Citizen K. is attempting to write a mystery set in South Texas. In the first chapter, three kids find a body on a windswept spit much like this one. I was at Drum Point one evening about twenty years ago with my wife, toddler son, and about every aquatic bird known to South Texas: Pelicans, egrets, herons, sandpipers -- you name. I've revisited the place many times. Last night, we were too early for the birds, but the fish were jumping. The wind was so strong that it blew up grains sand so hard that they stung my legs.
Rushbo Stupidism of the Week: It was a tough call this week, what with Rush blaming the shooting at the Holocaust Museum on Obama's anti-Semitism and all. But he set a pretty low bar on the very first hour of his Monday broadcast, so low that even he couldn't descend it:
Barack Obama sees America's role in the world as not good. It is offensive to the sensibilities of millions of people to hear a member of the state-run media refer to a half-black, half-white human being with no experience running anything of substance referred to as a god.
Friday's Choice on Saturday: The great Jimmy Lafave washes the taste of Rush away with his beautiful cover of "Catch The Wind":
Yesterday's shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Museum was the third act of violence this year by a right-wing domestic terrorist. It follows the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas and the shooting of three Pittsburgh policemen by a gun-rights lunatic. It's past time for responsible conservatives -- if any remain -- to stop blaming the victims and demand a halt to the hateful rhetoric that has fueled this onslaught.
Two things seem indisputable to me:
The violence is in part a response to the election of the first black president, and
The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage have played a part in this, as has every Republican politician who has kowtowed to them.
These people won't stop their hate speech because liberals want them to. They might under pressure from principled conservatives. If there are any of you left, it's time to make your voices heard.
Some years back, the merchants of Bishop, Texas ("great schools and great churches") abandoned its business district when the state built a highway bypass around the town. The businesses picked up and moved along the bypass, leaving the buildings behind.
When Ronee Blakely's character Barbara Jean sings "Dues," she provides the emotional epicenter of Robert Altman's film Nashville. Barbara Jean's heart-wrenching account of her tortured marriage connects with her fans at the same time that her preoccupied, insensitive husband remains oblivious.
Note: Brother Joe sits in today while Premium T. and I fly to South Texas.
Saw a great show Friday night - John Prine headlining w/ "special guest" Steve Earle. Steve opened and played for about an hour solo/ acoustic. Did a couple of cuts off the new album (Pancho & Lefty, Colorado Girl and the bluesy tune whose name escapes me), and then mostly some classics - Tom Ames Prayer, Someday, Goodbye, Dixieland, The Mountain & Copperhead Road. Couple of others. Played for about hour - he was totally on.
But John Prine was up to the task. I had really gone just to see Steve, but you forget how many John Prine songs are out there that you know. I'm not sure of most of the titles. I know he played the draft tune from his original album, "Sam Stone," "Lake Marie," "Paradise," "Angel From Montgomery" and a couple from his later albums that I have. I probably knew half the songs, but he really demands your attention. Great showsman. Had two backup guys for about half an hour, played by himself for about half an hour and then everyone came back out for half an hour.
I think this was a one time show because they were both in the area, but don't miss John Prine if he comes your way. Both American classics.
John Prine singing "Angel From Montgomery":
Those College Republicans: It's just a laugh a minute with those (white) guys...
As always, click to enlarge. For more Tom the Dancing Bug, Ben Sargent, Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, Tony Auth, Tom Toles, and Zippy, go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...
JUST A SONG: Woody Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)":
To Guthrie it is the "they" who took the money, who "chase us like outlaws," who are the anonymous ones, hiding behind legalisms to rob and exploit the migrants until there is nothing left but "dry leaves to rot on my topsoil." The use of the word "my" implicates all of us in the fate of the migrants, for it is we who eat "the good fruit."
Friday, Premium T. and I watched Robert Altman's Nashville. It was her first time and my sixth or seventh. As one of the top movies of the Seventies, arguably the best and most important ten years of American cinema, Nashville's place in film history is secure. I won't try to review it here because there's little I could add. But...
...talk about an opportunity to watch the hand of a master at work: Nashville is Altman at the absolute top of his game. Too often today, post-production is where movies go to die: A mediocre soundtrack and literally hundreds of cuts a minute mask a weak script and pedestrian direction. With Altman, though, post-production is where rough cuts became art. The overlapping dialogue is carefully mixed and the editing brings to bear his myriad abilities to direct everything from sprawling set pieces -- such as the opening of the film when all of the characters arrive at the Nashville airport and wind up in a mult-car highway crash -- to intensely personal moments such as Barbara Jean's (Ronee Blakely) on-stage breakdown. Most impressive of all is the club scene in which Altman distills a multi-character set piece down to Keith Carradine singing "I'm Easy" to Lily Tomlin while three other women think he sings to them:
Now watch the scene again. Notice how the slow, nearly unnoticeable zooms and almost casual pans set up the one quick cut towards the end of the scene. This cut enables the impression of Carradine and Tomlin looking at each other across a crowded room as if no one else were there. It is brilliant, meticulous film-making, the kind that most of today's directors have neither the skill, emotional insight, or artistic courage to pull off...
Here's the scene where Blakely, as a Loretta Lynn type, follows her heartbreaking song "Dues" with the on-stage breakdown:
Incidentally, the actors in Nashville wrote and sang their own songs. Blakely was the only real singer of the group, but whatever price Altman paid for that was more than made up for by the
immediacy of the various vocals. It certainly had a way of committing the actors to the scenes in which they sang...
