Music Corner - Totally Terrible and Really Wrong

People ask me, since my music taste is as eclectic as it is and I tend to like about everything (except that foulness know as rap), what do I think is a BAD song?

Well, like the rest of the western world, "Feelings" is about as bad as it gets. Even "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" and "Run, Joey, Run" are opuses (opai?) unto themselves compared to "Feelings". Still, "Feelings" is a gimme.

Therefore, I present to you, the second suckiest song ever composed and recorded:

"A Cowboy's Work is Never Done", performed by Sonny and Cher. Penned and produced by Sonny for a 1972 album (which I believe my mom won at a Jaycees raffle or something).

(Note to RIAA: this example is at a low sample rate, and is taken from the original vinyl so it crackles more than a yoga session at the old folks home, so it sounds like crap. No one will burn this onto a CD, nor will any artist lose money over this - it may even spur someone to go buy it for all its terrible glory. Yet, if this is infringement of copyright and not "fair use" please don't sue me, just tell me to remove it.)

I was all set to tell you how obscure this song was, buried on side 2 of a minor album, and then I was going to defend Sonny who did write some great tunes and was a protege of Phil Spector (inventor of "the wall of sound"), but I discovered through a little research it was one of their hits! Dear Lord! To think they played this on the radio on purpose and that people actually thought, "Hey! Let's go buy that one! It rocks!" just astounds me. Evidently I don't need to defend Sonny.

But, heck, my mom would play the thing so we could all roll around laughing at lines like, "Ride! I usta jump my horse and ride!" (I was old enough to get the sad image of a poor horse being buggered by Sonny in a cheap variety show cowboy costume) and, "And I got shot, but I never died". Maybe everyone listened to it in that spirit. I dunno.

And there you have it.

Egregious political post #8 (or so), but it's my blog and I'll bitch if I want to.

So the Texas gerrymandering worked.

The California recall worked. They now have a popular actor as their new Governor puppet. (Grand total of neocon puppets in charge, if you're counting, is now 4: Texas, California, Florida, and the USA herself!) Said puppet has clearly done more womanizing than ole Billy, but did we hear a peep from the moral brigade? Of course not! This one's their puppet. (Though Bill was anything but someone's puppet, which I think was one of the things that pissed off the neocons. "What!? He doesn't have controllers out in the shadows? He's running it himself?! That's just wrong!)

Our president has achieved, in a scant couple years, a new depression, a (potential) Vietnam, and a scandal worse than Watergate (*cough* Plame *cough*).

Welcome to the third world my friends. Brought to you by Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, and Georgy "the puppet" W!

Calpundit spells out what their agenda is, just in case you were wondering. With an addition here.

Nietzsche was an asshole

Stephen King is writing a bi-monthly article for "Entertainment Weekly" and he recommended some authors recently, one being Peter Abrahams. Just finished Crying Wolf and enjoyed it immensely, though the ending was a little anticlimactic.

The best thing about the novel is the continual riffing and rippage on the evil bastard philosopher Nietzsche. Dying insane and riddled with syphilis was too good for that son of a bitch, if you ask me.

Abrahams creates an interesting dynamic by presenting a Nietzscheian superman (the evil character of the book, natch) who's contrasted by a college professor who's enamored of Nietzsche. This misguided, prissy prof. foists his crap on clean, young minds using the standard lies that Nietzsche was a "free thinker" who was unencumbered with our stale notions of morality while the bad buy lives the nightmare. (My theory about Nietzsche is that he was so putrid that he was driven by the sole need to improve his impoverished sex life; thus, he sought to expand his potential mating pool by convincing others that screwing anyone was fair game. In short, he was the Pauly "the weasel" Shore of his day.)

However, all the characters with a little savvy expose him for the gumball machine diamond ring he was:

"Nietzsche didn't mind a little rudeness, did he, Leo?" said Mr. Zorn.

"He was rather correct in his personal dealing, in fact," said Professor [Leo] Uzig. "Excluding the period of his madness, of course."

"Let's exclude Lizzie Borden's one bad day while we're at it," said Mr. Zorn.

It's nice seeing Nietzsche upended like the bucket of turds he was.

