[Sad News] Geoffrey Perkins, who produced Douglas Adams' BBC Radio series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Channel 4's Father Ted, died Friday after injuries sustained in a London car accident.
Today, Britain is to comedy what France is to cooking, or Italy to shoes. But things weren't always that way, as evidenced every time KUED has a bad fund-raising year and is forced to fill its evening British-comedy slot with cheaply purchased, dreary, 40-year-old sitcoms.
The post-1970s British explosion of bizarre, incisive and compelling humor can be attributed to a generation of irreverent and forward-thinking men and women--among whom Perkins served as something of a visionary. Without Perkins, who produced the offbeat sketch series The Fast Show it's doubtful there could have been a Little Britain. Without Perkins, who advocated for Ben Elton The Man From Auntie, could there ever have been a Blackadder?
Perkins was 55 at his death.
Some Little Britain:
(Brandon Burt)
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Sarah & Me
[Veep Encounter] In a far distant universe, I once lived and worked in Alaska. My job was to promote tourism in and around a little town called Wasilla, known for being the headquarters of the Iditarod Trail race. One of my board members was John Stein, a popular three-term mayor of Wasilla who seemed destined to keep his job as long as he wanted it.But one election year—1996 to be exact—change was in the air, change in the form of plucky brunette 32-year-old Sarah Palin. Once a co-captain of her high school basketball team, Palin in 1982 led the Wasilla Warriors to win an astonishing state championship. For that, she’ll always be a local hero. At a young 28, she’d been elected to the city council and soon took issue with Stein’s “stale” leadership and “tax-and-spend mentality.”
It became apparent Stein was in for a fight of his political life.
Upon learning she’d won the hotly contested race, Palin and her supporters huddled together and prayed to Jesus Christ in gratitude. I began to wonder what was up with our local politicos. I’d watched as Palin aligned herself—in a city mayor’s race—with our newly minted Republican state lawmakers, all tripping over themselves to claim conservative Christian cred. I noticed how positions on abortion and gun rights bubbled up in a municipal race. After her win, a local cable TV show proclaimed Palin as the town’s first “Christian” mayor, much to the surprise of the town’s previous mayors who hadn’t been told their faith was revoked.
Even with all that prayer behind her, Palin’s first years as mayor were bumpy. She had to clean house and eliminate John Stein supporters among her staff. The local media and organizations around town questioned her ability to run a city without experienced people. She rather famously proclaimed: "It's not rocket science. It's $6 million and 53 employees."
That gutsy attitude along with her love of the Alaskan outdoors and her beauty-contestant good looks made her instantly popular and easy to re-elect.
About that time, I up and split Alaska, disillusioned by the conservative political sweep of my community. The Republican Party was seemingly intent on hijacking just about every nonprofit board and political office in the valley, filling them with smug, holier-than-thou operatives (I should point out that this is now changing. One Wasilla lawmaker from that era, Rep. Vic Kohring, for example, is serving time for accepting oil-industry bribes, and more are getting their comeuppance every day).
But keeping tabs from a distance, even I came to respect Palin’s subsequent moves: Being easily recognized by the Republican Party as a comer, she ran for, and lost, a bid for lieutenant governor in 2002. As a consolation prize, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski rewarded her with a chairmanship of the state’s powerful oil and gas commission. She then discovered and audaciously ratted out the commission’s good old boys on their ethical lapses. When the Republican Party turned its back on her, she ran her own campaign against incumbent Frank Murkowki, beating him in the 2006 primary. From there, it was a cakewalk against Democrat Tony Knowles to the governor’s mansion.
Bottom line: This woman is true to herself. She disarms you with her perkiness and off-the-cuff conversation style, and it is easy to mistake that quality for innocence and underestimate her. But don’t. I’m betting John Stein and Frank Murkowski are somewhere in Alaska today pounding shots in a dive bar. Nobody seems to own her. At least up until now. It remains to be seen if one maverick (McCain) can control another.
And, despite her legendary fresh face and ethical high road, she can still lay claim to hatahs. There is a little scandal brewing right now in Alaska about how she canned her public safety commissioner because he would not fire her sister’s ex-husband—a cop behaving badly. Some say she’s in over her head running Alaska, but she would likely fire right back: Hey, it’s not rocket science.
I guess I can say I knew Sarah when. But oddly enough, Dick and me go way back, too. Prior to my stint in Wasilla, I grew up in Casper, Wyo., hometown of another infamous VP maverick ... emphasis on the “ick.” [Jerre Wroble]
Friday Letters Round-Up
As a man, I feel I can speak for women when I say whom the little darlings should vote for.- "If not Georgia, where? If not for flimsy reasons, why?"
- I call for a return to the days when teenagers never drank alcohol.
- Of course, the really spooky part will be when Russia signs a non-aggression treaty with itself!
- Damn you toll-road-loving commies!
- Ooh, my sarcasm is just devastating. Take that, Obama-lovers!
(Brandon Burt)
Radioactive Women!
Tonight, I'll join SLUG's queen bee Angela Brown and gig poster/screenprinting goddess Leia Bell to chat about the local music and arts scene on KRCL's Radioactive. Tamrika Khvtisiashvili, co-owner of Blue Plate Diner and recent subject on the topic of Russia's Georgia invasion, will conduct the interview/roundtable discussion. I have no idea what will develop, but chances are it will be pretty much the opposite of anything you've ever seen on Good Things Utah.
Tune in to 90.9 FM, 6-7 p.m.
(Jamie Gadette)
Tune in to 90.9 FM, 6-7 p.m.
(Jamie Gadette)
Romney Out: Day of Mourning In Order
[McCain's Pick] Who cares about this Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin? The Deseret News nailed the real story--with this pithy lede: It's not Mitt.OK Utah: Let's all cut our wrists together, wail and gnash our teeth. Then we can move on.
(Holly Mullen)
Their Hype vs. Obama's Hope
[Democratic National Convention] This is what it came down to the final night of the DNC, before a crowd of 80,000-plus in Denver's Mile High Stadium: Barack Obama had a few things to nail in his acceptance speech. He had to show substance to his rhetoric, grit to his glitter. He also had to retell his story as a healer while at the same time standing up to John McCain.
“The record is clear: John McCain has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really what does it say about your judgment when you think George W. Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time?” Obama asked the roaring crowd.
Obama kept his McCain attacks in reference to George W. Bush and his party, not stooping to such potshots as McCain's anmesia for the number of homes he owns.
“For over two decades he’s subscribed to the discredited Republican philosophy to give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else,” Obama said. “In Washington they call this the ownership society, but what it really means--you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it...
"... Well it is time for them to own their failure. And it’s time for us to change America.”
After remininiscing about his time as a community activist on Chicago's South Side and how he learned a work ethic from his scrappy grandmother, Obama ended on what he promises will be the key to the next 68 days: “That’s the promise of America. The idea that we are responsible for ourselves but that we also rise or fall as one nation.”
And finally, a few of Obama's plans, as outlined in his speech:
*Cutting tax breaks to corporations that shift jobs overseas; rewarding companies that keep jobs in the U.S.
*A tax cut for 95 percent of all working class families.
*Eliminating capital gains taxes for small businesses and high-tech startup companies.
*Affordable health care for all.
*Pledging to end foreign oil dependence in 10 years.
*In foreign policy, the focus will return to Afghanistan rather than Iraq. “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell—but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives,” Obama said.
Then in a magnanimous conclusion, Obama recalled his experience and reflected on the good of all Americans.
“It is that American spirit that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen—that better place around the bend.”
It was a place called hope hat seemed at long last to subdue the week-long hype surrounding Obama. (Eric S. Peterson)
“The record is clear: John McCain has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really what does it say about your judgment when you think George W. Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time?” Obama asked the roaring crowd.
Obama kept his McCain attacks in reference to George W. Bush and his party, not stooping to such potshots as McCain's anmesia for the number of homes he owns.
“For over two decades he’s subscribed to the discredited Republican philosophy to give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else,” Obama said. “In Washington they call this the ownership society, but what it really means--you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it...
"... Well it is time for them to own their failure. And it’s time for us to change America.”
After remininiscing about his time as a community activist on Chicago's South Side and how he learned a work ethic from his scrappy grandmother, Obama ended on what he promises will be the key to the next 68 days: “That’s the promise of America. The idea that we are responsible for ourselves but that we also rise or fall as one nation.”
And finally, a few of Obama's plans, as outlined in his speech:
*Cutting tax breaks to corporations that shift jobs overseas; rewarding companies that keep jobs in the U.S.
*A tax cut for 95 percent of all working class families.
*Eliminating capital gains taxes for small businesses and high-tech startup companies.
*Affordable health care for all.
*Pledging to end foreign oil dependence in 10 years.
*In foreign policy, the focus will return to Afghanistan rather than Iraq. “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell—but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives,” Obama said.
Then in a magnanimous conclusion, Obama recalled his experience and reflected on the good of all Americans.
“It is that American spirit that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen—that better place around the bend.”
It was a place called hope hat seemed at long last to subdue the week-long hype surrounding Obama. (Eric S. Peterson)
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Well, Owl Be (Part II)
[OwlWatch] A second Laverne sighting has renewed the hopes of those in the Bountiful community who have been fasting and praying for her safe return.
Fran B., a reader from Northern California, snapped this photo of Laverne frolicking with two other bathing beauties at a Santa Cruz beach. It appears the wayward owl is taking a late-summer vacation!
More details on this breaking story as they emerge.
(Brandon Burt)
The Last to Know ...
[Media] Now that the Buzz has been swatted (its final issue comes out tomorrow), its yellow-jacketed distributors are going to be looking for work.The worker bees, who aggressively hand out the Trib's "commuter daily" near TRAX platforms, seem, typically, to have been forgotten by management. According to one yellowjacket, they were "notified" of their impending job-loss at the same time the rest of us found out about it--when they read the story in the paper.
I don't suppose they'll qualify for a parachute--even a yellow one.
(Brandon Burt)
DNC Protester Profile: Rockslide and the Anti-Green Capitalists
[Democratic National Convention] "I'm not giving out my name today," said the young man with the straw hat and bullhorn leading the Anti-Green Capitalism march throughout Denver yesterday. "But you can call me Rockslide."
Rockslide led the way along with a small army of more than 100 protesters. The group of well-meaning and ripe-smelling kid anarchists took to the streets to call out the hypocrisy of the "green" convention.
Decked out in battle colors of dirty camo green and black bandanas, the group moved peacefully but passionately, shouting chants and drumming on plastic buckets. When a reporter asked Rockslide if they had a permit, he tapped his hand over his heart, saying "This is our permit."
Which might explain the surprise many motorists had as they turned a corner only to find hundreds of green revolutionaries clogging the street. But if the march seemed impromptu, that's not to say it wasn't well-orchestrated. The group stopped outside numerous office buildings and relayed information about the polluters inside and also about how they were supporting the DNC convention financially. Citing Oxfam studies, the group called out Denver-based Newmont Gold, which protesters said had displaced 20,000 of the rural poor in Ghana with a mine. Newmont donated $250,000 to the Democratic National Convention, much like Xcel Energy, responsible for half of Colorado's mercury emissions -- and $1 million contributed to the convention. (Check this out for a more complete of corporate DNC sponsors.)
Police watched the march closely, but were far from confrontational. Several riot police just smiled and took photos as keepsakes. At one tense moment, as the marchers were pushing down a crowded downtown sidewalk chanting anti-capitalist slogans, a street vendor seeing the crowd come up anxiously hollered "Yo! Get your Obama pins, only $3!"
After the march had finished its circuit downtown businesses and made corporate chieftans uncomfortable by shouting outside their offices -- "For the earth we will fight, we know where you sleep at night!" -- I asked Rockslide what the next step was.
"We're just going to keep putting pressure on politicians to come up with real energy solutions," he said, catching his breath. "We want to stop land exploitation like mining in western Colorado and Utah, the uranium mines in Paradox [Colorado] near the Utah border. We need to keep these areas wild.
"We also wanted to break the spell of greenness of this convention," Rockslide says. "It's been touted as the greenest convention, but they've just done some recycling and offered a few free bikes. While people are flying in from all over, going to lavish parties and advocating policies that aren't sustainable." (Eric S. Peterson)
Rockslide led the way along with a small army of more than 100 protesters. The group of well-meaning and ripe-smelling kid anarchists took to the streets to call out the hypocrisy of the "green" convention.
Decked out in battle colors of dirty camo green and black bandanas, the group moved peacefully but passionately, shouting chants and drumming on plastic buckets. When a reporter asked Rockslide if they had a permit, he tapped his hand over his heart, saying "This is our permit."
Which might explain the surprise many motorists had as they turned a corner only to find hundreds of green revolutionaries clogging the street. But if the march seemed impromptu, that's not to say it wasn't well-orchestrated. The group stopped outside numerous office buildings and relayed information about the polluters inside and also about how they were supporting the DNC convention financially. Citing Oxfam studies, the group called out Denver-based Newmont Gold, which protesters said had displaced 20,000 of the rural poor in Ghana with a mine. Newmont donated $250,000 to the Democratic National Convention, much like Xcel Energy, responsible for half of Colorado's mercury emissions -- and $1 million contributed to the convention. (Check this out for a more complete of corporate DNC sponsors.)
Police watched the march closely, but were far from confrontational. Several riot police just smiled and took photos as keepsakes. At one tense moment, as the marchers were pushing down a crowded downtown sidewalk chanting anti-capitalist slogans, a street vendor seeing the crowd come up anxiously hollered "Yo! Get your Obama pins, only $3!"
After the march had finished its circuit downtown businesses and made corporate chieftans uncomfortable by shouting outside their offices -- "For the earth we will fight, we know where you sleep at night!" -- I asked Rockslide what the next step was.
"We're just going to keep putting pressure on politicians to come up with real energy solutions," he said, catching his breath. "We want to stop land exploitation like mining in western Colorado and Utah, the uranium mines in Paradox [Colorado] near the Utah border. We need to keep these areas wild.
"We also wanted to break the spell of greenness of this convention," Rockslide says. "It's been touted as the greenest convention, but they've just done some recycling and offered a few free bikes. While people are flying in from all over, going to lavish parties and advocating policies that aren't sustainable." (Eric S. Peterson)
DNC Protester Profile: A Pro-Hillary Puma Attacks!
[Democratic National Convention] While many in the party can't fathom how a Hillary supporter could be sore enough to actually cast a spite-vote for McCain just for their candidate being dissed on the presidential and vice-presidential nomination, one 74-year-old PUMA (standing for Party Unity My Ass) believes there's a very good reason to vote for McCain over Obama."[McCain] will be a lame duck president," says Carol Anderson, who has set up her small PUMA camp in Denver's Civic Station Park. Anderson, a lifelong Democrat, believes a Democratic-controlled congress will buffer any damaging conservative policies McCain might unleash. While she supported Clinton, she doesn't believe in the change Obama offers, especially with energy policy.
