenting that young people’s obsession with sex is cutting down attendance at the human sacrifices is priceless).

Spent more time playing City of Heroes that I should be – especially since my computer tends to freeze up just as the boss bad guy (or good guy) is about to smash me into bits. Still it’s great fun – trying to come up with different hero or villain types – and just in general wasting plenty of time that I could be doing other things. It’s crack for geeks I tell you.

Turns out the retail sales weren’t as good as everybody on the TV was saying or hoping they were. Which to someone in the real world isn’t that surprised at – with gas a 3 bucks a gallon and the housing market continuing to collapse (despite the talking heads) and just a sense of oh god what the hell is next that people would put people off of shopping like there is no tomorrow.

The Cigna story – Insurance company denies coverage for liver transplant to teen age girl, uproar ensues, Insurance company changes mind too late as girl dies, Insurance company now defending action since they are going to sued like nobody’s business – is pretty god damn horrible, made all the more so by the ugly fact that the talking heads will start weighing in screaming socialism and nanny state and everything else they can think of to obscure the fact that this company let this girl die because money was more important than anything else.

You if they just came out and said that it would be at least damn honest. But now the fog of weasel words has begun.

In a sane state an incident like this would result in major reforms to the health industry but here because too much money is being made of the current system they will try to stonewall the girl’s parents, try and settle out of court, or just out and out slime the parents suggesting they are trying to use their daughter’s death as a payday. (You know that one is coming).

Alas I think, judging by the flow of human history that we are not going to get universal health care (not insurance the parents whose kid just died had insurance) until after a severe pandemic kills enough people to make the powers that be take notice (it took the wreck of the Titanic to get the regulations changed so there are enough lifeboats for everybody, human nature hasn’t changed that much.)

Well that’s a depressing line of thought that I can’t follow up on because things got busy again.

Did discover the joys of downloading songs off of I-tunes – including Plastic Bertrand’s 1977 French Language punk hit Ca Plane pour Moi (loose translation ‘this life’s for me”) it was the biggest French language hit in the US beating out a hit from the 50’s by the Singing Nun of all things. I’m going to try and use that as my theme song for a bit – see what the hell happens.

Peace, Love, Ca Plane Pour Moi

Staring at the clock and Solos

We have gone from madness to deadness – the phone isn’t ringing – the fax isn’t faxing the e-mails aren’t mailing – it’s like the rest of the company has been raptured or something.

All I want to do now is go home, take a nap and then play my guitar for a bit and then city of heroes – tomorrow I’ll finish shopping and all that stuff like things.

Can’t say I’m really in the holiday spirit at this moment. I don’t see too many people who are – unless holiday spirit this year means running through the stores and clawing at sweaters on sale like rats in a death cage.

For which I blame the war on Christmas crowd – with folks now worried that they are going to get some kind of rabid foam at the mouth diatribe that they have just decided to dispense with the greetings entirely.

Meantime I see that some stores for example Macy’s and Old Navy are going to stay open 24 hours a day for the last few days before Christmas.

WTF? This has the smell of desperation here – while it’s not good to use anecdotal evidence every store near where I work is selling things at a deep discount – well not the stores selling guitar hero but everybody else clothes especially. I don’t see how this is going to generate more for the store – but who knows maybe the total wasted at 3 am crowd is willing to get socks as they go home - who knows.

Well just as I say things are dead – the damn wires start ringing with paper work. I promise I’ll get to the Baron of Terror and his two foot tongue and the rest as soon as I can.

Anyway in band notes I’m going to be playing my strat on stage for the first time like ever – while I grew up doing weird air guitar jimmy page things while listening to zep and the like – when performing I’ve been strictly rhythm and strictly acoustic so this is making me a bit nervous – in two ways – on that what I’ll play will suck eggs and more worrisome to me is that I catch a bad case of Nigel Tuffness disease and just keep wanking on the damn guitar long after anybody has lost interest (while sucking eggs).

