Picture of the day

Via TPM, photos of musicians with awkward old white men in suits.

Video of the day

DJ Steve Porter is back with Press Hop 2.



"I'ma take ma talents to South Beach!!"

....Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood....

"I'ma take ma talents to South Beach!!"

BAAAAAAAAHM!

How Inception composer Hans Zimmer tied the Edith Piaf song "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" from in the film to the score.

Ugh

I'm going to go die now. Regards.

I kind of want to vote for Mike Weinstein

My recipe for voting is simple: I choose the guy who offends me the least. Barring that, the one who entertains me the most. It helps if they're an out of touch old white guy, who is earnestly trying to connect to "the kids" with "the music" on "the internets".

Such is the case with Republican Mike Weinstein, who is running for the Florida House in District 19. No crazy conversations with dead Presidents. No heavily accented pledges to outlaw the gays followed with bible verses. Just an oddly long song about a candidate, sung by the dancing youth of Florida.



"Hey honey? Kids still like the WHAM!, right? *crooning* Wake me up before you go-go! Or Footloose! I kind of want to do a video like that, only about me. Call up the neighbor's boy, I hear he has a camera."

I think the body popping and twirling dancing youth really express his commitment to *checks site* supporting a no plea deal policy for sexual predators. KEYBOARD SOLO!!!

Seriously, if he pledges to make an album full of this stuff, I'll fly down and work on his campaign.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.21

Moritz Resl's 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Alan Greenspan and Paul Krugman got into a economic slap fight over the weekend with competing op-eds. Greenspan arguing we need to focus on debt instead of jobs, Krugman arguing jobs instead of debt. Let's see, do we believe the tired old man who sat at the apex of this crisis unable to see what was going on or do anything about it, or do I believe the guy who just won a Nobel and has been horrifyingly right every step of the way. What's that? Unemployment is hovering at 10% and focusing on the debt by cutting spending will kill more jobs? Gee, hard to see who to listen to on this point.

On that point, the Washington Post looks at how our elected betters' myopic concerns over making minuscule "drop in the bucket" dents in the deficit is taking precedent over, you know, fixing the economy and getting people back to work. No worry about the massive state budget crises, the Senate has to make it look like they're listening to the ill-thought out concerns of voters by being fake concerned about the deficit. So a year from now when we're all eating catfood underneath an abandoned freeway, remember to thank them all for they way they knocked down the deficit by $5 bucks.

After 28 years the Bloody Sunday killings were officially ruled unlawful at the conclusion of a 12 year inquiry by Lord Saville. Apparently shooting the Irish under flimsy pretenses and then claiming they all had guns and you were under attack isn't, in the strictest sense, legal. But hey, they finally got to the bottom of it after three decades. See what you have to look forward to in 2038, Israel?

Simon Johnson looks at all the ways in which the soon to pass and soon to be heralded as a "serious fix to the an unforeseeable and unprecedented crisis" Financial Reform bill fails to do any of the shit it needs to do. Who could have foreseen that catering to banks and Wall Street and treating them as if they had credibility left would result in laws that failed to adress the things that caused the last financial collapse or deal with the fallout? But at least it's called "Financial Reform". They can technically say they passed "Financial Reform". There is that.

On the Bright, Shiny, Happy front, one of the men who helped eradicate smallpox has a message to the world: we'll all be dead in a 100 years, thanks for fucking everything up you soon to be extinct shits. There's a myriad of reasons, but mostly overpopulation and the fact that we're ruining the environment and only engaging in half measures -at best- to address those problems. He's 95, so he'll be dead soon. He just wants us to know that we caused it, we refused to fix it, and we should enjoy a hellish decades of existence that will result in our violent painful extinction. Way to depress everyone on your way out.

The Intertubes has found the only way to listen to the inane tweets and proclamations of the Tea Party set: by making them poot out the butt of a colonial soldier. They call it: Tea Farty.

