“America is not perfect,” Abdul Malik, an organizer of the event called Islam on Capitol Hill, told the crowd.
“But I will say something it took me my whole adult life to come to: America is not perfect, but I want to tell the truth: It is one of the best places in the world to live.”
Across the street from the service, Christian protesters gathered with banners, crosses and anti-Islamic messages. One group, which stood next to a 10-foot-tall wooden cross and two giant wooden tablets depicting the Ten Commandments, was led by the Rev. Flip Benham of Concord, N.C.
“I would suggest you convert to Christ!” Benham shouted over a megaphone. Islam “forces its dogma down your throat.” A few Christian protesters gathered at the rear of the Muslim crowd, holding Bibles and praying.
[. . .]
“It is important for Christians to understand that Friday’s Muslim prayer initiative is part of a well-defined strategy to Islamize American society and replace the Bible with the Koran, the cross with the Islamic crescent and the church bells with the Athan [the Muslim call to prayer],” the Rev. Canon Julian Dobbs, leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America’s Church and Islam Project, said in a written statement.
“The time has come for the American public to call Islam to account,” he said.
I love how this Benham asshole claimed that Islam "forces its dogma down your throat," and then he suggests "you convert to Christ", thus effectively forcing his dogma down our throats. Those islamo demonspawn really did get something right though - America really is one of the best places in the world to live. Instead of taking part in bloodbaths in the streets, we're only shouting logical inconsistencies at the top of our lungs. I love this country.
I remember when I went through the bloody, adrenaline-pumped clusterfuck that is The Shield for the first time, I could never wrap my head around why the show never received any awards. Well, it got a fuck ton of them in the first season. But then after that, everyone completely forgot about it. And this simply amazed me. Because The Shield was not one of those shows that started out amazing, and then slowly descended to an "eh, it's okay I guess" death. No. The Shield starts out above mediocre, and then goes on a constant climb until ultimately reaching its "HOOOOOOOOOLLLYYYY FUUUUUUUUU--" final season. So going by this law, the first season was the worst one. And yet, it's the only season that got any recognition.
Well, I was going through Kurt Sutter's blog, and he noticed this too. He explains why this happened, and he freakin' nails it. I've explained this before, but as a reminder, Kurt Sutter got his start writing for The Shield, and then went on to create Son of Anarchy.
---
Recently, I've had a few interesting conversations with reporters discussing the Emmy nominations. Their standard questions -- Do you expect to earn any nominations? Do you care?
The short answer is no and fuck, yes.
The long answer began years ago on The Shield. After the noms and win of the genre-bending first season of Shawn Ryan's show, The Shield never got Emmy love again (nor any Golden Globe, SAG, WGA, DGA, or TCA love for that matter). We scratched our heads in the following seasons, watching network dreck pull in win after win, wondering whose dick we weren't sucking. We'd rationalize our loss and ridicule all the winners. Mean-spirited attacks would get us feeling better about ourselves and enable us to get back to work. Until the following July.
Clearly we weren't the only ones frustrated. Year after year, articles surface the day after the awards decrying the injustice of the process. So recently I've tried to put a little more thought than vengeance into my analysis. These were my conclusions.
The Emmys are voted on by Academy of Television Arts and Science members. They are individuals who work in the industry in every capacity. They earn the right to join the academy and qualify to vote (here’s a great link that explains the process in detail http://www.howstuffworks.com/emmy.htm). Members are not critics or experts; they are hard working men and women with opinions. Most are way too busy to watch television at all, never mind ALL television. So screeners are sent out of the shows for people to watch at their convenience.
I myself am not a member of the Academy -- at least I don't think I am -- I'm not really much of a joiner. But if I were, this would be my voting strategy --
A. I’d judge the packaging of the screeners. Who spent the most money, who was the most inventive, who really, really wants my vote.
B. I’d only watch the screeners of shows I was curious about (like the awesome shark attacks on Discovery) or rewatch episodes of shows I really like (Lost, BSG). Then I’d give the screeners away to our house keepers. Their kids love them.
C. I would vote for all the shows that employed my friends and family.
D. I'd vote for all the shows that I actually watch. For me, that's about 3 ½ shows.
E. Finally, and this is the important one, I'd vote for all the shows that EVERYONE says are good. I’d trust the hype, because I’m just too busy to watch all this shit.
I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the Academy votes using the above parameters. So what does that mean? Well, two things come into play. First, you have to look at the numbers and play the ODDS. Each week, 10-15 million people watch The Mentalist, 1.5 million people watch The Shield. If you apply that ratio to academy members, clearly more people are watching the CBS show. So using rule “D” above, more people will be voting for The Mentalist than The Shield.
