Oh Brother!

There are greater injustices in the world for me to complain about, but this one just jumped out at me.

Tim Russert's son, Luke, is now joining NBC as a correspondent at large for the upcoming conventions.

I'm sure he's a sweet kid and probably can string together an intelligible report, but I'm still dealing with the PTSD from the tsunami of Russert-mania after his death.

Can't we let it go, already?

My Week With Technology

Monday: After power outage (and subsequent 1.5 hours on phone), determine with help desk that the router blew out.

Tuesday: Screen on treasured iPod Touch starts intermittently not working.

Tuesday: Purchase new router and, after much consternation, get it to play nice (I thought) with the work machine.

Wednesday: Dan about jumps out window, which would not accomplish much since my office is on the first floor, when he realizes how awful this new Belkin G-series router is. I lose connectivity every few minutes, it seems. This kills my work connection, too, so I have to constantly log back into my VPN there. And scrolling through email? Forgetaboutit!

Wednesday: iPod problems persist.

Thursday: I will be taking the router back, getting an N-series (thanks, Ryno) and cashing in on the service plan I bought on the iPod.

Just waiting for the next thing to go wrong...

Godspeed...To The Prince of Darkness

Wow, what a year for political journalists and talking heads...

Poor Bob Novak (who had already had one hell of a week, producing a false story about McCain's veep announcement and hitting a biker in DC) was diagnosed with a brain tumor yesterday.

How awful...

Need New Router

Boy, life really has degenerated when a now-dead router has messed up my night. I got home to find that power seems to have gone out. It was already back on for me (but not for the folks using Cleveland Public Power...which is an odd shift, usually us Illuminating customers get the short end of the stick) but I had internet problems lingering.

After far too long on the phone with AT&T's service folks, we determined that my one-year-old Linksys router had bit the dust.

This fellow suggested a Belkin, so I'm going to go pick one up tomorrow and have a followup call scheduled.

Anyway, the psychic damage this did to me reminded me of this Pew poll...and the increasing list of "things" Americans can't seem to live without.

Looks Like I Picked The Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue

It's been hard to avoid an article about Cuil.com today, but it seems that their PR folks outpaced their server capacity guys...their servers are down on day 1.


Just imagining Lloyd Bridges in Airplane! right now...

Barry is the Acting President?

While there's also the potential for some fun wordplay, that's what Frank Rich thinks in today's Time's Op-Ed Page...

This one is sure to be the talk of the news cycle as people try to digest and put the first-term Senator's overseas trip into some perspective.

Looking forward to Barry's MTP appearance in a little while...

Quote of the Day

We'll keep this one in mind, Senator...I'm sure this line will come in handy one of these days.

“It is just amazing that someone would roll the dice on the economy for an ideological concept."

US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) on Republicans who voted against the housing bailout that passed the Senate this morning.

Fox News Announcement

Summary of the Current Veepstakes Contenders

No new news here, but the Journal has a nice summary collage of the current conventional-wisdom Veep choices. Here, of course, we're rooting for Gov. Palin.

Go Nanooks!

Brent Mydland, RIP

My favorite of the Grateful Dead keyboardists, Brent Mydland, died 18 years ago today.

After summer tour ended, Brent had to pay the piper for some of his addiction-fueled misdeeds and wanted to go out with one last bang, instead. He overdosed and died.

(While the fate of the dead Dead keyboardists is tragic, it is almost humorous how much their stories resemble those of the drummers in Spinal Tap.)

In my mind, this really was the end of the Grateful Dead. While the Vince years had a few highlights, the band just never seemed to get its footing after Brent checked out.

His case is a sad one because he was so damned gifted, but always seemed plagued by personal problems and feelings of inferiority...the latter of which were completely unfounded. He had more talent and soul in his pinkie than the rhythm guitarist will ever have.

I'm posting two versions of one of his more popular songs, Far From Me.

The first is from the second of two shows they played in Alaska in June, 1980. The next one is from Brent's second-from-last show, at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, IL, on July 22, 1990.

You can hear the degradation in his voice and spirits over the years, with the latter version being downright spooky. His voice is filled with pain and the insertion of profanity into the song speaks to something one just doesn't want to know about...