"Obama voted for the [2005] Cheney-Bush energy bill to set up liquefied gas terminals and 42 nuclear power plants in Washington and Oregon. Cheney hatched this bill in his office with Ken Lay and other big energy moguls, secretly. John McCain didn't vote for it, Hillary didn't vote for it, Obama did."
The issue will resurface, seeing as how the 2005 bill Obama supported included sizable tax breaks for big oil companies-- an issue Obama is working hard in his campaign to say differentiates him from his opponent. Obama has said he supported the bill "reluctantly" because it also diverted ethanol funds to his state of Illinois.
Anderson says the natural gas stations the legislation earmarked for her state of Washington are volatile and dangerous. "If one of them blows up, it will be worse than any nuclear holocaust in 100 miles," she says.
Anderson also doesn't feel the connection to Obama -- especially since his appearance at a Washington town hall meeting, where he was asked about Hanford, the site of one of the nation's oldest nuclear waste dump sites, retaining waste from the original Manhattan Project of the 1940s. Activists worry the clean-up has been stymied for too long.
"When he was asked 'What are you going to do about Hanford?' " Anderson says, "he said 'What's Hanford?' " (You can check that video moment out here.)
"I can't have this know-nothing guy as president," Anderson says. (Eric S. Peterson)
Kittens & Keith
[Locals on Reality TV] SLC's Slippery Kittens are still on America's Got Talent; Filthy Gorgeous' Keith Bryce has been voted off Project Runway. The judges on both reality-competition shows had little nice to say about either--"Are you Pamela Anderson's mom?" (That was directed to a Slippery Kitten, not Keith).
The respective vids:
(Bill Frost)
The respective vids:
(Bill Frost)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
DNC Nights: Biden Veep-a-looza
[Democratic National Convention] It's getting hard to write about speeches. It's fatiguing. It's hard to write something new when everybody keeps saying the same things.Don't get me wrong, I've been a Democrat all my life. But after three nights of convention stumping I've developed a strange wincing stomach twinge every time I hear "change we need."
I finally landed in the convention media filing center and discovered this "change-itis" was common among journalists. One journalist, who will remain anonymous (we hacks are thick as thieves, you know), was covering the convention for a major publication that serves an Asian demographic in the U.S. and in a certain Asian country. She left before v.p. candidate Joe Biden spoke. "Don't you want to hear Biden speak?" I asked. "Oh, I got the text," she said, referring to an embargoed copy of Biden's speech DNC convention staff members hand out moments before a candidate begins speaking. "But," I said, "they haven't handed out the Biden notes yet" She, having already packed her laptop up, said "Well ...we can figure out what he will say."
I guess I couldn't blame her. The message has become pretty formulaic. That is, after all, part of the strategy: hammer voters over the head with a call for change.
But for more honed criticism, the night offered a few notable surprises. The first came from the man who would be president-- John Kerry. Kerry aptly presented the knife to McCain that had been stuck in his back since 2004: flip-flopper. "To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let's compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain." Kerry pointed out McCain's backpedaling on climate change, wartime tax cuts and immigration."Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself."
The point was stuck deeper on foreign policy, where Kerry rightly observed that the multilateral foreign diplomacy Bush had once called "dangerous" and a diplomacy "of appeasement" is now the type of diplomacy Bush's own administration is pursuing. (For a thorough analysis on this policy reversal check out this article on Bush's foreign policy achievements by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria.)
Biden did score in his speech by repeating this attack in reference to Afghanistan: "Should we trust John McCain's judgment when he said only three years ago, 'Afghanistan--we don't read about it anymore because it's succeeded?' Or should we trust Barack Obama who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan?" Biden asked as he noted that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had agreed with Barack on the point.
Besides that, Biden reiterated much of the same message, swinging it a little harder with the weight of his 35 years in the Senate and his stature as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His biggest points came not from him, but from his family. Giving heartfelt props to his ailing mother and to his son Beau, Biden showed a little Everyman characteristic that helped make up for his sometimes stumbling speech. Hell, after all, it's no sin if he can fall short on speech giving when he's Obama's number 2.
Oh, and Bill Clinton spoke. He was a rock star--wowed the crowd with a shot of the good ol' Clinton charisma southern comfort, got them on their feet and pumped up for Biden to speak ... and didn't add anything else to the conversation. (Eric S. Peterson)
DNC Protester Profiles: Denver Food Not Bombs
[Democratic National Convention] "It's been a unique experience," says Denver Food Not Bombs organizer Mackenzy Lauren, of the convention in town. "I just hope it never, ever happens again."Lauren's group normally just distributes simple meals that otherwise would have been thrown away, usually bagels and bananas, twice a week to low-income and homeless in Denver (Salt Lake City has its own Food Not Bombs group, as well). But the Denver FNB chapter has kicked into overdrive since the convention started routing the homeless elsewhere in preparation for the convention--some critics charging they have been swept out of downtown areas.
For Lauren its no allegation. "The homeless have totally been fucked by all of this," she says, of the homeless population's routines and squalid homes destroyed by the city's convention makeover. That's why since the convention started, they've made their operation daily--distributing about 2,000 meals a day since Sunday. "It's really sad that our city has been invaded. I guess its good that the city gets all these tax breaks but its not good for the residents."
Well at least Lauren can relax and know that after the convention quits championing the working class and the poor, Denver's homeless might get back what little normalcy they had before the DNC rolled in. (Eric S. Peterson)
DNC Protester Profiles: Homo-Haters vs. Hippies
[Democratic National Convention] Wandering over to the Denver Civic Center Park it was apparent there was a bit of a showdown going on. One of those great megaphone dialogues where you only really make out staticy retorts like "Jesus hates you" and "hate-preaching asshole!" Yes, my favorite flavor of democracy--pissed off protesters.While waiting for the anti-green capitalist march to get going, a whole mob of well meaning greasy haired kids were in a pissing match with surly, overwieght homophobes wearing shirts that said "Ask me why you deserve to burn in hell." Makes me grateful that Utah missionaries at least wear a nice shirt and tie, don't carry megaphones and recognize that winning converts probably works best when you don't come right out and say they're going to hell at the first encounter.
Well, the pissing match seemed to be getting nowhere when in a moment of pure hilarity one of the long haired activists took off his shirt, walked over and proclaimed himself as Jesus. Soon the hippie kids were bowing at his feet and asking him to save them from gayness.
Hi-damn-larious. Though in the end I had to agree with the sentiment of one of the 24 cops who had to stand in front of the homophobes to make sure they didn't get their self -righteous asses kicked. "I'm all for expressing yourself," the cop told me. "I just wish they could do it civilly so we don't have to babysit." (Eric S. Peterson)
DNC Nights: Stand and be Counted, Unless You came After NY
[Democratic National Convention] The roll call is the chance for all state delegates who have made the great democratic journey from small town caucus to the convention in the big house to pitch their vote in the selection of a candidate for the leader of the free world.
Tough luck for Utah though, that coming alphabetically after New York they didn't get a chance to proudly declare their 19 Obama and 10 Clinton votes. In a move for unity Hillary stopped the roll call at New York and moved that the counted delegate votes sustain Obama as the nominee.
Oh well, that's not going to put a damper on the experience for Utah delegates like Rep. Phil Riesen, D-Salt Lake City. Throwing in the vote is one thing but not everything. "What I'll take back is the tremendous sense of unity, we came in here with diverse opinions, we all leave here unified as a democratic party, determined to elect a democrat president," Riesen says. "Something desperately needed in this country." Riesen also plans on taking away some of the ideas workshopped about alternative enery policy, including possible tax credits for fuel efficient vehicles, an idea he and other Utah reps are thinking of running for the 2009 session.
Riesen who helped get Obama on the Utah primary ballot in February as his state point person, believes his time as president is coming. While Utah might be a small voice in electing him, Riesen recognizes the growing voice of a democratic western region that Utah is a part of. "As a group we hold some clout, as we should."
Riesen is not the only one with Obama fever. Kathy Snyder from Mendon, Utah has enjoyed the perks of being a delegate. "Where we're at here for some reason, all these dignitaries have to walk right by," jokes Snyder of the convention floor exit right in front of the Utah delegation's seats tucked in the corner of the Pepsi Center floor. Besides spotting celebrities of the political world like Madeline Albright and George McGovern, Snyder got to take part in a panel discussion on progressive democrats in America moderated by John Nichols of The Nation magazine, who happened to swing by and console Kathy for not getting the limelight to cast the Utah delegation's votes.
Snyder, a "born democrat" thinks the party will get the message across about Obama. "We will once again have a president who respects American, and also restore the US position in the world." Snyder is sold, but will the rest of the nation catch the fever? "Oh yes," says Snyder. "It's contagious." (Eric S. Peterson)
Tough luck for Utah though, that coming alphabetically after New York they didn't get a chance to proudly declare their 19 Obama and 10 Clinton votes. In a move for unity Hillary stopped the roll call at New York and moved that the counted delegate votes sustain Obama as the nominee.
Oh well, that's not going to put a damper on the experience for Utah delegates like Rep. Phil Riesen, D-Salt Lake City. Throwing in the vote is one thing but not everything. "What I'll take back is the tremendous sense of unity, we came in here with diverse opinions, we all leave here unified as a democratic party, determined to elect a democrat president," Riesen says. "Something desperately needed in this country." Riesen also plans on taking away some of the ideas workshopped about alternative enery policy, including possible tax credits for fuel efficient vehicles, an idea he and other Utah reps are thinking of running for the 2009 session.
Riesen who helped get Obama on the Utah primary ballot in February as his state point person, believes his time as president is coming. While Utah might be a small voice in electing him, Riesen recognizes the growing voice of a democratic western region that Utah is a part of. "As a group we hold some clout, as we should."
Riesen is not the only one with Obama fever. Kathy Snyder from Mendon, Utah has enjoyed the perks of being a delegate. "Where we're at here for some reason, all these dignitaries have to walk right by," jokes Snyder of the convention floor exit right in front of the Utah delegation's seats tucked in the corner of the Pepsi Center floor. Besides spotting celebrities of the political world like Madeline Albright and George McGovern, Snyder got to take part in a panel discussion on progressive democrats in America moderated by John Nichols of The Nation magazine, who happened to swing by and console Kathy for not getting the limelight to cast the Utah delegation's votes.
Snyder, a "born democrat" thinks the party will get the message across about Obama. "We will once again have a president who respects American, and also restore the US position in the world." Snyder is sold, but will the rest of the nation catch the fever? "Oh yes," says Snyder. "It's contagious." (Eric S. Peterson)
Symphonic Shinedown
[Live Music] Their Wednesday concerts across the street from the City Weekly office at the Gallivan Center have been doing just fine with no assist from us or anyone else, but The Blaze 97.5's show tonight is headlined by Florida rockers Shinedown with a little help from ... the Utah Symphony? The Blaze's Big Rog explains:"This should be a one-of-a-kind performance from Shinedown ... We were able to scrape together a 10-piece string orchestra, featuring members of the Utah Symphony, to play some songs with them. They’ve never done this live before and I’ve never really seen anything like it except on award shows. If we can pull it off, it should be pretty special."
The Blaze 97.5's big turnouts for these shows is somewhat special, too, considering that the station had its longtime frequency 94.9 (what's there now ain't The Blaze, not matter what they imply) yanked from under it and had to scramble to a new number recently--judging by last week's crowd, the switch didn't make a dent.
A little Shinedown, doing a fine cover of Skynyrd's "Simple Man":
(Bill Frost)
Big, Scary Drug Bust!
[The War on Some Drugs] We can all breathe a sigh of relief since the defenders of public order were brave enough to stand up to a "drug operation" in southern Utah.No, it wasn't a bunch of crazy rednecks manufacturing crank or armed gangsters smuggling heroin across the border. It was a few pot farms.
Still, the D-News breathlessly reported that it "may be one of the largest drug busts in state history" and, predictably, failed to offer a single quote from a grower or legalization advocate.
(Brandon Burt)
Things That Make My Day
... Seeing the Diamond parking lot behind the old Zephyr building (300 South and West Temple) only half full. Used to be jam-packed with City Weekly employees' cars until they raised their rates and sent us packing. Now, we have to walk a half a block farther every day to get to work but it does give us a chance to savor the schadenfreude of Diamond's often vacant lot. [Jerre Wroble]
Gum Flapping on CNN
[Media and DNC] Raised by a political junkie mother, I have fond memories of watching the Democratic National Convention on TV as a wee one, all in black and white with frequent static, commentator gaffes, and true drama. It was pretty much continuous coverage from 6 p.m. to closing in the '60s and '70s. So you got to hear every rambling speech, arguments over the party platform and even witness some of the histrionics--like delegates yelling at each other and bashing each other over the heads with placards. People smoked cigarettes on the convention floor. Great live stuff--Mad Men with a political agenda.
So here's where we stand today. In spite of 24/7 cable, endless online access and even a full hour or so prime time coverage from the conventional networks, we still get only a sliver of the coverage. Why? Because we have to listen to endless "analysis" by talking heads Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, Campbell Brown and the gang. I was switching last night for three hours from Fox, to MSNBC to CNN and it never ended: The Dems needed to serve up the "red meat" to show McCain they are serious. Hillary had to hit one out of the park. Oh, and we were told--many times--what a kickass speaker the Mountain West's own Brian Schweitzer (Montana's Democratic governor) is. But how would we know for ourselves? Not once did the cameras cut away to let us see/hear him.
So here's the text of Schweitzer's speech. And I wasn't surprised to hear the guy brought the house down last night--I've heard him speak several times. He's a stemwinder speaker, but he's wrong about clean coal being the answer to our energy and environmental woes. Mostly because what he champions would take a shitload of water to accomplish, and we don't have it to spare in the West.
Anyway, it was frustrating for a convention geek like me to see Schweitzer's image on the video screen behind the CNN Gang of Five desk (or whatever the pithy name of their convention team is) and not to hear a word of it.
And yes, I know I could have had it all online in real time, and it's all over YouTube. But I prefer my convention and all the trimmings on the big flat screen in my living room, not on a laptop screen, thanks ever so much.
We have all this great technology but I'd take the old 1964 coverage in a heartbeat. At least it was raw and true and nicely unfiltered. (Holly Mullen)
So
So here's where we stand today. In spite of 24/7 cable, endless online access and even a full hour or so prime time coverage from the conventional networks, we still get only a sliver of the coverage. Why? Because we have to listen to endless "analysis" by talking heads Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, Campbell Brown and the gang. I was switching last night for three hours from Fox, to MSNBC to CNN and it never ended: The Dems needed to serve up the "red meat" to show McCain they are serious. Hillary had to hit one out of the park. Oh, and we were told--many times--what a kickass speaker the Mountain West's own Brian Schweitzer (Montana's Democratic governor) is. But how would we know for ourselves? Not once did the cameras cut away to let us see/hear him.