I do take some comfort in the fact that John Coltrane had problems ending his solos too – to which Miles Davis is reported to have said “take the damn horn out of your mouth”

Miles wasn’t much for cosmic.

Peace Love long wanking solos.

Short Braniaic Posting

Sorry for the light blogging but it’s the end of the year and between the end of the year and shopping – “what do you want for Christmas” “Oh I don’t know.” AHHHHHH!!!!!! – I have like no time at least not the kind of dreaming time I need to do this blog right.

Anyway did manage to see Brainiac the other night “he’s a brainiac brainiac on the floor and he’s eating brains like he’s never done before” and oh my god it’s just weird on a whole new level of weird.

I won’t be able to really do it justice today – no damn time but the film starts with a warlock wizard of some such – it’s never explained exactly what he is – being tried before the Mexican Inquisition in 1661 – I forget the name – let’s call him the Baron – anyway the Baron gets a weird creepy Bevis and Butthead kind of smile while being chained to a chair and told about what he said under torture. He keeps smiling at the word torture it’s creepy yes.

Then the scene shifts (after the Baron shows off some magic) and the baron is being burned at the stake – at this point he looks up and the fakest looking comet in the history of the movies is shown. He vows that when the comet returns in 300 years he will avenge himself against the descendants of the inquisitors.

This happens all the time in these kinds of films and I never get it. If my arch enemy told me that he would return in 250 years to avenge himself my first response would be “big whoop” and then I’d probably write something down so that in 250 years in case weird shit started happening – they would be forewarned. (That doesn’t happen here)

We fast forward to 1961 where the comet shows up then lands then a man wanders out of his car to look and is attacked by a guy with two suction cups for hands a mask that swells and then collapses and a two foot long forked tongue that he uses to eat brains. This he does, leaving the poor man who wandered out dead in his underwear.

More tomorrow.

Peace Love two foot tongues

Monday, Nice Guys, Cyrano and Brainiac

It’s Monday, it’s cold, it’s windy (the building is creaking like the mast of a sailboat in the wind) I’m tired and it’s just too close to Christmas and I haven’t gotten a damn thing done.

How’s by you?

Anyway part of my blah mood is that this is the 6th anniversary of my mom’s death. It’s funny so much has happened in my life since then, that it almost feels like another person was doing the stuff before. I don’t really recognize me as me looking back to those days.

Anyway looking out at the great big world I see that Joe Lieberman, with his unerring sense of timing – has climbed aboard the sinking ship SS John McCain for President. I’m not quite sure why other than the thrill he gets from seeing his name on the screen of the Fox News Channel. And while the major members of the village will be just beside themselves that these two fine centrists (and only inside the beltway are these guys centrists) linking up. Several of the many empty talking heads out there have suggested a McCain Lieberman sort of Unity ticket as a way of ending the awful angry partisanship of the Left. (Awful Angry partisanship on the right is of course always welcome so some reason I refuse to understand).

Something else I refuse to understand is what the hell Harry Reid is doing. Briefly put – he has put to the floor of the senate a wiretapping “reform” bill that grants folks like Verizon and the other telecom companies retroactive immunity for violations of the current law – before we even know what the hell they did. This is the version of the bill favored by W – so what the hell Harry Reid (the Democratic Majority leader in the Senate) is doing pushing this to the floor – over the objections of Senator Todd (also a Democratic Senator) who had put something called a hold on this bill (it’s all rather complex but it’s parliamentary procedure stuff) which Harry has ignored – (he has honored Holds put on bills by GOP Senators). Dodd is now going to filibuster this. The 35 Democratic Party candidates for president say they support this but they aren’t going to lose time fundraising to do anything to help him (like maybe join the filibuster?).

So I have to wonder what the hell is the deal with Harry Reid – a) tolerating Joe when at the very least Joe should have come the job this morning and found a horse’s head on his desk – and doing the bidding of a mush wit president with an approval rating lower than that of soap scum. I note that congress as a whole has a god awful approval rating as well but I think it could well be argued that it’s because of folks like Harry Reid doing the bidding of a mush wit president with an approval rating lower than that of soap scum.

