Christmas party went off good. Gift exchange. Talent show. Funtime. My performance/pep-talk went over well; I’ll post the text for the archive in a bit.
Number one quote of the night: “Motherfuckers try to front, but the Greatful Dead were hard as fuck.”
In the meantime, here’s something sure to make you smile:
LGD reminded me this morning of one of the top 10 rock performances of all time:
The White Wizard plays keyboard, sax, drums and then does crazy experimental sound shit. That's what I call talent.
And remembering this got me organized enough to resurrect one of the greatest web-properties of all time: VAGABENDER.COM RETURNS, BITCHES! I was specifically thinking of East Nashville, which is where Travis introduced us to that video, and the glory that was The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Pretty soon this will kind of be creepy, I’ll bet. But for now, let’s enjoy that #1 summer jam…
Hell of a catchy chorus.
This is what you call the closing argument. I expect the big 30-minute show on Wednesday to be a more intricate version of the same. By all indications, Barry is pulling away, which is just great to see. Hopefully w/all the early voting, the big GOTV push can take it to the next level and we’ll get a serious mandate to do all these things.
The reality is that it’s going to take several years to turn around the Bush momentum. Four years is enough to start to see a shift and hopefully earn another term to bring it on home. The big gamble is whether or not Obama will be able to govern, and whether or not the House and Senate will start to act w/purpose, and just how far out into the wilderness the ultra-political end of the GOP rump will end up. Hopefully the infighting there will hamper their ability to foul up an Obama administration (for reference see Clinton, Bill, years 1992 – 1994), and hopefully also the signs that Obama is a much more capable leader than the old Clenis will bear out.
The proof is in the pudding. Economically speaking we’re gonna have to spend money to make money, and there’s a big trifecta out there with infrastructure renewal, rehabilitating existing housing stock to be energy efficient, and this notion of a “National Venture Fund” for renewable energy. Basically we need to build the physical foundations for a 21st Century economy which (suprise!) isn’t entirely based on made-up financial derivatives and speculative sprawl-building in various deserts. We actually need some real shit.
If that starts to happen, and it starts to work, we could really actually honestly see something like a new New Deal.
Which would be sweet.
Bonus Links
Try and find video of Usain Bolt’s 100m astonishing world-record run this summer from Beijing. I remember happening to catch it in the kitchen in Westhaven. It was spectacular.
But you can’t find it online.
NBC owns it, and their stuff is only avaiable via their own (shitty) website and using a (shitty) proprietary Microsoft plugin-requiring format.
I was going to make a post using that video an analogizing w/the presidential race — as the McCain tailspin tightens and the backstabbing begins — but I can’t. Because the Olympics are the intellectual property of NBC Sports, and they’re a massive gang of wankers.
And speaking of a massive gang of wankers:
The little blond girl making monkey gestures at the beginning really gives me a twisty feeling in my stomach. Drawing out the toxins, this election is.
Joe the plumber is america’s next top political football. I found this invocation to give me a little sense of trepidation, mainly for reasons Bowers outlines here. It seems to tap into the Reagan-era shit that’s worked really well. I’m personally totally non-plussed, but it makes me nervous when people start attacking Obama for wanting to “spread the wealth around.”
But it appears that maybe America is waking up to the fact that this has been happening, except the “spread” has a decidedly upward drift. As one pundit put it, “the rich have been strip-mining the middle class” for the past twenty five years.
And Joe? Well, who knows if it will matter in the non-reality-based community that is the world of Cable News, but it looks like an EPIC FAIL of a campaign strategy:
So Joe (whose name is Sam) the Plumber (who isn’t a plumber) was used by McCain to attack Obama’s tax proposal, though Joe/Sam actually pays less tax under Obama (if he actually got around to paying his taxes.)
Brought to you by the same people who think character attacks are more important than issues.
That’s compounded by the fact that the ad McCain released (from professionals) prominently features the word “Everbody?” in one of its fear-factor jump-cuts.
This explains a lot. Lolcats are running the McCain campaign.
Another one, from everyone’s favorite comic denizen of Rudy’s:
Kudos to Katie. I think the “Strong on Women” tagline is fucking genius. It’s both mocking of conventional campaign discourse, and also clearly communicative of the creepy, overbearing, paternalistic attitude that typifies the Right’s position on all these issues.
Love it!
I’ve long enjoyed the static version of Get Your War On’s sardonic humor, and this animated/voiced version made me laugh out loud, but it’s pretty sick shit.
Incidentally, the most plausible rationale for Palin’s insistence that victims of rape pay for their own forensic kits (rather than the police doing so, which is the humane norm) is that these kits contain emergency contraception, which Palin likely equates with abortion, which she also staunchly opposes as an option for victims of rape or incest.
McCain, also not so much into choice, btw. Loud and proud about his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade.
This SaysMeTV site is potentially a hugely game-changing service. Letting normal people advertise (and having community funding around it) could have a radically democratizing effect on the media space, because you can drive a top-notch 21st century marketing campaign from your basement now.
