Maybe I Should Vacation in Denver This Summer

The LA Times' political blog, Top of the Ticket, has a little snippet that there's now a lot more rooms available in Denver in August, now that so many Clintonistas won't feel like partying down in the Mile High City.

Dan's eyebrow arches mischievously...

A Clip from The Office

The earlier posting on office language made me think back to the original BBC's The Office and this off-color joke...don't listen if you're in earshot of someone with no sense of humor.

Profiles in Courage Award Winner, 2008

In a stunning display of political backbone, Al Gorelioni came out in favor of the Barack Obama for President movement.

Earlier in the day, the guy who could have cleaned Bush's clock if he'd ran an even mildly-competent campaign in 2000 also announced his support of July coming after June and China hosting this year's summer Olympics.

Firefox 3...Pain in the Ass!

So I just "upgraded" from Firefox 2->3...thinking I'm jumping ahead in the world

I'm sorely disappointed as none of my plug-ins, bookmarks or passwords imported over.

One would think this would come with the standard installation flow.

I thought everything was erased, but I ended up figuring out where they are backed up on my machine through some cockamamie search process.

This ticks me off...

On Language

The BBC has a piece that's simultaneously hilarious and infuriating on officespeak that drives people mad.

It's obviously quite Anglo centric, but you hear a lot of this crapola on this side of the pond, too.

Nice Mullet, Jerry

Here's a really cool cut of the Jerry Garcia Band doing Evangeline, on September 10, 1989 in Mansfield, MA with Clarence Clemons.

Well, upon re-reading that, they're actually playing a song named Evangeline. An alternate interpretation of that sentence provokes...a quite disturbing mental image. But I couldn't resist the temptation to leave it in there.

Ella Puede Sí!

As time goes on, I realize that I can no longer look down my nose at people who follow soap operas and other sorts of dramas on television...because I do, too.

Mine are just shown on different channels.

In a rather bizarre announcement, and one I can't quite settle on the meaning of yet, Barry announced today that Patti Solis Doyle will be the chief of staff for his yet-unnamed running mate this fall.

Who?

Patti, a product of the Chicago (Rchard M.) Daley Machine, was Hillary's assistant during the White House years and eventually became the manager of her Presidential campaign until she was canned after Super Tuesday.

What do we make of this?

Is Obama setting the plate for a Hillary nod? The lovely Latina might help with inroads amongst Hispanics and be a familiar face when blondie joins the team later this summer.

Or could it be a big, public "F-U!" signal to the junior Senator from New York.

While I think the latter is a much more likely scenario, I can't wait to see how it shakes out!

Good News for Entourage Fans

I started to get the hankering again to check out some Entourage. I could not remember when the last season ended, but it'd been too long for me.

Did some searching around and they apparently have ammo for at least another 3-4 seasons.

Next season was supposed to start airing in June, but the writers' strike pushed this back to a September start date.

Awesome.

Dark Days Looming for the Internets

I've been following stories like this for some time, but they have mostly been in quasi-techie forums...but now that this story has made it to the Sunday's front page of the Old Gray Lady, I might really start sweating bullets.

The article is about how ISPs are moving to consider tiered pricing and bandwidth limits. When they plotted out how many gigabytes the average user transfers a month, I confirmed what I already know...this dreadful bootleg habit has me many, many, many standard deviations above the mean...confirming the accusations of deviancy I've heard all my life, I guess.

So while the argument for pay-as-you-use internet is clear on one hand, they also duly note that it's just this creation of artificial scarcity by providers that may have slowed down the initial growth of the internet.

Everyone remembers when AOL had its pricing based on the # of hours you spent online per month and some associate this with stifling the penetration of the internet to all facets of our lives.

Similarly, just as the media companies are trying to encourage people to spend more time transferring information and entertainment online, they are starting to plot out the fences.

I'm sure there'll be some kind of reasonable way to survive, but I did find my toes curling a little bit while reading this one.

Bob Weir...One Funny Cat

Kind of hard to hear, but they were asked if success has spoiled the Grateful Dead.

Editorial Cartoon of the Weekend

I thought this was quite funny...

Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News

Sunday Mornings Will Never Be the Same Again

While I won't go melodramatic and claim to literally be in shock, this is a major loss...

Vote for Barack...It's the American Thing to Do

Well, well, well...I must be on a Jewish Minnesotan kick lately...what with the Franken post the other day and now something about Thomas Friedman, the esteemed foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times.

Friedman's column in yesterday's paper gets at something important. Just the fact that a guy with as silly a name as Obama's, with such an Amish quilt background (minus the Amish), really makes this one of those "only in America" stories that chest-thumping patriots like to talk about.

He writes the column from Cairo and asks, rhetorically, whether the keys to power are truly available to all citizens of a country like Egypt.