So here's the text of Schweitzer's speech. And I wasn't surprised to hear the guy brought the house down last night--I've heard him speak several times. He's a stemwinder speaker, but he's wrong about clean coal being the answer to our energy and environmental woes. Mostly because what he champions would take a shitload of water to accomplish, and we don't have it to spare in the West.
Anyway, it was frustrating for a convention geek like me to see Schweitzer's image on the video screen behind the CNN Gang of Five desk (or whatever the pithy name of their convention team is) and not to hear a word of it.
And yes, I know I could have had it all online in real time, and it's all over YouTube. But I prefer my convention and all the trimmings on the big flat screen in my living room, not on a laptop screen, thanks ever so much.
We have all this great technology but I'd take the old 1964 coverage in a heartbeat. At least it was raw and true and nicely unfiltered. (Holly Mullen)
So
Dead, uh--air?
[Local Media] Apparently, KRCL has allowed its web domain to lapse. At the moment, krcl.org is occupied by a generic link farm.(Brandon Burt)
Hillary and Biggie
[DNC on TV] The best coverage of the Democratic National Convention can be found right here where City Weekly’s man in Denver, Eric Peterson, continues to file thoughtful updates on the goings on. (His dispatch on the Obama camp’s “faith advisor” is a must read: Democrats sitting around thumping a Bible and shouting down pro-choice delegates.)
However, if you feel the urge to tune in and watch the show (it’s made for TV, after all), I highly recommend catching your convention coverage on BET. Last night BET commentators on the convention floor discussed why two days were being turned over to talks from Hillary and Bill Clinton. (“This is Obama’s time. It’s not about Hillary being dissed.”)
The best line of the night: “Obama and Clinton is destroying anything that Biggie and Tupac ever had.” (Ted McDonough)
However, if you feel the urge to tune in and watch the show (it’s made for TV, after all), I highly recommend catching your convention coverage on BET. Last night BET commentators on the convention floor discussed why two days were being turned over to talks from Hillary and Bill Clinton. (“This is Obama’s time. It’s not about Hillary being dissed.”)
The best line of the night: “Obama and Clinton is destroying anything that Biggie and Tupac ever had.” (Ted McDonough)
DNC Hillary Night: Crushing Unity!
[Democratic National Convention] Last night Democrats delivered on Unity…in the party.In a display of deft politics the Democrats united through spite, against McCain. They were whole once again as speaker after speaker lined up to pound on McCain. Governors, senators and representatives tapped in and out to pummel the presumptive Republican candidate up until Hillary herself made the stage. By the time Hillary entered the ring the straw man effigy of McCain was dazed and stunned after some six hours of punishment. Throughout the madness of the crowd it was almost as if the voice of Mortal Kombat’s Shang Tsung pronounced from on high: “Finish him!”
But before that moment you have to appreciate the blows that rained down upon McCain. Really these blogs are long enough and there would be just no way to repeat all the put-downs. Needless to say, McCain was getting be-bopped and scatted on so many times the whole affair was beginning to resemble a furious barrage of political yo-mama jokes.
“They say the George Bush came into office on third base [after the Clinton years]. Well if that’s the case he then stole 2nd, and McCain cheered him on every step of the way.” –Ohio Governor, Ted Strickland.
Oh snap!
“Well being from Kansas we’re familiar with the term there’s no place like home. But John McCain’s version seems to be ‘there’s no place like home or home or home or home…”-- Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas Governor.
Oh no she didn’t!
“McCain says he’s a maverick. But when you vote 95 percent with Bush this year, that’s not being a maverick, that’s called being a sidekick.”-- Sen. Robert Casey Jr., P.A.
Daaamn!
“No way, no how, no McCain,” Clinton said warming her up speech. Moving in a way that was both grateful and sympathetic to her supporters, the party and Obama. Clinton graciously recalled meeting young veterans, a mother without health insurance battling cancer, the pleas of a family one paycheck away from poverty. Invoking these figures Hillary spoke directly to her loyal soldiers.
“Were you in this campaign just for me or were you in it for the young Marine and others like him? Or the mom struggling with cancer? Or that young boy and his mother surviving on minimum wage? Or for all the people in this country who feel invisible?” Clinton asked in complete sincerity and authority.
The Democrats clearly have taken to a classic good cop/ bad cop routine to win over the public and especially disenchanted Clinton voters. On the one hand, distanced from the punchier attacks, Obama will appeal to unity among Americans, highlighting “post-partisan” working class values. On the other, Clinton and others will beseech their wayward party members through an unrelenting attack on the McCain camp as the greater evil to a not-Clinton presidency.
And so after historical comparisons to the women’s suffrage movement Clinton called upon supporters to recognize the historical import of the present.
“Think about your children and grandchildren come Election Day,” Clinton said. “We’ve got to ensure the choice we make this election honors the sacrifices of those who came before us.”
With a speech punctuated by yells of ‘We love you!’ and roaring applause, Clinton beckoned with open arms her followers back into the fold and with a kick to the gut of the McCain campaign.
“It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart,” Hillary said, pulling the head and spine from the metaphorical McCain, to a standing ovation. (Eric S. Peterson)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The Abomination called The Obama Nation
[Politics] Is Barack fighting for us yet?Frankly, considering the state in which the neocon-infested GOP has left the economy on which we depend--and the nation that I love--there's no goddamn reason any presidential poll should be even close to tied. Surveys should favor Democrats, hands down, in every contest.
There's a great article in the New Yorker (it's brief and highly recommended) describing the opposition Obama is facing from The Borg--particularly that from Jerome Corsi, author of many trashy, ethically void pseudobiographies, including one called The Obama Nation. Apparently for the same reason Corsi's past bullshit books have garnered lots of airtime, his newest smear against Barack Obama seems to be getting some play.
Now, regarding the weird evenness in the polls, anybody who cares to look closely into my wardrobe knows that I do own a tinfoil hat. And, from the standpoint of accessorizing, it goes with everything during years that are divisible by 4. (Political polls are, after all, controlled by corporate overlords adept at employing weird shock-doctrine tactics. And they always freak us out.)
Still, this year is slightly different in that it's easy to locate a concrete, non-paranoid rationale for the Democratic candidate's sudden popularity lapse. It's Obama's Senate vote in support of the unconscionable FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which not only provides immunity for bootlicking telecoms that agreed to spy on American citizens during this protofascist George W. Bush era, but also seriously undermines the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.
Now, FISA is a good thing. Surveillance of citizens by despotic U.S. presidents is nothing new. FISA was enacted in response to Richard Nixon's freaky domestic-spying program. It limited government wiretapping and the arbitrary abrogation of citizens' Fourth Amendment rights.
The evil FAA crippled FISA. It said that the phone company is not required to abide by the U.S. Constitution. It made it easier for the government to spy on us for whatever whimsical reason it chooses, therefore normalizing the nosy, un-American policies of the George W. Bush administration. In case you've been wondering why everybody's so afraid these days, it's because of the FAA.
Barack Obama, our agent of change, voted for the FAA--to our surprise--and therefore voted for the continuation of nanny-government Bush policies. That made me a lot less excited about his candidacy. It also brought his poll numbers down to dreary McCain levels.
There's still time for Obama to renew all that hope he's been running on. But time is running out. Obama needs to take a strong stand against these creepy neocon policies which, suddenly, have made our lives a lot less private and much more subject to government intrusion.
Any forceful, symbolic stand will do. He can pick one of Bush's most chilling executive orders, and vow to repeal it once elected. That's what's going to convince me of "change." Yes, I am desperate enough that I'm willing to get back on the bandwagon for a token gesture, as long as it sounds sincere.
Will he make such a gesture? The DNC would be an awfully good time for it.
(Brandon Burt)
DNC Days: The Nuts and Bolts of Obama's Faith Based Initiative
[Democratic National Convention] "Now a lot of you aren't going to want to hear this," warned John Dilulio, the former Director of the Bush administration's Faith Based Initiative "But President Bush deserves enormous credit for getting [faith based initiatives] on the agenda and for keeping them there," Dilulio told the crowd of democrats at the convention's forum on Obama's proposed faith based initiatives.
Dilulio saluted the success of Bush's multi-year, multi-billion dollar faith based successes in providing aid to communities in sub-Saharan African countries. Dilulio while defensive of the previous administration for getting the program going, was one of the original refugees of the Bush administration and was adamantly behind the Obama take on faith based initiatives.
Citing Obama's criteria that his program would not give federal dollars to programs that proselytized, that federal dollars had to support secular programs and that the programs must work Dilulio commented: "All I can say to that is, amen, amen and amen."
Diluli0 thought the Obama initiative could be more broadly applied and with a strong "fiscal reality" principle could make sure programs were effective and that the money would not be crowding out other financial programs that would be more effective.
Dilulio also agreed with other panelists that the most constitutionally sound way to broker this unique kind of private/public partnership was for faith groups to create nonprofit 501c3's with secular purposes, or for that matter interfaith 501c3 groups where common ground amongst religious groups, informed by separate faiths would drive their mission.
The importance and potential of such partnerships was for Dilulio and others a no-brainer.
"You cannot go to north central Philadelphia, south central Los Angeles or New Orleans and not find that faith communities are the ones that are driving and leading the human recovery process," Dilulio said.
Rev. Otis Moss, a black church icon, who was an integral part of the civil rights struggles of the '60s and a potentially strong voice on religion in the Obama administraion, concurred and hoped that faith based initiatives would flourish and expand under Obama. "I think we need to look at how can we engage, interact and access all the departments. of government," Moss said of an exchange that would help educate faith groups about the workings of government, but with a warning.
Moss reminded the crowd that martin Luther King Jr. has described faith groups as being neither the master nor the slave to the state, but the conscience. That standing he warned could be jeopardized if faith based initiatives only drive faith groups to bow to the government for financial support.
"Getting a grant should not be the front side or at the head of the agenda," Moss said. "If getting the grant is the number one agenda, how can you then be the conscience of the state?" (Eric S. Peterson)
Dilulio saluted the success of Bush's multi-year, multi-billion dollar faith based successes in providing aid to communities in sub-Saharan African countries. Dilulio while defensive of the previous administration for getting the program going, was one of the original refugees of the Bush administration and was adamantly behind the Obama take on faith based initiatives.
Citing Obama's criteria that his program would not give federal dollars to programs that proselytized, that federal dollars had to support secular programs and that the programs must work Dilulio commented: "All I can say to that is, amen, amen and amen."
Diluli0 thought the Obama initiative could be more broadly applied and with a strong "fiscal reality" principle could make sure programs were effective and that the money would not be crowding out other financial programs that would be more effective.
Dilulio also agreed with other panelists that the most constitutionally sound way to broker this unique kind of private/public partnership was for faith groups to create nonprofit 501c3's with secular purposes, or for that matter interfaith 501c3 groups where common ground amongst religious groups, informed by separate faiths would drive their mission.
The importance and potential of such partnerships was for Dilulio and others a no-brainer.
"You cannot go to north central Philadelphia, south central Los Angeles or New Orleans and not find that faith communities are the ones that are driving and leading the human recovery process," Dilulio said.
Rev. Otis Moss, a black church icon, who was an integral part of the civil rights struggles of the '60s and a potentially strong voice on religion in the Obama administraion, concurred and hoped that faith based initiatives would flourish and expand under Obama. "I think we need to look at how can we engage, interact and access all the departments. of government," Moss said of an exchange that would help educate faith groups about the workings of government, but with a warning.
Moss reminded the crowd that martin Luther King Jr. has described faith groups as being neither the master nor the slave to the state, but the conscience. That standing he warned could be jeopardized if faith based initiatives only drive faith groups to bow to the government for financial support.
"Getting a grant should not be the front side or at the head of the agenda," Moss said. "If getting the grant is the number one agenda, how can you then be the conscience of the state?" (Eric S. Peterson)
DNC Days: The Obama Camp Gets Down and Dirty on that Good ol' time Religion
[Democratic National Convention] I guess it must just have been fate but today was an unusually religious day. It started with hanging around with some evangelical missionaries on a street corner along with about twenty cops armed to the teeth who were escorting some delegates somewhere. Then later on I had rambled to the convention center where an obligatory protester was waving a banner that said a "vote for Obama is a vote for dead babies." With a picture of Obama on one side and an aborted fetus on the other. One of those protests where the plan is to change people's minds by pissing them off. I'm sure it went well.
The image stuck with me though as I sat down for some panel discussion crafted by Josh Dubois a young up and comer in the Obama team who sits as Barack's chief Religious adviser and point person on his faith based initiative program.
The first panel was called "Common Ground on Common Good" sounds nice enough but I always wonder about more progressive faith paradigms. I believe in them but I just don't understand how they'll win over those so upset about the abortion issue.
Well the event started off with moderator Rev. Jim Wallis, evangelical activist and CEO of Sojourners, declaring that value issues were not confined to abortion and gay marriage but include Darfur, immigration, the environment and especially poverty. "My Bible has 2000 verses about [poverty] and that is at the heart of God's heart and that is at the heart of the common good," Wallis said.
So the panelists started going through how poverty, the minimum wage, immigration were all moral issues with scirptural referents. Then a speaker, former congressman and current faith advisor to the Obama campaign Tim Roemer (pictured) spoke about abortion. He spoke calmly and he even started with a wholesome joke about his daughter flubbing the Lord's prayer by finishing it saying "deliver us some eagles" instead of "deliver us from evil." And then he spoke about how Obama would break the gridlock of the abortion issue by a 95:10 program. Use education and prevention resources to prevent 95 percent of abortions in ten years. He was applauded warmly and sat down. Then Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlewaite got up and also started talking about abortion.
The amazing thing is that while Brooks shared the same opinion of Roemer that prevention and strengthening programs like Wic and other resources was the way to go, Brooks came up to the podium with her claws out. It wasn't that she said anything so controversial except "I'm proud to be pro-choice" and "I believe women need lots of choices" but her defiant tone finally set someone off.
A few older men in frustration started shouting from the crowd "What choice did the child have?" And "So it's a convenience to murder a child?" Thistlewaite shot back saying "See this is what's called lacking a common ground." She also said as the men were hustled out of the room, "After we say goodbye to these gentleman I'll continue..."
And the old timers were bounced out of there. When Thistlewaite finished speaking the moderator Wallis said how frustrated he was by a dialogue of shouting. Most everyone there agreed, though to be fair the hecklers weren't the only shouters.
