friends of the president from Texas were "shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated, 'I am the president!' He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of 'our country's destiny.'"
This is, hands down, one of the best online games at the LEGO site. (I said put your hands down, Joe.) Ian and I play this every now and then, but we don't even look for the checkpoints; we're stunt drivers, daddy-o! There's also a few hidden areas you can access. For some reason, this LEGO toy store has lots of boards propped up on its shelves ...
"Sky Blue Sky" on "Fly to Pie"Charged up and bursting with eccentric and experimental talent, Wilco Mk. 5 seemed poised to generate the band's finest-- or at least most interesting-- music yet. Instead, it produced Sky Blue Sky.
Looks promising. Summer 2008 is shaping up nicely for us comic book geeks.
There's a discussion on today's Salon Audiofile about pop music in repressive N. Korea. Mike Powell, a writer for Styus: "I've been thinking a lot about what it means to appreciate music. If North Koreans have only one kind of music available to them, is their appreciation of it a moot point? Is it perverse to talk about people's enjoyment of something when they have no other choices? There is information that suggests that because of the fact that Western music is illegal there, most North Koreans don't even know that other music exists...there's no indication that the public has ever heard Elvis or the Beatles." I weep for the people of North Korea.
I heard the title track from the new Wilco album on the way home, sounded great. Salon says "Dispensing with the buzzy, blurry electronics of 2002's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and the opaque artiness of 2004's "A Ghost Is Born," Jeff Tweedy and Co. have fearlessly jumped headfirst into ... sun-dappled folk-rock. Good thing, too, because the album is a sparkling, clean-cut gem."
So last week I was one of the chaperones for a trip to Washington D.C. Twenty of our juniors were invited by the Governor of N.C., Mike Easley, to attend the National Summit on the Silent Epidemic (which refers to the astronomical dropout rate in the U.S.- about 30%). We were in a pretty small conference with some big hitters: Tim Russert, Frank Sesno, David Broder, some Senator from New Mexico, the governors of Rhode Island, North Carolina, and New Hampshire, Secretary of Education Stallings and First Lady Laura Bush. We met most of the above, with the exception of the First Lady, and the kids got a guided tour of the Capitol and attended the world premiere of a new MTV/Gates Foundation documentary, "The Dropout Chronicles". The premiere was a swanky cocktail party (sodas only for the kids and chaperones!) and was hosted by Sway, some MTV celebrity that the kids were thrilled to meet. Anywho, the whole thing was pretty cool and the kids enjoyed themselves and were, I must say, incredibly well-behaved. In the above picture, I am the partially obscured white guy to the right.
You guys think you're so smart, try taking my Beer IQ Challenge! Match a numbered question at the top with a lettered answer at the bottom.
The Austin City Limits Music Festival has released its lineup for next year's festival. Not to continue the "whinge" about leaving the Live Music Capital of the World(seriously, they call it that), but come on! Bob Dylan is fucking headlining?!! Not to mention Bloc Party, Lucinda, Decemberists, Amy Whinehouse, Steve Earle, Peter Bjorn and John, the National, Patterson Hood, and Farmer Jason (Jason of Jason & the Scorchers doing the kiddie rock thing), and Spoon among others. Every year I've been here I've been very lukewarm about the line-ups, and now it's a killer. They're doing it on purpose. Fuckers.
SHA NA NA
Ben Sargent is the political cartoonist for the Austin American-Statesman. I would have to say he is one of the best in the business these days. Besides the fact that he draws like nobody's business, he's also consistently irreverant and makes Bush and the other wingnuts look like the morons they are. You know he's good because he gets ripped on in the letters to the editor almost everyday. A lot of his stuff is very Texas-centric, focusing on Texas Governor Rick 
Iron Man (Mark III Armor), created by Stan Winston. I'm telling ya, this is going to be the superhero movie to beat. Of course, I could be wrong.
After much hemming and hawing (I'm too busy, broke, tired, out of weed, etc.), I decided to go see Son Volt because one of the two friends I have in Austin (I've only lived here for 4 years) invited me. I must say, I'm glad I went. I haven't heard the new album, but it came across beautifully live, as did every other song they played. Don't know if you're familiar with them, but Jay Farrar has a tendency to come across as a bit of a downer (not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily). For this show, it was all thunder, though. They brought it every song and didn't let up. They threw in a bit of Uncle Tupelo ("Life Worth Living," and "Chickamagua") and all the necessary old stuff ("Windfall" of course). They even brought out horns for a couple of songs.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the pre-grunge Pacific Northwest was all about quirky pop and jangly guitars with a tiny bit of menace underneath. The Young Fresh Fellows and the Posies were a couple of the standard bearers that come to mind. My group, The Young Brians, were the first in the Spokane area to be able to play original music in bars and we gained a huge local following and lots of radio airplay, etc., with one of our 7" singles (remember those?) charting in the Rocket's Top 20 for several weeks alongside bands like Mudhoney, The Screaming Trees, Nirvana, and our beloved Fellows. The band broke up in 91 amidst the usual recriminations and acrimony, but the four of us have remained good friends over the years. I went on to Pophead and Anyface, Jamie plays guitar in the Makers, Brian formed Burns Like Hellfire, and Larry played for a number of groups such as Junk Train before becoming a full-time daddy.
"And the main thing ... I'm not sure what in the world that has to do with being president of the United States," said the former Arkansas governor.
So it turns out cavemen had WAY better sex lives than Mike Lurker or I ever will.Practices ranging from bondage to group sex, transvestism and the use of sex toys were widespread in primitive societies as a way of building up cultural ties.Not that that's really saying anything...
"It kind of changes everything when you're a dad. You don't have the same time to hang out with your friends. You don't have the same time to do other stuff that, for me, I used to do. But you're trading it up for something that's better, which is getting to hang out with my daughter, and that's amazing."
I love beer. In fact, I really, really love beer. But sometimes, especially during the hot summer months, a nice icy cocktail just hits the spot. Here's what I'm drinking right now:
Everyday after school, my kids go to the school playground to run off some energy. There are a couple of other moms there that I've gotten to be good friends with, and the other day we were talking about cars. One of them happened to mention that her parents had bought two old 1967 Thunderbirds, but her mother got sick and died (God rest her soul), so they've just been sitting in her sister's driveway in Atlanta. I mentioned how much I love old cars like that, and she said if I would go get them, I could have them. For FREE! I think only one of them runs, but as she remembers them, they are in decent shape.