Halloween

Ah, the season of Halloween has arrived! Halloween is a holiday where no one expects presents, cards, a meal, an invitation, or a big freakin TV sports game of some sort. Nope, everyone just wants to put on a costume, get a piece of candy, and perhaps attend a great party. Now THAT'S a holiday. The only way it could be improved upon is by adding in some Mardi Gras-like gratuitous nudity.

Because Halloween is my family's favorite holiday, we start planning our costumes in August, and put up the decorations October 1st. (I sit amongst pumpkins and skulls and bats - oh my! - as I type this.) This year, my wife and I are going as an electrical socket and a plug, respectively. Our daughter is going as a princess.

One year, my (then future) wife and I went as the 7-up dots. Remember them? They would detach from the red dot on the can, with little wayfarers and white gloves, and run around squeaking whilst making mischief, and were probably abandoned as product mascots because they are so similar to the M&M guys.


Before the party (shown here), we stopped at a bar nearby for a beer, which happened to be a sports bar. Because I am missing the competitive sports gene entirely, we had no idea that there was a game on with our most bitter rival (assuming you give a flying star-spangle fuck about such things), Nebraska. Nebraska's team color is red. People acted as though we had walked in and insulted everyone's mother, peed on the floor, beat their dog, stole their Bible, and then shouted "vote Democrat!" The bartender ignored me until I finally yelled over for a beer. She looked at me with a scowl and hesitated as though she wasn't going to serve me. When she did, she gave me a stunning variety of dirty looks, didn't say a word, and didn't even touch the money I put on the bar until I walked away. When we got to the party and told them about our trip to the twilight zone, they clued us in about the game and such. Still, though, what a weird subculture sports nuts are, getting all pissy about the colors on someone's costume on Halloween, for crying out loud.


Back in college, I went as a werewolf once.


I did it just like they did for the old movies; I glued it on layer by layer. However, I did not follow the instructions to put cold cream on my face first (as I hadn't read that until it was too late), and when I came home later from the bar, blasted off my canine gourd, I had the joy of ripping the hair off my face and literally sanding the glue off. Thank God I was so wasted or it would've hurt like hell. It was wild, though; No one recognized me. It's thrilling and chilling to walk up to someone you know well, and be able to tell that they have no glimmer of recognition in their eyes. You'd think that simple recognition wouldn't be such a blatant facial expression. The best costume at the bar that night was this bunch of guys who had attached eight ski boots to one set of skis, and all four of them trooped around all night together as the "Norwegian Ski Team." Going to the bathroom must've been interesting for them.

The best costume I ever wore, though, was a cake donut.

Simulation Only

I hadn't expected to get off work in time from the movie theater to go to the party, so I didn't have a costume. There was a bakery on the way to the party, so I got a cake donut, hung it around my neck, and went as an asshole. It was a total success. Everyone had a built-in joke. Also, it was the anthro dept.'s party, so everyone else there was dressed as Jesus (there were four, one carrying a life-sized cross), Moses (three, one with a tablet with profane commandments), or a nun (five, if I recall). I got away with calling everyone a bunch of assholes, getting a big laugh rather than a belt in the face.

I love Halloween.

New Genre Alert. Category: Music

Flying so low under the radar that only the most obsessive music sluts (like myownself) have detected it, is a new music genre known as "chillout" music. It's essentially jazz, classical, and other low-key instrumental music purposely intended to be background music - sorta like muzak with some cachet - or the old chestnut PBS radio show "Hearts of Space" with a rhythm track. Classical and jazz purists might spray blood from their eyeballs in apoplexy upon their first encounter with chillout mixes because this is an offshoot of modern sampled, looped and spliced drums, with licks and phrases mixed and hashed all together - for sheer ambiance or effect more so than musical purity.

Yet, it does make an excellent background soundscape for working or a mellow party.

A search on CDuniverse.com or Amazon.com for the terms "chillout" or "after hours" will pull up a bunch.

I can personally recommend these two:

-- classical chillout

-- the very best of AfterHours

Check it out, mang.

Enron, the sequel

Here in Colorado, we are getting gamed by an energy utility the same way that California got gamed by Enron.

