Sunday, August 31, 2003

WISH WE WERE THERE




A few pics from 2001 Burning Man. Are we not men? Did we eat apes brains?

Friday, August 29, 2003

EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL IS FARAWAY


MEANWHILE...

  • What's Woody Allen's typeface? [ via Zeldman ]

  • Check out Ahhnuld's 1977 Oui interview. For example, his progressive views on women: "I can look at a chick who's a little out of shape and if she turns me on, I won't hesitate to date her. If she's a good fuck, she can weigh 150 pounds, I don't care."

    If he has any balls, he'll make this the foundation of his gubernatorial platform.

  • I sure love it when political activism and technology smoosh together.

  • ITEM! I know my cultural barometer runs a little slower than your average Joe, but I sure love "Gay Nite" on Bravo. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a riot – they can gay me up anytime. As for Boy Meets Boy, it's sick and wrong. And I can't wait to find out which dude is secretly straight next Tuesday.

  • I can't resist linking to the mom who stripped for her son's birthday in a hotel room, giving them $1 bills and asking them to spank her. With moms like that, who needs porn?

  • Allright, if I link to the stripping mom I guess I'd better link to Madonna kissing Britney Spears. Mmmmm. Save some for daddy! [ via Fimoculous ]
  • Thursday, August 28, 2003

    WILL FERRELL HARVARD COMMENCEMENT SPEECH
    Oh-hooo, dat funnny guy! Transcript of the speech delivered on my birthday. RealVideo of the speech with bad audio. [ via like me, only angrier ]
    BLOGGING ON THE DEAN BUS
    Lucky Dave Weinberger blogs Dean's Sleepless Summer Tour. Here are some pics and an earlier Dean speech (MP3). Also, a little Blogumentary video footage of Dr. Weinberger. Go Dave, Go Dean!

    GET BLOGUCATED

  • Kaye Trammel showed the Blogumentary trailer to her reporting & writing for online media class and they "got a kick out of it." This makes Chuck very happy. I'm hoping to screen-n-talk at Carleton College and Bard College.

  • Hannah, a fictional college student blog created by an Australian communications class. What's the point, I wonder? I'm all for experimenting and playing with blog identities, as long as nobody gets emotionally invested with someone that doesn't exist (see Kaycee). [ via so this is mass communication? ]

  • Let's hear it for open-source education. MIT's OpenCourseWare is on its way to posting the contents of 2,000 classes on the web – free. More from Wired Magazine: MIT Everywhere

  • Congratulations Matt Clayfield, whose film work has earned him a scholarship studying Film and Television at Bond University. Not to mention some new toys. Well done my good chap.

  • MetaTalk thread on someone who got fired from reading this MeFi thread on pedophilia. (Umm, you might not want to look at this at work!) [ Kottke ]

  • Swami Da Prem has unleashed Yahoogle: "The best of Yahoo! and Google in a blog." It's going strong, check it out.

  • Devo remakes "Whip It" for a Swiffer commercial. Somehow this works for me.
  • Tuesday, August 26, 2003

    HE'S COMING AROUND TO SUCK UP ALL THE MONEY
    President Bush was in St. Paul today to extract $2000-a-head from the likes of plywood impresario and fruity milk-pusher Rudy Boschwitz. This, on a day that postwar deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq exceeded the combat toll and Bush vowed to stay on the offensive around the world. "No nation can be neutral in the struggle between civilization and chaos," Bush said. Buh? Do you call preemptive war and a record $500 billion budget deficit 'civilization'? If so, I choose chaos.

    America Two Years after 9/11: 25 Things We Now Know
    23. We know that the response to the 2000 Florida election debacle -- going to touch-screen computer voting machines -- may turn out to be even worse. Three outfits dominate the computer-voting market, all companies owned or supported by Republicans, and that they refuse to permit their software to be examined by outsiders, even though tests have revealed major flaws in their systems: The votes can be manipulated easily without any evidence that the count has been tampered with, and with no verifiable paper trail to check against the final tallies. [ via Lorika ]
    THE GREAT MINNESOTA GET-TOGETHER

    It's all pigs and bunnies, man. Lane and Tina, aka "Iowa's Blog Royalty" joined Doc Chameleon and Jr. Scientist, Space Waitress, Maggie & T., Lorika and myself for a sweaty, stinky, gas-inducing roundabout the fair. Even more fun than it sounds! Here's the proof.

