A friend of mine messaged me in a somewhat panicked state a few months back. She is a professor at a university in Texas and her state was about to pass a “right to carry” bill that would allow concealed firearms on her campus. Wisconsin had recently passed a right to carry law that allowed for similar things and she wondered how it worked by us. I understood why she was worried, as I also had concerns about students packing heat in my class. However, the classes I taught were pretty benign. I didn’t imagine a kid pulling out a … Continue reading Murder-Suicides: Stop giving these tools such good tools
We all have unfashionable things that we love. The work of Rudyard Kipling is one of my guilty pleasures. I deplore his bigotry and jingoistic colonialism but celebrate his prose and poetry. Kipling’s work also made for some great movies back in the day. Calvin Trillin wrote a great piece in 1994 about his fanatical devotion to the 1939 film version of Gunga Din. It’s time to let go of the white cat’s burden and move on to our favorite tuxedo cat. Della Street, of course, doesn’t know anything about literature or classic films, but she *is* curious about things that land on … Continue reading Friday Catblogging: Gunga Della
The last time there was a major round of lay-offs at NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune in 2012 then editor Jim Amoss promised their coverage would be as robust as ever. There was another round of robust sackings today: Managers at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune carried off an expected round of layoffs this morning, firing some of the paper’s longest-serving reporters alongside more recent hires. In a statement released after the firings, NOLA Media Group President Ricky Mathews said the firings included “28 full time and nine part time content staffers,” or “21 percent of the overall content operation’s full-time employees.” <snip> Several sources … Continue reading The Robust Picayune Purge Of 2015
The post title is a bit of a stretch: they weren’t in the same studio and Walker was merely Baby Deadeyes at that point. He didn’t become Governor until 2011, but y’all know I have a weakness for a snappy headline. So it goes. I apparently missed this the first time it popped up at Uppity Wisconsin in 2011. I barely even noticed it at TPM because of the overkill coverage of the 3 hour GOP sludge fest. The year is 1992, Dukkke was trying to get on the ballot for the Republican Presidential primary. Baby Deadeyes was there as a representative … Continue reading When Gov. Deadeyes Met The Gret Stet Fuhrer Wannabe
I guess this week’s PFT qualifies as gallows humor. I plead guilty to a love of black comedy, the darker the better. I’m also using the title of a David Byrne tune as the title so I’ll post it before getting on with it:
We begin with the book that was transformed into the film noir classic, Out Of The Past.
In the U.K. the movie kept the title of its source material:
VAN CLOSED. Thanks to all for being here, and OH MY GOD, did CNN shit the bed. For the record, here are some of the topics candidates were asked about: What everyone thought of Donald Trump’s fingers being on the nuclear codes. What Carly Fiorina thought about the mean thing Donald Trump said about her face. What each candidate thought their Secret Service code name should be. How “Reaganesque” each candidate was. A bunch of questions from Facebook and Twitter which were “hot” and “trending.” About 20 minutes spent talking about the Planned Parenthood hoax videos without ANYONE FROM CNN … Continue reading CNNANANANANA CRACK VAN
I’m a fan of good writing, especially when it’s in a scathing review of a bad movie or teevee show. A new show on FX, The Bastard Executioner, inspired Slate’s Willa Paskin to write a brilliant, bad review: In this case, passion has called into being an incoherent Game of Thrones knock-off full of senseless carnage, wooden performances, a dash of nudity, and a few scenes so poorly executed they play like farce. The Bastard Executioner is monstrously fetid, a mound of gorgonzola stuffed into a dead catfish’s gullet, smoked in sulfur, doused with heavy cream and left to rot for … Continue reading Quote Of The Day: Execute The Bastard Edition
Time for a long, circuitous introduction to this week’s post. I guess y’all are used to that by now. Using Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly as the basis for a post title got me thinking of another one of her books, The Proud Tower. It’s the story of pre-Great War life in Europe including the wildly creative artistic culture of the Edwardian Era. One chapter dealt with the controversial debut of Sergei Diaghliev’s ballet production of Igor Stravinsky’s modernist classic, The Rite Of Spring; Le Sacre du Printemps for any francophones out there. It caused a helluva controversy as you … Continue reading Album Cover Art Wednesday: The Rite Of Spring
One. I don’t understand why this is so hard to figure out. If you give the Internet the opportunity to be merry pranksters, the Internet will be merry pranksters. This is what the Internet is really for. It’s for taking Twitter hashtags that suggest we ask over-serious politicians, accused rapists, and racist sports mascots reasonable questions, and asking them which family members they imagine naked. It’s for using those “build your own campaign poster” apps to suggest sexual acts the candidates can perform on goats and Boy Scouts. It’s for crowdsourcing city slogans that include “duck and keep driving.” This … Continue reading Hilarity to Ensue in 5, 4, 3, 2 ….
