Meming Chris and Playing His Game

Took this from Chris Lefty Brown's blog and thought I'd go along:

Favorite Beatles song: Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
Favorite solo song by a former Beatle: Imagine or What Is Life
Favorite Bob Dylan song: Like A Rolling Stone
Favorite Pixies song: [sorry]
Favorite Prince song: Purple Rain
Favorite Michael Jackson song: nope
Favorite Metallica song: One
Favorite Public Enemy song: Welcome to the Terrordome
Favorite Depeche Mode song: Just Can't Get Enough
Favorite Cure song: Love Cats
Favorite song that most of your friends haven't heard: anything by Branford Marsalis
Favorite Beastie Boys song: none
Favorite Police song: probably Synchronicity
Favorite Sex Pistols song: suck
Favorite song from a movie: Tiny Dancer - Elton John (does this count?)
Favorite Blondie song: Call Me
Favorite Genesis song: anything pre-1977(Chris said Throwing It All Away; he needs to get out more)
Favorite Led Zeppelin song: Stairway (so cliche but it has been since 1986)
Favorite INXS song: I like wanking with a rope around my neck?
Favorite Weird Al song: Eat It
Favorite Pink Floyd song: really too many but live On the Turning Away always kills
Favorite cover song: She Came In Through the Bathroom Window - Joe Cocker
Favorite dance song: Tears In Heaven ;)
Favorite U2 song: With or Without You or Bad (both from Rattle & Hum)
Favorite disco song: admittedly, I so love the Bee Gees that anything by them, though I love Nights On Broadway the most!!!
Favorite The Who song: Baba O'Riley
Favorite Elton John song: Tiny Dancer/Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Favorite Clash song: not a fan of
Favorite David Bowie song: Changes
Favorite Nirvana song: I hate this band
Favorite Snoop Dogg song: ?
Favorite Ice Cube song: ?
Favorite Johnny Cash song: Ring of Fire
Favorite R.E.M. song: silly - Stand serious - It's the End...
Favorite Elvis song: Suspicious Minds or In the Ghetto
Favorite cheesy-ass country song: country either is either crap or life's true biography, so no cheesy-ass stuff applies
Favorite Billy Joel song: Scenes From an Italian Restaraunt
Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: Backstreets (Chris said Thunder Road, so he's forgiven for his Genesis faux pas)
Favorite Big Audio Dynamite song: ?
Favorite New Order song: Bizarre Love Triangle
Favorite Neil Diamond song: America
Favorite Squeeze song: ?
Favorite Smiths song: Frankly Mr. Shankly
Favorite Tragically Hip Song: ?
Favorite Beach Boys song: Oh Caroline, No
Favorite Dave Matthews Band song: Ants Marching
Favorite Dire Straits song: Sultan of Swing (Chris is right again)
Favorite Elvis Costello song: don't know
Favorite Guns 'N Roses song: the guitar solo of Paradise City
Favorite Jimi Hendrix song: Voodoo Chile
Favorite John Mellencamp song: Small Town
Favorite Living Colour song: Cult of Personality
Favorite Neil Young song: Down By the River
Favorite Paul Simon song: only one? okay, Still Crazy After All These Years
Favorite Simon & Garfunkel song: Bridge Over Troubled Water
Favorite Queen song: Bicycle
Favorite Radiohead song: ?
Favorite Sting song: If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Favorite Tracy Chapman song: Fast Car
Favorite Van Morrison song: St. Dominic's Preview
Favorite XTC song: ?

And I'm adding some of my own:
Favorite Allman Brothers song: Blue Sky
Favorite Grateful Dead song: Ripple
Favorite Green Day song: not possible
Favorite The Band song: The Weight or Tears of Rage
Favorite White Stripes song: Seven Nation Army
Favorite Willie Nelson song: On the Road Again or Whiskey River
Favorite Indigo Girls song: ?

someone else, pass it on!