Random Neural Firings:

In the subway the other day I passed by a woman holding up a copy of the Watchtower – which is the weekly publication of the Jehovah’s witnesses – I don’t really know much about this group other than a lot of them stand in public places holding copies of the watchtower. I presume it’s because god wants them to do this – but I keep wondering why the hell does god hate these folks so sending them out into cold subway stations where they are ignored by thousands while getting an arm cramp from holding up copies of some magazine. Kinda sad, well to me anyway.

Stuff all over the blogs about the up tick in “angry nice guy” blogs about the utter perfidy of women who won’t realize what nice guys these guys are and fuck them.

Well for one, if you’re being a nice guy just to get laid, you’re not a nice guy, you’re a manipulative little shit and lots of folks can see through that. Also nothing ensures getting laid so just relax for god’s sake.

In the interests of full disclosure I have been called a nice guy but I’m not the one of Washington Generals of romance because of the utter perfidy of women – my problem is, alas me. I fall for the ones who aren’t going to catch me and my self esteem problems ensure that I will brush off anyone expressing an interest in me with a “you’re kidding right?” tone of voice. (my apologies for that, it’s not intended to be rude it’s just my first response is incredulity – followed by feeling really really uncomfortable).

All in all it’s a pretty effective mechanism that keeps me laidless.

I’m very fond of Cyrano both the original play and the version Steve Martin did but I’ve always thought that the body part Cyrano had a real problem was not his nose – his real problem was his desire to have Roxxane’s legs in the air. Like the Phantom of the opera – who hides what he sees as his ugly and disgusting true personality behind that mask and then when forced to confront it blames the woman.

Got a copy of Brainic – the utterly bizarre Mexican horror movie (yes I know saying utterly bizarre and Mexican horror movie – is repeating myself but this is really bizarre) which I plan to watch one more time – probably tonight before writing about it – cause it’s so bloody strange – and I want to listen to the commentary track and pick up any trivial tid bits . By the by the commentary track on The Giant Behemoth consists of two guys who have done stop motion special effects work talking about how bloody lame and boring this film was – they are right but it does strike a jarring note. I’m told the director of Batman and Robin apologizes on the track of that DVD which doesn’t do much good – like who’s going to watch that disaster again?

And file this under to know him is to loathe him – Rudy’s campaign for dictator sorry president is starting to throw gears – he’s already pulled out of Iowa and one other state and is now cutting back on New Hampshire to concentrate on Florida – where he’s currently in 3rd place. No it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Peace Love Roxanne

Subway thoughts,Odin, and Tom Petty sadness

I was on the subway last night – sitting next to a woman who whenever the train stopped she would look at her watch and mutter something like “Jesus fucking Christ” and such like. I didn’t think much of it – New York is full of people who are simply too tightly wound to live anywhere else and sometimes too tightly wound for here. (I do put myself in that category – In my family I thought of as laid back but that’s only in comparison to folks wound tighter than an over wound Swiss watch with 32 jewel movement – I’m not laid back).

Anyway the ride continued through the rain and sleet and snow – it was pretty rotten last night – with the woman cursing next to me from time to time – when she wasn’t looking at her watch. Then a guy came on the train and spieled his spiel – if you ride the N or the W you know the buy – again no names but he’s hard to miss – he’s missing fingers, a lot them – including both thumbs. He, as he always does, said his little speech and then panhandled the crowd – personally I give a dollar cause well hell – it’s hard to fake missing fingers.

My bitter friend next to me mutter under her breath about “I’d love that not having to work all day just walk around.” Which just about floored me – here was a person in what looked to be decent health dressed well, yeah maybe under some stress, angry and indeed jealous of someone with no fucking thumbs – you try doing sometime with no goddamn thumbs and you’ll see what I’m talking about – I have no idea how he manages to dress himself never mind take care of the other daily needs of the body (yes that stuff).

But this woman was angry at him. Jealous. Again the man was begging on the subway and has no fucking thumbs.

