Thursday, September 30, 2004

Uhh...DEBATES!!

Oop, its almost midnight and I haven't fulfilled my at-least-one-post-a-day quota. So I'll toss in a few lines about the debate. I'm the only truly objective person in America, so you can believe me when I say that I think Kerry totally made Bush his bitch tonight.

Of course, my candidate was not allowed to participate, so I've got no dog in this fight.

"Human pillow seems to be warm and healing."

Lonely at night? Not afraid of possible creepy implications of sleeping with dismembered faux body parts? Then check out the Boyfriend's Arm Pillow, straight from Japan. A 'muscular' Boyfriend 's Arm Pillow is in the works, too. The company says it will also make a Girlfriend's Lap Pillow. I'd like to see how that one turns out....

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Wake Up With The King

You know that new-ish Burger King ad, where the guy slowly wakes up only to discover a horrifying, fiberglass-looking Burger King in bed with him? Since the guy is offered breakfast, and since the he's sleeping on the edge of the bed, facing out (and, hence, anus facing in), are we to assume that he spent the night doing, uh, man things with the Burger King (must...not...think of King's horrible, fiberglass scepter...)? Jeez, all it takes these days is a breakfast sandwich...damn kids these days don't know how good they got it...


UPDATE! Aha, see I'm NOT the only one!! I dunno know what's weirder: getting all bent out of shape thinking that the 'Wake Up With The King' ad campaign is part of a plot by the liberal media to get Americans to accept homosexuality ("C'mon, Barry, it's okay...the Burger King does it...") or doing so on a message board called Mortgage Grapevine...?

PATRIOT Act Goes to Court

Hey! A US district court struck down part of the PATRIOT Act! Alright!

Reuters says:
"Part of the PATRIOT Act, a central plank in the Bush Adinistration's war on terror, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Wednesday.
"U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations.
"The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies."

Like the article says, a blow to the Bush administration, and a welcome one. I don’t see how anyone could deny at this point that George W. Bush is anything but a liberty-hating creep. God, I hope he loses by a landslide. Say, I wonder who wrote that particular section of the PATRIOT Act anyway...?

“Meanwhile, [Democratic candidate for President, Sen. John] Kerry continues to support intrusive efforts to stamp out money laundering. His campaign statement points out that Kerry ‘authored most of the money laundering provisions’ in PATRIOT. Those provisions were largely based on an old money laundering bill that Kerry had introduced and which was opposed by economic conservatives and the ACLU. Kerry and other Democrats insisted that the money laundering provisions be attached to the PATRIOT Act. An October 2001 Associated Press article quoted Kerry as accusing Republicans of trying to remove the provisions ‘by fiat.’ The article noted that Kerry ‘underlined the political influence of Texas bankers.’
“The money laundering provisions, which became Title III of the PATRIOT Act, are some of the most privacy-threatening aspects of the bill. (See ‘Show Us Your Money,’ November 2003) They go beyond the ‘Know Your Customer’ rules of the late 1990s, bringing real estate brokers, travel agents, auto dealers, and various other businesses under the rubric of ‘financial institutions’ that must monitor their customers and file ‘suspicious activity reports’ on deviations from customers’ normal patterns.
“It was the Title III money laundering provisions that the FBI used in the much-criticized Operation G-String, an investigation of a strip club owner in Las Vegas accused of bribing local officials. The case had nothing to do with terrorism. Kerry - whose provisions allowed it to happen - has not cited this operation as one of Ashcroft’s abuses, even though other Democrats have.” (Reason, Oct. 2004, p31, all links mine)

Don’t forget to go out and vote on Nov. 2nd!

WI State Senator to Milwaukee Brewers: Fuck You

Okay, I’m paraphrasing, but only a bit, and you can’t tell me they don’t deserve it. For those of you who don’t live in Wisconsin, let me back up a bit.