Somehow the whole scene encapsulated the democrats trouble on the issue. They were right, many issues should be considered values or religious issues, including the environment and poverty. But those issues get put on mute when the abortion vitriol starts making people's blood boil. The speaker immeditaly following the incident tried to talk about his church's role in helping ease prisoner's transition back into society. An important topic but one obscured by the tension leftover from the hecklers being kicked out.
I caught up with Roemer after the panel to ask what happened? Why did the same message from two people cause polite applause on the one hand and people getting kicked out on the other?
"What we have seen over the last thirty years is not just a couple people standing up to yell-- the entire political system has been gridlocked and frozen and unable to deal with this issue," Roemer says. "Republicans make this an issue where they win seats instead of reduce abortions.
Obama is talking about how do we break the gridlock and reduce the number of abortions? What conditions in society can be impacted to prevent number of abortions?" says Roemer mentioning better adoption tax breaks and strengthening the Women and Infant Childrens program.
"How do we get beyond the definition republicans have that life begins at conception and ends at birth?" Roemer asks.
Its a position that may have traction and have some oomph to it. But while the message may be effective the Obama camp better make sure they got the right messenger for it. (Eric S. Peterson)
Mad Interview Skillz
[Former Local TV Folk] Anybody remember Fox 13 fluff reporter (fluffer?) Shauna Thomas? She did mornings, pre-Big Buddha, post-Allie MacKay. She moved on to other markets years ago and, apparently, once scored a fascinating interview with actor Peter Gallagher, who was starting work on a little TV show called The O.C.
Behold this hysterical YouTube bastardization ... or was it edited at all?
(Bill Frost)
Behold this hysterical YouTube bastardization ... or was it edited at all?
(Bill Frost)
Local Band Tour Diary: Update 6
[Chaz Prymek Tour] After Chico we headed up for Arcata, we got so close and it turned out the forest was alive and on fire, so we had to turn around and take a 5 hour detour. Thank goodness our schedule isn't as grueling as some bands tend to organize. I say day off every other day. So we took our detour and plowed throught the beautiful and smokey mountains till we hit the coast again. It always feels good to "hit" the coast. Refreshing air, your lungs love you, your eyes love you, your spirit always soars. All good things come from the coast.We drove through Eureka and finally made it to Arcata. Garrick used to live here, so he was my tour guide, and what a wonderful place it is. A small port-esque town with hippies, super chillers, and bros running amuck. We wandered the town quietly and eventually made our way to the beach to find a good spot to crash, made a small fire and did our best to avoid the local law enforcement.
The morning was a delight to wake up covered in sand next to your best friend on a beach in a town you've never been to, only to be invited in for breakfast from some fellow travelers, Cosmo and Love. We took our sweet time and headed up to the Redwoods. I'd never seen anything like it, I finally truly understood why all those people tie themselves to these things, they are some of the most pure, beautiful, enormously wonderous things I've ever seen. I felt like I was on Endor. It really put me in check as to how insignificant I am as a single being. I'm nothing compared to these trees and the lush life around them. These trees know a wisdom that no human will ever know, but if you listen close enough and are open, they will share it with you.
We got back to town and played at Big Pete's Pizza. It was cool and we got some free pizza. Everyone in Arcata that we ran into was super generous and into the best music. Thanks Arcata. After the show we drove to this spot where we had learned was free camping, met some groovy couple (the parents of Justin Gordon, who is currently on tour with The Avett Bros....woah) and they were so kind. We crashed under a tree to keep us as dry as we could get. With the sounds of the ocean below us, seals around us, the redwoods right behind us, the eclipse just over head, we slept like gods.
We headed up towards Eugene, Or where our next show was. The night was long and we had alot of trouble finding a legit camping spot that wasn't near a creek a creek with names like JumpOff Joe Creek, or Butcher's Knife River, Slathe Lake, I mean, who thought it was a good idea to name it those things. That whole area had the biggest "Deliverance" vibe going on, so we headed further away. We found a spot and were met with the two kindest ex addicts there ever was. They gave us fresh fish, firewood, home-grown veggies, coffee in the morning, and bought a few CDs. What Luck.
Off to Eugene! (Chaz Prymek)
Off to Eugene! (Chaz Prymek)
Well, Owl Be
[OwlWatch] Our hearts go out to City Weekly's receptionist Chelsie during this difficult time. According to Chelsie's blog, Laverne the owl has been abducted from her Bountiful roost!
Still, we must keep hope alive: A local photographer spotted Laverne, alive and well, sunning herself at Salt Lake Temple Square. Laverne flew off soon afterward, so everybody please be on the lookout. If you have any Laverne sightings, post them here.
(Brandon Burt)
DNC Opening Night Part II: Michelle Obama Knocks it out of the Park
[Democratic National Convention] Michelle Obama owned the Pepsi Convention center last night. She brought personality, power and message with only one crack in the speech to speak of, when it came to tipping the hat to ol' Hillary.Michelle Obama opened the speech by making it personal, drawing the audience in with the example of her father. A blue collar man who worked hard all his life in a Chicago water filtration plant to put his brother through college. An everyday example of courage who struggled in the last years of his life with multiple sclerosis. “He was our champion. If he was in pain he never let on. Even while struggling to button his own shirt. He would just wake up a littler earlier and work a little harder," Michelle said. "Even struggling with two canes just to cross the room to kiss our mother."
Michelle emphasized that her tradition and Barack’s were working class. It was an important point and worth mentioning that while both she and Barack had educations and opportunities to work in high paying law firms they rededicated themselves to working in low income neighborhoods. for Michelle it meant giving back to her community. For Barack it meant community activism in Chicago neighborhoods devastated by the loss of Steel manufacturing plants.
Michelle emphasized that her tradition and Barack’s were working class. It was an important point and worth mentioning that while both she and Barack had educations and opportunities to work in high paying law firms they rededicated themselves to working in low income neighborhoods. for Michelle it meant giving back to her community. For Barack it meant community activism in Chicago neighborhoods devastated by the loss of Steel manufacturing plants.
Their backgrounds may be different to some but their goals and their dreams were common. "All of us driven by the belief that the world as it is just won't do."
This message they hoped to relate to all Americans.
“My piece of the American dream, is made from the same conviction that drives men and women all across this country,” Michelle said. From parents struggling with two jobs to “the military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table,” Michelle made the case that her and her husband were part of a larger American family. “Barrack doesn’t care where you’re from, he knows the thread that connects all of us.”
The speech was killer. With only one really tense moment. Some might say it was where she said “that’s why I love this country.” I don’t. You could tell she meant it. The only awkward moment was when speaking of heroes Michelle said, “like Hillary Clinton.”
The moment received immediate, roaring applause. But there was something wrong. Almost imperceptible. It wasn’t insincerity, it was a moment of just tense almost over-focused poise. Michelle knew what was at stake and knew it had to be natural the way she delivered this simple praise. Unfortunately the white knuckle grip she had on trying to confidently and assuredly deliver this praise, effectively choked out any natural delivery.
This moment however was but one crack in a speech that I think should connect with many blue-collar and disenchanted democrats. That is, if they were listening. (Eric S. Peterson)
“My piece of the American dream, is made from the same conviction that drives men and women all across this country,” Michelle said. From parents struggling with two jobs to “the military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table,” Michelle made the case that her and her husband were part of a larger American family. “Barrack doesn’t care where you’re from, he knows the thread that connects all of us.”
The speech was killer. With only one really tense moment. Some might say it was where she said “that’s why I love this country.” I don’t. You could tell she meant it. The only awkward moment was when speaking of heroes Michelle said, “like Hillary Clinton.”
The moment received immediate, roaring applause. But there was something wrong. Almost imperceptible. It wasn’t insincerity, it was a moment of just tense almost over-focused poise. Michelle knew what was at stake and knew it had to be natural the way she delivered this simple praise. Unfortunately the white knuckle grip she had on trying to confidently and assuredly deliver this praise, effectively choked out any natural delivery.
This moment however was but one crack in a speech that I think should connect with many blue-collar and disenchanted democrats. That is, if they were listening. (Eric S. Peterson)
DNC Opening Night Part I: The Undercard Speakers
[Democratic National Convention] Part of the advantage to not being at the Democratic National Convention here in Denver, is that if you're at home watching, you pretty much just get to see the heavy hitters. Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama had the Pepsi Convention Center on their feet and chanting. And another speech by 30 year Iowa Republican House member Jim Leach raised the flag for bipartisan support of Obama past being just a cliche in the speeches of others.Oh and there were others, in reality the three stellar speeches mentioned above were good but in whole barely made up for like the bajillion crappy speeches that opened the convention since it started at 3 in the afternoon.
Most were well meaning, people who used to work with Obama or were followers cured of their political apathy by the influence of Obama. But most speeches were formulaic regurgitations of the same platitude. Slight (and I mean slight) variations on the same message. No politics as usual, change we can believe in, change we need, change we deserve, not four more years of the same.
(New prediction: Guest appearance of David Bowie in all denim singing "Changes")
Then Ted Kennedy spoke. Man I feel like an asshole for my earlier fun poking at the guy. The ailing Kennedy after a touching (and I mean touching, sorry its hard turning off my sarcasm sometimes) video roused the convention with a call for pushing for universal health care. Kennedy's style, even in his fragile state still hearkens the mind to the oratory one imagines you would hear from a classic Roman senator throwing heart and soul into defense of the Republic.
"This is not about just victory, but about renewal of our nation," Kennedy said.
Leach soon after echoed a similar thought. While being a proud conservative, Leach had no qualms in his ringing endorsement of Obama. Calling his campaign a "clarient call for renewal" in the country.
Leach pointed out that the previous administration had not only done under the country but had demolished classic conservative standards. "The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that never attacked us. And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts."
Leach was the real deal and made from a conservative standpoint a strong case for Obama, a "transcendant" leader to heal the partisan divide. Noting that historically liberals and conservatives all recognize that "in troubled times, country comes before party."
For the full text of his speech check it out here.
The main act of course was Michelle Obama's speech (see next blog) but for major points Kennedy and Leach made a strong bi-partisan case for Obama to deliver on change without making it a cliche. Their one-two combination should be one the party should work to deliver again and again for a November knockout.
One thing they should definitely not rely on is, the oratory of House Speaker nancy Pelosi. She came in trying to get the crowd into doing a big chanting thing about "McCain is wrong!" Which seemed tacky and ineffectual. Not to mention the fact that the all white (one piece?) suit she wore made her look like she should be the captain of Star Trek Voyager. Oh well, I suppose she could be considered the future of the party. (Eric S. Peterson)
Democratic National Convention: Showdown at the Denver Pepsi Center
[Democratic National Convention] I was trying to figure out what would be the theme of my first ever national convention while riding out in the taxi to downtown Denver. Party unity was apparently the rallying cry for convention organizers, and if it was a meant to be a battle cry for November that’s because party captains knew, that at the moment, it was a cry of pain. McCain had quickly mobilized to capitalize on Hillary supporters who felt jilted by Obama passing her up for veep. A recent gallup poll released yesterday found that almost 30 percent of former Hillary supporters were now supporting McCain, or at least, not Obama. Oh yes, the GOP and the McCain camp had their thumb in the cut and the democrats were indeed crying ‘Unity!” They were shrieking it for godsakes.But if the GOP has capitalized on the division nationally, here in Denver the showdown is not between democrats calling on republicans everywhere. It is between coastal liberals and the western purple state cowboys. And in the case of my cab driver Anne, cowgirls.
“I had a friend who’s been a democrat for thirty years,” says Anne as we cruise out towards downtown Denver. “He was a Spanish fella, and a big Hillary supporter. Since she lost he’s voting McCain and he’s actively campaigning for McCain.”
The first thing I noticed about Anne was the bizarre assortment of bobble head frog figurines cluttering the dash of her cab. The second thing I noticed about Anne was a good rocky mountain liberal attitude, blue-collar and straight talking. When I told her about the Hillary defectors she figured it was probably closer to fifty percent.
Either way the western democratic showdown was on. The town was readying for a party of unity. To try and get a little healing done and press a united front into November. The party has a candidate with a revolution of “change” hoping to ride him into an historic election victory. But first the party has to show that they understand the soul of blue collar folks.
I couldn’t help but notice tucked in the back of the cab a flyer that read “Obama talks Shop,’ depicting Barack getting his hair cut in a black barber shop. I wondered how many black barber shops there were in Colorado. Certainly some, hell there’s at least a couple in Salt Lake, but still it’s clear that now is the time for the democratic party to start fine tuning the message--its not necessarily a racial thing, but thinking more Western is something the party should be mindful of, especially if they want to keep more of those blue collar Hill-raisers from jumping ship.
So predictions… Things are gonna get folksy real fast. Western and southern democrats are going to get the podium, a lot. The conference opened with a video montage of various Western democrats giving their support in various western backdrops: Colorado Governor Bill Ritter in fly-fishing gear in front of a river, Nevada’s Sen. Majority leader Harry Reid in a ten gallon hat. The message was good, like Colorado congressman Ken Salazar: “We’re mainstream westerners that just want to get the job done.” But the props were a little much.
Still the message can resound especially on class lines. And the class card should be played, and played smartly.
Cue Party treasurer Andrew Tobias at the opening night: “In the last eight years the only kinds of people who have done better off are those with private jets, who can’t even remember how many houses they own.”
Score!
My other prediction for democrats going country-- actually my hope is, that god willing, I might spy Ted Kennedy in all denim. Call me a dreamer…
But if I don’t see that I can at least count on Obama cheer leaders like the girls pictured above. Who drove up from Santa Cruz, California bringing their so-cal sex appeal in a station wagon covered in Obama stickers. Five to ten says your not gonna find legs like that at the Republican National Convention. (Eric S. Peterson)
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Immortal Technique: Up Close Review
“Without economic sovereignty there is no political sovereignty”
That was the crux of Immortal Technique’s closing spiel at the emcee’s Thursday afternoon Slowtrain performance and signing. Not your typical hip-hop commentary, but Tech is not your typical hip-hop artist.
A liberal-arts understanding of econ and poli-sci isn’t necessary to appreciate this rabidly independent artist out of Harlem, but it definitely helps. On his most recent release, The Third World, he and his crew, including Rebel Armz, (on hand for opening duties and back-up), tackle geo-political issues like war, famine, and poverty with driving, antagonistic rhymes and martial beats by DJ Green Lantern.
Tech is a left-wing militant, a true-believer armed with a microphone instead of an AK only because of circumstances. If he’d grown up in rural Columbia instead of Manhattan, we’d probably be seeing him on the evening news, masked and brandishing an assault rifle next to a French journalist hostage. I mean that in the best possible way.
The show itself was in concentrated form, with a song each from the afore-mentioned duo Rebel Armz and Diabolic, self-described soldiers in Immortal Technique’s rebel army.