What about Mad Men you ask? No one watches Mad Men; they get less than a million viewers each week. That’s where the second factor comes into play -- HYPE. If you can buy and generate enough buzz, you can create a "given status". Rule “E” above. Mad Men has reached that status. I'm not saying the show doesn't deserve to be nominated, it does, it's one of the 3 ½ shows I actually watch. But I promise you, more than half the academy members penciling in Mad Men have never seen a bloody episode. They are voting for it because they've heard it's great.
So if my theories are correct, the awards can only be uneven. They have to be, it’s a human system. We're very tired, a little lazy, and completely imperfect.
So, do I think Sons of Anarchy will get any nominations? No, we will not. I think the perception of the first season, both critically and within the industry, was that we got off to a slow start and then ultimately became a good show. We can't compete with the ODDS of network numbers and we don’t have enough HYPE to push us into a nomination. Hopefully we can hit the ground running this year and generate positive buzz for season two. Nothing would make me happier than to reach "given status".
But I'm guessing that come this Thursday I'll have to glean my joy from meanness of spirit, as I rationalization and ridicule the shows that earned a nomination.
Here are some of the better comments people left:
Two of my good friends get Academy votes, so they get all the screeners for the Oscars.
You are dead on with how the process works. I get a lot of the screeners, they vote for the ones they've seen/heard hype about, and that's it.
The Shield was one of the best shows in the history of TV, and is the reason I've followed your career since then. So fuck awards. The Shield got you FANS, man. People who watch your shit just because it's your shit.
That's way better.
---
You were dead on with your post and I've been bitching about this for the past day - it's borderline criminal that The Shield (and Michael, Walton, and CCH) didn't receive ANY recognition, as well as no directing or writing noms? And nothing other than opening credits for Sons? Not even recognition for Katey's work or at least a nom for some outstanding music week after week??? Come on - Hugh Laurie over Chiklis? Shatner???? Seriously- this is the best we can do?
I think this whole process is so seriously dated. 40 years ago there were 3 networks from which to choose nominations. Now, you've got 10 times that number to choose from - there is much more interesting work being played on channels outside of the "Big 3", like F/X - USA - TNT - HBO - Sci Fi (or Syfy or whatever its new logo is). Does anybody really watch ABC - NBC - CBS. It's 95% reality show crap anyway and CSI or Law & Order clones. Maybe it's time to increase the number of nominees in the categories....
---
For what its worth I think the lack of awards is testament to the nature of the show. If you look at the nominated shows they are easy to watch. What I mean by that is they are shows everyday people can come home from a job they don't like, sit arms length from someone they don't want to be sitting next too and drone out without having thinking/feeling/digesting/questioning etc.
Shield and SOA are shows that get under your skin while taking you to dark places. You cannot be a passive viewer of these shows. I would argue that audiences want to switch off their brains and waste away the hours before the fall asleep only to do it all over again the next day. Its not right
Friday, September 25, 2009
A few things:
1) Why aren't conservatives thanking Barack Obama for keeping us safe from terrorists?
A man named Najibullah Zazi was set to launch a terrorist attack in New York City two weeks ago, to mark the anniversary of 9/11. He was caught.
Yesterday, a man named Michael Finton parked a van in front of a courthouse downtown. Yes, right here in Springfield. He believed the van was filled with one ton of explosives, but when he pressed the button to detonate, there was no boom. Then his "partner" slapped handcuffs him. He had been working with undercover FBI agents.
2) Michelle Bachmann is still one insane bitch, and may hold some degree of responsibility for a man's murder.
Representative Michelle Bachmann believes that the government is collecting census information, so it can be used it to round up white people and/or Republicans, and shove them into internment camps.
"If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the census bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations, at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I’m not saying that’s what the Administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private, personal information that was given to the census bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up."
I like her logical pattern here - "For no reason at all, let me remind you of a horribly disgusting taint on the history of our nation. I am not saying that it's about to happen again. I simply wanted to bring it up for absolutely no reason whatsoever."
I love how the United States government has been conducting a census for 219 years, but only when Barack Obama is the president, NOW there is suddenly a problem. It's staggering, considering the mental gymnastics a conservative mind must go through to defend its hypocrisy.
This brings us to the census worker found two weeks ago hanged in a graveyard with the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest. The investigation is still ongoing, so I'm not going to flatout say this was politically motivated, and was directly caused by conservative rhetoric (despite how much I would like to), but you really can't deny that it still raises questions. Maddow covers it really well.
3) The "conservative base" is now the mainstream. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, the conservative base is nothing but a bunch of racist conspiracy theorists.
Stephen Colbert covered this brilliantly last night
...a middle-aged white man and his Asian wife chasing after and harassing a trio of black people -- primarily two teenagers and an adult guardian (possibly their mother) who were selling "Don't Tread on Me" flags along the long grassy mall.