    Crappy state fair video montage (Quicktime, 5 MB)
    Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians (MPEG, 6 MB)
    Piglets enthusiastically suckling their mama (MPEG, 6 MB)

    Monday, August 25, 2003

    NIGHT VISIONS








    I forgot to mention the thoughtful conversation Lori and I had on the porch last night. When we all went to the State Fair (pics + video forthcoming) apparently a little boy was petting his bunny. When asked his bunny's name, he was confused. This bunny didn't have a name, only a number: future bunny meat. Along those lines, some people were commenting on the poor piggy flipping his empty water dish around. How many of those people just had pork chop-on-a-stick?

    Most of us cityfolk don't have to deal with where our food comes from. We don't slaughter the pigs to get bacon, we don't plant the seeds of our salads. Lori has one cucumber plant on our front porch that's yielded two crisp, delicious, precious cukes. When we buy a cucumber at the store, half the time it might get old and thrown away. Not our homegrown cukes - Lori is invested in them. Planted the seed, watered it every day, watched it blossom. Writer and farmer Wendell Berry, in his book What Are People For?, recommends all cityfolk grow something to appreciate the source of our food and stay connected to nature. I couldn't agree more.

    Sunday, August 24, 2003

    CAPTION THIS, PLEASE

    (with apologies to Tony Pierce)

    Friday, August 22, 2003

    WESLEY WILLIS DEAD AT 40
    Crap. Apparently he had leukemia and died peacefully of internal bleeding. I first encountered Wesley outside the sold out Mike Watt/Foo Fighters/Hovercraft show at the Metro in Chicago. Hovercraft featured Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Vedder. I was hanging out hoping in vain to score tickets to the show, when along comes this gigantic black man in a trench coat, yelling "Eddie Vedder! Eddie Vedder I know you're in there!" He went up to the door guy and gave him a head butt. "I got some new tapes. Ya want my new tapes." I was naturally terrified, yet intrigued that this guy actually made music. Sometime in the next year I heard "Rock and Roll McDonalds" on Radio K and realized this man was a twisted hurricane of accidental genius. This documentary revealed the darker side of Wesley: tortured by demons in his head, morbidly obese, surviving the violence and poverty of his Chicago ghetto home. He had an unstoppable primal drive to make music as a weapon against his demons. For us it's entertainment, for him it was survival. May Wesley and his demons finally rest in peace.
    A MOMENT OF SILENCE AND PROPS
    To mourn the current hiatus of my witty chum's blog, Liberry Blooze. What to do when your anonymous blog is outed in the workplace? No easy answers. I can only hope the liberry stories continue. But what of the indie rock (or Steely Dan), the politics, the view askew on things big and small? Not to mention the seedy, often illegal sexual escapades? Oh, well I suppose I could get those tales from the man himself. But I almost always learn things I didn't know about my friends from their blogs. The blog, it acts as a mutual impartial friend, eager to share and be shared. It's a strange world. Somehow knowing 'blog' is in the Oxford dictionary provides little help in our understanding.

    Thursday, August 21, 2003

    CAT FIGHT!
    Gawker's Elizabeth Spiers vs. Los Angeles. A real meta-snark moebius strip. For the record, Ms. Spiers really is a doe-eyed shy nerdy girl in person. Nice as can be. With just a sprinkle of glam and snark.

    Wednesday, August 20, 2003



    BLOGUMENTARY SCREENING #2: BLOGSESS!
    To all my homies -n- peeps at da B-totha-L-B: PEACE AND LOVE baby. Yeee-uh. Seriously, it was so great to see all y'all. Starfire, Barret, Ca-chee and Lumpy G actually drove down from Duluth. Man, I love you guys. I thought you were already in town or something. Sorry we didn't hang out more afterward. Let's make up for it when we roadtrip up to the northshore. Skinny dipping in Lake Superior? It could happen.

