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Saturday, August 23, 2003

Andrew WK will call the first 250 people who order his new CD.

How can you not love the man?

In other news, one of the hotbeds of AWK-hatin', the Velvet Rope, has a thread discussing this topic that ends up going almost unanimously pro-AWK! Be sure to check out the posts about his shows and about his MTV special.

posted by Mike B. at 1:32 PM 0 comments

Friday, August 22, 2003

Wesley Willis is dead.

Go listen to some of his stuff, and laugh. He was a good guy.

My favorite thing about Wesley: when he would get some audience member up on stage and say, "When I say rock! You say roll! And then we headbutt! OK?" And then he would do it. "Rock!" "Rock!" "Roll!" "Roll!" *headbutt* And then he would give 'em a big hug.

Yeah, that's what music should be: rock 'n' roll, headbutts, and a hug.

posted by Mike B. at 5:31 PM 0 comments

Probably not too much blogging today, but I wanted to mention that it just now occured to me how cool it is that Trevor Horn is producing the new Belle and Sebastian album. Like, real cool. I'm excited.

posted by Mike B. at 1:07 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 21, 2003

How do I hate you, Chris Ott? Let me count the ways:

1) "A sickeningly, painfully simple reconstruction of all the music that's ever really Mattered, The Constantines announced the Best Band in the World, and we-- critics, caricatures and cunts-- have been foaming at the mouth to crown another one for twenty years now." (Uh, yeah.)

2) "The Constantines are resurrecting rock music from the frigid, faggy dungeon currently overrun with a thousand self-obsessed, coke-snorting keyboard players." (Hmm, what do you think of that, Matt?)

3) "wresting abandon from effeminate black-and-dayglo pretenders" (effeminate? Like, uh, Sleater-Kinney? Bikini Kill? Huh?)

4) "Theirs is the sound of craven, drunk friend-fucking, of smoky, dead all-night bars and wondering how to keep the party going." (Uh, Chris, did you just never listen to Ladytron's "Playgirl" or what?)

5) "Unlike the chic Strokes or pretentious Interpol, they are truly opening their hearts..." (Good for them if they are, but you'd think if they are their supporters might be hesitant to close their hearts against others for no particular reason.)

Well, that's enough for now, I suppose. For more uptight music-snob assholery, check out Chris' WATW entry on the Constantines. And oh my god, he recycles half of it for the full review! Wow!

Here is more on Chris.

posted by Mike B. at 2:52 PM 0 comments

Richard Thompson - Oops, I Did It Again

Hillary sent me this--it's from Thompson's 1000 Years of Music CD, available only from his website, and a pretty hilarious concept: a true "millenium of music," reaching back into madrigals and folk songs and like that. But in addition to covering things like "Trafalgar Square" and "Shenandoah," he does "Cry Me a River," "Tempted," Prince's "Kiss," and, of course, this Britney song.

The interesting thing about hearing people cover Britney songs is how they'll make it into something pretty new and interesting, and then this one little bit in the song itself will totally demolish the whole concept and bring it back to Britney herself. So Thompson's version starts off like a minimalist blues/rock song in either an Elvis or Steve Winwood vein, and it sounds very good and impassioned--but then he hits the chorus. And he hits the totally illogical (and totally masterful) mid-bar upswing to a major chord on "I played with your heart," and the whole thing just gets wiped away. It's Britney again, because as of yet, that kind of chord change just doesn't make sense outside of a hyper-pop, electronic arrangement.

My favorite Britney cover is probably Fountains of Wayne's version of "Baby One More Time" (which I have been asked not to post, but which you might be able to track down), which is brilliant because it totally turns it into a 60's girl-pop song; you can almost hear Ronnie Spector wanting to bust in during the choruses. And they wisely leave out the huge jump to falsetto that the backing vocals would require (i.e. "still beLIEVE!"), which helps a lot. But then, again, they hit the bridge, with its totally illogical, radio-pop-only chord changes, and it's a bit demolished. But not really. It only happens once or twice, and the rest of the track is truly awesome.