Of course not.

Just having gotten someone like Barry to become a major party nominee is something that distinguishes us from most of the rest of the world.

Now, his background should in no way be a substitute for preparation for the job and that's not the argument Friedman or I are making. But I will argue that all these America-first rednecks who won't vote for 'that mooslim who goes to a church' because he has a funny name ought to take a step back and look again at what makes this country pretty cool.

More Great Deadhead Commentary

In reference to an Oade Brothers recording of the classic 6-30-85 show at the Merriweather-Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD...Looking back over this one, I think I will have to dust it off tomorrow!

Will also try to get up a cut of their Keep on Growing cover from that night.

Let the critics have their Keith & Donna, I'll take this serving of tasty, wild 1985 summer glory anytime.

I Hate Minnesota (Femi)Nazis

We may have found some ground that can sustain Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken at the same time.

Seems that Senator Amy Klobuchar and others up in the frozen tundra might be ready to stay home or get another Democrat to run against Horseyface Coleman for his US Senate seat this fall.

These folks remain apparently ticked off about Franken's career as a satirist, during which he...wrote satire, some of which was off-colour and sexist if you read it listerally.

While I can understand Minnesotans being a little bit trigger-shy when it comes to electing someone from an entertainment career, it's downright silly for them to draw this kind of line in the sand.

And the DFL had better be careful because Franken has a better shot at defeating Norm than St. Thomas grad, Michael Ciresi.

Hack Gets Hacked

Sorry, couldn't resist the subject line...I actually don't think that little Dennis Kucinich is that much of a hack.

But the other day, after he introduced 35 articles of impeachment against W, his campaign website was hacked and taken down for a few hours.

Another Favorite from One of My Favorite Bands of All Time

Here's a little bit of a slower Ramones song...when they did their priceless cover of Needles and Pins.

Enjoy!

The Decline of Western Civilization

I guess I have the power to change the channel (or, to more accurately reflect my viewing habits, never turn there in the first place), but VH1's Celebrity Rehab is just such an immoral show.

While Dr. Drew Pinsky will dress it up and try to feign some social value to the show, which follows has- and almost-been celebrities through some kind of attempt at removing the scourge of chemical dependency from their lives, it turns it into something more like a comic freakshow.

They just announced their new lineup for the upcoming season. Rehabbers include Tawny Kitaen, Cleveland native Steven Adler and Rodney King.

While our society and entertainment in general certainly has greater evils, I'll use up my free bit of space out here on the tubes to say that, until they begin donating their profits from the show to getting help to people who really need it, "Shame on you, VH1."

George Herbert Walker Bush...Terrorist Sympathizer?

E.D. Hill again brings home the bacon when it comes to idiocy on the Fox News Network.

Last week, teasing a segment on one of their favorite topics (which I often find interesting, truth be told), body language.

She referred to the fist bump that Barry and Michelle did at his St. Paul victory speech last week as possibly being some kind of "terrorist" gesture.

The bump is something that I took note of when she was on stage with him and actually found it quite charming. Luckily, their expert seemed to give little credence to Blondie's suggestion, but ... what a dipstick!

Media Matters has also put together a nice pictorial layout of the fist bump's notable practitioners.

A Cut from the First CD I Ever Bought

Wow, this dates me...but the first CD I ever bought (yes, I think it was actually old by that time!) was Face Dances by The Who.

Here's one of the more popular cuts from the album...You Better, You Bet.

I never totally got into The Who beyond the popular radio cuts, but this album does hold a special place in my heart and the video also features a few good windmills by Townshend, so it can't be that bad!

Too Darned Hot

I'm too hot to care enough to do much posting, but hopefully this nice-looking t-storm we have rolling in will cool it down.

But for now, here's a funny picture I came across on failblog.

Al Franken...In it to Win It

Over the weekend in beautiful Rochester, Minnesota, the state Democratic Farm Labor Party had their convention and picked Al Franken to be their candidate to go up against douche bag Norm Coleman.

While I'll stop short of endorsing everything Franky seems to be talking about these days, during the time I was up there, Norm (then the mayor of St. Paul who had recently switched his registration from Democrat to Republican) was a guy who made my skin crawl. So I'm for just about anyone who sends him out to the glue farm.

Norm's slimy New York accent just makes one guess that his breath stinks of old luggage.

It was not exactly an easy ride for Franken...as of late, the GOP machine has been pulling some interesting tax stories about him as well as a satirical piece in Playboy from the 1990s that, when read literally, would be offensive.

How stupid.

No one reads the articles in Playboy!

So anyway, I'll enjoy watching this race as the next few months tick by.

Tubby, in a Moment of Prayer

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

I'm pretty sure my Congresswoman and I do not pray for many of the same things.

