RIGHT TO THE CHIN

My birthday

Today, I turn 30.

I feel old.

Glen Campbell in trouble again

I am a huge Glen Campbell fan. "Wichita Lineman" is one of my faves.
He is in trouble again. Glen, you're 67. You need to get it together, my friend...

Bush: "I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East"

I mentioned this quote to Bob a few days ago. It comes from an article I read over the summer from Ha'aretz.com, a Jewish publication. It took a little digging to find it again.

The writer is not directly quoting Bush, but someone who talked to Bush, and I think it's interesting. I don't think it sounds like Bush, but it might not be far off. I've included Bush's full quote, and you can link to the whole story by clicking on it:

...According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush
said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I
struck them, and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am
determined to solve the problem in the Middle
East. If you help me I will act, and if not,
the elections will come and I will have to
focus on them."

Notice, Bush DIDN'T say GOD instructed him to solve the problem in the Middle East, only 'I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.'

I don't how I came across this site or article. I never visited it before or since. For some reason, I feel like I was supposed to read this. I think (and I'm not alone) our current actions in Iraq are setting the tables for actions in other parts of the region, and the snowball effect could lead to a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis in the forseeable future.

Many Jewish/Non-Jewish scholars argue that God brought on the Holocaust in order to gain international support for the post-Holocaust creation of the Israeli state in 1948. I'm not sure I agree. But I'm also not sure I don't.

What's seemingly crystal clear to our eyes and ears can often serve as a smokescreen to an alternate purpose that we will never know about until it hits us right in the face.

The time I interviewed Jared from Subway...

In October of 2000, my then TV show, "Faces," was airing during the local college block of our cable access channel's airtime. Jared Fogle, the Subway Guy, was in town, and we took a camera down to interview him.

Jared was a nice guy, and passed along a story about a lady who'd been stalking him from town to town - Subway to Subway...Weird...

Anyway, in the course of the interview, Jared showed us his "fat pants," which were waist size: 58", length: 32"...RELAXED FIT...

If a 58" waist doesn't indicate the fact that you like to relax, then I don't know what does...

MAN...

Wesley Clark on Letterman: A Brief Synopsis

In case you missed it, Democratic Presidential hopeless Gen. Wesley Clark was on Letterman last night. The only purposes for his appearance were a) to exude a nauseatingly fakey "aw-shucks" humility, b)to brag about his 4 YEAR-OLD military conquests (Huh?), c)to advertise that he can "get wars done" cheaper, quicker, and safer than the current administration, and, oh yeah, d)to sell copies of his new book, which discusses (I'm sure) the first three reasons for appearing the show.

I love Dave, but sometimes he is just too accomodating.
If it were my show, I'd have Bill Murray on every day.

Boo!!!

Shake well for best taste?

My carton of Tropicana lemonade contains the instructions:
"Shake Well for Best Taste"

I think simply by my buying this product (at a Food Lion, at 3 a.m., simply because it was on sale), you can learn a lot about my level of taste.

Improv Comedy Groups

Why do all pictures of Improv Comedy Groups look like that?

-The guy with his hands out at his sides: "I give up!"
-The big hairy guy looking mean.
-A guy in a hawaiian shirt.
-A lady with long brown hair, sitting indian-style, looking friendly.
-Another guy pointing at any one of them.
-Some guy looking like "Who? Me?"
-Someone else looking annoyed.

In every group I've been in, we just kinda stood there.

MP3.COM GOING BYE-BYE: Hurry and download your crappy local bands while they last!

MP3.COM will be no more as of December 2nd, taking all hosted content with it.

While I never downloaded a single tune from this site, it was a good place for anybody to post their tunes so anybody else (with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BETTER TO DO) could hear them. I'm sure another site will slide in and corner this at-home artist market.

In closing, I'd just like to say that there are WAY too many bands out there...

Little Feat: Waiting For Columbus

I have probably listened to this album 10,000 times in my lifetime. It is also a great album to play drums to - as I've also done about 10,000 times.

Little Feat, before the passing of Lowell George, was about the tightest and funkiest band in existence. "Waiting for Columbus" is a testimony to that fact. Equal parts blues, funk, jazz, rock, country, and dixieland - but not sounding exactly like any of them - Little Feat was a true "American Rock n' Roll Band," taking all styles that came before it and mxing them up into their own musical stew. Little Feat still exists today, but not quite like they did on this album...

The album features the Tower of Power Horns, the wicked drumming of Richie Hayward, the nasty guitar interplay of Paul Barerre and slide-master Lowell George, the key keys of Bill Payne, the rock-solid bass of Kenny Gradney, and the perfect percussion of Sam Clayton.