    Holy major local blog news: Sharyn got married! In the Seward Cafe courtyard, no less. Congrats. In case you were wondering, Sharyn is even cooler in person than on a web page. She also has a couple more pics: Chuck | Duluth crew

    The screening went great, except (a) apparently I was chewing gum during the Q&A, and (b) equipment problems necessitated playing an old cut from VHS. Can you keep a secret? Here's the latest cut (35 MB!). Because I love you guys, man. Y'all are my peeps, so sugary and delicious. I was happy to get some good questions from the perky host and the audience, including this guy. Then I sat down, relieved, and enjoyed a far better film called Dotcommies Revisited – a very funny short about the dot.com boom and bust. And a Flipp video. Never thought I'd screen with a Flipp video. So this is what it's like to be in the major leagues. Air....so..thin...can't....breathe....boobies.....everywhere.......dkljklj;rkkk

    Tuesday, August 19, 2003

    DEAN'S OPEN-SOURCE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
    Lawrence Lessig interviews Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's campaign manager, about the impact of blogs on Dean's bid for the presidency. Now if only *I* can get an interview with Joe Trippi...

    Our biggest hurdle is getting people over their disbelief that they can make a difference. And the one place where I think people are starting to get over that disbelief is on the Internet: because of the sense of a community they're getting when they go onto a blog, or when they participate in something like responding to the FCC, more and more people every day are starting to realize, "Hey, wait a minute, we do have the power to do something here."
    BLOGUMENTARY WORK-IN-PROGRESS SCREENING #2
    Curious about all the hubbub surrounding these things called BLOGS? Sick and tired of "good production value"? Wondering how a Sopranos actress kept Chuck from being arrested in a NYC Starbucks? Just plain horny?

    Well... then you might want to show up to the next CINEMA LOUNGE at Bryant-Lake Bowl for another Blogumentary work-in-progress screening! It screens with lots of other cool stuff, including the satirical short film Dotcommies Revisited:

    DATE: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 from 7:00 - 8:30 PM
    PLACE: Bryant Lake Bowl
    COST: Completely and utterly FREE!!

    Note: If you saw the DV-CINEMA screening, this is pretty much the same cut. So stay home and blog.

    Monday, August 18, 2003

    LINK JET

  • BlogJam has some awesome stuff, including a funny bit of Neil Armstrong landing on the f-ing moon and a definitive collection of Japanese 2-channel animation, including a DDR Tribute.

  • I like Occam's razor comics by Barrett Chase

  • NY Times adoringly looks back on Journey, and rightly so. Journey makes me wish I came of age in the early 80's and made it with a feather-haired girl in the back of a camaro. I'm sure my older brother did. Check out the hilarious promo (RealVideo) for the Journey Escape game for Atari 2600.

  • It's a pop renaissance! I'm totally digging the 60's psych-tinged sounds of Super Furry Animals new album, Phantom Power. Doesn't look like their U.S. tour with Grandaddy will hit Minneapolis. Grr.... On the way: New releases from The Clientele (also missing Mpls... last time we roadtripped to Chicago to see them), Beulah (400 Bar 10/27), Kraftwerk, and a CD/DVD compilation from Papas Fritas. Keith, the bass player for Papas Fritas, moved to L.A. and joined a "space glamrock soul" band called the solar saturday. I dig their tunes and you should, too.
  • Sunday, August 17, 2003

    WHILE BUSH VACATIONS, DEAN ROCKS THE NATION
    George W. Bush will be on a month long vacation in August. While the President vacations, more than 3 million unemployed people are having a sleepless summer trying to find work.  Join Howard Dean and thousands of Americans in August for the "People-Powered Howard Sleepless Summer Tour."

    "We are the great grassroots campaign of the modern era, built from mousepads, shoeleather and hope."


    I don't know if I can swing it, but Dean will be in Milwaukee, WI on August 23. Rally at 9PM. I've contacted the Dean campaign about getting a Blogumentary interview with the next President of the United States. Dare to dream. Tomorrow is the future. We're living in a child's dream. Apple pie and mousepads, Bush is going down. Don't pound a screw with a hammer, use the right tool for the job. You know the drill. Electric word life. It means forever and that's a mighty long time. Cuz in this life you're on your own. And if de-elevator tries 2 bring U down, go crazy.

    Friday, August 15, 2003

    I'M A GEEK
    I'm so excited! My boss just bought Designing with Web Standards for me. I had burritos and drinks with Zeldman (and about 50 other people) at SXSW. I've been screwing around with CSS and XHTML learning bits-n-bobbles, but now I have the bible. I'm on the path to Zen.

    THE ONION: Internet Social Networks

    Kristia has a terrible joke. If you laugh you're a racist bastard.
    MAKE FRIENDS WITH CHOW BUN!
    After reading this article about Friendster fakesters I couldn't help but think that Friendster owner Jonathan Abrams is a real jerk. I must side with the Fakester Manifesto. And so, I'd like everyone to meet (and make Friends with) Chow Bun, perhaps the very first Chinese half human/half bunny resident of Friendster. Enjoy!