(As a little side note, this last show is interesting because I'm pretty sure my family was stuck in a traffic jam from this same show. We were on the way back from a vacation up around the Great Lakes and the World was very close to where I grew up.)

So long.

Far From Me, 1980-6-21, West High Auditorium, Anchorage, Alaska


Far From Me, 1990-7-22, World Music Theatre, Tinley Park, Illinois

The Neverending Drew Peterson Saga

Every now and then, I have to go back to the Chicago Sun-Times to see what's going on with the Drew Peterson affair. Luckily, they talk about it often enough on the Steve Dahl show, so I'm alerted to details in this important story.

If you'll remember, Drew is listed as a 'person of interest' in the murder of his young wife in Bolingbrook, IL, a suburb of Chicago.

In the last week, his neighbors, Paula Stark and Len Wawczak have gotten into the act, claiming to have worn a wire around Drew for several months as part of an undercover op with the Illinois State Police.

Yesterday, Drew had allegedly been mouthing off, claiming to have slept with Paula at some point.

Understandably, this upset their son, Lenny, who ran into Drew at the local barbershop.

What ensued in the parking lot is some real Jerry Springer material, with Len Sr. showing up, shoving Drew and getting arrested by the cops.

Here's a few of the verbal highlights:

Len Jr.: "Hey, m-----f-----, you ain't nothing but a murderer. I'll beat the f--- out of you. Say something!"

Peterson: "Hit me," putting his hands behind his back. "I'm going down."

Len Jr.: "Take the cool sunglasses off! I ain't Stacy, bitch! You sissy!"

Onlooker: "Knock his ass out!"

Len Sr. (now on the scene): "Say right now you f----- my old lady! I'll come around right now and drop you like you want!"

Len Sr (after his arrest).: "I wanted to let Drew know he's not going to mess with my family...If I knew I was getting arrested, I would have knocked the m-----f----- out."

Another Celebrity Obama Endorsement

This is great.

Dale Leo Bishop was executed in Mississippi the other day for the murder of Marcus James Gentry in 1998.

Just before the lethal injection, when given the opportunity to speak his last words, he suggested that folks cast their vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming election he won't be around to see.

For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice.

While this deathbed endorsement is timely and funny, it can never beat this one. That will never be topped.

Did Barry Jump the Shark?

The New York Times, this morning, was nowhere near kind to Barack Obama after his Berlin speech yesterday.

The news analysis noted that the speech lacked almost any real substance or detail and when it did (he suggested that the Krauts, as well as the rest of the EU, is going to have to pony up more troops in Afghanistan), it kind of slipped by the crowd, all decked out in their Yankees hats and waving Obama-supplied American flags.

David Brooks goes further on the Op-Ed page, calling him out for illegal use of optimism not grounded in reality. When used in tandem, these are good things, but without, as Brooks writes, Barack really seems to have jumped the shark.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to be very happy to have a President I can probably be proud of in a few months. The cowboy routine with W was only attractive for a very short amount of time.

I just wonder what we're going to see when he's faced with making an actual legislative or military decision...something that forces you into some real choices beyond words in a speech. For him, they often seem to be a form of abstract art, where it can mean whatever the viewer/listener wants it to mean.

Oh, Will You Shut Up About the Damned Surge!

If a surgeon lopped off my arm during a surgery to repair a chipped bone in my pinkie finger, then was able to replace said arm with a Captain Hook stump three years later, should we give the doctor a parade or an Atomic Wedgie for messing me up in the first place?

It's beyond me why John McCain keeps running around talking about his support for the surge as if a) He actually has some operational authority over troop strategy in Iraq b) The idea really is evidence of a keen military mind and not just someone who legitimately got past the techniques taught in the first chapter of Playground Fights for Dummies.

He's at it again today, saying how his judgment is so great and Barry's is so poor based on their support for the surge. The problem, of course, is that if McCain is so keen on looking at historical wartime decisions, it makes perfect sense to look back at who got us into this mess to begin with!

Who displayed good judgment then, Mr. Man?

Who had a good read on our place in the world then, Senator?

Did "Al Queda in Iraq" even exist then?

God, I feel like Keith Olbermann, now.