Do go check out that Thompson CD--both the concept and (what I've heard of) the execution are quite good, and thought-provoking:

The idea for this project came from Playboy Magazine - I was asked by submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millenium. Hah! I thought, hypocrites - they don't mean millennium, they mean twenty years - I'll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection. My list was similar to the choices here on this CD, starting in about 1068, and winding slowly up to 2001. That they failed to print my list among others submitted by rock's luminaries, is but a slight wound - it gave me the idea for this show, which has been performed occasionally, and will hopefully receive a few more airings. The idea is that Popular Music comes in many forms, through many ages, and as older forms get superceded, sometimes the baby is thrown out with the bathwater - great ideas, tunes, rhythms, styles, get left in the dust of history, so let's have a look at what's back there, and see if still does the trick. I am unqualified to sing 98% of the material here, but me having a go could be considered part of the fun. Also, trying to render an Arthur Sullivan orchestration with acoustic guitar and snare drum is pretty desperate stuff, but may, at a stretch, be thought "charming."

Right on, Richard.

posted by Mike B. at 1:07 PM 0 comments

Matt Y points us to a NRO article about the UN-in-Iraq bombing that's pretty good. Matt also points out just how illogical (and self-serving) it is for conservatives to be bringing up Rwanda as a prime example of UN-weenieness:

Based on these rightwing retellings of what went down in Rwanda, you would think that the UN has some kind of massive military at its disposal that it cowardly refused to deploy. In fact, of course, the actual UN personnel in Rwanda were all for an intervention, but no intervention happened because the US wouldn't stand for it. We feared that even if no US troops were involved initially, that something might go wrong and we would wind up in a situation where we had to intervene in order to assist our allies. It was American reluctance to use force, not some conspiracy of UN-weenies, that prevented intervention.

It's especially odd, I think, that conservatives get this history wrong, because the US government was under the leadership of one William Jefferson Clinton at the time. The right is not known for its kindness toward his memory and, frankly, the truth of this episode does not reflect well on him. The explanation, I suppose, is that Bush specifically stated during the 2000 campaign that he agreed with Clinton's 1994-issue Rwanda policy. Nevertheless, even this is a bit strange since even Clinton eventually disavowed his own costly error in a speech that wound up getting roundly mocked by the American right.

Yeah...um...well...Clinton sucks, anyway!

posted by Mike B. at 12:24 PM 0 comments

Josh Marshall calls the idea that the attack on the UN in Baghdad was a sign of the Islamist resistance's weakness, not their strength, the "'paradoxically positive mass-casualty terrorism event' theory: that mass-casualty terrorism events show the success of our policy since they are a sign 'the terrorists' are becoming desperate." Whoof. Yeah.

posted by Mike B. at 12:09 PM 0 comments

Dear Mr. Ashcroft,

As regards the name of your newly-proposed bill, the "Victory Act": could you pick a word that doesn't appear quite so many times in "1984," please? It shouldn't be that hard.

Thanks,
Everyone.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, it's not so much that I'm horrified as amused; I'll be horrified if it actually passes, but for now, I'm just giggling at the addle-headedness of it all. It does make me a wee bit embarassed that my government is this clueless, politics-wise. Oh well. I guess it's a good thing in the long run.

posted by Mike B. at 10:36 AM 0 comments

Now, I don't engage in this kind of thing often, but: Frog Eyes are friggin' awesome. I just got back from seeing them, and the lead singer, Carey, is just a big pudgy sweaty spaz, and that's one of the biggest compliments I can give someone. And I mean spaz: like, red-faced, yelling, shaking, messy spaz. And really enthusiastic, too, despite some stage banter that edged uncomfortably close to bathos. And I couldn't even hear the words! But damn, it was neat. Here's a brief list of what I was reminded of:

The Pixies minus Joey
Meat Loaf (in a good way)
Tom Waits at 200 bpm
The Danielsen Famile, but louder and with less instruments

The best moment was probably when Casey sat down at the keyboard and took a while to adjust everything and you were expecting a slow piano ballad and then he turns to the drummer and she clicks her sticks four times and there's just this big whoosh of allegro noise. It was real neat.

Hopefully later today I'll post some more coherent stuff that I've been wanting to write for a while now. But if you get a chance to download some Frog Eyes, let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Upon further reflection and a good night's sleep (and a listen to the album) let me revise that to: Frog Eyes are friggin' awesome performers. The sound is much denser and faster and crazier live than on record. But it's still pretty cool.

posted by Mike B. at 12:33 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Huh?