About ten years ago, the Milwaukee Brewers were one of the most comically shitty teams in baseball (a condition that persists to this day). They were also owned by one Bud Selig, then-interim Commissioner of Baseball (now the real thing), which some people seemed to think was a potential conflict of interest, but nevermind. Anyway, one day, Bud & Co. came to the state legislature, hat in hand, appealing for a grant - free taxpayer money to build a new stadium. You see, they said, the reason that the Brewers blow so bad is because they have to play in such a ratty, ramshackle firetrap of a park; once they get a new place, look out! The team will improve, more people will come to see ‘em, they’ll spend more money in Milwaukee and surrounding areas, people will get richer and state government will get more tax money than they put in in the first place!! A lot of legislators recognized this “reasoning” for the retarded scam that it was, but alas, not enough: they narrowly approved a 0.1% sales tax for Milwaukee (and some surrounding counties) to raise a projected $160 million for the new field. A lot of voters saw through this as well, and at least one legislator lost his seat as a result. For a more detailed account of all this go here, although I wonder why this poor person’s editor made them end it on an inspirational, ‘heart-warming’ note (Note: the link doesn't seem to work when I put it up here, so, if you wanna read the article in question, C&P this: http://www.jsonline.com/sports/brew/mpark/mar01/miller25032201.asp).

Guess what? Even with the new stadium, the Brewers mysteriously still suck as bad as they ever did. Late last year, they were forced to cut their payroll, which foreclosed on any possibility that they’d be able to afford that super-team Bud had been promising for the last ten years. Plus, that $160 million that the people of southeast Wisconsin were supposed to raise has ballooned to $650 million.

So now what happens? This week, it was announced that Selig was gonna sell the team for $200 million to Mark Attanasio, some guy from LA.

State Sen. Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) is probably my favorite person in Wisconsin politics as he has two qualities I look for in any elected official: a stubborn dedication to his principles (some of which I do not share) and a willingness and ability to rhetorically stomp the nutsack of the sweet-talkers who crowd his profession. He’s been grousing about the Brewers scam since it first hit the scene, and the latest wrinkle did not find him in a forgiving mood.

"State taxpayers contributed to the book value of the Milwaukee Brewers, so they are entitled to a share of the proceeds from the sale of the team, state Senator Michael G. Ellis said today.
"...
"'There are two things that make up the value of a baseball franchise - the quality of the ballclub and the playground it plays in,' Ellis said.
"'Since 1995, the book value of that club rose from about $70 million to its reported sales price today of $200 million. I can assure you, Mark Attanasio is not paying $200 million for a team that's batting .247. He's not paying $200 million for a team that could well lose more than 100 games for the second season in a row.'"

Ouch. Anyway, read the whole thing.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Are You in a Good Mood?

Not to worry, this should help you snap right out of it.

(via Allah in the House)

bEAt

I’m going to see Mike Watt and the Secondmen this Saturday. I’ll take pictures (if that sort of thing is allowed) and post ‘em here (if I can figure out how). Pray for me.

AlcO

The boys at Reason turn their gaze toward teenage alcoholism and tell it like it is. I learned all I ever needed to know about the Republican party when, in the mid-80s, the Reagan administration - the same guys who were elected on a “let’s get big government off our backs” platform - threatened to withhold federal highway funds from the state of Wisconsin if it didn’t raise its drinking age from 18 to 21.

By happy coincidence, the fine folks at Socialism in the Age of Waiting posted this delightful bit of verse today, which I have re-typed for you:


Song Before Drinking
Li Po [or Li Bai], translated by Arthur Waley

See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven,
Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again!
See at the mirror in the High Hall
Aged men bewailing white locks -
In the morning threads of silk,
In the evening flakes of snow.
Snatch the joys of life as they come and use them to the full;
Do not leave the silver cup idly glinting at the moon.
The things that Heaven made Man was meant to use;
A thousand guilders scattered to the wind may come back again.
Roast mutton and sliced beef will only taste well
If you drink with them at one sitting three hundred cups.
Great Master Ts’êen, Doctor Tan-ch’iu,
Here is wine, do not stop drinking,
But listen, please, and I will sing you a song.
Bells and drums and fine food, what are they to me
Who only want to get drunk and never again be sober?
The Saints and Sages of old times are all stock and still,
Only the mighty drinkers of wine have left a name behind.
When the Prince of Ch’êen gave a feast in the Palace of P’ing-lo
With twenty thousand gallons of wine he loosed mirth and play.
The master of the feast must not cry that his money is all spent;
Let him send to the tavern and fetch wine to keep our tankards filled.
His five-flower horse and thousand-guilder coat -
Let him call the boy to take them along and pawn them for good wine,
That drinking together we may drive away the sorrows of a thousand years.