In closing we give you Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age covering "What, What (In the Butt)."

Video of the day

With the recent.... let's call it arglebargle and fooferaw surrounding Israel over that whole "shooting humanitarians, strangling media access, and then blaming the victims" thing, they're not all that popular. Well, more unpopular than usual. So of course one's mind wanders to the most obvious problem arising from these newly (not really) ratcheted up tensions: what of Israel's tourism industry.

So of course Israel could use some good PR to boost the flagging tourist trade that might not want to be caught up in that war we all know is coming or come sailing in on a cruise ship and get their head kicked in by a special forces SWAT team repelling from helicopters. And since Israel's only PR strategy seems to be throat punching anyone who makes eye contact with them, the responsibility to drive international travelers to the Holy Land falls to Peru. Yes Peru.

In the prologue the Delfín, who likes to begin his socially-conscious music videos with similar scenes, is shown relaxing in his living room, watching the news. In this case, the faces on the screen express their doubts about Israel as a tourist destination. “There could be bombs in the street,” one woman says. “It scares me.” The Delfín springs to his feet in outrage at this distortion: “This cannot be!” he cries, and the Andean disco/huayno beat kicks in. “Israel, Israel,” the singers chant in the chorus,

How pretty Israel is!
Israel, Israel
In your lands one day I’ll dance.

Behold:


I swear to God, despite all the footage of scuba divers, llamas, windmills, creepy old women in catsuits, and the countryside of Peru, that video is about Israel.

Anyway, makes me want to visit Jerusalem... or drop peyote in Lima. Either or.

Broken in Brief: America not allowed to be done with U2 yet

BRISTOL—As Americans tune in to ESPN and ABC this month to watch the World Cup, they are once again unable to pry themselves away from the sonic assault of Irish rock band U2. In an unprecedented deal with the rock supergroup, ESPN has agreed to feature U2 songs and U2 songs re-recorded by the Soweto Gospel Choir as the exclusive soundtrack of their World Cup coverage and commercials.

“Fuuuuuuuck! I thought we were done with them when we didn’t buy or support their last album,” the country said, referring to 2009’s lackluster No Line On the Horizon. “Ugh. Corporate America is aware there are other bands, right?”

Spokespeople for the "World Wide Leader" in sports were not so negative in their assessment.

“Look, with such a big worldwide event coming up, we had one decision to make: select a mildly interesting choice for bumper music or just put on the first band we could think of,” explained Seth Adler, Senior Director of Sports Marketing at ESPN. “So someone blurted out the Black Eyed Peas and we were going to go with that. But then someone explained that it was only the second-laziest choice we could have made, so we decided to go whole hog and make the laziest: U2.”

“Then we came up with the masterstroke of Africanizing some of their songs so you wouldn’t think this event was taking place in Sweden. You know, to fully homogenize this whole experience and reduce a culture to the broadest cultural stereotypes Americans can recall from the Lion King,” he explained.

Sources note that U2 lead singer Bono was only happy to oblige, eagerly fusing his music and Africa in a way that had already been driven into the ground many, many years ago. Those close to him say he was so touched by the size of the royalty check that he stared at it for a few seconds before putting it on the pile with the others.

America has claimed it’ll let this choice of U2 go, in lieu of the alternative of listening to the Black Eyed Peas, but has cautioned sports broadcasters that they have to discover the existence of a third band before the next major sporting event or satisfaction will be had.

Branford talks about the kids

From the documentary Before the Music Dies.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.04

Portland artist Alexander Rokoff painted a portrait of Modest Mouse frontman Issac Brock... standing in front of a boar whist wearing lederhosen. This is not that important, except for the part where it now hangs in the office of the mayor of the city of Portland, Oregon. Eat it, Eric Judy and Jeremiah Green!

Sean's off on a street corner, preaching from the bible he wrote and looking for "converts", so it falls to me to recount the things that happened today that weren't related to oil being everywhere. That doesn't leave much, so there's some oil stuff in here too. Fuck you if you don't like it.