In a nutshell, Xcel Energy has completed the construction of a new pipeline that allows them to divert natural gas from Colorado to California. Since they can make more money from the gas in California, they are sending a lot there. This creates a shortage and a competitor for the gas here in Colorado, so they are increasing the price of our natural gas 73% (and that's just for residential, with commercial getting an 84% gouge), making our prices roughly equivalent to what they charge Californians. That means, in dollars, that someone in Colorado who paid $64 a month last year will pay around $110 a month this year. So, we get the onus of California's rates without the benefit of their economy. Rapture.

Don'cha love big energy business and deregulation, especially when the energy boys run the country?

Here are a couple articles about it (if you care). (I love the spin on the title of the second one, "cost of coziness". Shit, as if we need heat to be merely cozy as opposed to NOT DYING.)

- Xcel's 73% heat-bill hike approved
- Cost of coziness could be worse

Layoffs have hit Colorado pretty hard, too. For instance, on my block alone, 9 people have been laid off in the past year, most of them in the past 4 months. Of a total of 30 people available to work (and this includes the stay-at-home moms), 9 have lost their jobs, making it roughly 1 out of every 3 people on my block alone have lost their jobs just this year. That's obscene.

And, so, we are being gamed by an energy company in the midst of the depression. Fuckers.

For many years, when I've had enough scotch at a party, I howled into the wind about how the neocon's most basic goal is to convert the USA into Mexico. I didn't think they'd get this far this fast.

At least we finally have proof (and it was just a matter of time with this bunch) of a political scandal that may help to bring this administration down. I direct you, as a starting point, to Andrew's (the Poor Man) hilarious post (it's precious!), from which you can surf around for other blogs and news about what will probably get monikered "spygate" at some point. (And I couldn't be happier that it's our own private Machiavelli, Karl Rove, who is probably the perpetrator of the crime. And a felony no less! (Funny how perpetrator almost includes the word "traitor".))
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Update: Folks, check out the comments for corrections to some of my suppositions here. (Thanks everyone!)

A long time ago, on an amp far, far away...

Bopping around town the other day, one of my favorite guitar solos came on, and for a moment I'm sure I was more dangerous to my fellow drivers than an inebriated executive on a cell phone in the midst of changing a CD in a school zone. Good solos tend to distract me. That gave me the idea to mine my collection for ya.

I've collected a herd (get it? "heard" - *ahem*, anyway...) of some great ones. [Click the titles for the solos. Or if things don't work, in MS Windows right click and select "save as..."; on a Mac, hold button down and save it; on Linux, I won't insult you with instructions.]

"When I look at the World" - solo by The Edge (aka Dave Evans) of U2. Doesn't it sound like fireworks riding into the sky and detonating? The Edge is underrated as a guitarist because what he does is so simple. Guitar mavericks often say "anyone can do what he does," yet I've yet to hear someone who makes good on that boast.

"Sentimental Hygiene" - Neil Young straps one on for Warren Zevon's chunky hit. This is just one of the two great solos Neil hammers out for the excitable boy, may he rest in peace.

"Breakdown Dead Ahead" - This is where I get into trouble with the true believers of rock and roll. "Boz Scaggs!?!?" they'd say in mock horror, "What have you been smoking and why aren't you passing it around? Isn't Scaggs that guy who sounds like Kermit the Frog on 'We're All Alone'? How lame!" Well, yeah, Boz did channel Kermit for the first couple bars, but man, Steve Lukather (renowned studio musician) just snorts off a nasty one here, don't he?

"Sausalito Summernight" - from Danish one hit wonder Diesel. This was one of those impossible to find singles until a couple years ago. Don't you wish you could play guitar like that?

"Things Change" - Dwight Yoakam's silent partner, in only a figurative sense, is Pete Anderson. Pete has produced all of Dwight's albums, is often the co-writer of his songs, and is his main guitarist on top of it all. Take the pressure off, Pete.

"Peach" - Prince gets all Jimi here. The tune is essentially a frame for guitar solos (three!) and breast metaphors. In other words, bouncy perfection.

"Up in Arms" - Foo Fighters. That's Dave Grohl, former drummer of Nirvana, smokin' the frets (all too briefly) there (AND doing the vocals). To think one guy is this talented just makes my fillings ache. (In case you were wondering, he simply is the best freakin' drummer still working today, only threatened by the drummer he hired for the Foo Fighters, Taylor Hawkins.)