As you can see, the man -- who identifies himself as Tim Jones -- shouts after them: "ACORN! These people are ACORN!!! They are frauds!!! ACORN is fraud!!! Obama sucks! This woman sells signs for profit of ACORN!!"
It attracts more harassers, and it verges on the point of an outbreak of violence when the D.C. bicycle police show up and break up the scene.
I heard a really cool story on Radio Lab earlier. Have you ever heard music that makes you emotional? How about music which triggered negative emotion? Has music ever made you want to physically harm another person? (lol)
That ugly motherfucker is Igor Stravinsky. Igor Stravinsky was one of the most brilliant musicians of the 20th century.
In 1913, Stravinsky premiered a piece called "The Rite of Spring". This was not about dandelions or honeybees, or what you would normally think of when you think of spring. This was about a pagan ritual in which a young girl would dance herself to exhaustion, and is then violently murdered to appease the god of spring.
It starts out innocently enough with a charming bassoon, playing a classic Lithuanian folk tune. Then about a minute in, it gets a little more odd. After about three minutes, it is fucking chaos. Stravinsky just fucking pounds on this really disturbing chord, and he doesn't stop pounding until basically the end. That chord structures the entire thing, and it's probably one of the most difficult sounds you will ever hear. You really do have to hear it to get the full effect.
Now, this may not seem all that "disturbing" or "difficult" to us in 2009, with almost a century of newer stuff that we've been exposed to. But this was 1913. The most extreme music people were familiar with was the soothing romanticism of the 19th century. Nothing remotely like this had ever been heard before. Audience members who liked what they were hearing (who were very few) began arguing with the detractors. About halfway through the ballet, the entire audience rioted in a violent game of fisticuffs.
Neurologists are now finding some very interesting effects music has on the human brain. Musical notes are typically broken up into two categories - consonants and dissonants. Basically, consonants are the notes that just sound "right" to us, and dissonants are ones that don't. When the brain hears a dissonant, some weird shit goes down. When an unfamiliar sound reaches your auditory cortex, certain neurons in there attempt to dissect it, take it apart, and understand it. They basically try to find patterns in it. Most of the time, these neurons are successful, and you're left with the feeling of "Oh hey, I get it now."
But sometimes the music is just too fucked up, and the neurons fail. When that happens, your neurons squirt out a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for making you feel. When you take part in things like drugs and sex, you get a tiny dopamine reaction, making you feel euphoric. However, when you get too much dopamine, it basically triggers mild schizophrenia. You literally go insane.
This is probably what happened during the Rite of Spring premier. Neurons revolted, and people lost their shit. It's also probably why grandma hates that got dang rockie-roll music.
The second night? The audience was warned ahead of time. They knew what to expect. Their brains could react to it a little better, and they could more easily recognize the patterns. Everyone loved it. Stravinsky was literally carried out on peoples' shoulders. A year later, police would have to escort him from the concert hall to keep him safe from adoring fans. Twenty-seven years later, Disney would approach him for the rights to use his music in Fantasia.
Our brains hate things that are new. Stravinsky realized that the purpose of the artist is break our brains out of their inherently conservative cycle. He wanted his audience to really listen to music, and the way he did it was not to bring them pleasure, but discomfort, and maybe a little bit of pain. But even with that discomfort, our neurons can adjust. Rapidly. Upon hearing something new, the brain literally rewires and tunes itself to make it more enjoyable. Then the new becomes the conventional.
I don't take this blog on serious notes that often, so bare with me. I'm in four art classes this semester. Every one of them is three hours long. I was really worried at first that I would get too stressed out, and my creative juices would run dry fairly quickly. And I admit, I am getting a little stressed, but it's okay, because I still feel that my creativity is going strong. It's fun as hell.
I love this story about Stravinsky, and I decided to share it because it pretty much summarizes all art. To be creative, just do something new. But you also have to be careful, because when someone does something new only for the sake of being abstract, or getting a shock out of people, you end up with complete meaningless shit. That is the lazy way out, it's attention-whoring, and it is not art. Use some structure. Just think about things that are fairly conventional, and put your own cool twist on them. That's pretty much all there is to it. Don't try to be the next Picasso, or you'll end up with shit since you are not Picasso. But you should still have a little confidence in yourself, and your ability as a human being to create. I think to be even remotely creative, you sort of have to develop your own personal method of how things should be done, and how things should change. That is the key. I'm really not trying to sound pretentious here, I've just never really thought about these things before. It's pretty cool stuff to think about.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
"If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you. It's not just a lot of mysterious things happening, there's a lot we understand out there. And that understanding empowers you. . ."