Local Pittsburgh politician and future victim of having trash dumped on his lawn, Councilman Matt Drozd, has a bright idea for the Stanley Cup finals going on right now between Philadelphia and Chicago: he wants people in Pittsburgh to root for Philly based on some arcane tax revenue/yay Pennsylvania reasons. After my urge to stab him subsided, I decided to honor the Flyers in much the way I'm sure they did when the Pens were in the Finals the past two years... but then I decided against urinating on myself while decrying a league wide conspiracy against my team. Fuck you Drozd and don't ever suggest -even in jest- that we root for anything to happen to Philadelphia besides some epically Biblical smiting.

Let's check the score on BP and celebrities. Listened to Kevin Costner? Check. Listened to James Cameron? That's a negatory good buddy, with BP turning down the director/undersea documentarian's help in providing access to underwater equipment/technicians. Cameron responded by saying "those morons don't know what they're doing" and referred to BP's handling of access to video and the site as "asking the perpetrator to give you the video of the crime scene". Uh-oh, looks like I know who the thinly veiled, subtle as a sledgehammer, mustache twirling villains of Avatar 2 are going to be. Hurts, doesn't it, neocons?

In "Democracy" news, Diebold, the crooked, politically active, former makers of easily hacked and zero paper trail voting machines, had to pay $25 million to the SEC to settle a fraud case. The SEC will continue to pursue criminal charges against three of Diebold's executives. Gee, if this is the way they handle their books and their accounting, it really warms your heart to think about the way they handled all those voting machines.

In "This is how the world works" news, a recent lawsuit that attempted to sue pretty much every energy company for creating emissions and global warming conditions that helped exacerbate Hurricane Katrina -effectively a trial on global warming- will not be allowed to continue. Why? because so many of the judges on the 16 judge appeals court panel had to recuse themselves because of "conflicts of interest" with the energy companies, that no true majority opinion can be reached and thus the case cannot proceed. So that makes it pretty much all three branches of government that are completely entwined with private interests. I was worried it was only two.

A study recently published by two UCLA economics professors showed a surprisingly political effects between "nudging" people about energy conservation -i.e. providing energy saving tips as well as information on electricity usage to households- and energy consumption. Those who were registered Democrats who received the "nudges" tended to cut consumption by 3-6%. But those who were registered Republicans actually increased consumption as a result of the "nudges". They essentially scientifically showed that conservatives would actively act out against their own interests if they received what they perceived as a "liberal"/"pussy environmentalist" message on it. For further evidence of this phenomenon, I submit the past two decades in US politics.

Finally we close with the best orangutan/hound-dog buddy video of the week. Caution: you might overdose on cute and go into catatonic "Awwwwwww" shock.

Cause/Effect

Justin Bieber, 16 year-old teen idol, gets a tattoo ----> Justin Bieber nominated for Black Entertainment Television award

You see what's weird about this is that he's incredibly white, bland, and inoffen.... wait, did I just blog about Justin Bieber? I'm sorry, but both of these things were all over Twitter and the Entertainment blogs. I couldn't avoid it! Dear God.... WHAT HAVE I BECOME!!!!! There's only one solution now.

/swigs gin
/distant sound of shotgun is heard off in the distance

RIP Dio

Ronnie James Dio, he of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Elf, and Dio, is dead at the age of 67. If you aren't familiar with his work, hit yourself. He was one of the best vocalists in rock/metal. So in tribute to Dio we will post some of his music. If you want to hear the man at his best, acquire Rainbow's second album Rising, one of the best/most under-appreciated albums of the 70's.

Chart of the day

As someone who had to sit in traffic recently I was incensed. How could God do this to me! As it turns out, God doesn't hate me as much as he hates other parts of the country. So, apparently there wasn't some universal force conspiring to screw me over worse than everyone else in the entirety of recorded history. Who knew?