It Ain't Exactly Christmas,

But I'll take Friday afternoon's handing down of five indictments against Scooter Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff. I was hoping for other heads to roll including Cheney's and Karl Rove's, but Libby is a start. Knowing enough of my Watergate, the special prosecutor will try using Libby to get to the other two, if not more, but also knowing more Watergate, the higher-ups probably won't get touched. Unfortunately, it looks like Rove gets to keep his job. With that, things could get deadly as Rove won't keep under his shell for very long and emerge ready to unleash against anyone unfaithful to the Bush cause. However, the special investigator's findings do show, in a large sense, that what was really indicted on Friday was the Bush Administration's and neocon movement's farcical hatching of the Iraq War. If Diplomat Joe Wilson's criticism about CIA reports stating that yellowcake in Niger blah blah meant nothing, the Bushies would have let the bleeding heart punditry alone. Instead, the Bushies sought to attack anyone out of the fold that appeared to challenge the authority (read: ostentatiously high-mindedness), legality or factual basis of the war and in the end, history will see through this house of cards. Now that politicians can mock shock and surprise (or now truly see what they were so ignorant to miss) about being lied to by the administration to go to war (something this nation's government has a history of doing, mind you), let the facts show the true situation of 2002/2003: the Bushies wanted someone to pay after 9/11 and Iraq served as a good straw man; Donald Rumsfeld on 9/12 told his department to connect the WTC attacks to Iraq; the neocons (i.e. Rummy and Cheney) wanted to topple Hussein in order to get to Iran and Syria (not that there's anything wrong with doing that, it's just now they've screwed up any form of support in the Middle East permanently); State and CIA were unsure of the Iraq/WMD connection but were coerced into going along with Defense; Bush manipulated Colin Powell to use the U.N. rouse into making Annan, Chirac and Shroeder look like appeasers; U.S. military personnel have committed war crimes against soldiers from Iraq; the Bush Adminstration has created a most heinous foreign policy of government-approved torture against dozens of prisoners of war; the Bush Adminstration has violated the Geneva Conventions and created legal "footholds" of determining these prisoners as "enemy combatants"; President Bush has sought and/or considered two of his White House counsels (Harriet "sucks to be hated by James Dobson" Miers and Alberto Gonzales) for the Supreme Court, both being privy to and counsel for his handling of the Iraq War and possibly condoning the prisoner torture policy; in a nutshell, Bush lied, thousands died. We'll only get to see years to come whether this giant lie was as severely devastating and as much of a failure as LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin fiasco but it surely is worse than William McKinley's debacle leading to the Spanish American War of 1898. At least we got to keep Puerto Rico, establish a totalitarian dictator in Cuba for half a century, and then butcher 400,00 Filipinos and steal their country until Japan stole it from us in 1942. We sure cleaned house there, Bill thanks.

The Coolest New Death Metal Band

Boy George and the Compassionate Conservatives!!! Don't believe me?

Here.

Okay, here.

Still not convinced, go here.

Or here.

Or better yet, yep, here.

Nah, go here.

Their best song is here.

Their coolest moment on stage is, you guessed it, here.

Their next single is, oh, let's see, HERE.

I'm beginning to think I'm the prophet Jeremiah. Please don't think I'm pretentious, but remember our OT friend? He was seen to be a fool and a crazy man for stating the obvious about the powers to be, only to FRIGGING BE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING HE SAID.

Off to Yoshi's and have my doors blown off by some amazing musicians ce soir

Stop what you're doing and go pick up the new Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis, the lost '57 performance of Monk and Trane, the new Susan Tedeschi, I hear the new Neil Young kicks bootie and maybe even the new Macca.

Living life in peace...

Happy birthday, John. You would have been sixty-five today. Imagine that.

It Is Alive!!!

In my "Friends" column, please click on UberSteve, as he's blogged for the first time since BEFORE THE CALIFORNIA GENERAL PRIMARY OF 2004!!!! We've been checking his pulse for months, and good thing we've kept a long wake (remember the "Coupling" episode?) because the body just sat up. Let's hope and pray for a speedy recovery...

Failure of the Will

The Op/ed section of today's SF Chron bristled with the now-famous rant by right-wing pundit George F. Will. Titled, "Why Harriet Miers should not be confirmed", Will rails on the newly-nominated Supreme Court pick and her lack of experience.