"This case is not about a monument, it's not about politics or religion, it's about the acknowledgment of God," he said during an interview on CBS' "The Early Show."

"We must acknowledge God because our constitution says our justice system is established upon God. For (the judge) to say 'I can't say who God is' is to disestablish the justice system of this state."

Moore, who installed the monument in the rotunda of the judicial building two years ago, contends it represents the moral foundation of American law and that a federal judge has no authority to make him remove it.

What?

I don't think this is about politics or religion, actually. This is about not letting mentally unbalanced people serve in the judiciary.

posted by Mike B. at 3:43 PM 0 comments

Good Matt Y post about not going to law school. The comments tangentially address a question I'm curious about, how to make a living as a politics person without a law school degree. I asked for more info, so we'll see.

posted by Mike B. at 1:08 PM 0 comments

So am I gonna have to be the one to say the obvious about this?

Mel Gibson, "under fire from Jewish groups," according to Religion News Service, has agreed to "soften" his portrayal of Jews in his upcoming film's depiction of the death of Jesus Christ.

"The Passion," which will be released next March, will add sympathetic Jewish characters to the storyline and have them shout unbiblical words of opposition to Jesus' crucifixion, lest moviegoers get the impression that Jews actually wanted God's Son put to death.

Antisemitism = bad, and the guy's dad clearly has mental problems, but there seems a pretty good explanation for Jews (and everyone else invovled) not being bothered by Jesus' crucifixion at the time: they weren't part of the insane cult of people who considered him the messiah, and so they weren't particularly concered with this guy dying. Just because now there are millions of people who pretend that this possibly fictional man is the son of an imaginary, all-powerful entity doesn't mean that the Jews, or the Romans, should have realized that at the time.

I mean, no offense to my xtian friends, and I understand that there are practical implications, but come on now.

posted by Mike B. at 12:38 PM 0 comments

A bunch of conservatives chuckle about UN workers dying. As always, proceed forthwith to the comments below.

A sample:

"I'm sorry about the loss of life, but maybe now they'll know what it feels like to be an Israeli."

Yes, people working in international relations, especially in the mideast, definitely would have no idea what it's like to live in Israel unless they're blown up by a terrorist. Right on, soul brother.

UPDATE: Just found out the father of a friend, who works for an NGO, was in the UN building when it was bombed. He has had both of his legs amputated. Lemme just go peruse that forum again.

Hey, don't I remember you conservative guys complaining about "blaming the victim" or something like that?

posted by Mike B. at 12:32 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

As someone who works in the commercial wing of art, let me tell these film clerks something:

When asked what solutions they would propose to bolster the film literacy of Hollywood's hit makers, the keepers and catalogers of our film heritage offer such helpful hints as "Give them all unlimited rentals! A gold card from our store!" and "Make them watch all the AFI Top 100 lists! Every single one!" But in a thoughtful moment after the fist-pumping fervor dies down, one of the Vidiots clerks ponders aloud the obvious: "The film world has such a rich history. It makes no sense not to know it if it's your business."

Au contraire, mon frere: it makes every bit of sense not to know it, and indeed, that's how I assumed the sentence read at first. Because as your "business"--and strictly as business--you want a memory as long as your customer, which it's fair (and, honestly, not insulting) to say is around 20 years long for most of the people you'd be marketing to. You want a memory and a perspective like theirs because then you'll have a better idea if it'll get seen. Now, it makes every bit of sense for people on the creative end to have a sense of film history--but the executives? Not so much.

posted by Mike B. at 6:28 PM 0 comments

From Newsweek:

Few Americans will get teary for Tariq Aziz, faithful servant to the Butcher of Baghdad. But consider the case of Rafet Kamal, a 27-year-old shop clerk who went out for cigarettes one night two weeks ago and never returned home. Kamal’s father, named Kamal Sayit, an unemployed laborer with no connections and no English, went from prison to police station to hospital looking for him. At Camp Cropper, he was simply turned away at gunpoint. Finally, after 10 days of fruitless searching, Sayit visited Baghdad’s morgue last Tuesday. He suspected the worst by this point, if only because his son had taken a pistol out with him. It was for personal protection, Sayit says, but he knew Coalition troops forbade it. Attendants ushered the father to one of five refrigerated rooms, where bodies lay piled two or three deep, nearly all of them young men with gunshot wounds. There he found his son lying on top, his body riddled with bullets. Sayit beat his own head with both fists and cried, “I just want to know: was he killed by American soldiers?”