But because they are good citizens and decent Americans, the people at Good magazine decided to graph out this information of how long certain American cities spend sitting in traffic and do it in comparison to how long it would take someone to read War and Peace, listen to Wagner's Ring cycle, or watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I know no one has ever read War and Peace or listened to Der Ring des Nibelungen, but just use them as stand ins for the concept of "unimaginably long shit."

It turns out that if you lived in LA, the traffic would have given you a chance to be incredibly literarily and operatically cultured... if you didn't live in LA and weren't an American. But you would have gotten to see Frodo a hell of a lot of times. Yeaaaah!

As always, click to embiggen.

Sunday Marching Orders

It's time for one of my favorite activities on this blog. No, not plumbing some new depth that our American political or news system has sunk to while adding in a snarky remark and a new curse word I learned. No, that's what the weekdays are for. The weekends are for me demanding that you do things; namely read.

Some would say these are articles of extreme importance. Others would say this is just a bunch of shit I'm putting up because it is clogging up my bookmarks folder. Who is to say who is right? Well, the latter are. But there is an extremely important reason I haven't been able to put these up before, namely... uhhh.... important... constraints... on my... time. Not extreme laziness. So away we go.

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
What if I were to tell you that we've spent six billion on the Afghan National Police force and they're grossly incompetent and unable to even do a fraction of their jobs? You'd probably say that you're surprised we were able to keep that waste of money under $10 billion. I agree. Why are they so awful? A myriad of reasons, but at least in this case it isn't because they're spending all their money on magic bomb detecting wands. Yet.

White House access is a jackpot for reporters
Want to know why White House coverage has become so uniformly terrible over the past decade? Mostly because the reporters covering the beat try to cozy up to insiders in order to get good gossip... for their "insider" "tell-all" books. Glenn Greenwald looks at how "journalist" really isn't the proper term for these people.

Building a Green Economy
Paul Krugman on what it would take to actually build a green economy and move toward greener energy. The article didn't start with the phrase "seal up most of the energy executives and lobbyists up in a coal mine along with a large chunk of our elected betters" so I don't know how seriously Krugman's article can be taken.

Copenhagen destroyed by Danish draft leak, says India's environment minister
If you were wondering how the Copenhagen climate conference came to be such a complete misfire that failed to make any serious progress on environmental issues, the Guardian has a rundown. Apparently it was petty infighting, aggrieved egos, childish power struggles, and comical shortsightedness beating out serious long term planning for a clearly foreseen problem. Who could have ever foreseen? It's only like the 7,435th time in a row a major global problem was ever dealt with like like that.

Gang Moves 1,800 Lb Of Coke In Fake Dakar Rally Truck
If you ever wondered why the state of Arizona has to whomp on Latinos with a healthy dose on un-Constitutional actions, it's because of stuff lie this. We can't even trust the validity of entrants in our beloved giant rally truck races. No, everyone is a suspect, even Latino rally trucks.

The Hidden Meaning of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”
If you're like me, every time you see the Lady Gaga video for Telephone, you say to yourself "this is a clearly a thinly veiled guise for indoctrination from the Illuminati using Monarch Programming mind control and is chock full of secret hidden codes and symbols from both". Thankfully, someone else has agreed and put together a comprehensive analysis of all the ways the Illuminati are boring into your brain through a Lady Gaga video. One thing is clear: the song is not about a telephone or an annoying boyfriend who keeps calling. We're through the looking glass.

Headline of the day

Shakira Coming To Arizona To Investigate Immigration Law

I'm certain that if anyone will get to the bottom of the legality of this bill it's constitutional law scholar and international pop sensation Shakira. If there's anything this debate needed it was warbly singing in Spanish and English, belly dancing, and sexy zombie walking.