Doing this would require listening to, you know, their own history and not to consultants who are still blithering about hyperlocal micro-local digital paradigms: Chicago Tribune food writer Kevin Pang’s tweetstorm: 1. Been thinking about how newspapers can compete in media landscape. You know who we should take lessons from? The Numero Group. 2. Numero Group is the Chicago record label that digs up dusty records and spiffily reissues it for a new audience. 3. What is a newspaper’s most valuable asset today? (Certainly not our ad revenues.) It’s our archives. Our back catalog can’t be matched. 4. Most stories … Continue reading Valuing Your Assets: Newspaper Edition
I had some fun with the title of this one by melding memorable phrases from two of my favorite writers: historian Barbara Tuchman and pundit supremo Charlie Pierce. I’ve written about Tuchman’s book The March of Folly before here at First Draft and Pierce is oft quoted in this neck of the virtual woods and not just by lil’ ole me. The Piercian phrase I’m alluding to is “the pursuit of the President’s penis,” which is his apt description of how Bill Clinton’s enemies tried and failed to bring him down by focusing on zipper issues and periodic “bimbo eruptions.” The … Continue reading The Gret Stet March Of Folly: The Pursuit Of Vitter’s Diaper
Inside Hungary’s orphanages, by my friend Erin: This complex hardly seems like a place that anyone, let alone a child, would want to leave. It has horses to ride, meadows and gardens to run in, and classrooms where they can learn. But for the children arriving in Hungary from the Middle East and North Africa, this home has become a place to flee from, not a refuge. The children’s home went into crisis mode in May, flooded with refugee children, most of them teens, who have no guardians — legally known as unaccompanied minors. Some of the children left their country of origin alone or … Continue reading How Unaccompanied Children Flee the War
Church opines that Black Lives Matter, gets exactly what you’d expect: While many people posted comments supporting the church’s message, several others posted profane rants, accusing the church of being racist and anti-police. “Your sign out front shows support for an organization that supports and promotes the killing of others. This is in the Bible where? I’ve never read to hate one another, but, to love one another instead,” Elizabeth Onesto wrote in the review section of the church’s Facebook page. [snip] Several reviewers accused the “Black Lives Matter” movement of being a terrorist group that promotes violence against whites and … Continue reading Post-Racial America Continues to Be Post-Racialicious
CNN staffers complain about coverage on CNN, then bitch anonymously in the trades about coverage on CNN, because they’re not just passive-aggressive, they’re aggressive-passive-aggressive: At a network town hall on Thursday, producers complained about the obsessive coverage the network has given the GOP frontrunner, including airing full campaign rallies and an endless amount of segments dedicated to Trump. One producer expressed concern that the network, as TheWrap first reported, bumped an Anderson Cooper special on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina last month to air a post-Trump-rally hour hosted by Don Lemon. IF ONLY THERE WAS SOMETHING THEY COULD DO … Continue reading If Only the Media Were Not Powerless
This is an odd little item from 1988. The music is excellent but the production is rather silly as are Chris Difford’s bowler hat and Jools Holland’s Stetson. Neither is very beachy. So it goes. Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Squeeze Live On MTV
This. This right here. #NeverForget911 pic.twitter.com/2DBDz8FFgv — Jamie East (@mrjamieeast) September 11, 2015 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Marriott faux-pologized, natch, as did a bunch of other obnoxious assholes who did obnoxious asshole things like this, who took something that we still don’t even fully know what it was and turned it into an excuse for a mattress sale or whatever. This is why I get so angry at the easy sentimentality and angel-wing GIFs and shit. The survivors are still surviving, and we’re offering them muffins. For half a fucking hour. A. Continue reading This Is Why I Have No Patience for Small Talk, Thoughts & Prayers for the Victims, or Cable News Theme Songs
This week has been a bottomless pit of stupid. We’ve seen an obscure county clerk treated as a hero by the Right and as a villain by the Left. She’s neither, she’s an outlier who’s best ignored. #MLKim my ass. We interrupt this rant with a message from Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys:
Speaking of empty suits, the dullest Greek in history, New Orleans Advocate owner John Georges, teased the media and Twitteratti with the possibility he might enter the Gret Stet Goober race. In the end, he didn’t run but a lot of bandwith was wasted on a boring rich guy who ran and lost for Governor in 2007, and Mayor of New Orleans in 2010. In that time span he’s been a Republican, Independent, and Democrat. Some decider; he can’t even make up his mind as to what he believes in, other than himself.