"I Wanna Be a Nonconformist, Just Like Everybody Else!"

Jeez, Lileks got grouchy real quick at the end of yesterday’s Bleat (probably in the archive by time you read this). Must be that slight cold. I have to say I’m sort of perplexed but not really surprised at all the consternation caused by the NY Times article about blogging. Not surprised because it seems that about 2 out of every 3 blogs I read are borderline-obsessed with Blogs As the Vanguard of the NEW New Media; perplexed because, well, I just can’t get too excited by that proposition one way or the other. I mean, hey, I dig blogs, I read a whole raft of ‘em every day, go blogs! But so much of that kind of rhetoric sounds exactly like the stuff that people used to (and still do!) say to each other in the fanzine scene: You still read the New York Times? Bah! I only read FANZINES!! Get hip to the desktop publishing revolution, gramps! You ARE the media!! Etc. It all sounds just a little self-serving. Whatever. If there really is a serious change afoot, bring it on, I welcome it - anything’s better than listening to Walter Kronkite being eloquent for six hours every night.

At any rate, Lileks’s story at the end of the Bleat was funny to me, since that whole ‘cultural elite’ stereotype is one I like to invoke all the time; it’s also one that I tend to embody much of the time as well. Trust me, when it comes to making cheap jokes at the expense of Prius-driving, Whole-Foods-shopping, farmer’s market fuckheads, I am THEE KING. Together, Stacey and I are the ROYAL FRICKING FAMILY of mockery. You can TELL that I mean it because of ALL THOSE CAPITAL LETTERS.

But: we buy the NY Times every Sunday (for what its worth, I read the magazine third, after Week In Review and the Book Review (‘cause I just love words!)). We live in a swanky, liberal college town. We’ve both got MAs in hopelessly obscure and useless humanities programs. We’re married now, but we lived together for almost three years beforehand, and only really bothered to get hitched so she could get on my health insurance. We never, ever want to have children. Is all that cultural elite enough for ya? Uh, we also go see foreign films a lot, if that helps. Oh, and we buy soy burgers at the grocery store!

Butt: I promise you that we read that paper at Perkins as often as not (no shit!). And I don’t think you’d need to ask for proof if I told you that we had more than our share of low-brow, red-statish allegiances (culturally, at least). Look, its all well and good to make fun of dipshits who seem to strive to embody all the cliches of their particular demographic, who try to model every aspect of their identity around what some pollster or magazine editor or whoever says it oughta be. And that’s not only true of liberal blue-state snobs: I grew up in a little town in northern Wisconsin, so you can believe me when I tell you that not all of those cliches about willfully ignorant, Kodiak chewing, fag bashing, gun luuvin’, Confederate-flag-waving bigots were made up by Howell Raines and Graydon Carter. There are jag-offs everywhere, Herr Lileks, even among the ranks of suburban, married fathers of young children.

But that’s why I like Lileks’s writing so much: he’s NOT a cliche, he’s NOT whatever the modern-day equivalent of a Ward Clever would look like. Or: he sort of is, but he’s not only that. He’s got opinions on politics, but he doesn’t use ‘em as a checklist. He writes serious bits about the war and he also takes time out to make jokes about obscure composers of television music. He’s, like, a HUMAN BEING. When I was a kid back in my aforementioned sleepy hometown, I couldn’t wait to leave so I could be in an environment that wasn’t so dominated by rigid, narrow-minded creeps. But over the course of the last ten years, and ESPECIALLY over the course of the last five years, the people I meet have become more, not less, conformist than what I was used to (there’re plenty of noble exceptions to this, but you get my drift). I guess what sticks in my craw about his story is not that its some malicious smear but that its true: its getting to the point where I feel like I can guess everything about a person - their opinions, their politics, what shows they watch late at night, what kind of beer they drink, what kind of music they listen to, what kind of jokes they’re gonna tell me - after talking to ‘em for five minutes. And it doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that this predictability could be anything other than a virtue.