Oh Arizona, you thought you could get away with this and no one would object. But now you've brought down the wrath of Shakira. For your sake I hope she goes easy on you. You definitely don't want a internationally successful, genre crossing pop hit about how you're all a bunch of shitheads. So help you God if she brings along Wyclef or Beyonce.

The financial crisis explained

Did you ever wish you had a better understanding of the financial crisis but thought it was all too dense, wonky, and economicky for you to understand? Don't you think you'd be able to understand it better if a bunch of puppets explained it to you in song? Well thankfully the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC and the Story Pirates heard the pleas of a desperate nation and condensed the crisis down into a couple of songs that a smarmy puppet sings to precocious children.

This is how all news should be explained.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Please tell me you haven't seen this yet

The Insane Clown Posse have made a new video. I know what you're saying: "That wouldn't interest me even if this was 1996 and I was suffering from a head injury". I know, this was my reaction as well. But that was only until I learned that they had become God rappers and released the most flawless form of unintentional comedy ever conceived. Watch it and I think you'll agree that they have created a perfect thing.

It's called "Miracles."



Now that you've seen it I think you understand why I posted it. It's like looking into the face of God.

Let us discuss why this is so great. Let's start with the title. "Miracles" doesn't seem to accurately describe the concept of the song so much as does the phrase "Basic concepts with which ICP are completely baffled and angered by." But let's look at the things they do consider miracles:

• giraffes
• that time a pelican tried to eat the Kevin James looking clown's cell phone
• fuckin' magnets and how they work
• dirt
• the fact that their children look like them, which might be an actual miracle given the kind of sleeping around this implies they feel their wives/girlfriends do
• fuckin' shootin' stars
• crows
• ghosts
• fuckin' rainbows
• magic all up in this bitch
• the Pyramids, which is something they only believed in as kids
• childbirth... ok I'll agree that shit'll shock ya eyelids
• music, which is also a form of magic

Now let us discuss why this video is such a comedy miracle:

• the fact that they point up when they say "dirt"
• the clown appearing in between the legs of a woman giving birth
• the fact that a video espousing all things natural and real was filmed entirely on greenscreen and used CG
• the look the one clown give after he informs us that music is just in there in the air and we can't even hold it
  
  it's like he thinks he dropped the most profound piece of information ever
• the fact that scientists make them angry by trying to explain fuckin' magnets and shit
• the dance the small one does when they relay the pelican story
• this story that tells you why there's so much goddamn butterfly imagery

Hell forget it, there's too much to love.

If they can drop another video like this I might even go to the next Gathering Of The Juggalos... un-ironically. Maybe I'll even hit up the Kickspit Underground Rock Festival as well. RIP Ass Dan.

Ahhh... wait... these people are millionaires. I think I just died a little inside. Wait... that's a miracle. Oh shit, it came around full circle up in this bitch

Things you need to know

• Whether or not Smithers picked Mr. Burns the most statistically dominant team of the era to play softball for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant team. Perhaps he should have added Mordecai Three Finger Brown and scoured the Negro leagues a little harder, because that Steve Sax pick looks unforgivable even taking into account he was responsible for all the unsolved murders in New York.


• DJ Shadow has an internet radio station.


• Any street with the world Grape in it was probably a notorious road for prostitution and had it's name previously changed from the more advertising savvy and branding accurate Gropecunt Lane. Yes, the Middle Ages did entail a better class of street names.


• Birds are poisonous now. Possibly all birds, but definitely the Variable Pitohui, which secretes a poison similar to the Poison Dart Frog. And you thought the only danger from birds was them all going crazy and attacking Tippi Hedren. No, they can surreptitiously poison you now. DON'T TRUST BIRDS.


• The Director of Media Technology for the Penguins, Chris DeVivio, has a blog. As if I needed to tell you more than that, I will. It's called Backteching and goes into the process of the building of the new Consol Energy Arena and the kinds of technology and technological decisions that goes into building a modern sports complex.