Here she is at Hillary's speech last Tuesday in New York City.

Buh-Bye!

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Put Dis Guy Over By Der In Da Superfans

I really don't know why this Chicago Sun-Times article caught my eye this morning, but as soon as I saw the guy, and read his speech pattern, he reminded me of way too many people I knew in the greater Chicagoland area.

He won 25K in a contest sponsored by the paper. Here, he relates the winning moment, at 7-11, as well as his future plans.

"I go to the guy next to me: 'I think I won,' " Kronenberger recalls. "He was like, 'Get the hell outta here.' Then, he looks and goes, 'Ya won.' "

Kronenberger knew exactly what he wanted to do. "I think I'm just going to go on a nice vacation with my wife and kids," he says. "I always wanted to check out Hawaii. Maybe a nice Hawaiian vacation."

And the ladies of the Kronenberger house approve?

"You kiddin'?" he says. "No doubt about it."

I think he belongs on Bill Swerski's Superfans...

Some Tunage Before I Turn In

Here's the show I was listening to on the way home this evening. I had not heard it in a few years, but immediately remembered why October 29, 1977 at the Evans Fieldhouse at DeKalb's Northern Illinois University is one of my all-time faves.

1977 is a top year for some people...the band's sound was just in a really nice groove and it was one of the last years before bad habits started to take their toll on certain band members with Hispanic surnames.

While I'm not in full agreement with all folks on 77, this show really shines in my book. The scorching Mighty Swell surprises as an opener, but the real highlight for me is the Estimated->Eyes in the second set. If you listen to nothing else, check those out and let the music wrap around your head.

The Vagabond Who's Rapping At Your Door Is Standing in the Clothes That You Once Wore

This wonderful cut of Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue by the Good Old Grateful Dead goes out to Hillary...it was the encore out at the Charlotte Coliseum on October 5, 1984.

(Even though she's not going away anytime soon...)

Guess Who Bobby's Rooting for in the NBA Finals

I suspect that someone from the Bay Area would rather root for Satan himself than any team from SoCal...so Bob Weir donned a Celtics jersey for Saturday night's RatDog gig at Hampton Beach Casino in New Hampshire.

I just grabbed a tape of this show, so it should be on the list for tomorrow.

Dick "Big Time" Cheney...Appearing at a Chuckles Near You

Big Time made a funny joke today at the National Press Club.

Talking about the research his wife did on their family tree, and how she found a few tangled branches, he quipped, "So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia."

Robert "Grand Wiz" Byrd (D-WV) is pretty pissed off.

RIP, Bo Diddley

Another one of the masters has left us.

Pfleger Reels It In

Father Michael Pfleger apologized to his parish this morning for the allegedly racist and sexist words he spoke last week as a guest pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ.

I don't care enough to repost the rant (even though I got kind of a charge out of it), but his only sin as far as I'm concerned, is that he should have known better.

He expressed surprise and disappointment this morning that people are fixating on a minute or two of his sermon and not on the larger problems facing our society. Furthermore, I guess he's gotten quite a few angry and threatening emails since he went nationwide.

This is a disappointment to me. I've casually admired the Loyola Chicago grad from afar for some time. He's certainly way out there on the fringes (and if a certain Catholic friend still reads this, he'd probably argue that Pfleger should be sent packing), but he appears to be associated with more positive work, and puts himself in more danger while doing said work, than a lot of other men who wear the collar.

Keep you chin up, Padre.

Almost as Funny as Springtime for Hitler

The Ramones perform The KKK Took My Baby Away in Sweden in 1981.

Gabba gabba hey!

Fill My Hole, Jerry

I don't know if Deadheads have always been this funny and I've just been missing it, but here's another gem from etree...

(I did not have this show, btw, so am grabbing it)


A perfect show and one of the top 25 shows. Top three of the Brent Era. If you don't have this show you got a big hole that now can be filled...

Grateful Dead - July 4, 1981
Manor Downs - Austin, Texas

The Real Dirty Harry

While it's now taboo to make any sort of suggestion about Barry being on the wrong end of a meeting with firearms, one can't help but imagine Harold Ickes throwing down a little, "Do ya, punk?" at Obama after the MI/FL decision yesterday at the Dem Rules and Bylaws meeting.

Not only did he offer that this was not a way to start building party unity, but dangled out there the threat to appeal the committee's decision (which made the SCOTUS in Bush v. Gore look downright NASA-like in the precision with which they assigned voter intent) to a higher power, much closer to the Denver convention in August.

Game on.

Below, here's a typical Hillary supporter at yesterday's event.

Ironically, I Got This Screenshot From a Pro-Hillary Video

More on the MI/FL decision later, but this video was linked over on Hillary's site and it just amused the hell out of me.