George Will's an interesting guy. He likes using big words. He likes feeling superior to others, as if his political punditry is his passive-aggressive way of getting back at that cute girl or popular guy who wouldn't give two shits about the dorky over-achiever who always bragged about the high score he earned in math class. Sometimes Will does possess the knack for astutely pointing out actions or positions taken by newsworthy individuals that are incorrect, stupid, idiotic or just plain dumb. However, and more often than naught, I read Will with the distain towards someone who lives in a parallel universe with a self-possessed case of entitlement who believes that everyone must hear what he thinks. Today's column keeps Will in the latter of my two categories.

Will rightly believes that Miers shouldn't be confirmed based on her lack of experience. He's also correct that Bush's "Trust me" position on the Miers nod, with absolutely no empirical evidence of her positions on legal issues, holds no water. I also love reading Will's growing frustration with the man who, just four years ago, was seen as the savior of the federal government from everyone not-from-Mayberry: "He [Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophistocated judgments". I'd like to leave the quote there, except, admittedly, it is incomplete. However, I do like the sound of this sentence defining the last four and a half years of the Bush presidency. Will continues: "Few presidents acquire such abilities [to construing the Constitution (the completion of the first quote)] in the course of their presidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections." How much more damning press can the President take, considering this quote is from someone so far right that he makes Barry Goldwater question his party affliation?

Will's points are well taken, yet the man fails to support his reasons of Miers' rejection. Why Will is unconvincing and even repugnant is seen in his reasonings against Bush. Will states that Bush has burned his bridges with the Right because he signed the McCain-Feingold bill which limits, in Will's mind, "political speech." Limiting campaign funds is speech? If that's the case, then bribery should be on the to-do list of the Good Samaritan starting tomorrow. We're watching Tom DeLay going to jail (thankfully - read this week's Newsweek to see just what a major prick - and all in the name of Jesus - he is. Chickens, meet roost) for "political speech"? Sorry, George, but if you gave ABC a million dollars in order to say on Sunday morning whatever you wanted, you'd be fired. Access to the poltical process via funds is bribery, not political speech, you tool.
Second reason for Will's short circuit in rational thought comes in his attack on Bush's naming a woman in the interests of diversity: "Identity politics [Will rants about Miers having solely X chromosomes for the sake of the Court being "diverse"] holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal - that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender". This is where my rationality and non-partisanship self-immolated. Does Will, like most well-meaning nineteenth century landed white men, believe that white men still possess the ability to serve as guardians of the rest of the nation and act, vote and run the world as if they "knew" what was best for us? Where in Hell does he believe that someone is capable of understanding the world from a universal, singular perspective? Myopic, sexist and racist as he believes his views actually are not. Does he believe that he can make medical decisions for a woman giving birth since he's seen a video of a baby popping out of the birth canal and therefore, because he can describe the process in three-syllable words, should have the final say on what should happen in the delivery room simply because he says so? Finally, as we are different - in myriad ways, in exactly the ways Will points out yet fails to understand - that because the differences in perspective have been quashed by those with white upper-class, well-educated penises, that people should just listen to those with those white upper-class, well-educated penises talk, using a body part just down the street from said reproductive organs?

I just received my latest New Yorker magazine (as usual, WAY late - why do we still test whether postal employees use drugs? Maybe if mine DID drugs, I'd get my mail on time!) and it's a killer. Hendrik Hertzberg, in an essay bringing to readers' attention the growing fear of the possible threat of nuclear terrorism, quotes Graham Allison's book, "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe" and how nothing has been truly done in the last four and a half years to stop this terrible threat. Hertzberg, quoting Allison: "'Americans are no safer from a nuclear terrorist attack today than we were on September 10, 2001. A central reason for that can be summer up in one word: Iraq.' The invasion and occupation have diverted essential resources from the fight against Al Qaeda; allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan; fostered neglet of the Iranian nuclear threat; undermined alliances critical to preventing terrorism; devasted American's standing with the public in every country in Europe (and, I must, say in this country, too) and destroyed it in the Muslim world; monopolized the time and attention of the President and his security team; and, thanks to the cry-wolf falsity of the claims about Iraqi weapons systems, 'discredited the larger case for a serious campaign to prevent nuclear terrorism.'" I'm not sure whether this is the most damning summation of the Bush presidency or the necessary epitaph for the worst president in the history of the United States. All I know is that the truth speaks as a clarion that the citizens of this country, fooled twice (shame on us both times) need to wake up and start a political revolution, one that returns this country on the path established pre-2001 and one that is void of neocon rightwing religio-messianic reactionary clueless freaks that have any sort of connection with that lame-ass family from Houston that likes to think it's got true New England roots.