Reflections Performs "Lonesome and a Long Way from Home"

As of the time of this posting, I have What is Dan Listening To set to Jerry Garcia's Don't Let Go, a commercially-released recording of his band at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre in May of 1976.

I've had this for a number of years and recently dug it back out to enjoy some Garcia from that period.

Unlike the Dead, getting soundboards of his shows was a little more difficult...not sure if the sound folks were just different or what the story was, but hearing something so clear from a period where his creativity and quality were at such high marks has been a real trip.

I couldn't find anything posted of him performing one of my favorite songs from that era, Lonesome and a Long Way From Home, so I found a copy of a Garcia tribute band, Reflections, doing it.

Not quite as the good as the real thing, but it'll do for now.

Media Item of the Day

Cheesy Answers

By most accounts, today's McCain press event in a Bethlehem, PA grocery store was just the latest stumble in an inexplicably poor campaign.

I hadn't paid much attention to this until I was watching Mrs. Senor's CNN show and they showed him in front of the dairy aisle trying to explain his historically-inaccurate portrayal of the so-called Sunni Awakening.

While the toilet paper aisle might have been slightly more appropriate, if cliche, there was something poetic about where he chose to give such a cheesy talk.

With the great spring we had, watching to able Democratic candidates go after each other in the primary, McCain has been disappointing so far in making the November decision a difficult one.

While I might not have been going into it with the full intention of voting for him, he's not giving me much reason, either in the substance or style of his campaign, to give him a hard look.

See a Broad to Get That Bodiac, Lay'er Down an' Smack 'em Yack 'em!

David Zucker, the comedic geinus behind the Airplane! movies has now set his sights on Michael Moore and plans to put out a little comedy about the left wing soon.

This should be cool.

McCain May Be Funny, But the Women of the Political Press Are Funnier

MoDo's column today, citing the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet, has coined a new name for Barry's campaign plane that I hope really takes off (get it...takes off)...

O Force One.

Her column this morning on The One's overseas adventure, as usual, is worth your time.

That John McCain...He's a Funny Guy!

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic has an item on the press credentials Johnny Mac is handing out to the second-stringers not invited over to Barry's Excellent Adventure.

One of My Favorite Billy Joel Songs

The other day, I was listening to a bootleg of Billy Joel playing the second-from-last concert ever at Shea Stadium.

It was pretty run-of-the-mill like Billy...which is to say it pretty much kicked butt.

He puts on one hell of a show, as I was lucky enough to find out in person last year. I have several bootlegs of his covering the length of his career and they're just great go-to music for me.

Anyway, Vienna was on my mind, so I thought I'd throw up a studio cut of it.

G'night....

My New Favorite Word

Locavore- Someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better.

The New York Times has had a fetish for this food trend lately, with at least two front-pagers in the last few weeks. I also read an article in The American Conservative a few weeks back that makes the case that eating locally like this is also, contrary to the hippie stereotype, not solely the domain of the lefties.

By eating more locally-grown food (not only veggies, mind you, but also some good old beef and pork!), one may be able to reduce the influence of the ADMs of the world, as well as the Department of Agriculture and their stranglehold on the whole process.

I am not painting myself as anything close to an expert on this topic, but merely parroting what seemed to be reasonable-sounding arguments to me.

The Missionary Position

I read a pretty interesting book, The Missionary Position, Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice, by Christopher Hitchens, this weekend.

I've always kind of gotten a kick out of the author's magazine articles as well as his television interviews and debates, but had never read any of his books.

It's about Mother Theresa and takes a stand that I've never taken notice of anyone else defending...that this saint-to-be may not be so saintly after all. He equates MT with a slick televangelist who dupes the willing and the unwitting into supporting (both financially and through actions) their fanatical, often-destructive beliefs.

He cites compelling evidence that she was not the simple little Albanian farm girl the Church's PR folks would have you believe in. MT was as slick as they come when you talk about getting world leaders in line.

While I won't recount the whole book to you, a striking example of her method was the letter she wrote to the judge presiding over the (Charles) Keating Five trial in California.

Keating, a devout Catholic, had donated many of his ill-gotten monies to the Missionaries of Charity and, as the trial neared its close, got a letter on his behalf from MT requesting leniency. In it, MT feigned the bumpkin who does not understand "the matters you are dealing with," and only asked for the judge to do what Jesus would do.