He will never know for certain, because no one will ever investigate. That’s partly because there is no codified system of justice in occupied Iraq.

I hope we can all agree, who's to blame aside, that this is a bad thing. Maybe Rafet took a shot at some troops; maybe he got killed by brigands. But either way, his father should not have to go digging through anonymous bodies in order to find out if he's dead or not. This is not civilization.

posted by Mike B. at 3:27 PM 0 comments

Greil Marcus writes:

1) Patti Smith at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Berkeley (June 15) Smith and Boots Riley of the Coup were performing in support of International A.N.S.W.E.R., a group affiliated with the Workers World Party, the left-fascist sect that uses Ramsey Clark as its dummy and the Palestinian Intifada as its true cause. It being Father's Day, Smith dedicated "People Have the Power" to her father. He was gone, she said--but there was still Ralph Nader, "father to us all." Or, as Paul Berman, author of the recent Terror and Liberalism, wrote two days earlier in Salon of the Nader cult, "I interpret the Green Party as a movement of the middle and upper-middle class, as actually having a certain satisfaction with the way things are--which is to say, the reason you should vote for the Greens is because you want to feel the excitement of political engagement, the adventure of it, but you don't really care what it's going to mean for other people if the Republicans get elected." You're voting not as a member of a polity, where each citizen is presumed tied to every other; you're voting to place yourself above not only your fellow citizens, but above the democratic ritual that presumes to make a republic. You're voting to affirm your own purity--like voting Republican, as Krist Novolesic put it when Nirvana was first accused of selling out, "so you can get tax breaks. Now that's sold out."

I went to see a free Patti Smith concert down at Battery Park, and I had a similarly distressed reaction to the kind of taken-for-granted politics she was going on about. (Suffice to say she didn't say anything this egregious, or you would've seen a post about it right away.) It was good to hear, I guessed, and I agreed with it, I guessed, but at the same time, I didn't. It was too easy, too pat, too nod-nod-yes-yes-right-on. It made me uncomfortable, in other words, or embarassed for her, or something, and while at the time I felt this was an impulse I should just get over, hearing her call Nader "father to us all," a deeply, deeply creepy act, makes me feel a bit more assured about my gut reaction.

It was just a bit odd to hear her start yelling about Bush in the space a musician would normally be yelling about how great a crowd we are, or something. Know what I mean?

posted by Mike B. at 2:41 PM 0 comments

Steve Albini does not know who performed "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," which means that I don't like him anymore. Uh, hello Mr. I-cover-Cheap-Trick, it's Poison! Not "Bon Jovi or Guns & Roses. One of those horrible fuckin' bands." WRONG! He's probably just fucking around with us, though.

In other Albini biz, someone posts an interview with him to this thread (scroll about halfway down) in which Steve, besides admirably not telling the reviewer he's an asshat outright, gives a nice little clarification about "selling out":

Q: It gets a little annoying hearing how a band loses all their artistic credibility once they sell a certain number of records.

A: I don't know anyone who genuinely thinks that way. People who are critical of the independent music world postulate that as a strongman argument all the time. I don't know a single person who begrudges a band selling records. Not a single person. I do know that people in the independent world hold it against someone who makes overt changes in themselves and their music and their behaviour in the hope of selling more records… That argument is made all the time by people who are critical of the independent world, saying, "Oh, they're a bunch of elitists and they don't want anyone to sell any records." That's a load of crap. I love it when my friends' bands sell a lot of records. Everyone I know in the independent world is thrilled when their friend's bands sell records. It's not about money, either, because I'm thrilled when a band makes a load of money and they get paid a lot for a gig and they sell a shitbox of records. What people respond negatively to is when bands do things in an overt effort to cheapen themselves so they think they can be acceptable to a dumber audience. That happens all the time, and when bands do that it's transparent and of course people react [negatively] to it. I don't think there's any validity to the notion that the independent world views success with suspicion.

I commend Steve's attitude, even if I don't agree with it particularly. But I would say that "everyone [he] know[s] in the independent world" are musicians or people otherwise in the biz, and not snotty college-age indie fans, among whom the attitude of popular = bad is very much present.

posted by Mike B. at 10:54 AM 0 comments

So I don't get a back-and-forth but Gerald fucking Cosloy does?!?! All right, you're both on my shitlist now. I'm signing with Touch and Go.

