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November 28, 2007
His band is Scientologist rock.
Silly cult membership aside, Beck killed at the Echoplex on Sunday night.
He had Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Jason Falkner, Joey Waronker, and Nigel Godrich as his band.
It didn't suck at all.
And no e-meter can doubt this statement: the Echoplex PA moves an eardrum-crushing amount of air.
Photo via Never Cool in School.
You will play the binoculars soccer!
As I've noted here before, the Japanese are far better at reality television than we puny Americans.
I don't know if it's the vestigial samurai code or just a greater willingness to inflict suffering and humiliation; their shows are tops at discomfort and its associated hilarity.
Plus, contestants dressed as colorful prisoners, and an official in bunny ears! Blessings be upon you.
Via she who rules.
November 18, 2007
Tom LaBonge drops a loaf.
L.A. City Council member Tommy LaBonge is such an enthusiastic, back-slapping, glad-handing old-school politician that it's impossible not to like him. He seems like a genuinely good egg, and is a big supporter of libraries, public transit, and Griffith Park.
He's also one of the few local politicians silly enough to try to give Heidi Klum a loaf of pumpkin bread. Seriously, Tom, don't you know she's just going to throw it up anyway?
Via LA Observed.
Two other questions come to mind:
1. Why are the Victoria's Secret Angels getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? That sacred honor is reserved for luminaries like Wink Martindale and Tony Danza.
2. Why is Justin Hawkins of The Darkness lurking just behind Heidi Klum? Is he waiting to POUNCE?
November 16, 2007
Please, please, please stop talking.
My hot date and I saw Neko Case tonight at Disney Hall.
This woman's singing voice could explode an incoming meteor and topple corrupt regimes; it is an astonishing creation of nature. Her songs are beautiful, haunting, and evocative.
And when she talks between songs, it's like being forced to overhear a teenager at the Glendale Galleria yammering about her last trip to the tanning salon.
Neko: One reason why Radiohead is so legendary is that Thom Yorke doesn't discuss Star Trek or his stamp collection between songs. Cultivate some mystery. That's part of what audiences pay for.
Any Neko Case show is worth seeing. They'd be doubly amazing if she kept her trap shut while tuning.
Tonight's lineup:
Kelly Hogan: backing vocals
Jon Rauhouse: pedal steel, banjo, arch-top and Hawaiian guitars
Tom Ray: stand-up bass
Paul Rigby: guitars
Barry Mirochnick: drums, percussion
Neko Case: vocals, tenor and six-string acoustic and electric guitars, talking inappropriately
November 12, 2007
When the caption writes itself.
I will not say it. It's too easy, and too horrible.
And it's Veterans Day.
Slideshow: Bush visits injured vets
Tipped by the Exploding Aardvark.
Olbermann looks at the plight of Iraq & Afghanistan veterans. Here's the story of Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, the "Marlboro Marine" pictured on the right.
November 11, 2007
Kash kard konfusion.
Imagine the fun when none-too-clever British scratch-off lottery players are confronted with the challenge of figuring the comparative values of negative numbers. The land that gave us Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday shines brightly in the 21st century.
The Manchester Evening News article quotes one irate player:
"On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't."I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it.
"I think Camelot are giving people the wrong impression - the card doesn't say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number. Six is a lower number than 8. Imagine how many people have been misled."
The article (tipped via b3ta) gets bonus points for silly British terms like maths, minus numbers, and Tina Farrell from Levenshulme.
Not that there would be any less confusion if any U.S. lottery posed such an arcane challenge. The difference is that game designers here are smart enough to know how dim their customers are.
November 03, 2007
Waterboarding, now euphemism-free.
From Tim Rutten's Regarding Media column in today's L.A. Times:
So what we have here is a president and vice president who want to install as the country's chief law enforcement official a man who refuses to flatly say that the United States of America should not torture people. Putting aside the surreal question of how our elected officials ever equivocated themselves into a debate over whether to torture, the descent of most of the press into comfortable euphemism this week has been a stomach-turning experience.The New York Times, for example, reported that Mukasey's confirmation is "in doubt over his refusal to state a clear legal position on a classified Central Intelligence Agency program to interrogate terrorism suspects"...Meanwhile, this newspaper and others repeatedly described waterboarding as a "harsh technique" or as a "coercive measure." It is neither of those things. It is torture, and the refusal to make that point each and every time this repugnant practice comes up is a form of rhetorical squeamishness indistinguishable from moral cowardice.
Strangely enough, this week's clearest statement of what the fight in Washington is really all about didn't appear in any newspaper or broadcast news outlet, but on an Internet site (www.smallwarsjournal.com) popular with unconventional warfare and intelligence professionals. The author is Malcolm W. Nance, a veteran special operations consultant to various U.S. intelligence agencies and a master instructor in the U.S. Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program in San Diego...
Nance has no time for euphemisms and no doubt that waterboarding is anything other than torture: "Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word. Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
"Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration -- usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right, it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again."
That's what really is at issue in the Mukasey confirmation hearing. When the media characterize it as a political struggle between the White House and congressional Democrats or as a complex debate over national security in a post Sept. 11 world -- two convenient dodges -- they aren't being realistic or fair. What the media really are doing is engaging in a sophisticated fan dance -- a convenient act of concealment.
What's really at stake is whether this country will continue to stand with the framers of our Constitution and our authentic moral traditions or whether we now will allow Bush and Cheney to put us shoulder to shoulder with Pol Pot.
Rutten's column is here.
For some unvarnished coverage of the issue, here's Keith Olbermann's take.
LSD rendered unnecessary.
b3ta denizen Cyriak has created this animated clip about UFO cow mutations that is utterly relentless in its sheer spasmodic insanity. Imagine early Terry Gilliam with 21st-century computing power, loopy techno beats, and far more brain damage.
It's a true glimpse of genius, I tell you.