Tech himself took the stage, or rather, the corner of the store, with intense delivery to laptop canned beats, opening with an old favorite, but quickly segueing into a too-small handful of tracks off the new record. The reconstituted nature of the performance was excusable considering the rumors that the crew thought they were just coming in for a signing, with the performance getting slapped together at the last minute. Prepared or not, the entire entourage brought their best once they had their mics, spitting with conviction to the enraptured sub-cultural hodge-podge with the good sense to show up.
Tech is the kind of guy who can actually get away with wearing one of those Che Guevara shirts. He’s not only a performer, but also a self-styled educator and rabble-rouser, so the crowd got a few well-rehearsed but impassioned lessons along with their music on Thursday. I, for one, was convinced. The revolution may not be televised, but I will be able to bob my head to it.
(Rob Tennant)
That was the crux of Immortal Technique’s closing spiel at the emcee’s Thursday afternoon Slowtrain performance and signing. Not your typical hip-hop commentary, but Tech is not your typical hip-hop artist.
A liberal-arts understanding of econ and poli-sci isn’t necessary to appreciate this rabidly independent artist out of Harlem, but it definitely helps. On his most recent release, The Third World, he and his crew, including Rebel Armz, (on hand for opening duties and back-up), tackle geo-political issues like war, famine, and poverty with driving, antagonistic rhymes and martial beats by DJ Green Lantern.
Tech is a left-wing militant, a true-believer armed with a microphone instead of an AK only because of circumstances. If he’d grown up in rural Columbia instead of Manhattan, we’d probably be seeing him on the evening news, masked and brandishing an assault rifle next to a French journalist hostage. I mean that in the best possible way.
The show itself was in concentrated form, with a song each from the afore-mentioned duo Rebel Armz and Diabolic, self-described soldiers in Immortal Technique’s rebel army.
Tech himself took the stage, or rather, the corner of the store, with intense delivery to laptop canned beats, opening with an old favorite, but quickly segueing into a too-small handful of tracks off the new record. The reconstituted nature of the performance was excusable considering the rumors that the crew thought they were just coming in for a signing, with the performance getting slapped together at the last minute. Prepared or not, the entire entourage brought their best once they had their mics, spitting with conviction to the enraptured sub-cultural hodge-podge with the good sense to show up.
Tech is the kind of guy who can actually get away with wearing one of those Che Guevara shirts. He’s not only a performer, but also a self-styled educator and rabble-rouser, so the crowd got a few well-rehearsed but impassioned lessons along with their music on Thursday. I, for one, was convinced. The revolution may not be televised, but I will be able to bob my head to it.
(Rob Tennant)
Friday, August 22, 2008
Bramble vs. Big Pizza
[Blogs] She's an LDS Sunday School teacher who likes board games, pizza and wool socks. She also listens to R.E.M., a Gen-X-era band whose fan base is frankly now on the shady side of 40. But, at 24, she frets that she looks young for her age.Anna Eagar has become my newest heroine. Her well-written blog Cartoon Brick Wall caused a stir earlier in the week when she published an account of an on-the-job run-in with Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo. Seems that, when Eagar attempted to deliver a pizza to the home of the Senate majority leader, there was some mix-up over preferred methods of payment--upon which Bramble became bizarrely combative, even going so far as to pull a "Don't you know who I am?" diva fit with the bemused pizza-delivery woman.
Until this, Eagar says her blog was read mainly by a few friends and family members. But the
Bramble entry proved to be a sensation: The story got some blog action, was picked up in the Daily Herald, discussed by Nightside's Ethan and Alex, and sparked a report on KSL-5.Now, Eagar's no political operative. There's no way she wrote the blog entry as some kind of anti-Bramble hit piece. She wrote about her feelings, and even tried to withhold Bramble's identity at first. She was bullied by a typically hyper-aggressive Utah legislator, and, understandably, got hurt.
As it turns out, our policy of keeping our state senabots carefully segregated from actual human beings means that, after a few years, the Brambles of the world forget how to simulate human emotions--or even recognize emotions in others. Eagar's story reads as a perceptive account of a really strange encounter. And, I dunno--now that I've read her blog, I just really like her.
Prior to the Bramble incident, Eagar's blog is that of an acutely introspective, intellectually gifted young person. She seems either unaware of or unconcerned with the fact that, outwardly, she is by any standard a striking beauty. But she wastes no time obsessing about fashion or other superficial concerns.
Instead, Eagar prefers to chronicle a rich interior life: her dreams, emotional catharses and spiritual insights. At times, she even achieves the truly revelatory transcendence of a mystic. At other times, she contemplates that sense of profound despair which, by rights, belongs only to exceptionally sensitive young people.
There may have been something transformative about the experience, though. After the incident, Eagar seems to have found a new kind of internal strength and self-awareness: Recognizing an opportunity for personal development, she triumphs upon summoning the assertiveness to kill a spider--or to write a polite letter instructing Bramble how to accomplish his goals like a human being--without humiliating and demoralizing other people.
Eagar's letter contains a lesson that, by now, the senator might do very well to heed.
(Brandon Burt)
Friday Letters Round-Up
As a man whose name is Eugene L. Kimball, I think I can speak with authority when I tell perfect strangers what they can and cannot do.- My great-grandfather was George Q. Cannon. Does that turn you on?
- My luggage was routed to Istanbul, the flight attendant spat in my face, we spent six hours on the tarmac with no sanitary facilities and a wild-eyed TSA agent kept muttering something about "trains and tunnels." But, on the plus side, we didn't crash into the Andes and nobody made jerky out of the pilot. Thumbs up, airline industry!
- Kostecki Update: Rainbows and kittens are the solution.
- Visit my blog for documentation of Milli Vanilli's involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing.
- I'm also pretty sure that René Descarte, Marie Curie and Victor Hugo would have disapproved of Calexico.
- OK, if this doesn't get my brother and his "friend" to stop bugging me about that goddamn Pottery Barn registry, I don't know what will.
Sore Spot
[Legislature] Leaders of Utah’s Senate are balking at suggestions they want to make it harder for citizens to change laws passed by the Legislature. (The subject of a recent snarky City Weekly commentary.
Recent posts on the The Senate Site the “unofficial voice of the Utah Senate majority”
finds the unofficial voce steamed about the idea GOP leaders would ever consider changing the citizens referendum process--even if citizens did use the law to overturn school vouchers last year.
“We're not inclined to change the law. We feel the current balance is about right -- referendums and initiatives are tough, but doable,” writes the voice. “Any push on our part to change the process is news to us.”
Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, goes further on his own blog, writing the Deseret News, which reported GOP moves afoot to monkey with citizens referendums, “fabricates more news” and “made up a story.”
We’ll put that down as decided then: No changes to Utah’s referendum law. (Unless, of course, someone wants change the referendum law by referendum.) (Ted McDonough)
Recent posts on the The Senate Site the “unofficial voice of the Utah Senate majority”
finds the unofficial voce steamed about the idea GOP leaders would ever consider changing the citizens referendum process--even if citizens did use the law to overturn school vouchers last year.
“We're not inclined to change the law. We feel the current balance is about right -- referendums and initiatives are tough, but doable,” writes the voice. “Any push on our part to change the process is news to us.”
Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, goes further on his own blog, writing the Deseret News, which reported GOP moves afoot to monkey with citizens referendums, “fabricates more news” and “made up a story.”
We’ll put that down as decided then: No changes to Utah’s referendum law. (Unless, of course, someone wants change the referendum law by referendum.) (Ted McDonough)
An Oddfellows Preview?
[Landmarks on the Move] This is what happened to New York's Peekskill Centennial Firehouse, built in 1890, when workers attempted to move it this week. Crumbled like a cheap cupcake. SLC's Odd Fellows Hall will be on the move soon. Just sayin': Look out below ...
(Bill Frost)
(Bill Frost)
Earthquake Benefit Concert
[Charity] The University of Utah's School of Music and the Utah Symphony are teaming up to put together a unique blend of Eastern and Western traditions in a concert to help benefit victims of the devastating Sichuan earthquake in China.The concert to be held tomorrow, Saturday August 30 at the Libby Gardner Hall, School of Music from 7:30 -9 pm will help out the Sichuan University's relief fund. The Sichuan university is a sister school with the U through its Confucius Institute and could use the all the help it can get.
The night's performance will vary from Chinese traditional music to Western classic's like "Butterfly Lovers," Mozart's Sonata in D Major. Tickets are only $10 and will go towards a relief fund for the earthquake victims. So go get some culture and do it for a good cause! (Eric S. Peterson)
Drama at the Trib: No "Easy Button"
[Nervous Media Moguls] Over the past five years, MediaNews Group owner and Salt Lake Tribune publisher Dean Singleton has snapped up newspapers like a brown trout leaping for a nymph hatch. Unfortunately, the economy is tanking in tandem with dramatic drops in daily newspaper readership.
So, the guy owns a chain of newspapers and a boatload of debt. And Singleton is nervous.
The following two-page memo (click images for full size) to MediaNews staffs around the country dated Aug. 8, recently found its way to the City Weekly newsroom. But no way is anyone in Denver pushing the panic button. Or the Easy Button. (Holly Mullen)
So, the guy owns a chain of newspapers and a boatload of debt. And Singleton is nervous.
The following two-page memo (click images for full size) to MediaNews staffs around the country dated Aug. 8, recently found its way to the City Weekly newsroom. But no way is anyone in Denver pushing the panic button. Or the Easy Button. (Holly Mullen)
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Old Polygamists (and the Many, Many Women Who Love Them)
[Science!] Turns out those embattled plygs may be onto a good thing after all: A British study suggests that men with multiple wives live longer than monogamists.The article suggests a behavioral explanation--they stay alive longer because they have to, with so many children to support. I imagine the kids and wives simply won't let the poor old dude enter senescence and kick off like a normal person.
Still, as we've learned from TV ads about spry octogenarians endlessly waterskiing and canoodling, men are biologically capable of fathering children well past the age when they should probably stop. So, in cultures that have practiced monogamy since prehistoric times, it seems there could be some natural selection at work here, as well: Over the millenia, men who carry genes contributing to longevity have more time to create greater numbers of offspring--but only if they are given access throughout their long, long lives to women of childbearing age.
A man in a monogamous culture, of course, loses that evolutionary opportunity since, once the mother of his children advances past childbearing age, his only opportunities for reproduction are illicit (and, come to think of it, probably life-shortening, if his wife finds out about it).
(Brandon Burt)
Obligatory Drag Queen Pun Here
[Locals on Reality TV] SLC's Keith Bryce was up last week; Wednesday night, he nearly got himself cut from Bravo's Project Runway by sorta-designing a goth pinata outfit for a drag queen. Fortunately, Heidi Klum & Co. kissed off the emotional rollercoaster known as Daniel. Super double-recap action:
(Bill Frost)
(Bill Frost)
Online Exclusive: City Weekly interviews Lewis Black
To anyone fed up with the rampant absurdity in our world, Lewis Black’s rants are as soothing as they are scathing. On The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and his own The Root of All Evil, the curmudgeonly comedian and playwright spits the truth like he has Tourette’s, or a really nasty hemorrhoid; we bask in it like a cool shower in the Sahara. He, like Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks and George Carlin, isn’t just a stand-up shecky; he’s a truth-teller, the kind of guy who’s good for a belly laugh and as well as food for thought. When he talks, we listen for days after he’s done. And when his wisdom sinks in, it helps society progress. Lewis Black manifests hope in spitting, finger-pointing rage.
In his new book, Me of Little Faith (Riverhead), Black focuses on religion, making observations about a variety of faiths. Since Black spent several months in Utah shooting Unaccompanied Minors, Mormonism gets plenty of space in the book. He’s also mentioned the visit in his act; just search YouTube for his Opie and Anthony Traveling Virus tour performance (part one) and you’ll hear him pop off about gingham dresses and a “12-foot animatronic Jesus!” City Weekly caught up with Black days before his Kingsbury Hall stop on Saturday to talk Salt Lake City and Mormons.
CW: You’re coming back to SLC. How’d you get caught in our tractor beam again?
LB: Uh… just luck. Just pure luck. [laughs] I like playin’ Salt Lake. You know, the 10 weeks there was an interesting experience, but I like performing there.
CW: You say the same thing about visiting SLC as you do about writing your latest book.
LB: Yeah. Especially with writing. Writing’s like being married to a bitch— but you can’t let her go because she’s hell on wheels. It’s like some weird mistress. But really mean [laughs]… But you just forget. I really enjoy the process of writing. It’s when you finish and you look and you say, “Really… is this good?” It’s just a lot of self-torture because you’re alone all the time.
CW: Mormons get some time in your latest book. Wanna hear more about 'em?
LB: Sure. Well, the thing was ... [Jon] Krakauer wrote a book [Under the Banner of Heaven] about the Mormons. That’s the other [influence]: My being there, and the book. He wrote a very remarkable history of the Mormon religion, very succinctly. In the book, with credit to him, I just said look, this guy really does it better in his book.
In his new book, Me of Little Faith (Riverhead), Black focuses on religion, making observations about a variety of faiths. Since Black spent several months in Utah shooting Unaccompanied Minors, Mormonism gets plenty of space in the book. He’s also mentioned the visit in his act; just search YouTube for his Opie and Anthony Traveling Virus tour performance (part one) and you’ll hear him pop off about gingham dresses and a “12-foot animatronic Jesus!” City Weekly caught up with Black days before his Kingsbury Hall stop on Saturday to talk Salt Lake City and Mormons.
CW: You’re coming back to SLC. How’d you get caught in our tractor beam again?
LB: Uh… just luck. Just pure luck. [laughs] I like playin’ Salt Lake. You know, the 10 weeks there was an interesting experience, but I like performing there.
CW: You say the same thing about visiting SLC as you do about writing your latest book.
LB: Yeah. Especially with writing. Writing’s like being married to a bitch— but you can’t let her go because she’s hell on wheels. It’s like some weird mistress. But really mean [laughs]… But you just forget. I really enjoy the process of writing. It’s when you finish and you look and you say, “Really… is this good?” It’s just a lot of self-torture because you’re alone all the time.
CW: Mormons get some time in your latest book. Wanna hear more about 'em?
LB: Sure. Well, the thing was ... [Jon] Krakauer wrote a book [Under the Banner of Heaven] about the Mormons. That’s the other [influence]: My being there, and the book. He wrote a very remarkable history of the Mormon religion, very succinctly. In the book, with credit to him, I just said look, this guy really does it better in his book.
We did this episode of The Root of All Evil on Scientology, which I knew very little about, and didn’t even write about in the book. Everything I tried to write about was personal. And those people, what they believe, makes Mormons look like scientists. ... But go ahead: please tell me.
