Here’s a classic hippie dippy teevee music documentary featuring Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jerry Garcia. It was first aired on KQED in San Francisco way back in 1970. Its only flaw is the lack of motherfuckers in the Airplane’s We Can Be Together. Tear down the wall, motherfucker: Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Go Ride The Music
Another duet from John Hiatt and Matthew Sweet. This time playing John’s tune, Cry Love, with the Nashville Queens: Continue reading Saturday Night Music: Cry Love
John Hiatt and Matthew Sweet performing the latter’s hit song, Girlfriend: Continue reading Friday Night Music: Girlfriend
Meet Bitbit whose cat guardians are my krewe of Spank friends David and Brett. He got his name-the cat, not David-because he was such an eenie weenie kitten. That is no longer the case. Get a load of that tongue, y’all: Continue reading Friday Guest Catblogging: Kitty Tongue
We have truly gone through the looking glass when I find myself quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial approvingly: These critics portrayed the Boehner plan as a sellout because of a campaign that captured the imagination of some conservatives this summer: Republicans must threaten to crash their Zeros into the aircraft carrier of ObamaCare. Their demand is that the House pair the “must pass” CR or the debt limit with defunding the health-care bill. Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots. Adding to the surreality of the whole thing is that I’m linking to the … Continue reading Quote Of The Day: Banzai Edition
Do your little dance, Bucky: A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging: Bucky’s Moves Edition
I’m going to finish the putdown/breakup tune series with Keith Richards slamming Mick Jagger in 1988 during a hiatus from the Stones. It obviously didn’t bother Mick all that much: Continue reading Thursday Night Music: You Don’t Move Me
It comes from an excellent post by the Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates about income inequality: A Rising Tide Lifts Mostly Yachts I cannot believe that I didn’t use this in my past life as a Rising Tide NOLA organizer. The first two events, in fact, were held at the New Orleans Yacht Club. Oh well, live and learn… Continue reading Headline Of The Day: Nautical Imagery Edition
Weather Reportwere one of the best and most interesting Jazz/Rock/World/Prog fusion bands ever. They were also surprisingly commercially successful for a band that played such challenging music. Maybe it was the way Jaco Pastorius rocked the bass in his tenure in the band or maybe it was the brilliance of co-leaders Wayne Shorter and the late Josef Zawinul. I saw WR quite a few times and one of the minor triumphs of my life was when I got the stolid Zawinul to play a snippet of Louie Louie on his piano between numbahs. He declined, however, to play Whipping Post. … Continue reading Album Cover Art Wednesday: Heavy Weather
Boy, howdy, we got us some dissolute hillbillies and/or rednecks. Yeah, boy: Note:John Faulknerwas a certain famous writer’s kid brother, which makes me wanna shout even louder. Continue reading Pulp Fiction Thursday: The Sin Shouter of Cabin Road
It’s not a banner day for LSU grads but, hey, at least I’m not a frat boy: On Saturday, students in the Zeta Zeta chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity hung a sign from their fraternity house that read: “Getting Massacred Is Nothing New To Kent St.,” referencing what has become known as the Kent State Massacre. On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students protesting U.S. military operations in Cambodia. Four students were killed in the shootings; nine were wounded. LSU’s football team beat Kent State 45-13 on Saturday. Doug Lanpher, executive director … Continue reading (Frat) Boys will be boys
Find some traffic to play in: Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), who’s running for Senate in Georgia, complained that while his staff can jump to K Street and make $500,000 a year by lobbying, he’s “stuck” in Congress making a bare $172,000 a year. The comments, relayed by congressional aides to National Review, came during a closed door meeting among Congressional Republicans on Obamacare. The lawmakers were debating a proposal that would exclude members of Congress and their staff from a part of Obamacare that requires them to engage in federal health care exchanges. A number of lawmakers complained that participating … Continue reading Just STFU, Rich Assholes
I took a trip to Tommy T country today. I feel like I dived into a cesspool and may need delousing or, at the very least, a cocktail.This week’s dishonoree, Larry Klayman, is a right wing lawyer, false flag aficionado, conspiracy theorist and blatantly crazy bastid. That’s why he’s malaka of the week. Klayman is fond of using intemperate, OTT, extreme and crazed language to make his points, such as they are: As conservative attorney and outspoken birther Larry Klayman sees it, the only recourse is for “people of faith and all true patriots” to take matters into their own … Continue reading Malaka Of The Week: Larry Klayman
The bile files song collection continues with John Lennon’s unfair, OTT, but musically awesome 1971 takedown of Macca: Continue reading Wednesday Night Music: How Do You Sleep
Poor Larry. Now he’ll just have to go home and cry into his GIANT PILE OF MONEY. I get that it sucks you don’t get a job you want, no matter how rich you are, but can we please start differentiating between people with real problems and people whose resumés are just a line short of their desires? Not everything is just like Hitler and slavery. And this Michael Wolff columnisn’t THE most offensive thing in USA Today, but that’s just because it’s USA Today and we grade on a curve around here: The public bake-off between the economists Lawrence … Continue reading Pity The Rich Man’s Man
My late, much missed friend Ashley Morris was as famous for his profane vocabulary as First Draft’s very own potty mouthed miscreant, Jude. They both have a lot in common with Nebraska football coach Bo Pelini who lost his shit after losing to UCLA in 2011.The recording was just leaked to Deadspin. Why? Because the Cornhusker faithful want Bo shitcanned: In the recording, Pelini is talking to Sharpe and to a woman whose identity we’ve been unable to determine. Pelini initially seems upset with an unknown person who works at the Omaha World-Herald, whom he calls “a piece of shit.” … Continue reading Bo Pelini Channels Ashley Morris
Like I said yesterday, nobody can, uh, twist the knife quite like Richard Thompson even when wielding an acoustic guitar: Continue reading Tuesday Night Music: She Twists The Knife Again
With every dumbass who pulls one and kills a bunch of people because he’s pissed off, or can’t cope, or just felt like it today, it feels more and more like we’re really not having this conversation hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a topic so assiduously avoided, as is the topic of guns these days, one mass shooting after another. We talk about security and we talk about “mental health services,” as if metal detectors and anti-depressants are what shot a bunch of people dead. We talk about creating a national list of nutters, because that has never … Continue reading Guns Are Political. Nothing Else Is.