Pure poetry.
Have I ever mentioned how much I admire that brain of Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Because I do. I really really do. Here are some other awesome sciency and/or reason quotes.
“If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator.” -Jerry Coyne
“Why people are so drawn to the irrational is something that has always puzzled me. I want to be if I can, as sure of the real world around me as is possible. Now, you can only attain that to a certain degree but I want the greatest degree of control. I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind, I don't smoke, I don't drink because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers and I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways, but I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world, or as close as I can get to it.” -James Randi
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. “ -Carl Sagan
"I think [atheists] get bad press, that we take the art out of beauty in the world, which is not true. The fact that the earth is 4.6 billion years old, and there are 4 million species of animals, and they've evolved by accident is, I think, more beautiful than any intelligent designer can claim." -Ricky Gervais
and the classic
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” -Galileo Galilei
I tried to pick up guitar back in high school, but I couldn't get into it. A friend of mine recommended his own teacher, and his name was Dave. He was a cool guy and a fantastic player, but he just couldn't teach for shit. He didn't know how. His entire method was just me bringing in songs I liked, and he would teach me out to play them. He never went over any of the scales, or how to strum, or any of the basics at all. He just threw me straight in the deep end, and I think that's why I gave it up. I just got too frustrated.
A couple weeks ago, I got a spontaneous urge to dust off my guitar, and calluses have once again returned to the tips of my fingers. I missed you, you disgusting mutations. I'm trying to teach myself this time. I still suck, but at least it's a lot more fun now that I'm starting with the bare bones. I'm trying to tackle the scales at the moment. I guess for just conventional rocking, you basically need to know only five scales, and then you're pretty much set for as much improvising and solos as you see fit (A Major, C Major, D Major, F Major, and G Major). And of course then there's the blues scales, which I haven't bothered looking at yet, but I'm sure I will eventually since blues is fucking badass. For now though, I got A Major down pat, bitches.
Whenever anyone used to ask me what kind of guitar I had, I could never answer them, because I could never remember. I just checked. Peavey Raptor Plus Exp. Peavey. Peavey? Who the hell's ever heard of Peavey? You know it's awesome because it has "raptor" in the name.
I can't be cool and say "Yeah I got a Gibson blah blah blah" or a "Fender blah blah blah." I got a Peavey, and I only bought it because it was used, it was barely over a hundred bucks, and it had a pretty sweet color that looked green in one light, and blue in another. Guitar talk, guyz.
Her name is Betsy
My old amp? It no longer works. No clue why. A dog may or may not have pissed on it. I don't want to buy a new amp. So I ordered an adapter that allows my guitar chord to be plugged into headphone jacks, which would allow me to use my computer as a really cheap shitty amp. According to the product description, you can "Plug your guitar, keyboard or mic directly into your laptop or desktop" and it's "Perfect for Apple's new GarageBand software". Nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Right?
It came in today, and I was excited. I have Garage Band, it came installed on my Mac. I've never really messed with it before, but it seems to be a pretty powerful music program. I go into the help menu and look up how to get my computer to pick up real instruments. Do this, do that, then change input. Presto. I do this, I do that... but then there's no option for input. It's just not there. I even tried going into the Mac settings and messed around with the input settings of my whole computer. I tried Google, and there were basically only two answers - 1) "It's easy as shit, just do this, do that, and change the input!" or 2) "It's flatout impossible, and you have to buy a pedal-mah-jig worth half a grand." I've been pulling my hair out for two god damn hours now, and I have no clue what the fuck I should do, other than pound my keyboard angrily and yell at my blog.
I also ordered a headphone splitter, so I'd be able to simultaneously plug in my guitar, and use external speakers at the same time. I decided to pull out the splitter and see if plugging the cable in directly would do any good. The moment I pulled out, sound from the guitar came out of my speakers. I didn't know what the fuck, because let me repeat myself - I had just pulled out the god damn splitter from the computer. Nothing is connected to the computer. The computer has nothing connected to it.
The only explanation I can think of is that my guitar and speakers were both still in the splitter... so I guess that means the speakers automatically get the input once the computer is taken out of the picture? The good news is that now I have sound. The bad news is that I cannot alter that sound in any way, like you would with a guitar amp or a computer. I'm sure confused as shit and o gawd wut do i do
I was listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast a little earlier, and he was talking about the Battle of Cannae, where Hannibal surrounded a Roman force twice his size and decimated them. This part right here is blog-worthy.
---
At the end of the day, the vast majority of those 70,000 people were dead. What's more, the rest would be killed the next day. The battlefield was supposed to have been one of the most amazing, horrific sights anyone had ever seen. And that's by their standards -- ancient people, who were used to seeing the results of ancient battle. It's unimaginable for people like us, who've never seen anything like it. Where's my Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the battlefield the day after Cannae?