Miers Who?

Just a quick note - my astute political theorist wife fired off a great piece of insight, though it just being a hunch. She stated that Bush doesn't really want Miers on the Supreme Court; he just fired her name out there to test the waters of his conservative base. Miers won't get the nod, as conservatives don't want her, so she'll go down in flames only to be succeeded by a hard-core right wing ideologue. Bush can then say, "I'm only doing what my base wants me to do," shove this person through confirmation and then the Democrats won't have a chance to block. The 5-4 split will be locked as the successor will probably be someone in her/his early 20s so that person will be on the bench for only sixty or so years. Only with our luck, right?

On a good note, I did pick up a couple of cool records last night. My wife and I are fans of Sheryl Crow and her latest one's less rock and more ballady. I always love listening to new Sheryl records and playing the "I hear this song and this band and this producer" game with each song. She's obviously a Beatles fan as much of her records have a Fab four influence. However, it's a Beatles > Jeff Lynne's wet dream > Aimee Mann type of Beatles influence, but there's always music that makes one think, "doesn't that sound like the Beatles even though they never wrote a tune or a song like that?" Lyrically, Crow's pretty banal but her vocals and the music sound great, which is the whole purpose of rock and roll anyway.
The second record is by the band My Morning Jacket. "Z" is a cool record a la Pink Floyd's "Echoes" done by Crosby, Stills & Nash sung by Steve Perry's "Dream On" outtakes. Their previous album, "It Still Moves" is a stronger rock album but this new one's fun as well. I can imagine many late summer night outdoors drinking a beer with the guys shooting the breeze listens.

Ups and Downs

Lots to talk about since I haven't been blogging very often. There's just so little time. At any rate, there's a lot to talk about.

Firstly, I wanted to mention how sad I am to hear about the passing of musician Paul Pena. I first heard of Pena in 2000 listening to David Gans' "Dead to the World" radio show on KPFA. Pena's 1973 New Train album had finally been released and Gans played it in its entirety. Ever hear something and wonder where it's been your whole life? After hearing the album, I realized that I knew Pena's music without knowing the man; he wrote "Gonna Move", a song covered by both Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. Pena also wrote "Jet Airliner" that was made huge by Steve Miller. Living in Fresno at the time, I could not track the album down and had to live with the fact that the record was just too elusive to find.
Moving to Brentwood, I immediately found the album and turned some of my friends on to it. Then, in May of last year when Derek Trucks came to San Francisco, Paul Pena joined the band on stage for "Gonna Move" and it was a true treat to see the man that made such a beautiful record. You owe it to Paul and yourself to listen to New Train.

On better notes:

Tom DeLay is the target of a vast left-wing conspiracy except for the fact that separate and independent grand juries are indicting him on charges of corruption and money laundering. We all know that this is the case of the liberal media, panicky Democrats and and effete corps of impudent snobs blah blah blah. Tom, you're a frigging crook and while cloaking yourself around the flag and Jesus may work for the ignorant voters of Texas, it won't in several courts of law. Nice knowing ya. Maybe you can spend some time after you're sent to jail writing your name in the book of rightwing reactionary demagogues like Spiro Agnew. Good riddance.

You know, I just spent an hour typing up a huge review of Intelligent Design and then just lost the damn post!!! I'm not going to retype it as I've lost an hour of work and time in my life. Sorry, you'll just have to know what I think and chalk this up to yet another novel, like Joyce's destroyed, right?

Eight years!!! What a great ride!