Yeah, I know: But I’m different! I’m not like that!! Not Handsome Dan!! I’m a wild free-thinker, a dupe for no man’s dogma!! Sorry if this reads like some teenager’s diary (“oh, why is everyone but me such an asshole?”). And a lot of this is just election fever, war fever. But the election’s gonna be over in about a month, and I feel pretty confident that everyone will stick with their team regardless of what kind of shenanigans fortune has in store for us on Nov. 2. Eh, look on the bright side - at least there are TWO teams (at least two teams; I suppose I’m on some third or fourth or fifth team). Whatever. I’m sick of writing about this.

Monday, September 27, 2004

Never Again

Let's review: the UN is an effective force for good in the world. France is an altruistic friend of the wretched of the earth. Nothing is worse than unilateralism. Got all that? Alright then, here ya go.

These guys seem to have their shit slightly more together. They deserve your attention and funds.

Reuters- Cat put outside During Jeanne


Yahoo! News - Top Stories Photos - Reuters


What kind of person puts their cat outside when a hurricane in coming? What an asshole.

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

October is SLEAZE MONTH!!

Even for someone as exciting as I, last night’s wild, mad-cap shenanigans set a new standard for thrills. Here’s how I spend my Saturday nights: relaxing on the couch and reading. Oh yes, we know how to cut loose here at AlcO-bEAT headquarters. The TV was on for background noise purposes, as usual; IFC happened to be on, and the original 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street happened to be on IFC. Its hard, after twenty years (whoa, A Nightmare on Elm Street came out TWENTY YEARS AGO) of lame sequels, endless merchandizing tie-ins and general oversaturation, to remember how effective this movie was when it first came out (well, sort of - I first saw it on cable in the middle of the night in 1985 or 1986). A lot of Nightmare has aged horribly, even worse than the original Halloween. I imagine that the scene in the sleep clinic is wringing tears of laughter from the eyes of midnight-movie-attendies somewhere. “What’s this in the bed with me...? Its...its...oh my god, its a HAT!!!!!!!!!! Aiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! DON’T LET THE HAT GET ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Even so, the surrealism of this one still hasn’t been beat, and I mean by ANYTHING - Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’Or (both of which I also like) can get in line with everyone else as far as I’m concerned. I’ll see your “woman’s eye being cut with a razor”, Luis, and RAISE YOU a tongue snaking out of the telephone, flaming footsteps leading up the stairs, and a fountain of blood shooting from the bed to the ceiling. Plus, the nasty simplicity of the various subtexts here are just too cool to believe. One of the things that I always hated about movies like American Beauty is that they absolutely tie themselves in knots trying to put together this rickety critique of suburbia, the family, school, whatever, whereas a good horror movie would basically just come out and say what was on its mind without getting all twinkle-toed about it. American Beauty says “Beneath the seemingly happy facades of suburbia there is a boiling cauldron of hypocrisy, paranoia and frustration;” Nightmare cuts to the chase: “Your parents are alcoholic, superficial dickwads, and a bunch of murderous vigilantes besides.” Its a subtle distinction, but (especially for anyone who was a kid in the 1980s and was into scary movies) its an important one.

So ANYWAY, I’m partly reading and partly watching Nightmare when Stacey, who’d been burning the midnight oil designing the cover of the new issue, wanders in to see what her layabout husband is up to.

“What is this...?”

Nightmare on Elm Street. The original. You’ve seen it, right?”

“Nope, never have.”