Seriously, though, this is a major embarrassment and a major fuckup; the fact that the headline for the letter is "Matador's head cheese checks in" indicates to me that PF might not be aware of how big a deal this is. The review in question was the lead review yesterday (which has--oh sweet Jesus--been changed without comment since then!), and the band in question, Interpol, is one that Pitchfork has been major boosters of. The review was negative, based largely around the assumption that the band's US label, Matador, was using this as a lame cash-in. Unfortunately, even though the reviewer (and editor) knew it was a foreign release, they apparently blamed the label without actually checking which label it's on. It is, instead, on the French group Labels, an imprint of EMI that Matador has nothing to do with. While I don't expect music critics to know the names of record execs intimately or anything, if they're going to try and analyze music in terms of the biz behind it--which, it should be noted, there's no reason for them to do--they should know shit like, oh I dunno, the fact that indie bands often sign with different labels in different countries in order to get distribution. They should at least look at the fucking CD and spend 30 seconds doing a Google search.

And yeah, this is the problem with reactive reviewing, which the Interpol review was a classic case of: it rests on objective instead of subjective facts, and since what you're largely doing is viewing those facts in light of preconceptions you already have (in this case, apparently, a desire to tear down a well-liked band), you're likely to actually get stuff demonstrably wrong. Once again, guys: don't do reactive reviewing. Just talk about the music. If you want to respond to other reviews the music's gotten or the biz behind it, respond to those, but don't assume that has a damn thing to do with the band or the music. Because hopefully that's all we care about.

It's telling that the review has now been changed to blame the band for all this instead of Big Bad Matador. Haven't learned anything, have they? It was probably the French label's decision, and at any rate, who the fuck cares if an import EP is bad? You're not really supposed to be listening to it anyway, jackasses.

posted by Mike B. at 10:45 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 18, 2003

I was just listening to Z100 and Bowling for Soup's "The Girl All The Bad Guys Want" came on, and...well, just let me post the lyrics here without comment, except to say that it's a lot more joycore than, say, Good Charlotte.

8 o'clock, Monday night and I'm waitin'
To finally talk to a girl a little cooler than me.
Her name is Nona, she's a rocker with a nose ring,
She wears a two way, but I'm not quite sure what that means.

And when she walks,
All the wind blows and the angels sing.
She doesn't notice me!

Cause she is watchin' wrestling
Creamin' over tough guys
Listenin' to rap metal
Turntables in her eyes

CHORUS:
It's like a bad movie
She is lookin' through me
If you were me, then you'd be
Screamin' "Someone shoot me!"
As I fail miserably,
Tryin' to get the girl all the bad guys want.
She's the girl all the bad guys want!

She likes the godsmack and I like agent orange
Her cd changer's full of singers that are mad at their dad
She says she'd like to score some reefer and a forty
She'll never know that I'm the best that she'll never have

And when she walks,
All the wind blows and the angels sing.
She'll never notice me!

Cause she is watchin' wrestling
Creamin' over tough guys
Listenin' to rap metal
Turntables in her eyes

She likes 'em with a mustache
Racetrack season pass
Drivin' in a Trans-Am
Does a mullet make a man?

CHORUS

There she goes again
With fishnets on, and dreadlocks in her hair
She broke my heart, I wanna be sedated
All I wanted was to see her naked!

Now I am watchin' wrestling
Tryin' to be a tough guy
Listenin' to rap metal
Turntables in my eyes
I can't grow a mustache
And I ain't got no season pass
All I got's a moped...moped....moped.....

CHORUS

She's the girl all the bad guys want!

I know, I shouldn't like the mall-punk, but we all know I love the pop-punk, and musical (and commercial) concerns aside, this is an impressively crafted set of lyrics--it's a lot of words for a punk song / radio hit, and the variations are witty and the whole thing is funny as hell--and goddamnit, I mean that. I especially like "but I'm not quite sure what that means" and "singers that are mad at their dad." I mean, it's no "Flagpole Sitta" or "Punk Rock Girl," but hey, it's kinda fun.

posted by Mike B. at 5:14 PM 0 comments

In Pitchfork reader mail today someone comments on the WATW entry about "Stacy's Mom" by bringing up The Bouncing Souls' "I Like Your Mom," a brilliant comparison (and a great song) if there ever was one, even if the poor deluded fool seems not to like the FoW track. (He's probably ashamed of liking "I Like Your Mom," too.)