Put in this in your car's cd player, turn it up loud, and listen to the saxophone/slide guitar interplay of "Mercenary Territory." THEN, humbly realize that "Waiting for Columbus" is, indeed, a LIVE album and that most of your other cd's are crap.

This album contains no whiny English lead singers with hair gel. The re-issue has improved sound, which is like making a diamond more "diamond-y." But, whatever they wanna do is fine with me... They've also also added bonus tracks and tracks that were previously issued on other Feat albums. And a swell book.

I recommend this album to anyone currently living. And some who are dead.

Are You KIDDING Me?

You know, it's amazing what appears in your browser when you fail to turn the crap filter on. I'm sorry if you know these people. No, seriously. I mean, come on! You should check out their newest album, "Straight Up Praisin'!"

You really shouldn't like Bukowski anymore...

Paul F. Tompkins, an alum on Mr. Show, has written a rather witty, though somewhat dirty, essay on why you shouldn't like Bukowski anymore. I wonder what he would say if you never liked Bukowski, anyway. Ah...Regardless...I think it's a funny article. Check it out.

DRIVEN TO DRINK
By Paul F. Tompkins
Reprinted from www.LAInnuendo

One mean drunk on one annoying drunk

If you’re over 22 years of age, you really shouldn’t like the work of Charles Bukowski anymore. I don’t mean you should stop telling people you like his work, I mean, literally, you shouldn’t like it anymore.

Why? Because Charles Bukowski was nothing more than a tremendously unpleasant old drunk who wrote and rewrote the same book about 40 times. If you’re a budding pretentious jerkoff in your late teens, get yourself any Bukowski book and hang on to it. You needn’t buy any of the others. Just read that one 40 times. You’ve got to trust me on this. And by all means avoid his "poetry." First of all, poetry is an embarrassing art form and is only really done well once every hundred years or so, and Bukowski was no cummings. Essentially, his "poetry" was just one of his self-consciously squalid, repetitive "short stories" chopped up to look like "poetry." It’s no "good."

See, it’s just not for adults. It’s okay for those crucial years when you are trying to form what you think is a cool personality. Bukowski will not let you down then. Talking about him lends you some whiff of non-suburbanity, which I know you desperately want and need at this point in your still-formative years. This is the time to drink off-brand bourbon and discover Tom Waits’s early catalogue, when he was singing in a phony Louie Armstrong voice and was pretty much just as pretentious as you now aspire to be. These early Waits songs are all about things that would happen in a Bukowski story! Fantastic! But as forced as those songs are, they’re still a thousand times better-written than any single sentence of Bukowski’s. Early Waits and any Bukowski will stand you in good stead with aspiring white bluesmen and any girls at your local "bohemian" bar who are really into getting drunk all day every day.

(Also, my future New Beverly fixture, don’t bother with clove cigarettes. I guarantee you won’t like them and it’s not worth trying to get used to them because you never will and they smell like perfume you would buy in a hospital gift shop.)

What’s so weird about the Tom Waits/Charles Bukowski connection is that Waits clearly didn’t experience any of the retro "Nighthawks at the Diner" horseshit he was shoveling out, but Bukowski lived all of his own miserable work. So why is it so goddamned terrible? Perhaps because Bukowski was merely reporting the things that went on in his life, without any real effort to make these experiences into literature. This is the beauty of pretension. It takes a huge asshole to write about his fights, his wine hangovers, and his frequenting of prostitutes, but it takes an even bigger asshole to encourage him to do so.

Unfortunately, Bukowski lived and wrote here and is associated closely with Los Angeles. In certain circles, anyway. A little while ago some old ghost of mine from back east came out here for a week-long visit that I can only describe as excruciating. This is a guy who has a soul patch, wears vintage bowling shirts, and says "dig" because he thinks it makes him interesting. This fellow is in his mid-forties. How awkward! Needless to say, he was thrilled to be walking the same streets as one of his heroes, Charles Bukowski. I let him do this on his own, going so far as to pretend I had a job to go to every day so I could avoid this goon.

One afternoon, he came back to my apartment after having been roaming around Hollywood all day. He told me he’d gone and had a couple of pops at a bar called The Ski Room at Sunset and Bronson. Sadly, I know the Ski Room all too well, having been forced by my circumstances to drink there almost exclusively when I first came to town and didn’t really have any of what you’d call money. By the way, it’s not called the Ski Room anymore; its current name is Raji’s, and by all appearances it is a thinly veiled Vietnamese brothel.

"Went to The Ski Room today, man," the goon said. "I really dig that place."

I angrily bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper and replied, "Oh, yeah?"

With a huge smile on his face, the goon told me that he was informed that Bukowski used to drink there.

What I did not tell him was that this is hardly singular news. Bukowski was a hideous alcoholic and most likely drank in every bar in Los Angeles. If there is a bus stop bench on your corner, odds are he drank there, too. There probably isn’t a plaque, but try to enjoy it anyway.

