Ring Out The Mold

As you may have noticed, I don't get a lot of comments here. Mostly, I think, because I am such a godamn know-it-all that most sensible people feel the effort needed to raise their voices is better spent elsewhere. This is too bad. I value all comments, even the dumbass ones, such as this, from one alansmithee, on the Dems possible way forward viz Iraq:

Of course the dems aren't going to do squat. Since when have they passes up the opportunity to score petty political points on the deaths of US soldiers? They'd sacrific whole divisions if they thought it would give them a leg up in '08.

It is a measure of our times that such criticism can now be leveled from the left as well as the right; though its belligerent tone, and chip-on-the-shoulder reasoning, and sloppy spelling, finally tipped the balance towards some Kampus Konservative, a ding-dong on a Dell, venting to an indifferent universe.

Indifferent, as Man Ray would have it, but not Unconcerned. Though short and dumb, it was enough to rouse me from my accustomed year-end narcotic haze to offer this ever-so-small look back in anger.

You know, Al? Even if you are right and the Dems are going to sacrifice servicepeople for political ends for the next 23 months, that would still leave them over two years behind the war bitches you voted for; the ones who dissembled and cheated the American people, caused to be killed or maimed 25,000 U.S. troops, murdered tens of thousands of Iraquis, set up a failed state in a very dangerous region of the world, bankrupted our nation. . . mostly for political reasons.

And as far as sacrificing whole divisions, what's worse - to do it for a political agenda, and by that I mean a governing philosophy needed to manage the social direction of a huge nation, or to assuage the swollen ego of a squalid, deluded little man whom hardly anyone likes?

And until, Al, that blessed day when Speaker Pelosi becomes acting Commander-in Chief, due to the resignation-in-the-face-of-indictment of the war bitches currently in charge; yes, until THAT day, Al, the Dems aren't sacrificing anybody for politcial points. Those squalid war bitches, those criminals, the guys you supported are the ones who vomited in your lap, Al. It's quite a mess, isn't it? Smells awful, even beginning to itch and burn. And they are not sorry, Al. They are not apologizing; they are pissed you might object; and they are getting ready to do it some more. So enjoy. . .

And thanks for dropping by.

The Way For-wad

Over the last week, our ruling junta's plan for Iraq has become crystal clear: amp up troop levels, dare the Dems to cut appropriations, and hope for the best.

In other words, a political way forward. Its main abstract virtue is a disregard for practicalities and consequences that can only be called, uhm, glorious and might well result in a political disaster the likes of which this country has not seen since - oh, I don't know - 1860.

There are many variables in the mix that might preclude catastrophic failure; policy shifts caused by, but not limited to, mounting popular displeasure at home, a looming exit of U.K. forces (which no one mentions in the talk of U.S. troop increases), and a new political coalition in Washington whereby scatterings of Repubs join Dems in standing up to the insane actors who have hijacked the GOP brand. The current plan guarantees the GOP collapse I've predicted for over a year; only hastens it, makes it definitive.

The whole Iraq disaster was always predicated on a gambler's equation, in which the downside was much larger than the intended payoff. Yeah, getting rid of Saddam was an okay idea, but the potential cost of doing so, hidden from the trusting public, was always much bigger than the potential payoff. Now they are going double or nothing.

Today's conventional wisdom says the Dems won't dare to cut appropriations for the war. I say two years is a very long time and, politically speaking, they are the ones with nothing to lose here.

True, D'oh!

The best writing about the American experience in Iraq is being done by a fucking cartoonist.

Hurrah the Chumps of Choice, I Say!

All props to Ned for a fine home for our little coffee klatch, and a spectacular launch. I'm due to cover the next passage and am in the process of getting thoughts together and applying lipstick to paper.

If things get a little quiet here over the next few, it's because the world mainly sux and I've run away, Mom and Dad, to join the Chumps of Choice.

Plots Lost And Found

Unremarked during the O.J. book deal outrage is how badly the Murdoch Gang misread the public's appetite for the gruesome details of celebrity murder; and by Murdoch Gang, I mean Murdoch. I have a hard time believing he had no idea such a thing was buzzing in his hive.

Though the FOX TV brand is known mainly for the cheap and meaningless way it depicts sex, its real porn has always been violence; from their gruesome police dramas, to the new belligerence they brought to the discussion of ideas on the news side and especially in their war coverage; all those remote control bombs taking out bad guys, in thrilling night vision - a reptile-brain celebration of power over others that, presented in patriotic bunting, many found highly appealing.

Judging now by the outraged front page reaction of Murdoch's Post to the mild policy blandishments of the ISG (SURRENDER MONKEYS) - on top of the O.J. miscalculation - one wonders if maybe the public taste for irredeemable mayhem has shifted on the Dirty Digger, and that he's pissed.

As should be clear to all of my several readers, the true aim of the ISG report was to give elements of official Washington, most especially the news organizations with bureaus there, a means to triangulate themselves away from the disaster they had so avidly promoted for their varied and selfish reasons for the past four years. Some, like the Chicago Tribune, grabbed the lifeline with a nearly audible cry of relief; free now to relate without apparent shame on their front page the scope and profundity of that fucking disaster. Others, like the Post and the WSJ blubber nearly senselessly over the lost world of their bankable firepower, while reloading. Here, now in black-and-white, is one version of the coming breakup of the GOP.

Since the ISG was nothing more than a media cover, the regime of that squalid little man, already backed into the bunker, saw no reason to give it any notice outside one of amused contempt. One would have been surprised at anything else, but what they have probably not factored in was how, in the wake of the ISG, the vacuum in power and sense in DC has launched them into a free fall, one they will not notice until the ground comes racing towards them with a welcoming smirk. The question is how many of the faithful are following him down. Right now it looks like more than a few.