• This is the kind of thing that would get your movie banned and you branded a purveyor of filth and lewdness in the 20's. Warning: there are female ankles... on full display.

Your morning message board hilarity

In all this debate over the health reform bills America has forgot to listen to one important voice in this debate: fiddle wizard Charlie Daniels and his fans who post on his message board. Sure we hear all sorts of nonsense from "experts", "analysts", "Congressional Budget Offices", and "elected representatives", but what about the considered opinion of a man who wrote It Ain't No Rag It's A Flag and his fans?

Black Monday 03/22/10

To paraphrase a statement by Franklin Roosevelt, Monday March 22, 2010 will be a day that will live in infamy, the day the Democratic controlled congress sold out the American people, voting in a health care bill that a majority of the American people have said over and over they didn't want.

We no longer have a representative government; we essentially have a dictatorship that is willing to force their will on us regardless of what we want. This is the most despicable act ever perpetrated on the American public by the most dishonorable congress we've ever had.

Oh, it gets better. This is a man who was in a Geico commercial. He plays a fiddle! Do you doubt his expertise? I know what you're saying "Charlie Daniels and his fans musing on health care and going mental over the state of the country? Sign me up." I know, but it's a like a million times better than that.

Much in that same vein, we all know that sometimes science is a cruel mistress that shuts out important data from respected individuals. People like the Revered Jim Osbourne of the Landover Baptist Church. I'm not sure of the exact degrees the Reverend holds in Advance Celestial Mathematics, Physics, and Complex Sciencing and Sciencstry, but the man is dropping bombshells left and right on his message board about the state of the universe. Fact bombshells!

Are Stars Actually Giant Diamonds? Science and Math Confirms It

Since stars are clearly stated to be designed for human purpose, it makes no sense that they would be millions of light-years away like scientists claim. If God made stars so we can keep track of time, why seperate them from earth by vast distances? Furthermore, if they were millions of light-years away, that would mean they would have to be very, very big -- even bigger than our own sun. No, that doesn't make sense at all.

Stars are simply lights. But they are not the same as the sun, as scientists say because stars are not yellowish-orange. They are white, silvery, and twinkly. I hypothesize that they are actually celestial diamonds that are reflecting moonlight. That would account for their white-silvery light. They can't be lumps of coal like the sun, otherwise they would be yellow. I think we can agree that diamonds would be the most likely choice.

Does anyone need any more proof? Well if you do I think you'll be glad to know that he also reveals, with the help of his faithful parishioners, that some how because of the magic light properties of diamonds that make light travel through diamonds at about 1/3 the speed of light, that also proves that the universe in 6,000 years old. As one of the posters is keen to point out, this is just "drawing conclusions from sound observations and no wild speculation." Agreed. I mean who knew that God was actually Lucy in the sky with diamonds?

As the Reverend Jim later says, "This is hard science, real science, not the crazy beliefs and blind faith of atheist scientists." Yes, there are giant diamonds floating in space that prove the universe is as old as adding up all the ages in the Bible. Someone get on the blower and call up the Texas State Board of Education. There's still time to get this information into the textbooks!

A St. Pat's miracle!

Today is St. Patrick's Day. What, you thought it was last Saturday or this Saturday or whenever there's an abundance of green beer? No, it's an actual day and because the Irish are so great we allow it to be celebrated early and late to accommodate for whatever massive liver damage you want to do to yourself.

But this is not about Catholic holidays dedicated to drunken street fighting, this is about an honest to God miracle. Someone sobered up Shane McGowan enough to convince him he looked like a homeless derelict and convinced him to finally get fake teeth. Hallelujah!



The man drank so much he lost all of his teeth. Granted some of that was because he got so drunk one time he faceplanted off a wall and onto some bricks, but the rest were knocked out by years of savage, savage alcohol abuse. Now he looks normal, almost unrecognizable. So to celebrate this miracle of St. Patrick, booze, and quality dental work, here's a Pogues song.