    UPDATE: Friendster has already flagged my uploaded photo (the purple infant/bunny cartoon below) as NOT APPROVED. Now I've uploaded a Chinese baby photo, pending approval. I wonder how they catch it so fast? And what if I want my picture to be a scribbled infant/bunny rather than my actual photo? How would they know a photo is any more real?

    Meanwhile, why not check out this incredibly boring video of Jack Black talking about food on The Jennville Show. Slightly better is my hero Liam Lynch eating fast food and performing "Whatever" live with Dave Grohl. Oh man! I just realized I met Jen at SXSW. She's Liam Lynch's older sis. Ass-cool.

    [ some links via Kottke ]

    Thursday, August 14, 2003

    RABBIT BABIES FROM CHINA
    Scientists in China have, for the first time, used cloning techniques to create hybrid embryos that contain a mix of DNA from both humans and rabbits... [ Washington Post ]

    At last! The furry cuddliness of a bunny, the interactivity and future labor potential of a Chinese infant – all in one organism. The Greeks had their centaurs, the Chinese now have their man-bunnies. Oh my, or their woman-bunnies? I suspect the furries are creaming their cuddly animal costumes over the possibilites. "But, but," you're saying, "these creatures are unethical! They should have never been created!" Oh bosh! Flapdoodle poppycock and jiggerflam pigdashery, I say! Admit you are devilishly curious to see how one of these little critters would turn out. In fact, I challenge you to create a sketch or Photoshop doodle of what man-bunnies (or woman-bunnies, or infant-bunnies) might look like, and I'll post them here. Anything is better than my feeble drawrings. Send your sick creations to chuck-at-blogumentary-dot-org.

    Wednesday, August 13, 2003

    I AM ONE WITH THE MAGNETOVERSE
    I must tell you something very exciting. Today I had a CT scan for my sinus problem. I laid flat on my stomach with my head positioned on soft foam looking straight ahead. I was then inserted into a large white ultramagnetic doughnut - straight out of 2001. The CT scanner starts up with the sound of something spinning faster and faster, as if it's about to take off. I'm nudged back and forth in short bursts as the hyperdoughnut scans cross-sectional slices of my head. My mind drifts... This is everything I've ever wanted. The contents of my head can now be preserved and studied by scientists around the world for ages to come. The mystery of my genius will slowly be revealed and celebrated. I am, at last, immortal.
    SNIZZTASTIC QUICKLINXXX (tm)

  • Ever wonder what Gizmodo impresario Peter Rojas has in his apartment? Manhattan User's Guide susses it out.

  • NY Times article on Julie Powell, who is nearing the end of her journey cooking every recipe in Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it.

  • The Hollywood Reporter has an interview with Conan O'brien as he approaches his 10th Anniversary. My hero!

  • Walter Cronkite debuts his Philadelphia Inquirer column : I believe that most of us reporters are liberal... We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful.

  • Crispin Glover's infamous 1987 meltdown on "Late Night With David Letterman" is super disturbing. (Windows Media) [ via Incoming Signals ]

  • Speaking of Letterman, comic artist Harvey Pekar was on Letterman eight times. He writes & talks about the experience. I'm excited to see the film adaptation of his comic American Splendor. Lots more great stuff from Harvey at WKSU.

  • TOO MUCH FUN: Idiotland
  • I'M A REAL WINNER
    You heard it here first, folks. I won the coveted virtual seven-piece Ratchet Up tool set for finding the coolest conceptual clock. I chose the incredible Ambient Orb Device, which quietly changes color based on the weather or your stock portfolio, or whatever you want. Wouldn't it be cool if you could correlate it to a biological function? Like how hungry or horny I am? I would want a giant one perched on our house. Giant red orb = CHUCK IS HORNY. Giant blue orb = CHUCK IS FRIGID. Giant rainbow orb = CHUCK WANTS GAY PORN. And so on.

    MORE THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ME
    I've had a recurrent sinus infection ever since my wisdom teeth removal. Today I saw an ENT (Ear Nose Throat) specialist, which was lovely except for when he raped my nose with various slinky probing instruments. After the probing and some X-rays, he referred to my left sinus area as a "cesspool" and suspected an "oroantral fistula". My ambient orb device was glowing bright red throughout this experience.