It’s a level of self absorbed crazy I haven’t seen in a while – I remember some one else I know who – when Mickey Mantle was dying of liver cancer actually made a nasty comment about how the Mick was put to the front of the line for liver transplants. It was pretty damn amazing stuff – I was in the presence of a man jealous of someone with cancer.

Of course he was also the person who wondered why he wasn’t paid that much since he was told nobody else could do his job while ( I forget the exact star let’s say Mike Piazza for the moment) had a back up and still made millions.

“That’s because 55,000 people don’t pay money to see you work.” I told him.

He didn’t like the answer and changed the subject.

So for the moment this has given me a vital lesson about bitterness – it’s not worth the time kids and you’ll end up saying things that will make your friends think you’re crazy.




Anyway, when I was a kid or teenager we spent a lot of summer weekends at my Uncles house in rockaway riding the waves. The longest rides were the ones you got when there was a tropical storm coming up the coast and the tide was coming in. The most intense rides were very short – when the tide was going out – you ended up riding what we called shore breakers – instead of rolling you along these would pick you up and slam you straight down into about 3 inches of water – along with a lot of broken shells and the angry crab or two. I remember more than once seeing nothing below me but shells as the wave started to break. At that point you just had to ride it out – and more than once I was there with my siblings and my cousins and as we were going over we all yelled “ODIN!”

Let me explain.

The Odin thing is from a family favorite movie “The Vikings” (1958) which started Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh and Earnest Borgnine (who was born to play a Viking). Per the movie a Viking could only enter Valhalla by dying in battle with a sword in his hand and calling out Odin’s name.

One of the things about this film that stands out is really really bad things happen to all three of the male leads – Kirk Douglas has his face scared up and an eye gouged out by a hunting hawk owned by Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine is eaten by wolves in a pit (after Tony gives him a sword so he can go to Valhalla) and Tony who is the leading man gets his left hand chopped off by the heavy (for giving Earnest the sword). This is followed up by an assault on a castle and a duel between Kirk and Tony (who are brothers half really- it’d take to long to explain it) where Kirk is killed and then is given a Viking burial. I.e. put in a ship and then the ship is put to sea, then burned – it’s a big moment in the movie. The whole thing is done with huge gusto and a great sound track.

And this was the film our family would watch every damn time it came on TV – we’re a pretty weird bunch looking back at it.

Listening to Tom Petty today – the thing that strikes me about his stuff is even in the up beat songs there is this underlying sense of sadness almost melancholy. Maybe it’s just the timber of his voice (the only man who could harmonize with Bob Dylan) but there is a weight there. All the songs seem to say that the sadness of life itself can never be transcended only escaped temporarily at best – it’s pretty downbeat when you get right down to it.

Peace, Love, Last Dance for Mary Jane

Cave Ins and Steriods

Another day another Democratic party cave in.

Dear Lord just what was the point here? Other than some kabuki dancing before the bills get passed things are the same as they were before the 2006 election W does whatever he wants and get whatever he wants.

Meantime the Mitchell report on the use of steroids in baseball and by all accounts is a pretty damning document showing a persuasive use of performance enhancing drugs by the players with the owners putting their fingers in their ears and going “La la la I can’t hear you”

The actual report will not be released until 2 pm but the names being named are flying around the internet. Not too many Mets that I can see (I won’t name the names cause it’s not confirmed – I have some standards) which may explain why they didn’t play so well.

Still this is a huge black eye for the game – which at least isn’t dealing with guys with dog fighting rings but still it’s gonna make things bad.

Most bad for the rest of the players who didn’t - cause there will now always be that suspicion that will be there when someone’s having a good year – or had one that maybe he was just better at hiding that he was on the juice than these guys – (some of whom are mentioned in the report apparently paid for their steroids by check – guys when you are buying illegal drugs cash only! What the hell is happening to this country?)