CW: For one, Mormons are said to believe that God lives on the Planet Kolob with his wives cranking out spirit babies. So technically you and I are two of those spirit babies.
LB: Come on! Is that true?
CW: Well, it’s the subject of debate. The Mormon PR machine is famously competent. ... Have you heard of baptisms for the dead, or baptisms by proxy?
LB: Oh, yeah. That I knew about. And also marrying for eternity, which is just… [famous Lewis Black roiling pause]… as brutal as it gets, I think.
CW: The Disinformation Book of Lists has a list of famous people the Mormons baptized by proxy. ... Albert Einstein… Anne Frank…
LB: Oh, he’d be thrilled. He wasn’t even that Jewish. Anne Frank? You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me. That’s unbelievable, seriously [laughs]. Anne Frank?
CW: Genghis Khan…
LB: Genghis Khan? Why? What would possess them to want Ghengis Khan?
CW: I have no idea. Hitler’s on the list, too.
LB: Yeah, that’s a great idea. Real good marketing when you’re tryin’ to convert a Jew.
CW: Maybe you already knew about this, but the list says that they baptized 20,000 to 380,000 Jews who died in the Holocaust.
LB: And the others…? Five million…
CW: Maybe they’re just runnin’ behind.
LB: They’re hand-pickin’ ‘em [laughs].
CW: For one, Mormons are said to believe that God lives on the Planet Kolob with his wives cranking out spirit babies. So technically you and I are two of those spirit babies.
LB: Come on! Is that true?
CW: Well, it’s the subject of debate. The Mormon PR machine is famously competent. ... Have you heard of baptisms for the dead, or baptisms by proxy?
LB: Oh, yeah. That I knew about. And also marrying for eternity, which is just… [famous Lewis Black roiling pause]… as brutal as it gets, I think.
CW: The Disinformation Book of Lists has a list of famous people the Mormons baptized by proxy. ... Albert Einstein… Anne Frank…
LB: Oh, he’d be thrilled. He wasn’t even that Jewish. Anne Frank? You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me. That’s unbelievable, seriously [laughs]. Anne Frank?
CW: Genghis Khan…
LB: Genghis Khan? Why? What would possess them to want Ghengis Khan?
CW: I have no idea. Hitler’s on the list, too.
LB: Yeah, that’s a great idea. Real good marketing when you’re tryin’ to convert a Jew.
CW: Maybe you already knew about this, but the list says that they baptized 20,000 to 380,000 Jews who died in the Holocaust.
LB: And the others…? Five million…
CW: Maybe they’re just runnin’ behind.
LB: They’re hand-pickin’ ‘em [laughs].
(Randy Harward)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Taxes at work (in Sandy)
[theater wars] Sandy doesn't want tax money, just tax money.
After a conversation with Sandy City officials, City Weekly came away with the impression that the theater wars between Sandy and Salt Lake City wouldn’t turn into a repeat of the Real stadium tussle—at least not financially. We reported that Sandy City planned to finance its Broadway-style theater complex entirely with money from the developer and local, Sandy City taxes generated by the project. Sandy wouldn’t be competing with Salt Lake City for county tax money or state subsidies. Silly us.
Yesterday, during a meeting of the Salt Lake County Council, Sandy’s business partner in the theater project confirmed developers wouldn’t be seeking county tax money for the theater—but said they might be asking for county tax help to build for several smaller theaters and an arts school planed for the same complex.
In defense of City Weekly (and Sandy), our story—published one month ago—included a caveat that Sandy was not seeking outside tax help “at this time.” (Ted McDonough)
After a conversation with Sandy City officials, City Weekly came away with the impression that the theater wars between Sandy and Salt Lake City wouldn’t turn into a repeat of the Real stadium tussle—at least not financially. We reported that Sandy City planned to finance its Broadway-style theater complex entirely with money from the developer and local, Sandy City taxes generated by the project. Sandy wouldn’t be competing with Salt Lake City for county tax money or state subsidies. Silly us.
Yesterday, during a meeting of the Salt Lake County Council, Sandy’s business partner in the theater project confirmed developers wouldn’t be seeking county tax money for the theater—but said they might be asking for county tax help to build for several smaller theaters and an arts school planed for the same complex.
In defense of City Weekly (and Sandy), our story—published one month ago—included a caveat that Sandy was not seeking outside tax help “at this time.” (Ted McDonough)
Why You Aren't Reading 'The Paper'
[Media] This Ted Rall strip ran in last week's City Weekly, but it's too perfect to resist a rerun (plus, ironically, it didn't print all that clearly; click for full size):Tuesday, August 19, 2008
R.I.P. Craig Froehlich
I was out of town last week and just read the news today, oh boy. I worked with Craig at RED Magazine and always imagined he would move on to bigger and broader things. Witty and outrageous, hilarious and cantakerous, he never backed down and never failed to elicit some kind of heated reaction out of me. My former co-worker Jeremy Mathews wrote a poignant piece on Craig and posted several of Craig's articles. If you have the time, read them. Laugh. He deserved as much.
(Jamie Gadette)
(Jamie Gadette)
Jackson Hole Music Festival: Review
About once a year it's imperative to go out of town and see a concert. While we get a good many shows in Salt Lake City, some bands have a tendency to skip over us and I end up feeling like an abandoned child. Wilco included an August 18 Red Butte date this year, but tickets sold out before I could get in on the action.They were sold out so fast I wasn’t even aware that they were on sale. Bummer! Wilco is by far one of the best live bands I've ever seen...five times, and only once in Utah. I guess I'm kind of a ... Wilhead? A Willy? Willies are probably what they get when they know that you're practically stalking them. Each time they come out with a new album, they manage to bring a new element of awesomeness to their awesome sound--and it comes across impeccably on stage.
Down and nearly out at the missed Red Butte opportunity, I wiped my tears and looked into Wilco's gig at The Jackson Hole Music Festival (August 16-17). I found a friend who is just as directionally challenged as me and she agreed to come on the make-it-there-alive adventure.
We left on Saturday at the very unreasonable, hostile hour of 5:30 in the morning. I printed out a map all nice and pretty out on the Internet with step by step instructions and felt pretty confident that there would be no getting lost this time. Of course, some of the directions on include such things as “take a slight left” on a road that looks like some sort of junkyard dog or better yet, one on which a serial killer may come chasing out after you.
Down and nearly out at the missed Red Butte opportunity, I wiped my tears and looked into Wilco's gig at The Jackson Hole Music Festival (August 16-17). I found a friend who is just as directionally challenged as me and she agreed to come on the make-it-there-alive adventure.
We left on Saturday at the very unreasonable, hostile hour of 5:30 in the morning. I printed out a map all nice and pretty out on the Internet with step by step instructions and felt pretty confident that there would be no getting lost this time. Of course, some of the directions on include such things as “take a slight left” on a road that looks like some sort of junkyard dog or better yet, one on which a serial killer may come chasing out after you.
Once in Jackson Hole, I saw more pedestrians crossing than a morning at SLC's Downtown Farmers Market. That paired with no grid system and only a street name for the hotel, panic mode kicked in. I was ready for the best shower of my life and to catch the show. Upon arriving, and knowing that the first act would be going on at 3 p.m. --same time as check-in. Turns out Jackson Hole is on a pretty strange hotel room schedule. The clerk was very accommodating to my whining and let us in early.
There is a shuttle that you can take to the festival site in Teton Village. Bonus! The drive to Jackson is a very scenic one, but only if you aren’t scared of driving your car off of a lush green mountain road that winds and curves enough to think it's curtains for the driver. The one down side to the shuttle is that at each stop they did not announce stops. This immediately prompted me to think that each stop had to have been the one where we needed to get off.
There is a shuttle that you can take to the festival site in Teton Village. Bonus! The drive to Jackson is a very scenic one, but only if you aren’t scared of driving your car off of a lush green mountain road that winds and curves enough to think it's curtains for the driver. The one down side to the shuttle is that at each stop they did not announce stops. This immediately prompted me to think that each stop had to have been the one where we needed to get off.
Fortunately, you can always spot a boy going to a Wilco show thanks to his faded plaid shirt, and the bus was full of that boy. Once I saw them head toward the front, I followed and there we were.
After the chill of downtown Jackson, I had put pants on thinking it would be colder in the Teton Village. But by the time I made it uphill, I felt like I was on fire. Apparently the number one festival rule was "shirt-free is the way to be!" Oh, the sweaty topless men dancing in the heat!
I got into the festival just in time to watch Brian Wilson’s set start. Every time I say this people want to hang me, but I am not a fan of the Beach Boys and yes I have listened to Pet Sounds so leave me alone. I am, however, pleasantly surprised by his solo music. The only songs that I didn't like were when the ones with the word "surf" in them. Other than that, the man has really held the integrity of his voice quite well over the years and put on a good first solo impression for me.
After his set, I headed over to my favorite place to hole away from the sun, the tent, and found probably the nicest of group of people in there. Everyone in Wyoming was just so friendly and interesting. Could have been all the free beer. That's always a sure bet to get my warm fuzzies flowing, but either way we did end up meeting some of the most wonderful people that were willing to sneak off and smoke cigarettes with me.
After his set, I headed over to my favorite place to hole away from the sun, the tent, and found probably the nicest of group of people in there. Everyone in Wyoming was just so friendly and interesting. Could have been all the free beer. That's always a sure bet to get my warm fuzzies flowing, but either way we did end up meeting some of the most wonderful people that were willing to sneak off and smoke cigarettes with me.
Wilco arrived on stage and played an amazing set, starting with numbers off their most recent album Sky Blue Sky. The crowd was as enthralled as I was. Guitarist Nels Cline does the most amazing, gorgeous things that help Wilco's live material sound just as clean and concise as their studio recordings. Most people don’t seem to know this about Jeff Tweedy either, but when he performs his sense of humor comes through between songs and he playfully toys with the crowd. No signs of his notorious migraine-related pain.
Pre-encore, Wilco ended their set with the epic “Spiders Kidsmoke," followed by an additional, equally epic encore of older material.
Their show essentially made the whole trip worth the drive, but then I realized that there was still a whole extra day’s worth of festival left on Sunday! I would like to admit that I turned in all early in order to prepare for that, but there are still a lot of things you can do when a festival ends at 8 p.m. in Jackson. We went out and explored and I was still up bright and early for Son Volt, who came on around 12:30 p.m.
Their show essentially made the whole trip worth the drive, but then I realized that there was still a whole extra day’s worth of festival left on Sunday! I would like to admit that I turned in all early in order to prepare for that, but there are still a lot of things you can do when a festival ends at 8 p.m. in Jackson. We went out and explored and I was still up bright and early for Son Volt, who came on around 12:30 p.m.
I had never seen them live and was obviously really excited since they're one degree of separation away from Wilco. Jay Farrar has the sad country twang down along with a touch of the blues that makes his music sound breathtaking and not at all like that pesky kind of CMT music that makes your ears cry. He played a lot of his original music and tossed in a couple of Uncle Tupelo songs for nostalgia's sake. Farrar's snagged himself an amazing crew, including guitarist Chris Masterson who wowed me with his obscure German guitar that I can’t remember the name of because it had more than two syllables in it.
Later, I walked uphill both ways again to watch The Black Crowes. I have a serious thing for the type of straight-up dirty rock and roll that this band's known for. Chris Robinson, front man for the band came out on stage and immediately started working the crowd with his showboating moves. It was a perfect end to the festival--one I'll definitely return to next year. It’s not that far of a drive, and the location, lineup, and hospitality of the people made this easily one of the best concerts/festivals in recent memory.
Ironically enough, what led me out there to begin with (a sold out show) got me to that sold out show.
Later, I walked uphill both ways again to watch The Black Crowes. I have a serious thing for the type of straight-up dirty rock and roll that this band's known for. Chris Robinson, front man for the band came out on stage and immediately started working the crowd with his showboating moves. It was a perfect end to the festival--one I'll definitely return to next year. It’s not that far of a drive, and the location, lineup, and hospitality of the people made this easily one of the best concerts/festivals in recent memory.
Ironically enough, what led me out there to begin with (a sold out show) got me to that sold out show.
After speaking with Wilco's ineffable Pat Sansone and John Stirrat, I let them know what had brought me out to the area, and they completely took care of the Red Butte ticket, enabling me to get home on the 18th and run down to that concert.
Initially, I was a bit perplexed at the Red Butte show. It was a beautiful night, but the crowd appeared to be half asleep in comparison to the one I had just seen. After being warmed up few songs into it, the place was up and excited and everyone started to party like it was a Monday in Utah. The band said with sincerity, that thus far the Salt Lake City one ended up being the best show they have played on this tour thus far.
So, go to Wyoming. Good things will happen.
So, go to Wyoming. Good things will happen.
(Dominique LaJeunesse)
Local Band Tour Diary: Day 5
Sacramento was A-OK. We played at Luna's Cafe to a crowd featuring the door girl, the waitress, and a chick doing her homework, but they all seemed to really enjoy it. After our show our friends in Alak Alas Alaska helped us get into this show a few blocks over that stole the crowd. Ha! Rightfully so though, it was in a this superb art space and the show was rad as ever, bands like Hexlove and Thee Oh Sees (super percussive experimental) it ended with this band named The Z's (you guys should check out all of them).
We went back to their house and just kicked it--too hot to really do anything but take it easy. The morning winds however, brought great change.
We said goodbye to our dear friend Hannah (okay.okay). I drove her to the airport way early and it was a somber farewell, we miss you MC SILENT. R.I.P.
Have no fear though, we're playing with her in Boise on the way home, and she lent me her sleeping bag. 'Till this point I've only had a blanket and a really nice pillow. Cold as a mother fucker.
We got asked to play the second night with Agent Ribbons, Alak Alas Alaska & Wummin (chicago). It went pretty well, then Garrick and I split for Nevada City.
At this point it was one in the morning. Nevada City is on 1-80 no more than an hour away, maybe an hour and a half. As we drove on, something happened. We started getting eerie vibes and our conversation bleed into the paranormal. Reflective street signs became very animated (waiver: we had taken no substances, so don't get your hopes us). When we came to (so it seemed) we were only 30 minutes out of Sacramento on an entire different freeway than which we had started and made sure we were on.
Mind you, we had lost 2 hours somewhere.
We camped as usual, tarp and blanket, sneaking into campsites and getting out freely has become our fortae, we finally made it to Nevada City. It was quaint, as well as Grass Valley, quaint. Kinda Park City(ish). We found a lake that day to camp at again and spent the day playing music, swimming, fishing by bag and stick, nature bathing, and slept under a nearly full moon with our ever so proud hand-made-no-paper added fire keeping us warm. It was so refreshing to be out there, it's so nice to be with someone whose into camping rather than finding a place to crash. I mean, it's like we have the option of sleeping in nature under the stars, soaking pu healthy god air, clearing your lungs, purifying your soul. Take note touring bands, camping only makes you better musicians. I'm way glad Garrick is here.