I’ve been doing a lot of re-reading this summer.Yes, A, it’s still summer in NOLA, alas. I gleefully plowed through the entire Robert Caro LBJ series, and recently re-read The Great Gatsby for the first time in many years.This is my favorite passage: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Every time I deal with careless people, and I’ve done more than my share … Continue reading Quote Of The Day: Literary Edition
Cap Times: “Show, don’t tell” is a classic rule in creative writing, but we think it has also represented some good advice for The Cap Times this year. For all of 2013, we’ve been quietly evolving from a past we concluded was still a bit too tied to the culture of print, and now we’ve decided it’s time to go public in describing this change, to give readers a peek behind the proverbial curtain. [snip] We are not a general interest print daily newspaper, nor are we pretending to be one online. (That said, The Cap Times’ tabloid on Wednesdays … Continue reading In Part, This, Newspapers
Fucking sociopaths: Speaking of urban agony, by the way — if folks on the right were truly Macchiavellian, they’d be joining the critics of stop-and-frisk. The big Blue enclaves are where the crime and racial strife mostly are; letting those get worse would probably benefit folks on the right. Luckily for the hipsters, righties are too principled for that sort of “heightening the contradictions” thing. What Glenn “Celebrate Diversity” Reynolds is really saying here is that it would be totes hilarious if enough people died that things started to suck FOR LIBERALS. Christ, these people. Everything’s permissible if it proves … Continue reading Nothing’s Real Anymore
I’m feeling spiteful, vitriolic, and sarcastic this evening and nobody does it better than Richard Thompson: Continue reading Monday Night Music: Put It There, Pal
Morning, all! While I was out sick, I see that you guys pitched in and made some improvements to the iso chamber. Elspeth, thank you for the cupcake dispenser, although I’m not so sure about the Muse-inspired glitter frosting. Maplestreet, I like the new see-through handles on the filter panels – lets one see if there’s any accumulated sludge up there before you pull them down for cleaning. Blacksheepone, I see you replaced the rubber handles on the emergency dump levers – excellent idea. Dee Loralei, Mazareth, and Aaaaargh – the airlock seal gaskets have never looked better. Jude – … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – gun crazy edition
What’s your favorite fall food? I honestly couldn’t pick one. Butternut squash soup, chili for hockey and football weekends, hot apple cider and pumpkin lattes, pie pie pie pie pie, apples, fresh-baked bread because it’s finally cool enough to turn the oven on … FALL! A. Continue reading Weekend Question Thread
I would sign up for a world run by Charlie and Leona. I HAVE A PROBLEM HERE OKAY.
Continue reading “We’ve Come a Long Way: The Newsroom Thread”
Through no fault of their own: Foreclosures have upended families in some of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. Houses were taken from a housekeeper, a department store clerk, a seamstress and even the estates of dead people. The hardest hit: elderly homeowners, who were often sick or dying when tax lien purchasers seized their houses. One 65-year-old flower shop owner lost his Northwest Washington home of 40 years after a company from Florida paid his back taxes — $1,025 — and then took the house through foreclosure while he was in hospice, dying of cancer. A 95-year-old church choir leader … Continue reading What Good are Bootstraps if They Repo the Boots?
I’m surprised I haven’t ‘honored’ Ted Cruz before. He’s a freshman Senator who is widely hated by his colleagues, planning to run for President in 2016 and may be the biggest asshole in public life. And there’s a lot of competition when it comes to assholery; especially among GOP teabagger types. Above all else, Ted Cruz dicksmack from Texas is malaka of the week. Despite Cruz’s overwhelming credentials, I’m going to focus on one recent malakatudinous episode: his declaration of manlove for the late, unlamented, and incorrigibly racist Senator Jesse Helms.Here’s what Texas’ Cross To Bear said about Jesse to … Continue reading Malaka Of The Week: Ted Cruz
The Robert Cray Band live in Ala-fucking-bama in 2010: Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Cookin’ In Mobile
It is astonishing to me that young people aren’t flocking to newspapers, when there’s all this relevant content for them: The details of twerking are now all over the Internet. Instructions. History. Some claim it goes back 20 years. Whatever. Folks from my era just shrug it off as another thing we will never do, like zip-lining or writing our own rap lyrics. To be honest, I feel sorry for kids today. We only had to learn to roll our arms in the air, like we were conjuring up a magic potion, and we could survive on the dance floor. … Continue reading In Which I Compare Mitch Albom Unfavorably to Twerking With Miley Cyrus
I was just turned on to Adam Green and Binki Shapiro’s debut duo album. It’s chock-full-o-good songs with baroque 60’s pop rock feel: Continue reading Saturday Night Music: Just To Make Me Feel Good