This reminds me, somehow of an interview from a great baseball book – The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter – which you should read if you haven’t – What Ritter did back in the 60’s grab a tape recorder and talk to as many of the old time ball players that were still around (from the 1900-1920 dead ball era with some others) and just let them tell their stories. The result is just a marvelous picture of a time and an era long gone.
(Side note everybody loved Christy Matthewson and hated Ty Cobb – like big woop).

But to the point – all during that era gambling was slowly starting to eat the game from the inside (esp in the late teens) culminating in the 1919 black sox scandal.

Anyway while it’s common (hell even I do it)– especially after field of dreams - to cast Shoeless Joe Jackson as the tragic victim of the scandal – I still remember the interview with Heinie Groh (that’s him with the weird bat – he choked up on it and slapped balls around with it) who insisted that his team the 1919 Reds could have beaten the Black sox even if they didn’t throw the series. Now this was a very successful player – borderline hall of fame even – good hitter and a very good third baseman and this is what burned at him. He got to the series again when he played with the NY Giants in 22-24 even was on a winning team. But 1919 is what burned him as he was looking back.

And he was luckier than some for example his team mate hall of famer Ed Roush – his only time in the big dance was 1919.

So anyway while there will be plenty of excuses and well everybody else was doing it stuff flying around soon – and while I can feel for these players on some level I mean my god this is only a game in the end – their sad legacy will be that all the feats of this era will be darkened by steroid use and even the clean players will not be untouched.

Meantime it’s snowing out and the NY weather press is going mad – they haven’t had a winter storm watch in a while so they have forgotten how to be adults I think. It’s just a storm people it’s almost winter we have them from time to time.

Anyway later folks are waving papers at me and making strange gibbering noises.

Peace Love bottle bat

Pretty Good, the Dude and signs of the Season

Pretty good gig last night considering it was Otto’s – small crowd – hell it was a Tuesday and it was raining like most of the day – I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t been in the band.

But as I said it was a good show – some folks that came hadn’t heard us since the new drummer The Dude showed up. He’s made us into a damn fine band I have to say. He also has the right sense of humor about this – he was going, he told us, that had he gotten their earlier he’d have told The Enemy Below to tell me that he was demanding $100 or he wouldn’t play. It would have worked to – because well I do tend to panic at just about anything. I wouldn’t have appreciated the joke but the rest of the band would have.

And I guess it’s just because it’s his name but ever since The Dude joined the band we have all be constantly quoting from The Big Lebowski – and as I am typing this I am flashing onto the scene were The Dude’s landlord is doing a dance recital. I have go hit myself on the head with something to get rid of that image.

Okay, back.

In other news we are looking for a temporary replacement for Insect Girl – so anybody who wants the job let us know. Not a lot of money but much the fun.

We’re going to try and get bunches of people to the show 1/5. If we have to roam the streets and drag them in we’re gonna that.

Meantime – while I’ve been busy with end of the year stuff – the Bushes has proven that no matter how bad they look they can get worse – there is a brewing scandal over the destruction of tapes showing the torture of an Al-Queda suspect. All of Washington is trying to come up with excuses for why they did or didn’t do what they did.

As the story as unfolded it becomes clear that the tapes concern the torture of a low ranking Al-Queda functionary, who didn’t know much and also had a history of mental problems. Nonetheless they went and gave him the business until he started talking about all sorts of plots. Which was the point of the exercise anyway – it wasn’t to get real info just stuff to wave in front of congress or whoever. Hell they wouldn’t water board a high ranking Al-Queda prisoner anyway – he’d be too valuable to risk with this stuff.

In other cheerful news a woman has alleged that she was gang raped while working for KBR (A Halliburton company) by her co-workers and then the company covered it up by various means including holding her inside a shipping container for 24 hours.

Nice people, salt of the earth . Good Americans too.

Anyway a few days ago – Hilary and another senator came out against violent video games (again) once again the culprit is Rockstar’s Manhunt (this time a sequel).

You know – with everything else wrong in the damn world – including our country’s descent into thug nationalism (“torture is okay when we do it’) you’d think Hillary would a) have better things to do with her time and b) not invite Joe Lieberman onto the same stage with you so he can spout his pious nonsense about the dangers of violent video games – with the same mouth he uses to say water boarding is okay and we should bomb Iran like really really soon.