Chico is also way too fucking hot. Global Warming is becoming a reality for us, were burnt to crisps, skin peeling, gettting skinny and buff, and our beards and getting big. The show in Chico was really good for us, we finally made some money. FINALLY. We played with Aubrey Debauchery (chico) and come old friends from last time I was here came out and out we went for the night. This is what we've dubbed the Garrick Leg of the tour, I can't wait to play again. We kicked it off right, sold some merch (finally) and made some door cash and are good to go. 8 more days you guys. Miss you all.
Shameless Plug: August 30th @ Kilby court w. Jana Hunter, Mothers of Songs, Lesser Gonzalez.
SHAKING OUR PEACE TILL OUR PEACE GETS SORE.
(chaz prymek)
We went back to their house and just kicked it--too hot to really do anything but take it easy. The morning winds however, brought great change.
We said goodbye to our dear friend Hannah (okay.okay). I drove her to the airport way early and it was a somber farewell, we miss you MC SILENT. R.I.P.
Have no fear though, we're playing with her in Boise on the way home, and she lent me her sleeping bag. 'Till this point I've only had a blanket and a really nice pillow. Cold as a mother fucker.
We got asked to play the second night with Agent Ribbons, Alak Alas Alaska & Wummin (chicago). It went pretty well, then Garrick and I split for Nevada City.
At this point it was one in the morning. Nevada City is on 1-80 no more than an hour away, maybe an hour and a half. As we drove on, something happened. We started getting eerie vibes and our conversation bleed into the paranormal. Reflective street signs became very animated (waiver: we had taken no substances, so don't get your hopes us). When we came to (so it seemed) we were only 30 minutes out of Sacramento on an entire different freeway than which we had started and made sure we were on.
Mind you, we had lost 2 hours somewhere.
We camped as usual, tarp and blanket, sneaking into campsites and getting out freely has become our fortae, we finally made it to Nevada City. It was quaint, as well as Grass Valley, quaint. Kinda Park City(ish). We found a lake that day to camp at again and spent the day playing music, swimming, fishing by bag and stick, nature bathing, and slept under a nearly full moon with our ever so proud hand-made-no-paper added fire keeping us warm. It was so refreshing to be out there, it's so nice to be with someone whose into camping rather than finding a place to crash. I mean, it's like we have the option of sleeping in nature under the stars, soaking pu healthy god air, clearing your lungs, purifying your soul. Take note touring bands, camping only makes you better musicians. I'm way glad Garrick is here.
Chico is also way too fucking hot. Global Warming is becoming a reality for us, were burnt to crisps, skin peeling, gettting skinny and buff, and our beards and getting big. The show in Chico was really good for us, we finally made some money. FINALLY. We played with Aubrey Debauchery (chico) and come old friends from last time I was here came out and out we went for the night. This is what we've dubbed the Garrick Leg of the tour, I can't wait to play again. We kicked it off right, sold some merch (finally) and made some door cash and are good to go. 8 more days you guys. Miss you all.
Shameless Plug: August 30th @ Kilby court w. Jana Hunter, Mothers of Songs, Lesser Gonzalez.
SHAKING OUR PEACE TILL OUR PEACE GETS SORE.
(chaz prymek)
City Weekly Explained Dutcher for You
[Ex-Mormon Filmmakers] Of course it simply isn't a story until the Los Angeles Times says it is, but City Weekly's film critic Scott Renshaw plowed this ground about Utah filmmaker Richard Dutcher nearly a year ago with this cover feature. In the interim, Dutcher's obviously been interviewed a few times, as evidenced by the similarity of quotes (as in, "What if it isn't true?") in first, CW, and then the Times. (Holly Mullen)
Monday, August 18, 2008
Tough Love
[Humor] Sick and tired of your infant acting like a big baby? The Onion can help.I particularly like the color scheme of the product packaging.
(Brandon Burt)
Roller Derby Report: Housewives Deal It to Ninjas 97-88
[Alt-Sports] We now know one team that will be competing in the Salt City Derby Girls' 2008 championship bout next month: The Leave It to Cleavers, the red-clad housewives from hell, edged past the purple-ninja Death Dealers Saturday night in a hard-fought roller battle at the Olympic Oval that came down to all of 9 points: 97-88. (Victory lap photo above by Will Bill Hill.)The Cleavers outpaced the Dealers in the first half, as jammers Scarlicious and (everybody say it, it's fun) Dirty Pirate Hooker racked up points in rapid succession. But the Dealers retaliated hard in the second, with jammer Moonraker scoring impossible numbers to close the gap. Wasn't quite enough; the Cleavers will go onto face either the Bomber Babes or the Sisters of No Mercy to decide the SCDG champions of 2008.
Next bout: The SCDG allstar Shakers take on Reno's Battle Born Derby Demons at the Olympic Oval on Saturday Aug. 30. In the meantime, Salt City celebrates three years as a league this Saturday, Aug. 23, at the Trapp Door. Be there. (Bill Frost)
Becker's Big Test
[Clash of the Liberals] Finally. It appears that a growing number of Salt Lake City policy makers are beginning to call out the emperor has no clothes! on the multi-million dollar mess that has become The Leonardo.Earlier this month, Salt Lake City Councilman J.T. Martin expressed doubts that the project for a loosely defined science and humanities museum at Library Square would get the City Council's backing. From the start, The Leonardo has been built on oversize dreams and an exaggerated sense of self-importance. This led to repeated cost overruns and the collapse of expected donations--largely because The Leonardo's board and management staff could never quite define or explain what the museum was supposed to be or what it hoped to accomplish. City Weekly's Stephen Dark was all over last year, and was the first local reporter to nail all of the problems with getting the heavily taxpayer-subsidized museum off the ground.
Last weekend, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker finally jumped into the controversy. This is no small feat, and marks the most significant test yet of Becker's ability to stand up against the base that elected him last fall. Why? As Dark pointed out in his story, former Leonardo executive director Mary Tull (she recently left the post in the wake of growing controversy) is married to the Rev. Tom Goldsmith of Salt Lake's First Unitarian Church. Several of The Leonardo's financial backers--including liberal philanthropists Norman and Barbara Tanner (who coughed up $1 million)--are Unitarians or regular visitors to the church. Robert Newman, Dean of the University of Utah College of Humanities, has been a longtime supporter of the project.
Leonardo supporters make for a cozy group of Salt Lake City liberals and intellectuals--which also happened to make up the solid base behind Becker's election last fall. They gave him lots of money. They walked neighborhoods and knocked on doors for him. They proudly posted campaign signs for him in their xeriscaped yards.Now--and wisely--Becker is acting like a mayor, questioning the strange expenditures of The Leonardo and projecting that even its board's latest plan to severely downscale the museum will not be enough to save the thing. Salt Lakers have put up with nearly a decade of fiddling around with notions for the best use of the old library. In 2003, city residents approved $10.2 million of their own money go toward rehabbing the building and putting The Leonardo in place. And still, there is nothing to show for it.
Rightly so, Becker is now wondering if there might be a better use for the space.
But the mayor surely isn't going to please those who brought him to the dance in the process.
(Holly Mullen)
Kill the Message and the Messenger
[Media Overkill] Why would The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board go to such lengths to try and debunk Orrin Hatch flunkie-shill's take on global warming? After all, newsprint is expensive and newshole in this tough economy is precious.(Holly Mullen)
The Mudslinging of Angels
And you thought politics was the only field where denigrating your opposition was more important than promoting what you have to offer. In the Sunday arts sections of the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, the forthcoming LDS missionary-themed drama The Errand of Angels ran an ad with a unique promotional angle.
"5 More Reasons to See The Errand of Angels This Friday!" trumpeted the headline ... which then proceeded to list the current and Aug. 22 releases Pineapple Express, Death Race, The House Bunny, Mirrors and Tropic Thunder along with the detailed MPAA ratings for each one. That information -- "Rated R for strong violence and language" for Death Race, for example -- was then supplemented by handwritten-style notes. "Sick & wrong" read the scrawl for Death Race; "trashy" went the commentary for The House Bunny. In conclusion, the copy read "See something virtuous, lovely, and of good report in theaters this Friday!"
No mention is made of whether the movie is actually any good (more on that later this week). Apparently it should be sufficient for its target audience that it is not "trashy" or "sick & wrong" like its competition. I'm The Errand of Angels, and I approved this message. (Scott Renshaw)
"5 More Reasons to See The Errand of Angels This Friday!" trumpeted the headline ... which then proceeded to list the current and Aug. 22 releases Pineapple Express, Death Race, The House Bunny, Mirrors and Tropic Thunder along with the detailed MPAA ratings for each one. That information -- "Rated R for strong violence and language" for Death Race, for example -- was then supplemented by handwritten-style notes. "Sick & wrong" read the scrawl for Death Race; "trashy" went the commentary for The House Bunny. In conclusion, the copy read "See something virtuous, lovely, and of good report in theaters this Friday!"
No mention is made of whether the movie is actually any good (more on that later this week). Apparently it should be sufficient for its target audience that it is not "trashy" or "sick & wrong" like its competition. I'm The Errand of Angels, and I approved this message. (Scott Renshaw)
Friday, August 15, 2008
Headline of the Day
"Grocery store employee accused of having sex with teenage baggers"Um, I believe the term is "double-baggers," D-News. And, really, is the attractiveness of the teenagers really worth reporting on?
Oh. Upon reading the story, never mind.
(Brandon Burt)
Friday Letters Round-Up
- I like my intercourse the way I like my Swedish cinema: grim, laborious and dimly lit.
- Also, the Jersey Turnpike would be smoother if somebody would just dig up the bumps and put them into the potholes.
- The only thing I can't figure out is why all the other NRA members keep telling me to pipe down.
- This next one is a little something I like to call "Confuse the Message Board."
- After all, whom does the public trust and respect more than a member of the newsmedia?
- There are still some governments that lock up more people than ours does--how can we let some pipsqueak like Mugabe outdo us? USA #1!!!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Local Band Tour Diary: Day 4
[Chaz Prymek Tour] The drive to Big Sur was AMAZING! Overwhelming even, we stopped at the Henry Miller Library to see if they had any good shows going on and ran into another touring band, playing at some place in Alpine. So go see them. Whoever they are. Big Sur is not like Jack Kerouac put it, it's very beautiful and lush, and green, but very ritzy now. Our Saturn was probably the worst off car we saw the whole time. But I do recommend you drive it. I think it's important.We stopped and got some soup and decided we couldn't afford to stay in Big Sur, so we hit the road to Santa Cruz.
I have decided that I want to live in Santa Cruz. We kicked it old school style for a while before getting a tip of lispsy pizza girl of a spot to camp above the campus there. We drove up and found a spot to park finally, when out of the car behind us came the nicest of humans. A girl named...Angela...or Elisa... In the morning we weren't sure, we're still not even sure if she was real. Real or not, she was a doll, and so kindhearted. We talked with her in her camper she lived in, in a camper community on campus at USCS. She walked us up to a meadow in the redwoods behind her camper and left us to the woods.
Meteor shower. blah blah blah. Woke up surrounded in fog to the point of white blindness. Blah Blah Blah. Left Angel(a or Elisa) a note saying thank you. And took off for San Fran.
San Fran was cool, now were in Sacramento kicking it till the show, reading, writing, living, loving, vibin', groovin', killin'.
San Fran was cool, now were in Sacramento kicking it till the show, reading, writing, living, loving, vibin', groovin', killin'.
We have discovered a few things about each other: I really like forests and wake up WAY too early. Garrick is not human. Hannah loves to shout through tunnels.
We recorded Hannah's album up at the farm so get one when it’s all done. I think we're coming home sooner than planned.
We're smelly and sunburnt.
Love you guys, keep on rocking in the free world.
(Chaz, Garrick, Hannah)
p.s. body surfing isn't as easy as regular surfing.
Got Any Change?
[Politics] Any of you Obama lovers want to believe in some change tonight, you can do so at the Barack Obama fund-raiser, Phillips Gallery (444 E. 200 South), starting at 6 p.m. The George Brown Quintet will be playing; say hello to that handsome keyboardist if you get a chance.Here's an interesting discussion from earlier in the year about the Obama campaign logo--it's mainly a forum for graphics-design geeks, but an occasional neocon troll pops up in the middle of a discussion regarding the relative merits of Obama's use of sans-serif vs. serif typefaces; then, out of the blue comes a hysterical neocon who is aghast that the logo uses stripes but not stars--meaning, obviously, that Obama plans to become the One World Ruler. Good stuff!
(Brandon Burt)
King of Thieves
[Bird Baggage] A nearby neighbor of mine is a sweet, friendly old giant of a Mormon. The other day we were discussing the strange behavior of local magpies.* These oversized, rowdy, screeching black and white harridans with beaks designed for torment daily dive-bomb his cat. They harangue and bully it whenever the animal deigns to walk his own garden. The cat flicks its tail and ignores them.The magpies also target the cat owner’s windows for blitzkriegs of over-sized shit droppings and have even been known to go after his car.
My neighbor explained the bird-hate in this fashion: Two years ago his cat found a magpie nest up in a tree. He knocked the nest out of the tree and dumped the fledglings at his master’s feet. My neighbor wrung the birds’ necks, stuck them in a box and left them for the magpies to find. The birds have not forgotten. They have pursued him with a venom of epic proportions ever since.
While bird lovers might deplore my neighbor’s actions, my sympathies side with him. These birds are not only noise pollution. They drive out other bird populations, have killed fledglings in nests in my garden, and when you stumble close to one of their offspring they gang up on you with shrieks and a murderous glint in their black eyes that turns the blood cold. I’ve asked around about possible solutions to getting these birds to move on. So far ideas mooted include a BB gun or a trap and a pair of gloves to snap their necks once they’re caught. Given how the magpies torment my neighbor, I’m tempted to leave well alone.
As it turns out, nuisance magpies are practically an obsession way down under in Australia. A Google search of "aggressive magpies" yields dozens of Web sites and blogs devoted to trashing these avian pillagers as well as offering tips for staying safe around them. This Aussie is particularly blunt about black and white birds that run amok.