"Nada" - The Refreshments (specifically guitarist Brian David Blush) from their album "Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy", which to me is one of the great unsung rock albums of all time. The whole thing is a raft of great tunes, with phenomenal guitar work - as you can tell from this clip. The band broke up after their second album, which was a dark day in the Yahmdallah household. The wife let me sit out on the deck and gaze into the distance as the sun set, contemplating that "sun-cracked, coal-black soul of mine" (a refrain from "Nada") and the sadness of losing one of my favoritist bands.

Hey kids, rock and roll, rock on.

Reason number 57,387 why I love that woman:

Came back from running errands the other day, and my wife was introducing our daughter to that classic of felonious parenthood Raising Arizona as part of our ongoing effort to fan the flames of one of the most important components for having a happy life - a good sense of humor. There are so many things to love about that movie, but this is one of the better ones: It shows how very much we love our babies.

Reason number 666.2 why some Christian fundies shouldn't even be allowed to drive:

Crap like this. (Via Mark Shea.)

Their basic premise is this: These musicians aren't really Christians, even though the musicians themselves claim they are, because they aren't as perfect as Jesus and don't even try to be, therefore they are not good enough, neener neener.

You really can't get the message of Christ any more backwards than that.

(For those of you in the cheap seats: None of us are good enough because we all sin, therefore we are made good enough, that is forgiven of those sins, through belief in Christ and what he did for us. It's not a goal; it's a gift.)

Movie killers

Ever noticed how some actors and actresses always bring up the level of a movie by merely being in them? The short list includes Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, and M. Emmet Walsh. (Yes, M. Emmet Walsh. Check it out. If he's in a movie, it's good.) I could spend a lot of keyboard mileage debating with myself whether their skills as a performer create this magical aura or if they just tend to know which scripts are for them, have something they can work with, but I won't. Partially because I haven't really thought that hard about it yet, but mostly because I can't muster much of a damn over the fact. It's just a fact, let's move on.

I say this only to point out that I've discovered the antimatter, the dark side, version of this phenomenon. By name, he's Dennis Quaid. What's odd about this is that he's actually a decent actor. He was great in both The Right Stuff and The Big Easy. Yet, nearly every other movie he's been in has either been a turkey in its own right, or he has made it somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Boring. Arid. I dunno. Odd, ain't it?

You got any antimatter/black hole actors/actresses that just suck the life out of a film?

A rare event

For the first time in over half a year I heard a song on the radio that I liked, and would buy if I had the money. There was a time where I had this experience at least twice a week. I read an interview in this week's "EW" with Dave Matthews, Pink, and Outkast, (which was great btw) and they all carped about the same thing. We turn on the radio, surf for about a half hour for something, anything, that will make us want to stay, then we pop in our newest mix CD. If major label artists are bitching about the same thing I am, let's call it A CLUE. And the record labels wonder why no one's buying.

I went out to iTunes to get the song because I can afford 99 cents, actually, but they don't really have a good run-down of actually how things are charged before you download their application and sign up - or at least I couldn't find it. Web designers: if a customer cannot find exactly how much something will cost in under five pages, then you've lost half of your potential customers. Fix it, please.

Oh, and online CD sales guys, like Amazon and CDUniverse, please put up samples of the songs of new releases when they're actually released and for sale. That's kinda the whole point, just in case you were wondering.

Big nasty fuckin' spider

My computer is in the basement, and the other day on the way to a potty break from reading blogs, as I bopped past the sunken window well, I registered a bug clasping the screen on the window. My early alarm systems posted "Spider!" on my fight-or-flight nerve web, but the higher brain overruled with calm reason, offering that it was probably a grasshopper because the creature was simply too large to be a spider, so I didn't even break stride. However, the reptilian brain spoke up and said, "you'd better believe that's A BIG FUCKING SPIDER! MY GOD!! LOOK AT THAT MONSTER!!!" So I did.