It explains why Hilary’s once large lead in New Hampshire has vanished – she won’t take real stands on real issues and wastes time with junk like video games. Stakes are too high these days for this kind of stuff.

Christmas season is well under way in New York – with an influx of tourists who I swear to god are confused by soup and a rotten story that some folks in a subway train said Merry Christmas to some other passengers who being Jewish replied happy Hanukah. At which point the Merry Christmas folks jumped them and started beating them up – and the only one to try and stop them was Muslim exchange student.

Merry Christmas

Peace, Love, The rug held the whole room together

Busy and Zappadan

Sorry for the light blogging – I’ve been busy at the day job stuff along with struggling with some kind of low grade deal that while it didn’t make me sick enough to skip work made the days a long drag and left me no oomph or whatever it is that propels these words on the page.

We have a gig tomorrow at Otto’s again – this will be the Dudes and Miss Trafalgar’s first look at the shrunken head - so come on down and start the celebration of the end holidays early – or Zappadan which started December 4th (the day Frank died) and ends December 21st (Frank’s Birthday).

It’ll be fun.

Apropos almost of this I was listening to the Yellow Shark again this was one of Zappa’s later recordings released (about a year before he died). This is really one of the few ‘classical’ albums by Zappa that works – throughout his life he always had problems getting classically trained musicians to play his material the way he thought it should sound. (He has extremely caustic things to say about the brass section of the London Symphony orchestra in his ‘as told to book’). But with the Ensemble Modern he finally found a group that were not only fabulous classical musicians but on the same wave length as he was and were willing to pretty much try anything. The result was the yellow shark.

I recently saw a u-tube of one of the performances “Food Gathering in Post Industrial America” and while it was obvious frank was delighted to be doing this – there was a sadness about the clip – one you knew he didn’t live much longer and two there was a sense of perhaps not sadness but melancholy about Frank – that it had taken so long for him to find the right group to play his classical compositions and he didn’t have much of a future left.

Not quite sure I really want to think all the way through on what that means okay?

Meantime – turns out several democratic congressmen (including the current speaker of the house) were given a tour of the CIA’s torture chamber or some such back in oh 2003 or so – this report coming out after the story that the CIA destroyed some tapes that showed the torture, sorry interrogation of a suspect.

Apparently instead of calling the Hague in Belgium and asking for charges to be filed they nodded and went on with their day – no word on if they got a gift bag after they were done.

I was talking with someone this weekend about this and he was talking about putting wires to some bastard who has killed a bunch of us and what not – the crux being why the hell would be care if they water boarded a high Alqueda thug – and my thought was if we did get a high ranking alquedia thug we wouldn’t torture him, he would be gold dust and handled a lot differently. Some low ranking underling – that’s the one that gets the wires – because they don’t care if they damage him.

Anyway I am profoundly disgusted with the High ups in the Democratic Party today – W is a nut case surrounded by nutcases but he wouldn’t be any where if he didn’t have his freaking enablers on the blue side of the seats.

Ug.

Adding to my ennui Mitt Romney made a speech that while presented as a version of JFK’s 1960 speech on religion (which argued for strong separation of church and state) was actually aimed at the GOP church right and was trying to send the message that he hated the same people they did and would be as autocratic and as intolerant as the next gop right winger. I’m not sure it helped.

Rudy G now has yet more problems – this time about money. More later.

Again more later I have tons to do.

Peace Love Zappadan

DEATH RACE 2000 and odds and ends.

Sometimes when my brother and I are in car one of us will see a guy jogging or someone with a walker or some such thing just going along and both of us will say

“Look at those points!”

The reference is to the utterly classic and bizarre B-movie Death Race 2000 – shot in 1974 in about 11 days it is story of the transcontinental road race where in addition to trying to get to LA first, you get points for running people over. Older people score more than younger people; women score more than men, and such like.