If you sense I am tired of all this, you are correct-o. There is nothing energizing about intransigence and entropy. The days' events take on a sameness that mocks further comment. I've said everything there is to say on this sorry mess and that dispicable man and I'm dead tired of it and him.

"It is too late." as one writer put it. "The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre."

Picks For '06

As the body politic falls freely through the ether of dead assumptions (don't ask what exactly I mean by this, it's still dark here) I've found less and less to write of a body political nature. It is edifying to note just how marginalized that squalid little man has become, even among those once proud to claim him as their own. The photo of his vile Dad (Reagan I didn't like, Bush 1 I despised) full-on weeping in public, the good son at his side, drew even me up short. It is always about control with those assholes and for Poppy to go so visibly off the reservation, though granted he is a tired old man, must have some very important people feeling more than a little ill this chilly midwestern morn.

But enough about the dead. It is for us the living to go on.

The holidays are upon us and I though I'd give a rundown of my fave records from this year. You should know that I'm a kinda Americana roots individual and so my choices all tend down those lines. You'll have to go elsewhere for your Techno, Jazz, R&B, Metal and/or Classical recommendation needs.

Late to the party, like it was released only two months ago, is my fave of the year, American Lo-fi from the Canadian band Ox. (Hear a few cuts here. I am particularly fond of Sugar Cane.) Any band that covers Cheap Trick and Woodie Guthrie are aces in my book, and the whole record is a fucking treat; a twangy, rough-cut gem.

I am a big fan of records that let you listen to the room they were recorded in. American Lo-fi allows that in a studio setting, while Charlie Parr's Backslider gives you all of the full-on Duluth bar where it was captured. Give this a listen, and if you are like me you will listen to it a few times more. I discovered Parr's music this summer (he was supposed to open for a friend here in Chicago, until his car died) and, in a fit of weird coincidence, met him a few weeks later at Duluth's Brewhouse, where I was having lunch and he was delivering copies of Backslider for the bar to sell. Very nice guy.

I'm sure Drew Landry would not object to me calling him a Coon-ass Cajun, I think he uses those very words several times in his exceptionally moving ep-cd Tailgaten Relief & Hurricane Companion. The record was made in the aftermath of Katrina and veers smoothly from fondness for a way of life gone forever (the storm only finished the work of industry) to the bitterness of watching everything fall to pieces. Landry is a plain ol' country rocker, and there is nothing here you have not heard musically, like from John Prine, before. But Prine has not made a record with this much affection and feeling. And Landry's song Category Five reaches back to a time when folk songs were news.

Hard as it is to admit, I am old enough to remember top 40 radio before the advent of the Beatles here. Consequently, people like the Ronettes, Ricky Nelson, the Everlys and Dion DiMucci probably mean a lot more to me than to most of you.

What is there to say about Dion? An Italian kid from the Bronx who got his start singing for nickels in bars to Hank Williams on the juke. A little older, he took guitar lessons from the Rev. Gary Davis. Became a HUGE pop singing star with his Doo-wop group The Belmonts; then a heroin addict; then the Beatles hit. For my money, the best rock 'n' roll singer after Elvis. Go hear his version of Ruby Baby sometime, or Drip Drop. This year saw him release the home-recorded Bronx in Blue; nothing fancy, just him and his guitar in a tasteful expression of something he clearly loves, acoustic blues music. There are not a lot of musicians who are talented and modest enough to make good blues records nowadays. Buddy Guy, of course; Alvin Youngblood Hart and Jimbo Mathus also get my vote. But Dion? Who knew?

Copyright Infringement Theater Presents...

Anita O'Day, Newport, 1958, from Bert Stern's Jazz on a Summer's Day



That Stern was a fashion photographer turned documentary filmmaker should be pretty clear here. Jazz... may be the first, and only, concert film where the audience is as absorbing as the performers; who include Thelonious Monk, Chuck Berry and Mahalia Jackson.

Hurrah! The Chumps Of Choice

The redoubtable Neddie Jingo and Yr. Obt. Hmbl. have committed ourselves to a gang reading of Tom Pynchon's newie, Against the Day, a hefty tome gimcracked with goodies of a recondite - indeed preterite - nature. Mr. P. makes it pretty easy to miss the fine, rather the more convoluted, points in his woiks, dazing the left brain with persiflage while filling the right one with the good stuff. And nobody puts the goo in good quite like Mr. P.

I will be happy to kick things off here on a preliminary basis by observing from the several reviews and my own early foray, here shedding light I hope on my own biases regarding the tasks and aims of literature, that, as Thackery delivered with Vanity Fair a Novel Without A Hero, I am already getting the sneaking suspish that Pynchon has sent a novel without a main character. God knows what else he has up his sleeve.

We'll cover, what, twenty pages a week? (At that rate, starting next, we could be done by Xmas '07) Assign one person to post/host his or her impressions for that installment and the rest of us just pile on in comments?? Anyone with a better idea, call the manager.

The name of this band is The Chumps of Choice; and you gotta play to get it.

Nodes In Passing

Wolcott joins me in the Ahab analogy.

Josh Marshall melts down, poor guy.

Billmon, perhaps in light of the above, has apparently retired from the lists.

A Kick From The Yule

Take my advice and bookmark the link to Big Rock Candy Mountain there on the right. My fellow citizen of the City of the Big Shoulders (and thanks to him for the photo here) is posting daily through Xmas, a series of Americana MP3s dedicated to a sobbing drunken good time at the ol' Yule log. Yesterday he set us up with Buck Owens and Charlie Pride.