The Today show didn’t remind me of my own home, but it was about “home,” and that was almost as good—in some respects, even better. Morning after morning, in the studio that seemed to me like a cheery New York apartment, with its living-room furniture and kitchen, and following a format (news, weather, segment, segment, repeat) as inflexible and calming as a morning in elementary school, Jane and Tom learned how to cook things, how to budget for a family of four, how to choose a vacuum cleaner.
Pitchfork: "The Day That Never Comes:"
Well, you have to hand it to Metallica— the first track released from Death Magnetic doesn’t sound like a rock radio sure-thing. It’s about eight minutes long, with builds and discrete parts and lots of shredding just for the sake of shredding.
I heard this on the radio the other day. I’ve been a Matallica-hater from about the sixth grade. The band’s name has always bothered me. The obviousness of it maybe.
I remember that Acid Andy and I sat down one afternoon to listen to Metallica. I had been going through his records and came across Kill ‘Em All. I said I hated Matallica, and Andy admitted that he had been a fan once, but explained that he had always felt ambivalent about the band’s early stabs at death metal. They could never quite kill the beast, so to speak. Andy played “The Four Horsemen” as an example. When Lars (is that the singer’s name?) barks “PESTILENCE!” we burst out laughing. We doubted that Lars could define the meaning of pestilence.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I kind of liked the new song, especially the “shredding just for the sake of shredding.”
Haggertyhoff
I’ve been avoiding the barber for the last two weeks. I really need a haircut and a beard trim. My wife said to me last night, “Do you realy think that the Dan Haggerty-meets-David-Hassellhoff look is a wise style choice?”
Maybe not.
The more interesting question is why my evil twin decided to write the Great Republican Novel in the first place. True to his own life story, the book suffers from too much plot and not enough character. But it’s not nearly as bad as I’d hoped, and it’s chock-full of accidental revelations
— Ralph Reed’s novel plan to blow up the GOP Convention. - By Bruce Reed - Slate Magazine
Coats nails something I’ve never been able to articulate:
In the spring of 2004, I quit hip-hop. It wasn’t the first time. Our relationship was stormy from the start. Hip-hop was my first literature, and it was Rakim, not Fitzgerald, who first made me consider writing. Still, all that macho blathering was a weird match for me, a kid with the self-esteem of an earthworm.
I’ve never thought I disliked rap (i.e., hip-hop, though someone who knows about these things once told me that hip-hop was a term created by people ashamed about their taste in music) because I was too white. (I’m a nutty latte brown in fact). No, it’s because I’m too much of a wussy. When I was coming up, the people who listened to rap were beer-swilling football players. These people were my antithesis, so I was never going to accept the soundtrack of their lives as my own.
If vice-presidential picks are a reflection of a campaign’s conclusion midway through the general election, then this is what Biden says about the Obama campaign’s lessons thus far: Voters don’t believe in change. Not yet, anyway, They’re open to it. But they’re skeptical. They need to be persuaded, cajoled, convinced. There was a hope in the early days of the Obama campaign that simple, sharp difference would be enough. Obama was different in aesthetics and experience and age and ideas. Different would assert change. Hence the long and enlivening Kathleen Sebelius boomlet. Obama/Sebelius would have represented change. Visually, her and Obama on a stage together would have been the most powerful image of political transformation in decades. But a choice like her presupposed belief. Otherwise, you’d be adorning a cathedral that had no promise of parishioners.
—
Dear Robert,
Read Ezra Klein and, since you’re obeying my every command, look at this electorial map. Doesn’t Michigan look like the Ohio of 2008 if McCain chooses Romney? Or am I missing something?
Jeff
Image via Wikipedia
Dear Robert,
My hat’s off to you again. The AP is reporting that Joe Biden will be Obama’s running-mate. You called it months ago: Obama’s VP will be someone seasoned, white and male. Who did I predict? Kathleen Sebelius?
There were some issues with the show that Sucks played….yes, it is true. The owner of the building was not happy with hearing this terribly loud racket that sounded totally unmusical to his ears. It also didn’t help there there were more people on the stage than actually in the audience. Had there been at least 30-40 people in there at the time, maybe it woulda been different. It has been disappointing to me that many folks who appear at house shows are not showing up at Luigi’s shows.
The owner of the building put Luigi’s on notice that things needed to change, citing stylistic problems with the kindsa bands he was noticing there. There’s still plenty of shows that can happen there, but just not anything really wild and noisy or anything that seems “too scary” to the owner.
[…]
So, I’ve had to cancel a few shows…