Just My Little Piece of the World has more here...
Foxessa points out that George Tiller is hardly the first victim of right-wing repressive attitudes and actions against women's reproductive rights. In fact, this goes back over a hundred years...
Like all thinking people, Projections is mystified by the Republican concept of judicial objectivity. Says Republican senator Jeff Sessions (AL), the one-time segregationist and ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committe,
Do I want a judge that allows his or her social, political or religious views to impact the outcome, or do I want a judge that objectively applies the law to the facts? That is the central question around which this entire nomination process will revolve.
Based on his record of consistent support for school prayer and calling the NAACP "Communist inspired," I'd say that the former is exactly what Jeff Sessions wants. He just wants a nominee who subscribes to his social, political, and religious views...
President Obama finds his ancient twin. ZenYenta has more here...
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) wants to apply the Dutch model of water management to Southern Lousiana and prepares to take on the Army Corps of Engineers in the process...
Rushbo Stupidism of the Week: Rush has been in a lather all week over President Obama's Cairo speech, excreting the usual "Obama is an angry man who hates America" nonsense. But any time one of these clowns mocks the Holocaust, well, ya just can't pass on that:
Did you see Angela Merkel standing next to the guy [Obama]? Put this in perpective. She was standing there, and she's not happy because, you know, he's -- they're not getting along and they haven't gotten along ever. So there he is. He's at Buchenwald today, the concentration camp, and he is beating Germany up. He's ripping them to shreds over something they did 60 years ago one day after praising all of Islam. Now, can you imagine? Now, of course Elie Wiesel gets up there and he does his thing, but it's 65 years here or close to it, and so she's up there, and did you see the look on her face? It's more than just solemnity on her face. Trust me, my friends, I know these things. And he's up there and he's ripping Germany, what it did 60, 65 years ago, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah -- one day, one day after praising to the hilt Islam and talking about how Islam is a nation -- America is a Muslim nation and so forth. Trust me on this; she wasn't happy.
We deplore this terrible taking of a human life and trust that the left will not exploit it for political purposes.
We deplore the taking of all human life, even that of an abortionist. And just watch: The left will exploit this for political purposes.
"Evidence" suggest that Tiller performed unsafe and illegal abortions. The Kansas jury that acquitted him of just that was the tool of a liberal governor and a liberal judge.
Tiller was a baby killer who specialized in late term abortions and who committed tens of thousands of them. (Insert torture porn description of a late term abortion here.)
The elimination of Tiller the Killer was justifiable homicide, but we played no role is creating the climate for it. All we did was speak the truth.
Who?
Obama is a socialist. And the most pro-abortionist president ever. That makes it his fault.
I don't blame everyone who checks a pro-life box on the pollster's chart. I know that ambivalence is the emotion often cast onto the sidelines of this debate. But it is well past time for the anti-abortion movement to denounce those who are in the profession of inflaming passions: Those who call Obama the "most pro-abortion president ever." Those who ratchet up the rhetoric on a Supreme Court nominee. Those who cull doctors from their honored profession by labeling them "abortionists."
That anti-choice groups have created a dangerous environment for doctors who perform a legal medical procedure seems self-evident. You don't see pro-choice groups picketing doctors who don't perform abortions, threatening them and publishing their home addresses, or murdering them. The rationalization by the right-wing blogosphere of Dr. Tiller's assassination is repugnant. The left doesn't need to politicize this tragedy: The right is doing that without our help...
Wayback Machine:The Who Sell Out (Deluxe Edition), The Who. When The Who released Sell Out in 1967, it arrived during the Summer of Love as a contrarian tribute to what Dave Marsh called in his excellent essay about the album the romance of the transistor radio and to the kids who learned about new music from listening to them. Replete with commercials and public service announcements, Sell Out boomed thunderous anthems like "I Can See For Miles" on the heels of novelty songs like "Tatoo" before leading into such pop wonders as "I Can't Reach You" and lovely ballads like "Sunrise." The album captured the experience perfectly. While the term "concept album" carries connotations of pompous grandiosity, Sell Out is a concept that works from beginning to end.
My first transistor radio was about 4" x 4". I regularly removed the back of it and studied the innards. It was my link to popular music, and it had one monaural speaker that I often eschewed in favor of the single earbud that came with the radio. When I listened that way, I could turn up the radio as loudly as I wanted to. That's what music was to me in those days: Loud and monaural.
Now, Geffen Records has released a 2CD Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out with all kinds of bonus tracks and -- best of all -- the vaunted mono recording of the album. The mono version is the Criterion Collection of CDs: When the sound floods out of my speakers like a great flood from a bursting dam, it's like I'm hearing the album for the first time. I suppose a sound engineer could dissemble the stereo version and rebuild it from scratch with improved results, but I don't think he or she could ever capture the romance the way that the mono version does. If you are a fan of The Who, you already know that your collection is incomplete without the Deluxe Edition of Sell Out. If you're not, well, there are worse places to start. Incredibly highly recommended...
Robert Frost's Banjo reviewsStew Called New Orleans, the excellent new CD by Paul Sanchez and John Boutte. RFB's review includes a video of their beautiful interpretation of Paul Simon's timeless "American Tune"...
Friday's Choice. Greatness: The Who perform "I Can See For Miles":
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