Like most of life's lessons, the moments I'm dwelling on up in my brainbox today are best examined and learned from with plenty of perspective.
I remember writing my own ham-handed amateur's bridge piece between Weezer's Pinkerton album and Kevin Smith's film Chasing Amy, which hit my life right around the time a couple of close friends came out as gay or bi, and I found myself just a boring old straight person.
Not narrow enough to find dykes unattractive, but unmoved by the prospect of dick even when I didn't have to look far for a male who constantly threw softball come-ons my direction.
So here I am today reading one person's ultra personal dissection of Chasing Amy over here:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/11/15/jay-silent-bob-live/
and then a history of Pinkerton over here:
http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/this_is_beginning_to_hurt_a_woefully_incomplete_oral_history_of_weezers_pin/
and it all leaves me wanting to dig out the last few copies of that poem I wrote back then and burn them in a pile in the backyard.
Then I'll go write something BETTER...
Monday, November 15, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
I like tea, you're ruining it...
I bit into a bright wonderful orange up in my headspace listening to 89.3 the Current, MPR’s populist station. Itself an I.O.U. for the promise of once-great Rev105 Revolution Radio station in Minneapolis, the Current played me a great song.
Conventional Wisdom, by Built to Spill
I love the soaring, swirling guitar on this track. Everything else I was doing when it came on just stopped happening, and I rode the groove like a rollercoaster. Afterward I sought out the who and what, knowing it sounded vaguely familiar but not who it was. I ended up later that afternoon buying it on itunes. The rest of that story isn’t as important. The song’s title is a catchphrase.
Privately, up in my brainbox, I pride myself on seeing ahead of the curve. Whenever possible, I try to see what’s coming, stay informed, sniff the dirt, get the gist, read voraciously, and earn myself a feel for who’s worth their weight and who should do a lot more thinking before they speak.
I watched the last presidential election with sharp memories of the hopeless haze left after the previous two. Then myself along with the rest of the masses felt a fresh splash of water on our faces when something else happened this time.
Setting aside for a moment the frothing furor of the tea party racists and how egregiously John McCain failed his first Presidential decision when he couldn’t find someone more awe inspiring than him, and chose a flake of a spokesmodel from Alaska as his running mate when Barack Obama chose Joe Biden. I utterly disdain Biden’s association with the deep pockets of the old money running the old media machinery, but I can see what Bill Clinton meant when he said a candidate’s first Presidential Decision is picking a running mate. And Biden is a home run, certainly compared to the failed bunt of Sarah, plain and dumb.
I believe that the conventional wisdom being sold this midterm election cycle is clearly slanted to most people, regardless of where they stand. I’ve been stunned to have my feelings about the AP honed to a point this cycle, when I watched them cover democrats tepidly when they opposed Bush, but are covering every single race this year as if the opposition gets top billing every single time. Everywhere I look, the old guard seem to have lost their way, are predicting massive defeat of democrats in this midterm.
I haven’t believed it and I won’t. Doesn’t really matter what happens tomorrow night. I’m confident that there will be a serious revision of the power and solidarity of the opposition party in this country. Their media outlets will fail to cover it, the rest of the confused, jittery chatterbox of cable news, cowardly corporate networks, and puffy chested self-important fishwrappers.
If the best this widdle tea potty can muster is Sharon Angle, Carl Paladino, and Christine O’Donnell, failed businesspeople with more money than brains like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, incredulity is the only rational reaction. The most enlightened person on the GOP side of the spectrum is Jon McCain’s daughter Meghan, from this irrational liberal’s point of view. Thank Goddess we’re not feeding her to the machine that churns out these generic, soundbite spewing bobbleheads.
I see a lot of bright young stars on the democrat side of things. Jersey, New Orleans, New York all have fascinating candidates and people already elected and serving. Al Franken makes me proud every time I hear him, honestly he’s a far better prepared politician, astute speaker and writer than he ever was as an SNL-type improv-ish comedian.
The numbers have been clear all along the way, and I doubt that things will change much beyond what fivethirtyeight predicts. Republican governors may see some gains, but senate and house aren’t gonna change nearly as much as people wish to think they will. The change comes from the movement, the President, and the rest of the democratic groundswell that promises to fix what 8 years of Bush did. Bush’s wars, Bush’s deficit made from a democratic surplus.