The causes me to put my book down, sit up and practically fly into a fit about how its inexcusable that any wife of mine hasn’t even seen A Nightmare on Elm Street, let alone The Re-Animator, The Thing (1982 version) or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is something of a refrain of mine; I let out a big tirade about it every other month or so. Some people are “children of the Depression” or “children of the Vietnam era”. I’m a child of the cable and video revolution. My family got cable in 1981 (when I was five) and a VCR in 1983 (when I was seven) and ever since I’ve been a sleaze addict, always on the prowl for bizarre and/or shocking sci-fi, horror, porn (hardcore when I can, softcore when I must), action or fantasy films. Those of you who got HBO or Cinemax back in the old days will no doubt remember the content warnings that came with every movie in the monthly guide. At the end of the description, right after the time listings, there’d be a series of letters clueing in the conscientious parent (or the tenacious pre-teen sleaze monger) as to what sort of moral depravities they could expect in any particular movie. AL meant “adult language”, which was in almost every movie. AS meant “adult situations”, which I always found maddeningly vague. AS was maybe the one pair of initials which wasn’t worth getting excited about - someone in the movie might consider getting an abortion, for example, which would get it slapped quick with an AS. All well and good, but it doesn’t really move the needle on the Sleaze-O-Meter too far to the right, not even as much as the most perfunctory AL (I could talk about abortion to my parents, but heaven help me if I gave ‘em any AL!). (September, starring Margot Kidder is the only movie that I know of to make the listing with ONLY AS, nothing else. It sounds like the most boring movie ever made.) AH, however, would never fail to make my young heart skip a beat - AH meant “adult humor”! This era was also good for gross teen sex comedies, by the way (once again, American Pie and other modern-day members of tis ilk can go sit in the back of the bus. In the Reagan era the jokes were funnier, the grossness was grosser and the women were hotter and took their tops off more often. Get used to it.), which could always be counted on to produce some swell AH.

Next, there were the violence warnings: You gotcher ML (“mild violence”), you gotcher V (regular ol’ “violence” - not too much, not too little) and then you got GV (“graphic violence.”). GV, of course, was the one to look out for, because it usually meant some manner of scuzzy slasher movie. Best of all, though, especially for an adolescent boy, were the sex warnings: BN was “brief nudity” (bah!) and N was just “nudity.” Sadly, there was no designation for “abundant nudity” or “extreme nudity” or anything like that; regular old “nudity” was the ceiling, but I was certainly happy enough with that. If I was really lucky, though, there’d be something on that garnered an SC, which stood for “strong sexual content”. This could usually only be found in the softcore porn that Cinemax would play late on Friday and Saturday nights (ah, the Emmanuelle movies...but that is for another post...), so it usually meant “lots of people fuckin’”. Anything with an SC would almost always have an N with it (and in conjunction with the SC, that N could fairly reliably be taken to mean “full frontal”, so, like, bonus), although I do remember a few isolated cases of an SC paired with a BN or, even weirder still, an SC without ANY advertised nudity. I’m still not exactly sure how that worked. The last letter in the HBO/Cinemax rogue’s gallery of sleaze was R, which stood for “rape”. I felt a little weird about that even then, but I must confess that I would make a point to not miss anything with an R in it, as movies with rape scenes in ‘em tended to not hold back on other sleazy elements, upping the sex and (non-sexual) violence ante even more. I thought then - and I haven’t changed my opinion too much since - that the greatest movie ever made would have ALL the letters in its listing: AL, AS, AH, GV, N, SC, R. I even remember the one that had the most - Hard Ticket to Hawaii, which had (at least) AL, GV, N and SC in it. There may or may not have been AH or R; I’m pretty sure that no Andy Sidaris movie has any “adult situations” in it.

Anyway, the point of all this is: sleazy movies are part of my cultural DNA, horror movies in particular. Horror movies did for me what punk rock did for thousands of other kids (punk rock eventually did this for me as well). While I’m not as much of an obsessed nut as I was, its not something I think I’ll ever completely get over. So I think you see why I want to share all of this with Stacey. She likes sleaziness and horror movies and such - I doubt we’d be together if that wasn’t the case. But there’s so much of the canon of sleaze that I have yet to introduce her to. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that she hasn’t yet seen Blood Sucking Freaks means that I’ve somehow failed as a husband and as a man.

With that in mind, I’m designating October as Sleazy Education Month. I’m gonna see to it that Stacey has a bit better grasp of this sort of stuff by Election Day. I’m not saying that she’s gonna be an expert, but I will promise that she’ll appreciate the odd Jeffrey Combs joke.

