WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican Mike Huckabee said Sunday he would not back down from a 1998 statement in which he said he hoped Baptists would "answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."
Caught Charlie Wilson's War over the holiday and it is fantastic. Based on the true activities of Charlie Wilson, a congressman from Texas' 2nd district back in the 80s, the movie shows how Wilson went about arming the rebel Afghans who eventually beat back the Soviets. Sounds dull as hell, but the story is brisk, the acting excellent, and there is an undercurrent of humor that pulls it all together. Tom Hanks is Wilson, Julia Roberts plays a Houston socialite who hates communism, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is just unbelievable as a CIA operative who puts the pieces together. Mike Nichols directed and it is definitely one of the best movies I've seen this year. Oh yeah, you get to see Tom Hanks naked in a hot tub full of nude strippers. At least Joe will see it now.
This probably won't garner as much attention as the next celebrity DUI, but Barron Hilton, the man who's daughter made slutty fashionable, is donating 97% of his $2.3 billion fortune to charitable endeavors. I'd imagine there's some hand-wringing going on in Hilton households all over Beverly Hills. Way to go, Barron! The next time I stay in a Hilton hotel, I swear I'll leave the towels when I check out.
Post-Christmas hangover seems like as good a time as any to share some John Prine. I hardly ever think, "Man, I'd like to hear some John Prine tonight!" But once I start listening to him, I rarely want to stop. Frantic Twangy Poetry.
Did you heathens know that in the holy book of Isiah, somewhere in Chapter 35, there is a reference to a "highway of holiness?" Did you also know that there's an Interstate 35 in the United States, traveling from the holy city of New Laredo, through Austin (Willie), Dallas (near where JFK was shot), Oklahoma City (need I remind you), and Minneapolis (falling bridge)? Start prayin', boys. And if you can watch this freak for more than 8 seconds, you're a better Christian than I.
Interesting map renaming each state as a country with a similar GDP. Some of the comparisons seem quite apt culturally as well as economically (South Dakota as frozen, teeth-clenchingly miserable Bulgaria; Florida as leather-skinned, half-witted Australia; Tennessee as heavily-armed theocracy Iran, etc.); others less so. Larger version here.
Maybe it was already on my mind from catching Cherry 2000 (wonderful '80s apocalyptic B-movie with Melanie Griffith) last week, but I found Salon's Machinist column Love and Sex with Robots pretty interesting. It reviews a book (written from a doctoral thesis, no less) that predicts that people will bond ever more closely with their mechanical servants, until something like LOVE happens. Crazy? "What's love got to do with robots?I personally find if more likely that huge, rich corporations like Microsoft will find a way to dominate the market, squelch all competitors and charge more and more for worse and worse robots. It's more likely we'll hate the damned things. And if the robots ever turn on us, I swear they'll be like malevolent, deathray-equipped Nascar vehicles!
Well, what's love got to do with pets? Levy points out that like robots, cats and dogs first pushed into human lives by providing services to our ancestors -- cats kept homes free of rats, dogs were guards and hunting partners and herders. Love was only a side benefit of such relationships, a feeling cooked up in human brains and exploited by the animals, who got shelter and food and safety from the deal."
I was quite intrigued by this series of photographs, in which the supporting poles etc. for various signs are photoshopped out, leaving only the sign itself floating in mid-air. Reading the inevitably-pretentious artist’s statement about the “disconnect between the corporate symbols and terra firma,” it struck me that in a future age of not just global, but truly universal sponsorship opportunities, these photos may be how alien spacecraft would eventually appear to take over the earth, covered in sponsor logos like malevolent, deathray-equipped Nascar vehicles.
Now that I've had time to digest Andy's list, I have to say it kicks bloody ass! I'm loving the Libertines, thanks (you don't happen to have "Up the Bracket" do you?). I hope you will update your blogger profile soon, with totally fallacious, but cleverly self-revelatory personal data. And get a better avatar. Delighted you're on board! Best addition we've had since Lurker Mike!
Meet poor Michael Millhouse. Not only was he recorded on high def video taking a woman's wallet from the counter of a convenience store, but his identification and capture were all but guaranteed thanks to Thursday's front page of the Lewiston Tribune. Scroll down about halfway through the first page and you'll 'read all about it'.
Dec 12th, 2007 | SAN DIEGO -- Ike Turner, whose role as one of rock's critical architects was overshadowed by his ogrelike image as the man who brutally abused former wife and icon Tina Turner, died Wednesday at his home in suburban San Diego. He was 76.Read about it all day if you like.