It's not a mental picture that any of us can envision. And there are often people who will try to tell you what battle in that period was like, or what something like the battlefield of Cannae must have looked like the day afterwards. Don't believe a word of it. We don't know what it was like, and anyone who tells you differently, no matter what their credentials, is lying. The experts disagree, no one's seen anything like this for five-hundred years -- what an organized, mass, "civilized" killing looked like before there was gunpowder.
Just think about the images that were maimed in the heads of the people who lived on after seeing what that looked like, and the nightmares they must have had for the rest of their lives. You talk about post-traumatic stress disorder in a modern sense? Think about what the survivors, on both sides, must have seen in their nightmares at night for the rest of their lives -- images that the human mind cannot imagine. And it's the same thing with ancient combat -- this is something we can't imagine. Could you have done this up-close-and-personal combat?
As Hannibal and his generals walk the battlefield the day after, as Romans who were only wounded, a lot of them had their hamstrings cut as they tried to get away, from behind, had to be finished off the next day, Livy says that they were baring their throats to the Carthaginians, asking to be finished off basically, they didn't speak the same language, but they figured it was sort of an international sign language, "finish me off," and they did. Matter of fact, in the hot August sun, it would have been a problem if they didn't, but you can only imagine trying to deal with, you know, that many people dead in such a small area.
And yet of course, as shocked as he's said to have been, Hannibal, at this sight, his subgenerals must have been in a wonderful mood, one of them says, "It's time to move on Rome." And back in Rome, that's exactly how they were feeling too. Panic does not do justice to the Roman reaction to the loss at Cannae. It looked like they were doomed. It reminds you of Polybius' line -- "It is when Romans stand in real danger, when they are most to be feared." And after the Battle of Cannae in 216, the Romans stood in real danger.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Barack Obama gave an amazing speech in Maryland yesterday. The blatantly librul media completely ignores it. I watched it live yesterday, but I can't find any video of it anywhere on the interwebs. Even CSPAN let me down. All I got is this short clip from Obama's own youtube channel (complete with inspirational propaganda music!)
I'm a little surprised the right hasn't jumped on those cheers at the end, and compared them to Nazi Germany. HITLER GAVE SPEECHES TOO, WAKE UP AMERICA.
Barack Obama will be on Meet the Press on Sunday. That's pretty much my favorite political show ever, so if you can't catch it on TV, just subscribe to the podcast and watch it on your computer.
Wednesday on Rush's radio show, he was foaming at the mouth about a SUPER DUPER MAJOR NEWS STORY - a kid on a school bus got beat up. oh my god
But what gives this story it's special oomph is that the guys doing the beating were - stop the fucking presses - BLACK. Totally not racist by focusing only on race, the ever-classy Drudge attempts to spark a race war.
Limbaugh: "In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on."
Right on Rush, just pretend the white kids cheering along with the black kids aren't there, and ignore the totally-not-black black girl up front who looks fucking terrified, and on the brink of tears. Oh, and that witness who said it had absolutely nothing to do with race, but rather a dispute over a seat? It's a lie, ACORN got to him. And this is all Barack Obama's fault. Hide your daughters - now that there's an ungodly hybrid in the White House, all the black kids around the country know that IT'S OPEN SEASON ON WHITEY.
I love how the bus driver is just as nonchalant and incompetent towards this as the drivers back in my day were.
"SHITH DOWN U GOD DAMM KIDZ HUUUUUURRRRGGG"
I bet he smelled like sweaty ass. Ahhhhh, memories.
But this isn't even the worst of it. I have an idea. Let's go back to segregated buses.
"I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.
Barack Hussein Obama - Invading your space and stuff since 2009
Huh. I can't imagine why there's speculation that a lot of the health care anger is just pent-up racism. I'm not tagging this as "news and politics" because it is neither news, nor politics.
"Can Christianity be rescued from Christians?"
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Well, what's left of the Republican party marched on Washington on Saturday, and what was found in the ashes should surprise no one. I keep hearing Glenn Beck and similar retards say "this isn't about democrat or republican!" when in fact, that is a gigantic pile of shit, just like the entire Republican platform. When Barack Obama directly ordered the rescue of a Navy captain from Somali pirates, the right defended the Somali pirates. They don't give a flying fuck what this man does. He will always be hated because he is a democrat and/or black, and therefore he is the enemy. End of discussion.
I wonder why all these people weren't crying fascism and totalitarianism when George Bush was torturing people and wiretapping American citizens with no warrants. Fascism exists because people love the person, and not the principle.