I don't know about you guys, but when I encounter something truly spectacular in a negative sense, my brain attempts to recoil, thereby prolonging the agony as I have to re-grasp the terribleness over and over again a few times until it sinks in that it really is as horrid as it appears, such as when I encounter a truly ugly person (so ugly they fit Moms Mabley's description of, "so ugly, it hurt my feelings"), a large, complex puddle of vomit, or a REALLY BIG FUCKING SPIDER. So, I froze there, waves of goosebumps echoing around the surface of my skin as if it were a proof of concept demonstration that the epidermis is the largest organ of the body.

I thought briefly of taking a photo of it and posting it here, but that would've meant that I would've had to tape something to the window to give you an idea of the scale of this monster, which most likely would have resulted in my wife discovering my cooling corpse in the basement, a look of horror molded onto my face ala The Ring, scotch tape in one hand, a quarter clutched in the other (the coin I would have used for scale comparison), spider gone as the thump of my body hitting the floor would have startled it away, so she would have to wonder for the rest of her days what I had been doing, why it killed me, and why I needed tape and twenty-five cents.

To give you an idea of its size though, if you were to place a computer floppy on the thing, all of its legs would've extended a solid inch or two, depending on the leg, beyond the perimeter. The fangs would've been just visible on one side, and the two weird stubs that hang off the back of the abdomen's web excretor would've been visible on the other side. It was one of those sinister sporty spiders, all sleek with the legs held to the front and back for optimum leaping and dashing ability, as opposed to the economy spiders who hold their legs in a circular configuration, best for gripping a web. The quarter I would've taped to the window were I a braver man would've looked like an M&M next to a Hotwheel Camaro.

I stepped into the other room and had a total cluster attack of the fantods. I went and sat again at the computer, planning my course of action. I simply wanted to read some more, have another cup of coffee, and so I decided to relax and do just that. However, my lizard brain kept whispering things like, "what if it's not there later when you go to get it?", "what if it's outside the window well and it jumps on your leg?", "what if it crawls up the side of the house and falls on you while you're looking down in the window well?", and finally, "what if it gets inside?" Well, fuck.

I go into the garage for a really big, really long stick. Then I remember I have a can of spider killer spray up on the ledge out there; I won't have to even get close! I have another moment of anxiety as I imagine another spider perversely clinging to the other side of the can way up there where I can't see it. I spastically grab the can in order to dislodge any nasties, real or imagined, and head over to the window well, which is at the top of a steep incline covered in landscaping rock, surrounded by long wild grass we've neglected to pull. I imagine the look on my face as I climbed the sliding rock was quite comical.

It was still there on the screen, so I blasted it. I totally coated the thing, turning it from gray to completely Christmas tree frocking white. It slowly turned and began climbing up the screen, the thick layer of poison not even making it falter or slip. (That fact that anything which weighs as much as a mouse can casually stroll up a sheer vertical of glass is just wrong.)

I ran to get a big stick! Images of its yellow fangs gave me another fit of the fantods as I scooted down the rocks. The thing was a dull, moldy gray, but its freaking HUGE fangs were poisonously yellow! Dear God!

Back with my stick, I whacked it a good one. It dropped to the bottom of the window well, and I leaned over and went after it.

Here, boys and girls, is the reason I have told you this whole horrid story: I reached down with the point, placing it on its stomach segment to crush the dreadful bastard, and it started grasping wildly at the stick for purchase. The thing was so huge, the thrumming of its legs traveled up the stick; I could feel it!! I can't really be sure, because at that moment the tape head that records my memories was completely out of contact with the tape so my brain wouldn't have to go to the effort of repressing the memory later, but I bet at that moment I let loose a strangled, multi-octave, "GAAHHHH!" and impaled the beast. It stopped struggling, but I hammered the thing flat, pushed it between the rocks, covered it with one, and pushed hard on the entombing rock for good measure.

I hope it's dead.

Where the Boys Are - and the Girls, too!
or
Artfest!