....Turner, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is credited by many rock historians with making the first rock 'n' roll record, "Rocket 88," in 1951. Produced by the legendary Sam Phillips, it was groundbreaking for its use of distorted electric guitar.
But as would be the case for most of his career, Turner, a prolific session guitarist and piano player, was not the star on the record — it was recorded with Turner's band but credited to singer Jackie Brenston.
And it would be another singer — a young woman named Anna Mae Bullock — who would bring Turner his greatest fame, and infamy.
Barton views most of the people around him as incomprehensible grotesques because they're so much coarser, so much more animated and alive than he is. They curse, they drink, they sweat, they spit, they vomit, they have sex -- but Barton is so repressed that he's become completely disconnected, not only from others but from his own body. So, he sits behind his typewriter, imprisoned in his own head and his own room, and stares dully at a framed tinted photo of a beautiful girl gazing out over the ocean at a sky as blank as the paper in Barton's typewriter. Barton's life of the mind is composed of nothing but barren abstractions. It takes Charlie to bring Barton crashing into the real, physical world.You can read the rest of it here, if you so desire.
Sadly out-of-print, but still available used, are the satirical, mostly fictional diaries of Auberon Waugh, the irascible, somewhat resentful son of novelist Evelyn Waugh, who was once described in the Guardian as “effete, drunken, snobbish, sneering, racist and sexist.” Fine compliments indeed. As a young man serving in the army, Waugh famously managed to shoot himself six times in the chest with a machine gun after losing his temper with the seemingly-jammed gun, and shaking it in anger. In his autobiography, Waugh recalled that as he lay on the ground waiting for an ambulance, he jokingly said to his platoon sergeant: “Kiss me, Chudleigh.” But “Chudleigh did not recognize the allusion and from then on treated me with extreme caution.” Waugh also achieved a certain notoriety for his wine columns in The Spectator magazine, in which he memorably likened the bouquet of a disfavored wine to that of “a bunch of dead chrysanthemums strewn on the grave of a still-born West Indian baby.”
Thanks, everyone, for allowing me to sporadically bore you all to death with half-remembered news items, three-years-too-late website discoveries, and my insipid taste in music. My dedicated lurking at this site and feigned tolerance of Dave's Costello anecdotes have finally paid off! By way of introduction to non-Dave bastards, I am in my late thirties, live in Washington, DC with a tolerant wife and three-legged dog, and my hobbies include recycling beer bottles, bathtub gin, and dividing my time between tattered leatherette recliners. I look forward to wasting some of your time.
Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her. She offers you openings time and again but you do not take advantage of them. Sharpen your attacks and make them more precise.More of Rove's tips on How To Beat Hillary.
From the beginning, on purpose, Devo was a multimedia idea. There was no name for 'Performance Art' at the time. That term didn't exist, although I think that's what we were doing when I look back at it. It's exactly that, Devo represented an attitude, a point of view, a philosophy. It was like combining film-making and theatrics and cutting-edge kind of synthesizers and rock beats all rolled into one big performance with a lifestyle message behind it, which was basically to beware of illegitimate authority and think for yourself. Hardly a revolutionary idea, but it turns out to be more revolutionary as people's freedoms are slowly eaten away.Continues Devo lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh:
We saw Devo as something bigger than a rock band. We thought that was he most boring thing you could do. We wanted to be a clearing house for concepts and ideas. That's where art de-VO came from. That's why we made films: Even though we had no money, we made the film The Truth About De-Evolution. We designed our own costumes, designed our own artwork and graphics. We designed every album cover that we ever had control of. The downside of doing everything ourselves and directing our own films and producing our own films and going out and getting the props and coming up with the concept and the ideas was that we didn't really collaborate a lot.I was exposed to Devo's oeuvre during my formative high school years, and their impact was substantial. Devo underlined the absurdity of society's rules and values during a time in my adolescent life when I was already beginning to question authority, and the band's philosophy was a private joke that I could share with a few of my friends.
(Reprinted with kind permission from iamascientist.com.)
I had 2 good reasons for wanting to see The Golden Compass this weekend: 1)I liked the book, and 2)the right-wing Jesus police don't want me to. Flipping through some movie stills, I found a third reason.
Onlookers said she appeared disorientated as she wandered around on the pavement for several minutes in the freezing cold before disappearing back inside.Maybe rehab wasn't such a bad idea.
"She came out of the house, walked down the drive and wandered around on the pavement for a bit.
"She looked upset and agitated but there was no obvious reason for her to have come outside. It was weird."