These dumbfucks thrive off retarded conspiracy theories that were debunked ages ago, they don't know what the hell they're screaming about, and they're only angry because they're told to be by the teevee. I want to be optimistic about this. I want to say they're only waving their dicks around. But as long as Barack Obama is the president, these people are not going away. Fearful and ignorant mobs have a history of being quite dangerous. The only thing this disaster is missing is a spark.
But thanks to Jon Stewart, we can laugh about it anyway :D
I saw this extremely fucking badass promo image of Jax on his motorcycle, and I just think I'll leave it right here. That is all.
My brother and my dad are the only people I know who watch Sons of Anarchy. I know Chris isn't the only person who reads this blog, so to everyone else, start this god damn show. Now that The Shield and Battlestar Galactica have ended, this is the only orgasmic show on television anymore. Kurt Sutter has admitted it's loosely based around Hamlet. Henry Rollins is a regular in the new season. How does it feel to now be convinced?
Basically a followup to the last post. I'm in a bunch of art classes this semester, and it's keeping me very busy outside of class doing artsy types of things. Artsy things can be very time consuming, so to entertain myself, I listen to podcasts. One of my favorite podcasts ever is called "My History Can Beat Up Your Politics", and this guy basically just sits around for an hour talking about the history of American politics. If I drank, it would be something I could get drunk to.
Today, the host namedropped another history podcast called "Napoleon 101." Napoleon: Total War immediately came to mind, and I checked it out. The podcast has been going on for three years. There are 53 episodes. Each one is an hour or longer. I become disappointed in my pathetic life when I spend 53 hours on a single video game. These guys have done that talking about Napoleon Bonaparte.
Yes, it's interesting as all hell, but it's just a little funny to me how seriously these guys take it. Their lives simply revolve around Napoleon - one guy's a history professor, and the other's an author (he wrote Napoleon For Dummies, he's serious). They spent about ten minutes going off on how "NAPOLEON DIDN'T REALLY WALK AROUND WITH HIS HAND IN HIS JACKET ALL THE TIME, GOD!" and "HE WASN'T SHORT, HE WAS AVERAGE HEIGHT FOR HIS TIME, GOD!"
Also, apparently there's a raging debate among historians on whether Napoleon was ultimately a force for good in the world, or a force for evil. Both of these guys fucking love Napoleon (I guess it just takes that kind of person to create 53 podcasts about Napoleon) so it's good that I'm getting both sides of the debate here and everything. They argue that the "warmonger" thing is unjustified, because it was always other countries who would declare war on France. They apparently viewed the progressive French Republic as dangerous, so they wanted to bring them back to the traditional order of monarchical Europe. "AND NAPOLEON COULDN'T BE A WARMONGER, BECAUSE HE NEVER BROKE A SINGLE PEACE TREATY, GOD!" I hope in 20 years, I'm sitting in my mom's basement making podcasts about history.
The episodes are arranged chronologically; the first few episodes cover Napoleon's early life and career, and they just branch off from there. I actually bought a book on Napoleon a few months ago. One of the reviews there complains that the author is pretty anti-Napoleon, so maybe I'll read it for some balance. But it is sitting on my bookshelf collecting dust because it is a fucking tome, and it scares me a lot and make me cry. Reading's for nerds and homos anyway. Maybe I'll just settle for listening to a history podcast while I paint, which is a thousand times less nerdy.
Apparently an expansion for Empire: Total War was announced a couple weeks ago. I'm disappointed by the lack of any gameplay in the trailer, but they still made it seem incredibly badass.
I would've much rather preferred a Civil War expansion, but Total War is international, so you gotta please everyone I guess. I don't know much about the Napoleonic Wars. But five years ago, Rome: Total War sparked my initial interest in history, so hopefully it'll happen again. I cannot wait for this.
Here's a PrinceofMacedon battle, to commemorate this ridiculously awesome announcement.
My first year of high school was just beginning. I walked into biology, the TV was on, and the twin towers were on fire. A couple minutes later, I watched the North Tower collapse. Then he turned it off. Out of all my teachers, it was only my history teacher Mr. Bunch - one of the coolest and most intelligent teachers I have ever had - who made us watch the news for the entire period. I will never forget what he said to us. "This is history. Remember this."
Glenn Beck's so-called "9/12 Project", being held tomorrow, unabashedly exploits the murders of 3,000 dead Americans. Fox's fair and balanced propaganda will undoubtedly romanticize it for the entire day like they did with the tea parties.
Never in my entire life, have I ever cried harder than I did as the initial shock of that day subsided, and the reality of the death toll sank in. I never want to experience those feelings ever again. This horrifying era is the bane of my generation. The burned images of those towers are all we've ever known. Don't you fucking dare pretend to know how I felt on the worst day of my life. September 12th is not a day to be glorified for ratings and political gain. This is bigger than you. I hope you choke, you soulless piece of shit.
Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala met as teenagers, and have been making music with each other ever since. In 1993, they formed the post-hardcore band At The Drive-In. I'm not a fan of regular hardcore, so I don't really know what "post-hardcore" even means. Whatever the hell type of music it is, I'm actually fairly surprised that I like it, because it's usually not the type of music I listen to. They're really not bad.
At The Drive-In never reached a huge amount of success until their 2001 release Relationship of Command. It got #94 on Guitar World's 100 greatest guitar albums. However, tensions within the band were already way too high by then, and so they broke up right when they were getting known. Simply put, it was a dispute on where the band should go. Cedric and Omar felt that punk had basically been stagnant for twenty years, and people needed to try new things. But the rest of the band liked things more conventional. Heads were subsequently bumped.
Here's one of their last shows. Cedric (singer) and Omar (guitar with huge afro) pretty much just didn't give a shit about anything anymore, and wanted to play in the loudest and most obnoxious way they could -- because A) it was probably really fucking fun, and B) judging by the looks of the other guys in the band, it probably pissed them off a lot, and that's all that matters. Oh yeah, and C) They were both tripping balls on who knows how many fucking drugs.
Like I said, At The Drive-In had a very messy break up, and everyone basically ended up hating each other. Cedric and Omar formed The Mars Volta. Everyone else formed Sparta.
The Mars Volta can hardly be considered a band. It's more of a project. Omar writes the music, Cedric writes the lyrics. That is the deal. They switch out old band mates for new ones constantly. Ikey Owens, the keyboardist, is the only person who's been with them since the beginning.
The Mars Volta is not punk. They can't really be described as any single genre. They're progressive experimental psychedelic hard jazz rock. You are not allowed think they're "just okay." You either hate the shit out of them, or you think less of anyone who doesn't worship them as gods. Either way, you pretty much have to become a snobby music elitist and start judging people the very moment this band is mentioned. There's no way around it, it is required of you by music law.
Their lyrics can be very odd, and they're probably the band's most intriguing aspect. Everything is in symbolism, and nothing is ever clear. You have to decode. Fans debate endlessly on what everything means.
De-Loused in the Comatorium
De-Loused, released in 2003, is a concept album based on the death of Cedric's friend Julio Venegas, who committed suicide. Wikipedia: "the album is an hour-long tale of Cerpin Taxt, a man who tries to kill himself by overdosing on a mixture of morphine and rat poison. The attempt lands him in a week-long coma during which he experiences visions of humanity and his own psyche. Upon waking, he is dissatisfied with the real world and jumps to his death."
It's the best-selling Mars Volta album to date.
Frances The Mute
Jeremy Ward, a mentor and very close friend of Cedric and Omar, worked as a sound technician on De-Loused, creating most of the annoying and unnecessary ambient noises in between half the songs. Less than a month after De-Loused was released, he overdosed on heroine and was found dead in his apartment. His death convinced the band to get completely off opiates.
Frances The Mute was dedicated to Ward. Wikipedia: "[Ward] had previously worked as a repo man. One day, Ward discovered a diary in the backseat of a car he was repossessing, and began to note the similarities between his life and that of the author — most notably, that they had both been adopted. The diary told of the author's search for his biological parents, with the way being pointed by a collection of people, their names being the basis for each named track of Frances the Mute. Ward was in the process of completing it at the time of his death."
This album is dark. Cedric describes it as a "story of abandonment and addiction." Fans are still confused as shit on a lot of things, but this synopsis is generally agreed upon: Our protagonist is Vismund Cygnus, heroine addict and possible male prostitute. His mother is Frances, also known as "The Widow." Frances was raped many years ago, where Cygnus was conceived. She was later murdered and "gutted at the nave," and Cygnus was taken from her womb.
25 years later, the album follows Cygnus' attempt to track down his family's history, and seek revenge on his mothers' rapist(s) and murderer(s). He meets his aunt L' Via L' Viaquez, his grandmother Miranda, his possible sister Cassandra (who could also just be another one of his personalities) and along the way he descends into drug-induced madness. Many fans speculate that the characters and events in the CD aren't even happening at all, but are mere phantoms brought about by Cygnus' insanity. Others guess that Frances may not have been raped and murdered, but just made up a story so she could abandon her kid.
To me, Frances The Mute is one of the greatest albums of all time. The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is commonly considered The Wall of Generation X, and I really do think Frances could be The Wall of whatever the hell they're calling my generation this week. It is motherfucking brilliant. Once you get past the first three or four songs, the entire rest of the CD is like one god damn fuckingly epic jam session, ranging from utter chaos, to eerie and tragic beauty. Omar (probably knowing full well what a god damn masterpiece he had helped write) wanted the best performances possible from his band, and so he used the method of old jazz legends to record the CD: he basically locked everyone up alone, and refused to let them hear each other play. They each had to play their own parts individually with a metronome.