My town had the annual artfest recently (an event which I heartily recommend for every single town in the nation), and it is one of the highlights of the year for my family. Artists and artisans set up their tents, local eateries put out booths and double their prices, and the town rents the a cappella group du jour for the weekend. There's a guy on stilts who takes care to dress as a cowboy and not a clown (our current age's scariest archetype), since freaked-out frightened little kids tend to automatically strike out at scary things within reach, a real hazard to stilt-wearers. Someone makes balloon animals. Once, they had a roving magician, but I think he made the jewelry artists nervous since he could clearly palm anything; I've not seen him since. The local Birds of Prey rescue mission shows up and displays the eagles and hawks they're nursing back to health after prying them off someone's fender or grill. The police show up and do their K-9 unit demonstration (which makes the artists who indulge in chemically enhanced inspiration a little edgy). They sell nice T-shirts. And, of course, there's beer for $5 a glass.

It occurred to me as I was perpetuating my endorphin rush by wandering from tent to tent, that artisans are the real artists anymore. Official, academically-sanctioned art is so pretentious, formless, and generally awful that no one outside of that particular circle of artists likes it, takes it seriously, or really pays any attention to the latest "found art" refuse sculpture or abstract smear of pigments intended to wake us up from our bourgeois trance. (Most twenty-year-olds who indulge in this illusion haven't even lost their mental baby fat, and yet they are supposed to shake the rest of us from our supposed daze. Like, puh-leeze, dude.)

Michael Blowhard once asked me via email about what I do out in the wasteland of Colorado to experience art since I moved from the art mecca of Minneapolis/St. Paul (though these are not his phrasings or implications, he's too polite for that, but is the basic gist). Well, for me, artisan fairs are the answer.

My two favorite artists whom I encountered this year are Bill Amundson and Padgett McFeely.

This is an example of Bill Amundson's drawings, and his site is here.


Amundson told me a great story when I chuckled at this particular drawing. And I paraphrase: "Yeah, that happens to be my most popular commission subject. Everyone wants me to put logos and stuff on tits. I say 'tits' by the way, even though it embarrasses me, because my girlfriend said that 'breasts' really belong to women - its such a serious grown-up word - but 'tits' belong to the world. So, she says I need to call them 'tits'. This one lady had me make one with tractors on the tits for her dad, because he likes tractors, and well, tits, of course. I think I've put every logo there is on tits..."

Naturally, he's a hoot.

Here is one of Padgett McFeely's hand-tinted photographs, and her site is here.


"Mountain Melody"

I wish I could retell her stories about where and how she found some subjects, and how she re-envisioned them, but those were mostly great in the telling, and I just can't do them justice.

However, both of these artists post their scheduled shows on their sites, so go find them yourself and hear their stories first hand.
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As an added bonus, check out this great essay by the Blowhards regarding art and stuff.

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Afterthought: Now I know that slamming mainstream/academic art and then posting a drawing of boobs (sorry Bill, I like "boobs" better) and a tinted photo is kinda cutting myself off at the knees, as they aren't "high art". I don't think the artists who produced those works would call them high art either - but they are art, regardless of their relative stature in the larger wash of things. It's just that art should contain the high and the low and everything in between. Here's the inbetween. And they pass my test: I would hang them on the wall with pride if I could afford them. So there.

Why Star Trek SUCKS when Capt. Kirk isn't at the helm.

Was pleased to run across the DVD set of the complete fifth season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" at the library. Snag-a-roo!

Spent the rest of the week remembering why I eventually abandoned the series with extreme ambivalence. Gad what a frustrating experience STTNG is. It's Star Trek, dammit. But it's boring and grindingly politically correct, dammit anyway.

The main culprit is mediocre writing (you can often reverse engineer the story conference for an episode* [see below]), but the blah writing is always exacerbated by clunky direction and pacing. As I had suspected when riding out another vast swath of commercials during the original broadcasts, each episode clocks in at 45 minutes, including the title and credit sequences. Taking 3 to 4 minutes off for that, we have only 40 minutes of show. Then, each and every cursed (pronounce that with a long "ed") episode has a good 5 to 10 minutes of bullshit character development - that serves nada towards said character development.

I don't know how many times a scene starts with someone cutting flowers in their quarters, playing the trombone/clarinet, reading a book, masturbating, etc., and we have to wade through their cute moment before something to do with the actual plot happens. Y'know, when Spock was playing his hippie dulcimer-harp in the rec room, it was interesting because we didn't think an emotionless person would like music. But when we see Riker tooting on a trombone, no one gives a flying warp speed fuck. It's not surprising or informative that he plays the trombone, it's dull.