In New Orleans, we’ve seen Mayor Mitch Landrieu threatened with house arrestif he doesn’t settle an endless lawsuit with the Firefighters Union. This dispute seems to have been going on since the Louisiana Purchase. It may be time to resurrectGen. Wilkinson or Gov. Claiborne to settle the issue. They’re long dead but still have more life than John Georges as well as better hair than Mitch Landrieu…
A friend asked me the other day why I haven’t done a Malaka of the Week post for a few weeks. It’s because there’s too bloody much malakatude to choose from. There’s a wealth of stupid, which brings me to this week’s theme song. It comes from Aimee Mann’s ab fab 1995 album I’m With Stupid. We’re all with stupid this week, y’all:
Okay now that I’ve vented, on with the Saturday post, which does involve some stupid but not this much:
Now that you’ve consumed some empty calories, join us after the break. Fast…
Claire is nearly 7, which is pretty old in ferret years, and she’s been kind of spacing it lately, isn’t as energetic as she once was, etc. All the familiar signs. I’m off with her to the vet this morning, hopefully just to find out if we can put her on a course of meds like Riot, keep her mischievous little self with us a bit longer. A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging: Claire vs. The Sick
The quadrennial ritual of GOPers pissing off rock stars with the unauthorized use of their music may have hit its apogee, apex, or some other A word. This time it’s R.E.M., It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz. R.E.M. was an odd choice to play at a Trump rally since they’re Lefties from way back. So far back that Michael Stipe had hair when they became politically active: R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe blasted Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for using the song at their rally in a Wednesday email to The Daily Beast. … Continue reading Orange Clown Orange Crushed
People in Louisiana like our politics the way we like our crawfish boils: highly seasoned, tasty, and entertaining. This year’s Goober race seemed destined to continue the dullness of the Jindal era political scene. The good news is that things have gotten very interesting this week. The bad news is that, with the exception of deep blue New Orleans, the Gret Stet is getting redder every day but the freak show is back in town. David Vitter looks somewhat vulnerable but remains the favorite. He has bags and bags of money-$9 million smackeroos-and nearly 100% name recognition. That’s, of course, a mixed bag for him since … Continue reading The Gret Stet Goober Race Heats Up
In 2009, Dave Alvin recorded with an all-female quintet featuring Cindy Cashdollar, Nina Gerber, Laurie Lewis, Sarah Brown, and Laurie Pankratz. The resulting album Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women is one of my favorite Alvin CDs. Honorary New Orleanian Marcia Ball sat in on piano on Boss of the Blues, which is one reason I’m posting it tonight. The other is that it flat-out rocks: Here’s some extra tasty lagniappe, which also features la belle Marcia: Continue reading Wednesday Night Music: Boss Of The Blues
Dick Cheney was not the only wingnut to deal with protesters this week. Our old pal Senator David Vitter qualified in the 2015 Gret Stet Goober race yesterday. He was greeted by a dude named Brian in a makeshift diaper: As funny as I think this stunt was, I don’t think the whole Vitter prostitution thing is going to work unless something new pops up. The issue has been litigated and Bitter Vitter has been forgiven by his right-wing base. My friend Lamar White Jr. disagrees, check out his post. Continue reading This Happened In Baton Rouge
Wendell Pierce is from New Orleans, left for many years to seek his fame and fortune as an actor, and has spent more time here since a certain event in 2005. His post-K track record is more mixed than the media would have you believe. He’s partnered in several enterprises with 2010 Mayoral candidate and developer Troy Henry including a grocery store “chain” that hasn’t lived up to the hype surrounding its launch. Pierce has also engaged in an unseemly and inaccurate war of words with a neighborhood association that opposed one of his development plans. He threw around some buzz words … Continue reading Quote Of The Day: Bunk’s Bunkum Edition
There was a lot of gimmickry used in the early days of pop-rock music. The record company suits were never quite sure how to appeal to the kids so they threw a lot of shit against the wall and hoped that some of it stuck. Two pop bands in the Sixties went all in on gimmickry and wore stage costumes/uniforms that evoked history in the foggiest manner imaginable.
Then there was the band who quickly became Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.They wore faux Civil War era Union army uniforms. I’m not sure how that went down in the Deep South but who gives a flying fuck?
Until Rob Ford appeared on the scene, Americans tended to think of Canadian politics as a bit on the dull and dry side. This story out of Toronto further disproves that belief: Jerry Bance, who represented the riding of Scarborough-Rouge Park, has been officially dropped from the election campaign after a video of him urinating in a coffee cup surfaced, a spokesperson from the Conservative Party National Campaign office confirmed to Global News on Monday. The incident occurred in 2012 while Bance was working as an appliance repairman and was recorded on video by CBC’s Marketplace program. The show had set up the … Continue reading The Case Of The Cunning Canadian Conservative Urinator
Why won’t #BlackLivesMatter protesters behave in a way that makes them acceptable to people who hate protests, you guys? It is the eternal media mystery of our time: Williams began by acknowledging how the movement was the African-American community’s response to the violence and social injustices they have endured. However, Williams also pointed out how the movement’s recent actions like challenging supportive Democratics while not proposing political solutions will be counter-productive to its own goals. People who are protesting, have you been up all night freaking out about whether Juan Williams wants to join your protest? Have you been wondering what you could do … Continue reading Juan Williams is Concerned #BlackLivesMatter Might Not Care What He Thinks