^^ This leads into this, it's pretty much one song vv
The guy who designed the covers for De-Loused and Frances? That's Storm Thorgerson. You may have seen his other works. Do Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Muse, The Offspring, or Audioslave ring any bells? The motherfucker designed Dark Side of the Moon. He's a pretty big deal.
I won't cover the three albums that came after these, because De-Loused and Frances are really the only ones that matter. And also, I'm tired and I've typed enough already. But yeah, after Frances, everything else they pump out just seems mediocre. It just can't be topped.
I owe a special thanks to The Mars Volta. During the time I was introduced to them, there was some high school drama bullshit going on that was really making my life hell. I had never been exposed to anything even close to these guys, and listening to something this new and interesting really helped me wade through all the crap in one piece.
Additionally, when I was first getting into music, I would flat out refuse to listen to anything that wasn't classic rock, and I would actually lose respect for someone if they didn't like it. I really was a fucking douchebag. I was also in high school, so I obviously knew everything about everything ever. When my brother Chris introduced me to Frances The Mute, I slowly but surely began opening up. The Mars Volta was my gateway drug. I've been shaped a considerable amount by the new music I've enjoyed since then, and The Mars Volta is what started it. I know I'm sounding a lot like one of those annoying "THIS CD IS LIKE, TOTALLY MY LIFE" schoolgirls, but if there are two bands that really opened the doors for me, it is Dredg, and The Mars Volta.
By the way, here they are watching a video where two women shit and vomit into each others' mouths.
In 1908, Jack Johnson became the first black man to hold the title of World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. White people shit themselves, and tried to find a white guy who could beat Johnson, whom they dubbed "The Great White Hope". James Jeffries (a white guy, score!) came out of retirement, in his own words "for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro."
This was called the "Fight of The Century," and it took place on July 4, 1910. Guess what? Jeffries got his ass kicked. Fucking shithead. Johnson held it for another five years, hahahaha. More like the Great White DOPE, amirite?
DUUURRR WHITE PEOPLE ARE DA BEST
"The Great White Hope" became an infamous racial phrase, used whenever a black person managed to climb over white persecution and become successful.
Fast forward to August 19, 2009, a couple weeks ago. The inherent racism behind all the slobbering, blubbering Obama-fearing is finally starting to come out. Well, it's been out, but the republicans holding office have just been hiding it real well until now. Republican Representative Lynn Jenkins feels that "Republicans are struggling right now to find the Great White Hope." Whoops?
It's curious, when she was naming off "great young republican minds", she neglected to mention Bobby Jindall -- a great young republican mind who has a bright future. Bobby Jindall is not white.
Jenkins, unsurprisingly, never apologized - "I was explaining that there are some bright lights in the House, and I was unaware of any negative connotation. If I offended somebody, obviously I apologize."
Ah! IF she offended anyone, THEN she apologizes! That's very sincere, Mrs. Jenkins! It's obvious you know what you did, thank you!
Wikipedia says,
"Though Jenkins claimed that she was unaware of the racial history of the phrase, she had voted for a resolution in July 2009, only one month earlier, that had text which explained the history of the phrase. Jenkins responded by saying she had voted for the resolution without reading it first."
Nice!
But this is old news. This fucking cunt has made some new news for herself. Elizabeth Smith came to a town hall discussion being held by Jenkins to ask about health care. Smith is a 27-year-old working single mother. Her 2 1/2-year-old son has not been to a doctor in 21 months, with the exception of emergency room visits, because her son is not covered under any insurance. Jenkins' disgusting response shows more than anything the complete detachment republicans have from the people they're supposed to represent.
"Go be a grown up."
Really. She told this struggling mother who cannot afford medical care for her son to "be a grown up." This is the hurdle republicans can't seem to overcome. You see, by telling Smith that she needs to "be a grown up," Jenkins confirmed that she completely lacks a sense of empathy. This isn't fucking about Elizabeth Smith. It's about her son.
"I think we can agree we need reforms, again it’s just how we gonna do it. I believe people should be given the opportunity to take care of themselves with an advancebale tax credit to go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance."
Oh, yes. There's video.
It truly staggers the mind, trying to figure out why republicans have any support at all. "Problem? Tough shit. Vote for me."
Jesus, just look at her. Have fun dying miserably confused about why you missed out on all the good things in life, you disgusting racist pile of shit.
On a higher note, I discovered yesterday that my great grandfather was in the KKK. Kill me.