Even the way trivial dialogue is delivered (meaning they're not on the bridge dealing with aliens with bad facial prosthesis) and edited fills me with entropy. It typically goes like this:
- One character speaks, then mugs for the camera
- Cut to the other character looking at them; pause; we see them absorb the other's dialogue, formulate their own
- They then speak their dialogue, mug
- Cut to other character looking at them; repeat
(This is what typically happens when you let actors direct, btw.)

Since the running time of most episodes is only 40 minutes, this crap pads each by about another 5 to 7 minutes, so we are officially down to about a basic half hour of action and plot spread over a life-wasting hour. It's kinda like that joke Woody Allen uses in Annie Hall to explain his view of life: two women are at a cheap resort in the Catskills having a meal when one says to the other, "the food here is terrible," to which the other adds, "I know, and such small portions."

*- "The Perfect Mate" - story conference idea: Q: what would be the perfect woman? A: someone who liked what I liked and thought I was totally cool. (Another possible sci: "You brought her, you fuck her.") ((Though, Famke Janssen in the role goes a long way towards achieving the perfect woman groove. Good Lord, that woman's a mondo-uber-hottie! (Alien estrus spots notwithstanding.) She joins my "Friends" inspired list of Celebrities My Spouse Would Let Me Do, alongside Kimberly Williams and Kate Hudson.))
- "I, Borg" - sci: what if a borg, used to a collective, was all alone?
- "Ensign Ro" - sci: if the Klingons represent(ed) the Russians, what kind of character would represent Arabs?
- "Darmok" - sci: y'know how we pitch stories, "it's kinda like "Altered States" meets "Lethal Weapon" (), what if a race really talked like that all the time?
- "The Game" - sci: you guys really need to quit playing "Doom" and work on those scripts.
And so on.

I have also complained in the past (if you're paying attention and bless you if you are) about the dearth of sex in most post-classic Star Treks. Well, in season five, Troi boffs the leader of the Eugenics society they save from a neutron. Riker boffs Troi, Ro, an androgynous character who supposedly doesn't even possess genitalia, and a few nameless wrinkly faced alien chicks. Picard most likely boffs the "Perfect Mate", the "Metamorph" empath babe who's literally born solely to please men. So, seems there is a lot of woogy woogy taking place, but everyone seems to regret it except Riker. I still prefer Capt. Kirk - and even Bones (and Spock if only he didn't go into heat just every seven years) - indulging in a little space nooky, then unashamedly showering off and moving on to blow more shit up.

Now, the Borg were a great creation, and Data was a wonderful character, but that's about where it begins and ends for STTNG. Oh, and what red-blooded guy didn't want to do Troi at one point or another?

One final thought ... the compression used on the DVDs had this odd artifact/effect where if any of the characters were sitting with their head very still, their features would float on their head, because the compression would keep the surrounding frame of the sides and back of their head still, but let all of their features move as a unit, particularly with Capt. Picard. It's totally freaky. I surprised they let this pricey collection out of the gate with such a blatant flaw.

In the Bedroom
partial review

<Channeling Sam Kinison> OOOOOOH! OH! OOOOOOOOOOOOOHH!
IT SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKED! I WOULD RATHER DIE SOBER IN A HAIL OF BEER CANS ON AN ABANDONED HIGHWAY ESCAPING MEMORIES OF MAKING A VIDEO WITH JESSICA HAHN THAN WATCH ANOTHER ARTHOUSE TURKEY LIKE THAT! OOOOOOOOOOOH! </Channeling Sam Kinison>

Yet another pretentious, glacially paced, overly long art film with inexplicable Oscar nominations up the butt. This is some folks idea of the perfect "serious film". Bullshit. It's the perfect bad film.

Let me give you an example. The plot (all 5 minutes of screen time that it gets out of the total 140) is this college boy home from school is boffing an older woman who has kids and eventually her estranged husband puts a bullet through his eye. The remainder of the film is his parents dealing with this. Here is one of those scenes:

- 10 seconds of black screen and silence.
- We fade up slowly on the mom (Sissy Spacek) sitting watching some talk show. We watch her watch the TV for approximately 90 seconds of screen time (I watched the time readout on the DVD player for these timings).
- The dad (Tom Wilkinson) walks in with a teapot and offers to pour her a cup, which she accepts, so he does, taking 60 seconds of screen time.
- The dad sits down to watch the TV, too. We watch the both of them watch TV for approximately 100 seconds of screen time.
- We fade out slowly, for about 15 seconds, to sit through another 10 seconds of black screen and silence.