It’s truly truly sick in a wonderfully twisted way.

It’s the year 2000 in our old future – the United States is part of a larger group run by Mr. President who has been the leader since 1979 – and there is a need to show off just how tough Americans so that other nations, especially the French who along with their European allies have wrecked America’s economy and it’s phone system will respect and fear us.

Yes it’s satire but looking at the state of the union in late 2007, it reads more like prophecy at time. Most of us think we are way off the path – meantime there is a group that keeps on urging massive acts of violence against countries mostly because if we don’t it will be a signal to our enemies that we have lost our will and then the brown people will swarm over the borders and take us over.

The racers are an odd combination of the Wacky Racers, NASCAR and Professional wrestling – David Caridine fresh out of Kung Fu plays Frankenstein the hero no less. Sylvester Stallone in one of his earliest roles is the heavy – a Chicago style 30’s gangster.

Just an absurd side note – some years ago Alan Keyes had a show on I think MSNBC called “Alan Keyes is Making Sense”. I remember wondering when I saw the title that someone forgot to put the question mark at the end of that phrase. Seriously Alan Keyes is one of the few people I have ever seen that is so bat shit crazy that I swear I saw his eyes roll in different directions one time.

Anyway the only time I watched the show – it was a multi-car wreck and I had trouble looking away – the topic was on why weren’t there any religion on television. He and his guests nattered on about the sinfulness of Hollywood and how deprived folks were huddled in their living rooms thirsting for the religious themed shows Hollywood won’t make.

Now not one guest said what I would have asked first off “What are we talking about here when we say religion? Cause under some definitions Kung-Fu could be counted as a religious show – hell the main character was a Showlin Monk.”

That didn’t happen.

On this track I remember a show something like touched by an angel where the two main characters were yes angels of the lord. I saw this a couple of times – well one and ½ times anyway – and in both shows one of them would announce that they were and angel of the lord and not once did anyone say “are you f-king nuts?” Or something along the lines of “Yeah and I’m Marie of Romania”

Anyway back to Death Race 2000 – it’s gory but not too cause other wise it’s not funny and it really seems to touch at our current fearfulness and our need as a result to be bellicose. Male Gorillas don’t start thumping their chests unless they feel threatened just to add an utterly unneeded example from the animal kingdom.

Anyway there is lots of very prescient satire on the cult of celebrity – a running gag that all of Frankenstein’s limbs have been replaced over the years – a joke that Hot Shots stole for the Lloyd Bridges character “My skull is steel – shrapnel in Iwo Jima” and if you haven’t seen it do so.

We haven’t heard back yet from the press kits we sent so the next ones may have send a horse’s heads along with them (kidding). But we look to expand outside the New York area soon if not early this year. Philly and Boston, along with New Jersey seem to be the best bets for now – we’ll wait for the world tour a bit – for now that will be enough.

Also want to go back to the studio in January to lay down the last tracks for the CD – now tentatively entitled Songs for Ewe and Me – the things we do for love yes?

Peace Love Points

Rushed and Insane

A Different Kind of Bomb

Okay – no time today end of month end of year and all that still some quick thoughts.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that just came out saying Iran stopped their bomb program in 2003 has made everybody that was pushing for bombing Iran look like they have just been sprayed by a skunk. Look at the President in the pictures from the god awful news conference he just had – that’s a man who keeps getting sprayed in the face with skunk juice.

One Neo-con has all but accused the CIA of being in cahoots with the terrorists.

Anyway W said something to the effect in his news conference that he just saw this NIE ‘last week’.

WTF?

The report is months old – why didn’t he get to see it? Too Busy or just a case of what he doesn’t want to see he doesn’t. (which I think is more likely )– who’d want to give this news to this president?

What they are saying to day is that Iran knows how to make a nuclear weapon – which makes that them dangerous – not as dangerous as a pack of rabid wolves running down the street chasing you but still dangerous.

Because they know how to make the bomb. And they might start to try again.

Jesus

Who the hell doesn’t Know how, at least under broad circumstances how to make an A bomb. It’s the specifics that get tricky – which is why rogue scientists are so dangerous.