For more Paul F. Tompkins, visit www.paulftompkins.com

We're having a fetus shower!

If an unborn baby is to be referred to as a fetus, then why aren't baby showers called fetus showers? "We're having a fetus!"

I guess "baby" is OK if you're gonna keep it. Otherwise, call it a fetus, make it scientifically irrelevant and get on with your life. Unless you were raped, because it's the baby's, uh, fetus' fault then, too...

About the only good thing that could come out of a rape would be the chance for a desperate family to adopt a baby. Because, after all, it's still a baby.

Isn't it?

Man, I just can't stop with these posts...

Driving Around Like A Damned Fool

Question: Was there ever a time in your life when you just spent all your free time driving around listening to music with friends and stopping at the 7-11 for junk food...
...like I did?

...And wasn't it great?

Please Help: Story About Blogging

I'm writing a December cover story about the blogging phenomenon for a local publication, and I'd be interested to hear some things from you fellow bloggers for inclusion in my piece. The piece will serve to inform folks about blogging, and bring some publicity to Chattablogs, specifically.

Feel free to respond to respond to any/all of my questions.

1. WHY do you blog?
2. What, to you, IS a blog?
3. How long have you been blogging?
4. What do you try talk about on your blog?
5. Why is a blog better/wrose/different than a traditional message board?
6. When you see something posted on somebody's blog that you agree/diasgree with, what is your first impulse?
7. How many people do you imagine are reading your blog?
8. Where do you think you're blog is going?
9. Where do you think blogging is going?

...and anything else you'd like to add...

Paris Hilton Attempts to Halt Sex Video

Apparently, model/actress Paris Hilton is trying to halt further distribution of a homemade sex video of her and a past boyfriend. The couple was 19 when it was made.

To me, this story, Hilton herself, and this new sleazy Hollywood subculture is getting quite old.

Girlfriend, put on some clothes and learn a skill. Nobody owes you anything...You're twenty-two. Get a clue, and some self-respect.

It seems that the parents involved in this story could afford to give their children everything in the world they wanted...except attention and discipline.

Other than California's natural beauty and climate, stories like this are so smarmy and remind me that there is seldom anything in/coming out of California left to admire anymore.

Movies I've Never Seen

I often skip big, blockbuster films. I figure enough other people are watching them, why should I? So, here is a short list of films I've never seen.

Matrix (Haven't seen ANY of them)
Jurassic Park (Haven't seen ANY of them)
Star Wars (Haven't seen the new ones)
Lord of The Rings (Any of them)
Harry Potter (Any of them)
Kill Bill
Gangs of New York
English Patient (fell asleep two different times after renting it)
Anything with Jackie Chan except Cannonball Run
...and MANY others

No point, really. Just haven't seen 'em.

Client Liked Their DVD Project

It is with humble happiness that I sit, learning that a client of mine - a local prep school with a HUGE budget - LOVES the promotional DVD I recently completed for them. I should add that this was the FIRST DVD I've ever completed from the ground up for a client, and they could have chosen ANYBODY to make it for them, but they chose my company and, in turn, me, and their reaction has done wonders for my confidence in this area. I am constantly in awe of other people that I know in the field (see: Dwayne and Chris) and am ALWAYS striving to get better artistically with every project I do. It is nice to know that I am getting to the point where I can do quality work - for that is all I care about.

I didn't edit the client's video, though I could have. But I WAS able to create a fully-functional DVD-ROM with a computer-viewable PDF and weblink, and two clean movie files. I made all my menu layers and buttons in photoshop, cleaned up the grainy source footage in Final Cut Pro 4, and created a fully functional DVD in DVD Studio Pro 2.

A bit dorky of a post, yes. But every month passes me by with more confidence and additional skills, and I am beginning to truly enjoy completing clients' projects.

Alison Krauss and The CMA's

I have been a big Alison Krauss fan for a few years now, and watching tonight's CMA awards, it's obvious why. She and Union Station are fantastic and, dare I say it, too good to be held in the same category/class as the majority of performers that make up the LAME country music industry. She didn't win Best Female Vocalist. Martina McBride won. Whatever. Good for her. What Alison and her band do transcends the current mechanical pop-laden drudgery that is today's country music. And her voice can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. In a good way.

While I'm also a Johnny Cash fan, his repeated wins tonight reeked of pandering to a recently-deceased man, and the tribute medley to him was shaky, at best. The fact that he would win the awards was MORE than obvious, and another example of pop culture taking something/someone great and exploiting it/them. But, after all, this IS country music, and being classy hasn't been part of country music for a long, long time.

Oh yeah, buy a Junior Brown record.