    Oh, and we had a lovely fun-filled weekend at the cabin. Swimming and pontooning, card games and video games, feasting and drinking and merrymaking all-around. Here are a few pics.

    Saturday, August 09, 2003

    DROP DEAD GORGEOUS

    Beauty in Decay photography by Richard Dearney in 28mm. [ via Harrumph ]

    Our whole gang is headed up to the cabin for a few days. Have a lovely weekend.

    Friday, August 08, 2003

    RUN!!!

    www.arghnold.com [ via Harrumph ]
    REQUIRED READING: GORE SPEECH
    I often skip links to whatever everyone is buzzing about, but there are times when everyone needs to know. Everyone needs to link. Everyone needs to discuss. Al Gore's speech to Moveon.org is one of those times:

    Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals.

    In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.


    Companion required reading: The Bush Administration's Top 40 Lies About War and Terrorism by Steve Perry.
    FRESH HOT LINKS, GETCHER FRESH HOT LINKS!

  • Remember Free Mike Hawash? Well, he fessed up. We got all worked up over what turned out to be a bad guy. But it's really no surprise that we'll catch bad guys in a post-PATRIOT act, John Asscroft world. The problem is, will we also catch good guys? And will we have any way of knowing?

  • John Scalzi getting paid to blog for AOL. Nice gig.

  • OJR: Dean's Blog Builds Support Despite a Lack of Personal Input. Nevertheless, they're listening to (and hugging) bloggers. Also: PBS NewsHour piece on Dean's Internet strategy.

  • Also from OJR, a good article on participatory journalism. Howard Rheingold also mentions a collaborative journalism project Matt Haughey and friends are working on. Matt mentioned this to me in March, and it seems they've smartly narrowed the focus to the 2004 elections.

  • Talk about service. Moments after I signed up for TypePad Pro (thanks to Lane for the discount) and tried in vain to import my Blogger posts, I got an email from Anil Dash: Saw you might be having trouble
    importing into TypePad... let me know if you need any assistance.
    Wow. I love the TypePad office pics, in which Anil is sporting a Blogger shirt.

  • Wired News article on Craiglist: The Movie. How do I get Wired News to do a Blogumentary article? I need a gimmick. Somebody cook me up a gimmick.

  • Next up on cyberlawyer Lessig's blog: Dennis Kucinich. Here's the Kucinich blog.

  • Google has introduced a cool new feature: Google News Alerts. This is great! I'm trying out a daily email about news stories with the word - what else? - blog.

    BE ADVISED that my jet-fueled mojo will descend upon the Creative Commons Moving Image Contest with soul-searing tenacity, squishing tightly through my fingers and dripping from my chin like a magnificent feast.
  • Thursday, August 07, 2003

    MAKE OCT. 25th PAUL & SHEILA WELLSTONE WORLD MUSIC DAY

    Best idea I've heard in a long time.
    BEHOLD, OUR NEW HOUSE: TROGDOR'S COVE

    Pictures Here

    So yeah, check it out. It's all greeny and medieval. Can anyone think of a better name? Gilgamesh's Tavern? Castle Wolfenspunk? Tomb of C'thulu? Peggy?

    Wednesday, August 06, 2003

    WHITHER THE SOUL OF BLOGUMENTARY?
    I got a double-whammy of rejection today, and I'm feeling rather deflated. Rejection #1: Jerome Foundation grant. I could have done a lot with the money, but I could have done even more with the vote of confidence. The panel felt my budget was overblown; they thought the trailer was OK except for the terrible "Shatner-esque" intro; and they didn't see how the topic of blogs could sustain a longer format. Pretty fair actually. Rejection #2: IFP Market. Tons of submissions, only a few slots available, thanks for playing, better luck next time.

    I've got a lot of mojo invested in this thing. Right now I need to wallow and mope... just for a minute. Then I need to figure out what I'm going to do. John Schott got me enthusiastic about it again and gave me some great ideas and possibly some contacts. He really likes a documentary about the open-source movement called Revolution OS. (Sidenote: pic of me with Richard Stallman) He'd like to see a version that's not trying to be entertaining for a general audience. I have interviews with many of the blogging luminaries, and lots of the technology community might like to hear what they have to say. Right now I only have little soundbytes of those people because I'm focusing on the broader blog story. *sigh* So many directions it could go. It's a big bloggy blob and I need to squish it down into something tasty.
    UNIVERSE MAN, UNIVERSE MAN
    John Schott of Ratchet Up – you have been reading it, haven't you? – is having a little contest to find interesting and cool conceptual clocks online. He sites a few examples: Industrious Clock is one I'd seriously like projected on my living room wall. You've probably heard of the Doomsday Clock, which reflects international nuclear tensions.