When you contrast this letter with the comparatively sophisticated arguments she laid out when speaking to political or church bodies, one can be quickly disgusted by the faux naivte in the letter to Judge Ito.

Paul Turley, one of the prosecutors, later wrote MT back, informing her that the monies she recieved from the convicted Keating were stolen and asked her what Jesus would do if he found himself in posession of the fruits of a crime. He offered to put her in touch with the fleeced Americans, but never heard back from her.

He also takes considerable issue with her crazed opposition to contraception, finishing one chapter with the following:

(Her) call to go forth and multiply , and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitble losers of this very lottery.

As with anything of this sort, particularly something written by an author with an axe to grind, I don't take it as the final world on her life or role on earth, but it was a strangely refreshing book for me.

If Barack Obama Was a Red-Headed, Teenage White Boy

This is what his European tour would look like...

Niiice...

Princess Diana Makes Stuffed, Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Yum, this looks good.

Come See Hockey At Wrigley Field

Despite the pleasure I derive from watching soccer, I've just never been able to get into hockey. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm not all that big a sports fan anyway, so it does not bother me.

However, there's a pretty good likelihood of my being tuned in on New Years Day, 2009, when the Detroit Red Wings face off against the Chicago Blackhawks, in an outdoor game at Wrigley Field.

I watched the outdoor game last year, up in Buffalo and thought it was really cool, so seeing a game from the Friendly Confines can only be better.

Tickets to the Winter Classic are going to be hard to come by (plus, figure you're looking at NYE-rate hotel rooms) so this one will be best enjoyed from the couch.

I Didn't Know There Were Many Black People in China!

While it's hard to figure out just how far into the true category this is when it's only being picked up by small media outlets at this point, the PRC has apparently told nightclub owners in Beijing that they are not to serve Black or Mongolian patrons.

This is easily the most politically-charged Olympics in my post-infant life so, while I don't think the story is impossible, it's also a fact that there are a whole lot of people out there who would have sufficient motivation and means to push stories that are both damaging and plausible, but also false.

And Now...A Woodstock Moment...Brought To You By Joe Cocker

A friend kept telling me about this and I couldn't figure out why it would be so funny since I knew all the words to A Little Help From My Friends.

I was mistaken, obviously.

Holy Attention-Deprived Douchebags, Batman!

I can almost understand people who paint their faces before a sporting event in the hope of riling up the crowd, whose energy might transfer to your team for a better performance.

But there's no excuse for anyone over the age of 11 to be dressing up to go to a movie.

The only possible exception is the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

So let it be written.

The Best Website I Have Seen in a Long Time

I think this is not the newest site in the world, so no need to tell me how cool you were for noticing it first, but Stuff White People Like is hysterical.

The Poll I'm Running on the Side

Take a sec, if you want, and vote over on the sidebar.

The truth is that I post stuff up here that amuses me, so I don't anticipate dropping the Dead off the roster here or altering much based on response...I'm just asking out of curiosity if anyone listens and enjoys the tunes at all.

Thanks!

Grateful Dead Perform "Maybe You Know"

I'm pretty tired and don't have much to say, but did want to throw up some more Brent Mydland stuff...

This is Maybe You Know from Tax Day in 1983 at the Community War Memorial in Rochester.

Mitt Romney Is Going to Mess Up His Pretty Hair

If he gets his nose buried any further up John McCain's ass, that is.

Yesterday, he credited the brilliant war strategist with being the person who"authored some time ago the philosophy that said a surge would work in Iraq."

"Authored the philosophy" that bringing in a whole boatload of people (who arguably should have been elsewhere doing things of more moral and strategic value) is one way to overwhelm an enemy?

I mean, that might very well be true, but it's a concept that can be grasped by any second grader.

Romney's argument also implies that McCain had a much more hands-on role than he probably did in planning the current tactics in Iraq.

Czech, Mate!

Friend Of McCain, Mike Murhpy, had a clever little quip on Race for the White House a moment ago.

Commenting on Johnny Mac's little historical blunder the other day, he said (paraphrasing):

I don't know what everyone's whining about. I still refer to it as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so I'm really out of touch!