Rotorglow

As I've said, I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. But dammit, I'm pissed (in an existential, self-actualized kind of a way), and that's gotta change. For example:

Why is dissatisfaction worth an unknown? (Trick question: it's not.)

What is UP with attractive women and pudgy, stringy-haired men? On the one hand it should be
encouraging ("hope for all of us," etc.), but on the other hand, it's just annoying, because I am not a pudgy, stringy-haired man; I must be doing something wrong.

What's to be done about the screwed up shit happening in the world today? How are are we gonna figure out how to talk to each other? Why is violence more acceptable than sex? Etc.

To wit (and speaking of pudgy, stringy-haired men): "....A mistake?? Or did He DO IT to us [beat] on PURPOSE? BECAUSE I WANNA KNOW."

All hail Updike, rock, and electricity.

Woman Charged With Mailing Explosive Condoms (Via FiveSevenFive)

me: if I were Homeland Security Commandant Mike Chertoff, I'd be wearing orange Kevlar for a little while.
Or re-hire Mike Brown, and use him as a human shield.
clampants: This is like a good Benny Hill show
"this" being our government
me: sigh
clampants: And instead of busty nurses with seltzer, it's Dick Cheney with a shotgun

I just saw the Touch Me Theres play at Charlie's Kitchen. Now, Charlie's is a great place; the food is...pretty good for being a dive; the beer selection is very good (I typically go for Chimay on tap, since it's hard to find).

And the jukebox is without peer, at least around these parts. Tonight I heard some Deadbolt, which I never thought I'd hear outside of Sleazefest or some San Diego voodoobilly whorehouse (whatever that might be like). Or, I guess, my own apartment. Not that there's usually anything similar, hypothetically, about a San Diego whorehouse and my apartment. But I have seen some crazy shit in a go-go cage while (trying to) keep an eye on the tiki/reverb/death-surf stylings of Deadbolt, and I guess each time I hear them there's a bit of a Pavlovian response....

...Which, like many Pavlovian responses, wasn't rewarded this time. But regardless the point is that hearing Deadbolt on the jukebox is good. So that's another point in Charlie's favor.

And for the trifecta, by god, seeing the Touch Me Theres cover Gut Feeling, in a punked-out, lo-fi, amateurish kindofa, broken cymbals (which, frankly, sound shitty, but hey) bad sound, obstructed view sortofa dive bar way was completely sublime. Don the New Daddy Drummer sang backup vocals, and it was all just stupendous.

Somewhere Mothersbaugh is smiling. Even though he's not dead.

I posted this earlier in a different category, but upon further reflection, I realized I had it wrong. White House Press Secretary Scott "Straight Dope" McClellan has outdone himself, and whoever transcribed today's press briefing about Cheney "peppering" a septuagenarian GOP donor with buckshot has helped Scotty cook up one of the most bizarre things since.....well, I was gonna say Ionesco, but that story last week about the Tupperware sex-toy parties and explosive condoms was pretty great....

So, let's just say that McClellan's latest masterwork is simply that....his latest masterwork. He more than made up for the 22 hour head start everyone else had on the story including the Corpus Christi, TX, rag--via the Armstrong matriarch who, and I'm just guessing here, rules the ranch in question with a bony yet crushingly-strong fist.

And it's a good thing Scott is around, too. Because the story itself, frankly, needed a little punching up: elderly lawyer in Tejas (who oversees the licensing of funeral parlors) doesn't follow "protocol" by announcing his presence BEHIND PEOPLE CARRYING GUNS and gets sprayed with lead while hunting. The gunman? None other than VPOTUS. So then what? Well, it seems those on the scene took a few hours to get their stories straight make sure the old fart was going to pull through, and then decided let the rest of us in on what had happened--by allowing a civilian to call the local broadsheet.

So as you can see, there's not nearly enough going on there to hold my interest, but maybe that's just me.

The point is I'm damn glad McClellan was around today. And I'm sure we all look forward to further genius from him (and his unwitting foils in the White House press corps) soon.

Top Topless Beaches from Forbes.com (RealPlayer)

From the network of flat-tax weirdo Steve Forbes, comes this advice about the best topless beaches in the world, nude vacationing, and nudist etiquette.

Happily (by which I mean "incrementally more arousingly, much-less creepily, but also a whole lot less amusingly"), the advice is delivered by a couple of J-school bimbos (clothed, and in a studio, at that), and not Steve himself.

Monty Python's Personal Best and Flying Circus | PBS

So...wow....I found out about this on from a banner ad, I'm sorry to say. And I'm pretty excited. My adoration for Monty Python goes way way back, and when I was in high school, it seemed to trump many of the more typical adolescent hijinks. When MTV started showing Flying Circus marathons, my friends and I would watch them raptly, even though we'd already seen each episode numerous times. Co-ed slumber parties revolved around a couple of Monty Python video tapes, instead of beer, pillow fights or Truth or Dare.

No joke; the first time a girl stayed over at my house was when I had a bunch of people over for a Python all-nighter, and by 3 AM, many people had left, but this girl (and a male friend of mine, which may have put a damper on things) decided to crash at my place instead of head home. So we pulled out the sofa bed, and the three of us chastely dozed through till daylight with the Spanish Inquisition, and Hell's Grannies (among countless others) coming and going all night.

As you can see, my friends and I had wild, raging hormonal urges...

...which were utterly silenced by the Fish Slapping Dance.

So, Monty Python is strong, strong comedic medicine for the dispossesed and disaffected. I've been taking it for years.

Several things made me laugh today, and one of them was a story about air travel.

halcyon the shop audio

It's kind of hard to for me to say just how amazing I think Halcyon used to be. It catered to my every vice (well....except two--one of which was simply because there's no parking around there, and the other only because I didn't hang out there quite often enough): food, beer, coffee, records, furniture, art (but, as I say, not the other two...).

Stupendous record collection, great sandwiches, amazing beer selection (Chimay! Hennepin!), nice espresso, and the swankest used retro-mod-New Frontier-Barbarella furniture you could imagine. They had a couple of turntables, and DJs would do in-store mixes while you sip coffee, eat a bagel, or both. Imagine if Other Music still had a Boston store, and merged with Abodeon the Enormous Room, Zeitgeist and 1369.

So.

They've moved now, from funky Smith Street to becoming-funky Dumbo, and are focusing on records. But it's still the Hanging Gardens of DJ Culture. And Francis Harris, aka Adultnapper, does a weekly-ish mix of new stuff that comes into the store. Done live, in one take, they are universally brilliant. Glitchy, funky, deep and seamless. And they're all archived. There's a new, questionably-useful Flash interface for them all; or you can dig down a directory and find all the mp3s.

Relatedly, Tim found some great stuff and has been compiling some dope-ass mixset links of his own.

Go forth and be musical.

The Eggcorn Database

More on this later....but I needed to post the page so I'd remember.

Basically, my fascination with it is twofold: admiration/agreement, and exasperation/eyerolling. (Maybe that's fourfold, dunno...)

(And wait....is "dunno" and eggcorn? Crap!)

Anyway, there's one in particular that I'll write about later. But I'm glad there's a word for these (particular) things that drive me bonkers