This is where you, the reader, step in. What should I show her? I wanna focus mainly on the 1980s, since that’s what I grew up on. Plus, I consider that to have been something of a golden age. I wanna throw a few 1970s gems in there as well, but mostly just for seasoning and context - we’re gonna focus on the Reagan administration here. I’ve already got a sort of rough draft of what I want, but I wanna hear your suggestions (which you can leave in the comments box) before I show my cards. I’ll be sure to post a log of what we watch.

That’s it. Ready...GO!




Saturday, September 25, 2004

Notice Anything Different About Me?

Because she’s a genius, Stacey inadvertantly deleted our entire blogroll the other day, which is why there’s that very attractive empty white space on the right side of the page. We’ll get right on that, maybe even with a fancy new system to classify ‘em - she said she may even give ‘em Library of Congress call numbers, which SO has my vote.

We Love Wrestling (But Not Too Much Wrestling)

So yesterday I got a copy of IWA Mid South's “One More Time” show from back in June. I’ve been out of the wrestling loop for a little while, and I figure I’ll start at the beginning of the summer and catch up (I’ve got some Ring of Honor cards on the way as well; I’ve never actually seen any ROH before - it always sounded way too athletic and not nearly sleazy enough, kind of like watching the Olympics - so I’ll let you know what I think). I’m excited to see new (for me) matches from Samoa Joe, Homicide, CM Punk and Chris Hero, plus I’m intrigued by Alex Shelley, who’s new to me.

I don’t get a chance to pop the tape in until late last night, almost 1 o’clock. First match is a good-enough brawl between Jason Dukes (who apparently is a regular at Mid-American Wrestling in Milwaukee) and some guy named Hillbilly Jed. Like every other wrestler ever named “Hillbilly ____________”, Hillbilly Jed is a big fat guy who wears overalls. For a big dude, he’s pretty agile, though. Like I said, good enough, a perfectly fine opening match.

Time for match #2, which turns out to be Samoa Joe vs. Homicide, which I would’ve thought they’d save for the end (if not the main, then certainly near the end of the card), but, hey, both these guys rule, so I’m fine with it. They beat on each other in all sorts of fun ways and I’m a happy wrestling fan. At one point, they wind up out of the ring and on the floor, brawling into the crowd. This sends the fans scurrying for safety, which is always amusing at an IWA MS show, as the crowd usually consists of about 25 farm kids sitting in steel folding chairs. A nice mix of submission moves and hard strikes to the part of the body you think with; I think someone may have even started bleeding, but the ol’ memory’s a little spotty as it was inching toward 2AM at this point. I decide to see how long the show is by FF-ing to the end while watching the counter. After several minutes of whirring and clicking by my bronze-age VCR, I get to the end, read the numbers on the counter and almost literally weep: 4:00:00! That’s four hours!! Christ, WWE pay-per-views aren’t four hours long!! That’s simply too much wrestling!! Why do the people who put on bush-league wrestling shows feel the need to pack it so full? I appreciate the whole “bang-for-the-buck” mindset that’s probably at work here, but JEEZ, I got things to do with my life. Looks like I’m gonna be watching this one in fits and starts, so look for more details later.

Speaking of wrestling, anyone who follows the Only Good Sport online has no doubt already come across this. Even if you’re not a wrestling fan - no, ESPECIALLY if you’re not a wrestling fan - I urge you to read this, as it will make you laugh hard while making you feel very, very dirty. And there’s nothing like a good mix of knee-slapping laffs and abject horror.

Che You, Che Me

I know you’re gonna go see that Motorcycle Diaries movie ‘cause you’re a right-on type who’s down with the cause and always looking for a way to stick it to The Man. But before you go, check out this article by the fab Paul Berman, which serves to remind that Che Guevara wasn’t just another pretty face; he was also a dissident-shooting, power-worshipping douchebag.

I know I’m gonna go see that Motorcycle Diaries movie ‘cause I see every movie. But I think I may have to wear this when I go.

Friday, September 17, 2004

Johnny Ramone, R.I.P.

Well, I'd heard Johnny was sick and not doing so well for quite some time now, so I wasn't completely shocked to hear the news, nevertheless, it hurts to lose another Ramone. Here the NY Times obit.

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