    But the coolest of them all is the 10,000 Year Clock of the Long Now: This is an idea to create a working clock which will mark time for ten thousand years - not really because we need more clocks in the world, but because we need more encouragement to start contemplating the possibility of a distant human future. The Clock of the Long Now is an icon to long-term thinking. – Long Now board member Brian Eno who composed a soundtrack for the clock.

    This clock ticks once a year. The cuckoo comes out on the millennium. Sobering, isn't it? "Now" is getting shorter and faster. In the blogosphere, where blog addicts check Google News/stats/blogdex constantly, "now" is really a matter of an hour or minutes. But think about how long humans have been on earth in relation to nature. How many of us are really thinking about the future? I have blinders on most of the time, although I'm starting to think longer. Buying a house makes you do that. 30 year mortgage. Not that we'll have the house that long, but probably a good 5 years. How about 50 years, 500 years, 5,000 years? That's the purpose of the Long Now clock.

    Monday, August 04, 2003

    CIVIL LIBERTIES CORNER
    It's old news by now, but the ACLU is challenging the Patriot Act:

    “Ordinary Americans should not have to worry that the FBI is rifling through their medical records, seizing their personal papers, or forcing charities and advocacy groups to divulge membership lists,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU and the lead attorney in the lawsuit. 

    “We know from our clients that the FBI is once again targeting ethnic, religious, and political minority communities disproportionately,” she added. “Investing the FBI with unchecked authority to monitor the activities of innocent people is an invitation to abuse, a waste of resources, and is certainly not making any of us safer."
    [ Full ACLU press release | USA Today article ]

    Big news, right? It's the first legal challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act. Congress has been increasingly critical of it (even though they voted for it). Now for the punchline. Ashcroft was interviewed on FOX News, and here is the only "discussion" of the lawsuit:

    HUME: All right, now, let's talk a little bit about the Patriot Act, which, while as our poll -- we said it earlier -- indicates, enjoys considerable public support, you had the ACLU filing a lawsuit, as the ACLU will do.

    ASHCROFT: What?


    Badump-BUMP! Tssss! Thanks for coming out everybody, hey nice tie! Is that your wife or is that all you could afford? Yes friends, even Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn had better discussion of the issue, thanks to David Cross:

    David Cross excerpts on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn (Quicktime, 7.5 MB)
    David Cross excerpts on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn (Windows Media, 6.5 MB)

    Further reading:
  • US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban [ The Independent ]
  • Weinberger joins Dean campaign
  • Dean on covers of Time and Newsweek, TV ad
  • Lots of great political stuff on Space Waitress
  • Local man visits patriotic other-universe
  • Rex is in Spin
  • Pray for Bill O'Reilly's Death
  • Friday, August 01, 2003

    GRANDADDY IS BETTER THAN RADIOHEAD
    Don't get me wrong, I'm a loyal member of the Radiohead brigade. I've never seen them live. But seeing Grandaddy live tonight for the fourth time, I'm reminded of how much more important they are to me.

    It's like when you argue with your girlfriend about something (not that I do that...) and you know you're right, and you can back it up from here to Chinatown, and then she starts getting teary-eyed. Oops. You can't argue with feelings. Radiohead used to be about feelings, but they've been awfully heady on their last few albums. I can dig that, sometimes. But what I want most from music is to feel something, not to think. I want to connect and surrender in a way I don't understand. Grandaddy, Badly Drawn Boy, the Flaming Lips, and Low all take me there and I love them dearly for it.

    ADDENDUM: Alan Sparhawk, in his Low Tour diary, says of Radiohead: "They are really nice people who make great music and try very hard to make the whole experience for everyone around them as positive and selfless as possible." Who am I to argue?

  • CYBORG LIBERATION FRONT Maybe Radiohead is just more posthuman than me, and I'm jealous.

  • Sen. Norm Coleman Wants Answers from RIAA Wow.

    I think my RSS feed is fixed now. rabbit rabbit.