Perhaps I should also point out that the headline given to the letter is "Oh yes, but please do check out the video." Assuming, reasonably, that this is sarcastic as usual, they are making disparaging remarks similar to NYPLM's, and you know how I feel about that.

posted by Mike B. at 3:47 PM 0 comments

For those of you wondering, as I was, exactly how Japanther "includes elements of hip-hop," as Pitchfork claims, it's because, um, they have samples at the beginning of every song.

Which is bullshit. That's an "element of hip-hop" if it's 1987. Right now it's "found sound," and it's about as hip-hop as Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Japanther themselves are pretty neat, tho.

posted by Mike B. at 3:42 PM 0 comments

Starlight Mints - "Submarine #3"

There's an indication of how good this track, the first off the Mints' first album, is going to be right at the beginning, leading off as it does with a violin-and-cello fanfare. It then leans into its great little dance of melody and counterpoint disguised as hooks, producing a perfect mix pleasurable partially because of the individual elements, but far more because of the arrangement, which at times goes beyond the well-trod Beach Boys symphonies to a more precise chamber music kind of feel--and I mean actual chamber music, not the kind of pop that's gotten tagged with that particular adjective, like The Divine Comedy or Belle & Sebastian (both of whom I love to death, but still)--even moreso than Momus, who strikes me as more specifically Baroque. (And then a lot of the artists who do get listed as Baroque Pop like Scott Walker or Nick Drake or Burt Bacharach sound more Romantic to my ears, but that's enough of that tangent.)

Anyway, theory-nerdishness aside, the real heart of the song comes after the end of the first chorus, which goes:

If you pull me apart
I'll swallow my...

And then there's a pause, and then they sing the word you'd expect them to. They go for the obvious rhyme, but one of the cool things about pop music is that sometimes they go for the obvious rhyme not because it's the only thing they can think of to put there, but because it's the best possible thing to put there--they take the obvious rhyme and make it evocative, or powerful, or referential, or funny. Or, as the Mints do here, they go totally over-the-top with it, embrace and celebrate it as something obvious and overused because it's just so damn good.

And so there's a pause, and they sing "heart," the obvious rhyme, and there are two bars of that great arrangement, ending with a natural fall to the tonic, and this girl's voice, sounding distorted, yells "HEART!" and there's a great whanging guitar noise for no particular reason whatsoever, a perfect little pop touch. And it's such a great little turn, following the sort of resigned tone of the chorus to make you think, "Well, that was the obvious rhyme, but I guess it makes sense thematically, and..." and then the girl yells the word again and there's the whang and you go, "Yeah, fucking right! Heart! Goddamn!" It's such a great little contrast and turn that it changes your whole attitude. People talk about the complexities of hip-hop recontextualizing other people's music, but what some folks miss about pop is the way it's forced to continually turn the familiar into the exciting and semi-new, and the minor miracle in it somehow continually doing that. Maybe it's because of the (beneficial?) absence of memory in pop, but it does manage to keep on keepin' on, and it's really neat to see moments like this, when enthusiasm overwhelms cliche.

Another nice aspect to the song is the way, after this first "heart-HEART!" turn (at around 0:47-0:54) they then manage to hold off on doing it again for almost the whole of the rest of the song, although the nice moves of the distorted female voice and guitar whang float back in during the bridge. But then it's reprised, chamber-music-like, at the very end of the song (1:40-2:00--also nice that this gem gets in and out under the Beatles-limit), with the female voice doubling the male in a much harsher tone. It's a different model of soft-loud contrast from either Nirvana or, say, Deerhoof (about whom more later, maybe), but I like it.

posted by Mike B. at 3:15 PM 0 comments

So about this California recall thing: some blogs have been referring to the, um, Austrian Candidate as "Ahnold." Might I suggest the far more sprightly and evocative "McBain"? After all, if wingers are going to appropriate "cheese eating surrender-monkeys" for their own weird gloating about heat death purposes, I think it might be good to get a few of the more liberal Simpsons references out there.

posted by Mike B. at 2:44 PM 0 comments

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