Total wasted time: 4 Minutes, 55 seconds, and let's just round it up to 5 minutes to be that way.

That is just one vignette out of 7 in a row like that. The movie is wall to wall with scenes like that. The movie even ends with a series of scenes like that. Why in the hell does anyone make a movie like that?

Just in case anyone needs reminding:

George Bush did not win the popular vote, and perhaps wouldn't have even won enough votes in the Electoral College had the vote been allowed to continue to legitimate resolution, but the Supreme Court, stacked with cronies, halted the election and installed Georgy..

After we were attacked by Middle Eastern terrorists, George rightly attacked the country that gave refuge to the group, but we don't know if we got the leader. It's even come out that our intelligence agencies knew of the possibility of the attack, but it was ignored at higher levels.

Using this terrorist attack, George Bush then attempted to justify a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein by saying they had weapons of mass destruction and had aided the terrorists. So far, neither seems to be true. It's good to be rid of Saddam, but the means perhaps weren't justifiable. It is more likely that Saudi Arabians were behind the financing and planning of the terrorist attacks, but the Bush family and most of the oil families are tight with the Saudis, so aggression against them, whether it's justified or not, is unlikely.

Americans have lost more civil rights though this administration through John Ashcroft's PATRIOT Act than we have in all of our nation's previous history. This is the single largest attack on our civil rights since Ronald and Nancy Reagan's drug war, with its introduction of civil asset forfeiture - taking the accused's money and belongings before guilt has been established. Essentially, the PATRIOT Act completes the nullification of our Constitution begun by the drug war. In case you missed the fine print, Feds can now come into your house when you're not home, go through everything there, not tell you they did this, and they get permission to do this from a closed court that has no public accountability. The same goes for phone taps, internet access taps, and complete access to all of your financial accounts.

Tom DeLay has been the mastermind behind the possibly illegal, and certainly unrepresentational, gerrymandering in Colorado and Texas to guarantee Republican seats in the Capitol. He was also behind the California recall fiasco which will most likely result in the installation of another actor/puppet and neocon rubber stamp into the Governor's office.

George Bush has led our country into the worst depression ever since the Great Depression of the '20s and '30s - a verifiable fact. Jimmy Carter's recession was nothing compared to the economic trouble our nation faces today. There's even cause for suspicion that the Bush administration and the puppeteers behind it actually want our nation to be in a depression as some sort of "wage adjustment" with the added benefits of union busting. ("Look! We're losing our jobs overseas to cheaper workers! Make it cheap here and the jobs will stay!")

On top of all this, some of our news operations now blatantly and unapologetically lie to us, and then try to sue citizens who point this out, as Fox news did recently to Al Franken - just search google on his name. News organizations are supposed to be upholding free speech, not suppressing it. Reuters is often caught lying, as in this mind-stabbing example (on yourish.com via Andrea Harris).

Total full-goose bozo wingnut Ann Coulter's latest effort has been to "save the legacy and reputation" of Joe McCarthy - of the infamous McCarthyism period (so infamous your spell-checker knows the term). When she froths about it on the Rushclone talk shows, they just smile and ask, "Really Ann? Joe McCarthy? Isn't that even far out for you?" And when she says, "No, he was a great man," they just smile, say "OK," and go to commercial.

Even my father-in-law, a lifelong Republican, has finally realized the above and how bad things are. He began a "did you know about this?" diatribe yesterday, and my wife and I felt vindicated that someone who should be firmly and warmly ensconced in the excrement of delusion offered by the administration and the far right's spin doctors is suddenly alarmed by the facts. He even went so far as to explain the original, real meaning of fascism and how fascism rises only from a nation that was democratic, but had been whipped into a nationalistic frenzy and then allowed the many small changes which add up to the creation of a fascist state. A lifelong Republican said this.

We are in some deep shit folks. No doubt about it. It can happen here.