America can do better, together, than we do under Republican Presidents. This is established fact among everybody at the bottom, struggling to get by, and the Union members who are just beginning to break above the poverty line by becoming skilled workers. We The People know these things. Them With All the Money, they pay to convince anybody otherwise. This is how it’s been. But everything changes. Projected gains this year for the party opposing the President will be far slimmer than the blowhards want you to think.
The difference between the tea pawty and the party of hope and change is centrally that you want your country back, but you want it without us, any way you can get it. We’re taking America forward, and we’re taking you with us, in spite of these embarassing and uninformed digressions you take us on.
Conventional Wisdom, by Built to Spill
I love the soaring, swirling guitar on this track. Everything else I was doing when it came on just stopped happening, and I rode the groove like a rollercoaster. Afterward I sought out the who and what, knowing it sounded vaguely familiar but not who it was. I ended up later that afternoon buying it on itunes. The rest of that story isn’t as important. The song’s title is a catchphrase.
Privately, up in my brainbox, I pride myself on seeing ahead of the curve. Whenever possible, I try to see what’s coming, stay informed, sniff the dirt, get the gist, read voraciously, and earn myself a feel for who’s worth their weight and who should do a lot more thinking before they speak.
I watched the last presidential election with sharp memories of the hopeless haze left after the previous two. Then myself along with the rest of the masses felt a fresh splash of water on our faces when something else happened this time.
Setting aside for a moment the frothing furor of the tea party racists and how egregiously John McCain failed his first Presidential decision when he couldn’t find someone more awe inspiring than him, and chose a flake of a spokesmodel from Alaska as his running mate when Barack Obama chose Joe Biden. I utterly disdain Biden’s association with the deep pockets of the old money running the old media machinery, but I can see what Bill Clinton meant when he said a candidate’s first Presidential Decision is picking a running mate. And Biden is a home run, certainly compared to the failed bunt of Sarah, plain and dumb.
I believe that the conventional wisdom being sold this midterm election cycle is clearly slanted to most people, regardless of where they stand. I’ve been stunned to have my feelings about the AP honed to a point this cycle, when I watched them cover democrats tepidly when they opposed Bush, but are covering every single race this year as if the opposition gets top billing every single time. Everywhere I look, the old guard seem to have lost their way, are predicting massive defeat of democrats in this midterm.
I haven’t believed it and I won’t. Doesn’t really matter what happens tomorrow night. I’m confident that there will be a serious revision of the power and solidarity of the opposition party in this country. Their media outlets will fail to cover it, the rest of the confused, jittery chatterbox of cable news, cowardly corporate networks, and puffy chested self-important fishwrappers.
If the best this widdle tea potty can muster is Sharon Angle, Carl Paladino, and Christine O’Donnell, failed businesspeople with more money than brains like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, incredulity is the only rational reaction. The most enlightened person on the GOP side of the spectrum is Jon McCain’s daughter Meghan, from this irrational liberal’s point of view. Thank Goddess we’re not feeding her to the machine that churns out these generic, soundbite spewing bobbleheads.
I see a lot of bright young stars on the democrat side of things. Jersey, New Orleans, New York all have fascinating candidates and people already elected and serving. Al Franken makes me proud every time I hear him, honestly he’s a far better prepared politician, astute speaker and writer than he ever was as an SNL-type improv-ish comedian.
The numbers have been clear all along the way, and I doubt that things will change much beyond what fivethirtyeight predicts. Republican governors may see some gains, but senate and house aren’t gonna change nearly as much as people wish to think they will. The change comes from the movement, the President, and the rest of the democratic groundswell that promises to fix what 8 years of Bush did. Bush’s wars, Bush’s deficit made from a democratic surplus.
America can do better, together, than we do under Republican Presidents. This is established fact among everybody at the bottom, struggling to get by, and the Union members who are just beginning to break above the poverty line by becoming skilled workers. We The People know these things. Them With All the Money, they pay to convince anybody otherwise. This is how it’s been. But everything changes. Projected gains this year for the party opposing the President will be far slimmer than the blowhards want you to think.
The difference between the tea pawty and the party of hope and change is centrally that you want your country back, but you want it without us, any way you can get it. We’re taking America forward, and we’re taking you with us, in spite of these embarassing and uninformed digressions you take us on.
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