Anyway just saying Iran is Dangerous – which he said about 11 times doesn’t make them MORE dangerous than other states – Pakistan (which HAS nukes) makes me very very nervous for example.

But no nuke less Iran tops the danger list - which does boggle the mind just a bit – a country with the economy the size of Finland with NO NUKES is the most dangerous country in the world. It’s pretty insane.

But that’s the way they roll these days – I suspect that W has a cork at the end of his fork so he won’t hurt himself (al la Steve Martin here).

As I said no real time.

Band stuff tomorrow.

Peace Love Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Walkin' the Dog and other thoughts

There’s an old R&B song called Walking the Dog by a guy named Rufus Thomas who billed himself as the world’s oldest teenager when he was in his sixties and did a version of the song wearing a cape and big red boots as the act before Led Zepplin took the stage at the Atlantic Records 50th anniversary party. It was pretty bizarre if memory serves.

But that’s not what I’m writing about.

As part of the fallout from Rudy’s excellent adventure in the Hamptons it seems or is alleged that in addition to providing Rudy with a level of security more commonly given to folks like Castro when he comes to speak at the UN gave police protection to his girlfriend when she was driving to Pennsylvania to see her mother, act as a private driver and apparently walk Judy’s dog.

There is a line crossed here – and I call it at walking the dog. The other stuff did as well but not so much.

Frankly if Rudy wanted to go see his thing on the side god speed – but well walking the dog?

Currently there are several folks going through the bills released by the city of New York - and there is much comment on the staggering $400,000 prepay to American Express mostly cause governments just don’t pay like that – you need a bill under normal circumstances to get a payment and even then you had better be ready to wait a bit. And as some one pointed out – what happened to the bonus points?

As I said folks – interns mostly – are going through the bills like Woodward and Burnstein did with the out slips from the Library of Congress in All The President’s Men (remember when reporters didn’t spend all their waking hours sucking up to the people they were covering? I kind of) and it will partially restore my faith in a just and merciful god if there is a bill from Tiffany’s in there. I do so hope that is the case.

Anyway much to my surprise this actually is having an effect on Rudy’s standing in the primaries – he’s dropping like a stone. I have to say I didn’t expect that. His vows to keep on torturing and killing, his brittle hatred of anybody that is not just like him and dislike of saying anything that is actually true all would seem to ring deep cords in the Dalek, sorry GOP base.

Which could be bad for Rudy, since he does tend to just fold under pressure. (macho posturing notwithstanding)

Mitt Romney the overly calculating robot candidate is re-launching the idea of a JFK like speech about his faith and the US Government and what not. He, I assumes, will be extolling the separation of church and state to an audience that hates that idea.

Good luck Mitt.

Eh – enough.

Random Neural Firings:

I was scrolling through some recipes trying to figure out what to cook for dinner tomorrow – not tonight Monday’s never a good night for that, when I came across this recipe entitled Indian Beef patties with cucumber yogurt sauce.

Let’s look at that again – there is just something to me very odd about using Indian spices and seasonings on beef. I mean it’s not illegal but it is a bit weird to read that.

This season football seems nothing but a mind numbing group of bad dull games played by bad dull teams led by coaches who’s only reason they have the job is that they were god awful at some other team and got canned.

I was flipping about and saw towards the end of the half the eagles were on the Seahawks 1 yard line or something with one time out and about 1:40 or so to play. They ran the ball three times right up the middle and passed once and managed not to get a damn thing out of it. It’s the idiot call on 4th down that got to me – the Seahawks had stuffed the up the middle run twice so the Eagles decided to do it again – with the result it being stuffed again.

“They’ll never expect us to run up the middle again” had to be the thought path that led to that sorry ass play call. And of course the Eagles lost the game.

Got cable modem whatever for my computer this weekend – can now play City of Heroes
At home at 3 am – that I think that’s a good thing worries me.

More paperwork in so that is it for today

Peace Love Rufus Thomas