*Above: A magpie gets feisty with an innocent bicyclist. (Stephen Dark)
Yet More Marcus
[Media] No, not another City Weekly feature on the Second to Last Comic Standing--KUTV 2 has finally covered Marcus!OK, not really: Gavin Sheehan, who toils below the surface for our unfriendly media neighbors across Main Street, has posted a post-LCS interview with Marcus on his Gavin's Underground blog. The hilarious pictures alone are worth the click; note the second, wherein Marcus is shamelessly mugging for a vote in our Artys 2008 ballot--dare to dream, buddy! (Bill Frost)
Keith In the Jungle
[Locals on Reality TV] SLC designer Keith Bryce not only survived another round of Bravo's Project Runway last night, but also won a challenge to dress Brooke Shields on an episode of NBC's Lipstick Jungle when the corporate-cousin series inexplicably returns this fall. The recap from Bravo:
(Bill Frost)
(Bill Frost)
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Local Band Tour Diary: Day 3
[Chaz Prymek Tour] The show at the Habitat was amazing. The vibe there was so mellow and beautiful. Candles burning, minimal light, perfect sound, good people. I still can't get over it. So big ups to s.d.The drive from San Diego to Santa Barbara is so rad, but as rad as it may be, its like a time warp. It took us twice maybe three times as long as we though. WTF right?! BUT! If you do find yourself on the ONE in Huntington Beach, stop at this place named THE SECRET SPOT its behind some gas station by some skate shop in a really ritzy part of town. Best food every. Well, maybe not ever but pretty damned close. Garrick and I were tripping out on his sandwich and my veggie burrito. As we headed further and further up the coast we turned into Cheech & Chong. The drive was beautiful though, I can't announce (express, exhaust, I don't know what word I'm looking for) that enough.
We got to Topanga Canyon before night fall and decided we needed to get some good vibes from it, after all, Devendra made his album up there, so did Uncle Kyle. So we drove up it for a while and breathed it in DEEP. We then spent until night fall trying to find the house that Incubus recorded the Morning View album in. Little known fact, the street their house was on just so happens to be named Morning View, hence the album name, we drove by the house, I was and still am a bit overwhelmed. As much as it's unhip or what have you, Incubus rocks, we all know it, we can deny it as much as we want, but we all have that album and we all know most the words. Michael Einzinger is my hero.
We FINALLY made it up to the farm we were going to be working and kicking it on a bit after night fall. The scenery was epic, we met my old friend Pete, who on my last tour I dragged along with me from Tempe, AZ, the long way to San Diego. We crashed under a little tree fort on a pete-built deck that he usually keeps his tent on, under the stars and looming the sea.
We woke up and went to work to earn our keep and stay. Then we had ourselves a beach day, climbing through tunnels to get to privately owned, mostly remote spots on the beach, we shared salad, two buck chuck, avocadoes, swim, swam, swum, got burnt to a crisp, and put a map in a bottle and sent it out as far as we could. Our new singer, farmer friend Shae was a huge part in all of this. I highly recommend to any touring band, days off. Farm work. Plan your tours more aesthetically, it's nicer this way.
The Drive from Santa Barbara to Big Sur is twice as gorgeous as anything I could compare it to.
More to come.
p.s. I fixed my guitar
p.p.s. we don’t know how to upload photos yet.
(Chaz Prymek, Garrick, Hannah)
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The X-clusive Ocho
[Radio] In case you missed it this morning, the X96 Radio From Hell special-edition exclusive super-special Ocho commemorating 5,000 episodes of the show (Warning: Inside Baseball references to follow):Eight reasons the Radio From Hell show has lasted for 5,000 episodes on X96:
8. X96’s covert “Operation: Gina Kills the Show” plan failed in the ‘90s.
7. Todd Nuke’Em’s only backup replacement is “The Marcy Playground Morning Zoo.”
6. No one’s ever really verified the existence of the “orbital death ray” Kerry threatens the station with every year.
5. X96’s covert “Operation: Richie Kills the Show” plan failed in the ‘00s.
4. The Public Broadcasting System secretly siphons pledge funds to keep Bill on commercial radio.
3. The nightly “Fun Pigs on the Strip” Las Vegas revue is still in negotiations at The Flamingo.
2. The budget has been kept lean for years by suckering local media chumps into coming on the show for free.
1. There’s always something to bitch about, ain’t there?
(Bill Frost)
Barack Loves Me Mostest
[Campaign Gimmickry] I don't know why Obama picked me. I may be a brilliant and intuitive reporter, but in most arenas outside my profession I have never, ever been the first to know. Anything.But the Obama for President campaign tells me that's about to change. Any day now I will be the First. To. Know.
The campaign keeps me and oh I dunno, about 82 million of Barack's other close personal friends, on an e-mail list. The latest in their innovative electronic campaign strategies is to announce that people on the list will be the first to know Obama's running mate, once he decides. We'll get the news via e-mail or text message. All we have to do is sign up.
I feel very special. Particularly since I am not exactly part of the breathless Obama is God faction. Yes, I was a Clinton supporter. But all I want at this point is a Democrat in the White House. And that choice is Obama. I think he'll make a fine president. But I'm not as convinced as others seem to be that the man can perform miracles. He's got years of damage to undo. And we're talking the reality of politics, after all.
Anyway, somehow my sorry self landed on the Obama e-mail list. Last month I got a close, personal letter from Michelle Obama, inviting me to make a "pledge" to the campaign (I suddenly felt like I was listening to Doug Fabrizio, pimping for donations during a KUER fund drive. Except there weren't any coffee mugs or CDs on the premium list.). If I donated by such and such a date, I'd be in the running to meet her husband at the National Democratic Convention in Denver.
I feel so special. (Holly Mullen)
Monday, August 11, 2008
Camping. Who Needs It?
[Outdoor Retailer News] Well, the twice-yearly, three-day extravaganza known as the Outdoor Retailers Show just wrapped up in downtown Salt Lake City. Hundreds of Chaco-sandaled, Patagonia-shirted and deeply suntanned people have left, but will rejoin us in another six months.According to a press release I just received with a wrap-up of all cool things for the outdoor life, we can anticipate items soon in retail stores that emphasize smart use of gasoline and other resources. Outdoor apparel firm Gramicci, for instance, is pushing a new line of cycling clothing that bike commuters can wear to the office (Hmm. Can't imagine say, Wells Fargo Bank or LDS Church HQ signing on to that notion).
Also, the companies who churn out outdoor and leisure time gear and gizmos are right on top of the --cliche alert!--staycation. According to CGPR, the Massachusetts p.r. firm for the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, "the 'staycation' concept has been front and center as consumers look for less expensive outdoor alternatives closer to home. Companies including Coleman and Johnson Outdoors showed a wide variety of tents and outdoor furniture that enables consumers to bring the comforts of home to the outdoors including reading lights, fans, hair dryers and even blenders."
What? No solar-powered vibrators?
Seriously, does anyone, anymore, know how to get away from it all? (Holly Mullen)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Local Band Tour Diary: Day 2
We are leaving San Diego finally.
The past few days have been way rad and way sunny. We drove through the night to Joshua Tree after the Tempe, Arizona show and spent the night camped under the stars and siren sounds of coyotes and owls. We slept under the rock formation we dubbed The Pregnant Mother. Shooting stars left and right ripping the atmosphere open.
We got to San Diego Wednesday afternoon, and went to the beach and swim swam swum. We stayed with my old friend Sammi Diego in her cute apt in North Park. She is such a nice human being, good vibes were abound in S.D. Beaches, Art Parties, Girlfriend, Dinner, and the best professional house show ever.
We played last night at this venue/house/recording studio named THE HABITAT. Such good vibes, good people. Garrick's set was the best he's ever played, he was IN IT. It was literally mind bending, beautiful, vibey, droney, perfect. He couldn't have done it better. Hannah, bless her heart, sat at the merch table all the while, we finally started making money.
The vibe was so chill, such good people came out, we played with Drew Andrews of the band The Album Leaf. His set was rad as hell. We went and got burritos and spent alot of time watching David Cross and Tromafilms ... films.
Were hitting the road to Santa Barbara today to go earn some food on a farm on the beach. So wish us luck. Send some positivity our way. I think thats it. I mean there's more, beaches and stalking models and babycake coffee shops to talk about but we're in a rush slightly so i will elaborate later. In one MEGA BLOG.
Thanks guys. Miss you.
-Chaz Prymek, Garrick, Hannah
The past few days have been way rad and way sunny. We drove through the night to Joshua Tree after the Tempe, Arizona show and spent the night camped under the stars and siren sounds of coyotes and owls. We slept under the rock formation we dubbed The Pregnant Mother. Shooting stars left and right ripping the atmosphere open.
We got to San Diego Wednesday afternoon, and went to the beach and swim swam swum. We stayed with my old friend Sammi Diego in her cute apt in North Park. She is such a nice human being, good vibes were abound in S.D. Beaches, Art Parties, Girlfriend, Dinner, and the best professional house show ever.
We played last night at this venue/house/recording studio named THE HABITAT. Such good vibes, good people. Garrick's set was the best he's ever played, he was IN IT. It was literally mind bending, beautiful, vibey, droney, perfect. He couldn't have done it better. Hannah, bless her heart, sat at the merch table all the while, we finally started making money.
The vibe was so chill, such good people came out, we played with Drew Andrews of the band The Album Leaf. His set was rad as hell. We went and got burritos and spent alot of time watching David Cross and Tromafilms ... films.
Were hitting the road to Santa Barbara today to go earn some food on a farm on the beach. So wish us luck. Send some positivity our way. I think thats it. I mean there's more, beaches and stalking models and babycake coffee shops to talk about but we're in a rush slightly so i will elaborate later. In one MEGA BLOG.
Thanks guys. Miss you.
-Chaz Prymek, Garrick, Hannah
Friday, August 8, 2008
New Voodoo
[Burlesque Action] Local dance troupe Voodoo Darlings Burlesque (the ladies who aren't on America's Got Talent) have apparently outgrown The Woodshed; tonight marks their final show at the lime-green venue before moving onto bigger rooms--and they'll be performing their "Crazy Eights" set (8/8/08, natch) on the patio, to boot. Best hope it doesn't rain ... or better yet, hope it does.Tonight will also feature the Voodoo Darlings debut of a new dancer, someone we previously believed couldn't get any more exposure: Deena Marie Evanoff (above), she of the hysterical YouTube videos, Best of Utah '08 award and mad local press galore. If she doesn't have her own PR department, look the hell out if she ever hires one.
Showtime's "Midnight, under the moon," tonight at The Woodshed, 60 E. 800 South. Check out Deena Marie before she becomes governor or something ... (Bill Frost)
Support Local Musicians
Local artist Marcus Bently, who recently went electronic and changed his name to Location, Location--a switch that also reflects the addition of Cam Runyan and Drew Taylor--is currently in the running to play the Treasure Island Music Festival. Details below:
Hi Friends!
Good news. We are Mutiny and Mayhem Finalists. This means we have a 1 in 10 shot to play in San Francisco for the Treasure Island Music Festival. Some other bands playing that weekend are:
the Raconteurs
Justice
TV on the Radio
Goldfrapp
Dr. Dog
Fleet Foxes
Tegen and Sara
Vampire Weekend
the Kills
Tokyo Police Club
and more....
This would be a great opportunity for us but we need your help. Please go to Imeem. com and post some comments. This is a good page to post on...
http://www. imeem. com/treasureislandfestival/blogs/2008/08/04/oSVQjQN5/mutiny_mayhem_finalists
http://www. imeem. com/treasureislandfestival
also check out our profile on Imeem...
http://www. imeem. com/locationlocation
(Jamie Gadette)
Hi Friends!
Good news. We are Mutiny and Mayhem Finalists. This means we have a 1 in 10 shot to play in San Francisco for the Treasure Island Music Festival. Some other bands playing that weekend are:
the Raconteurs
Justice
TV on the Radio
Goldfrapp
Dr. Dog
Fleet Foxes
Tegen and Sara
Vampire Weekend
the Kills
Tokyo Police Club
and more....
This would be a great opportunity for us but we need your help. Please go to Imeem. com and post some comments. This is a good page to post on...
http://www. imeem. com/treasureislandfestival/blogs/2008/08/04/oSVQjQN5/mutiny_mayhem_finalists
http://www. imeem. com/treasureislandfestival
also check out our profile on Imeem...
http://www. imeem. com/locationlocation
(Jamie Gadette)
Comics & Kittens
[Locals on Reality TV] Update: SLC's Marcus came in second on Last Comic Standing, Slippery Kittens Burlesque advanced to the next round on America's Got Talent, and I still couldn't care less about So You Think You Can Dance?, a show I watched 10 seconds of last night and felt at least 10 percent dumber for it. We all know I can't afford that.
The Slippery Kittens perform next in Salt Lake at the Bar Deluxe on Saturday, Aug. 16; Marcus hits Wiseguys in Ogden (Saturday) and WVC (Sunday) this weekend. Don't expect to see him ever again on Fox 13, who last night had the post-show balls to run a "We knew him when" package of clips from his previous morning fill-ins after ignoring their "bud" for months. Guess corporate Fox synergy is more important than supporting one of your own on "another" network.
The bittersweet clip from last night's Comic:
(Bill Frost)
The Slippery Kittens perform next in Salt Lake at the Bar Deluxe on Saturday, Aug. 16; Marcus hits Wiseguys in Ogden (Saturday) and WVC (Sunday) this weekend. Don't expect to see him ever again on Fox 13, who last night had the post-show balls to run a "We knew him when" package of clips from his previous morning fill-ins after ignoring their "bud" for months. Guess corporate Fox synergy is more important than supporting one of your own on "another" network.
The bittersweet clip from last night's Comic:
(Bill Frost)
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Marcus! Was! Robbed!
[Locals on Reality TV] He made it to the Final 2, but SLC's Marcus lost to Iliza Schlesinger on Last Comic Standing--who knew America was ready to vote in a woman?Marcus is still our man, however--he'll be at Wiseguys in Ogden and West Valley City this weekend before going on the LCS tour. Go show him the love, and please don't mention David Archuleta.
Now, we'll see if the Slippery Kittens can stay on America's Got Talent ... (Bill Frost)
Friday Letters Round-Up (Thursday Edition)
I'm the proud owner of an air compressor. Jealous?- How does Jesus grab you, Obama lovers?
- ... and those airline passengers are just a bunch of whiners anyway.
- I like kittens and puppies and homophobia.
- Now that they're getting married, it's only a matter of time before the gays start forcing good, upstanding citizens to ride on parade floats.
(Brandon Burt)
Project Dullway
[Locals on Reality TV] Blame it on the earlier timeslot, blame it on Project Runway overdose (like, six seasons will air this year) or blame it on the dullest outing yet for the Bravo once-hit--ratings are down, no matter how bitchy the contestants get.
SLC's Keith Bryce has kept a low profile on Project Runway thus far; so much so that, if he gets eliminated soon, viewers might ask, "Who's that guy? I haven't seen him in a sewing-room catfight." He survived this week to maybe make a future splash--behold the recap (don't blink or you'll miss him):
As for the local So You Think You Can Dance? contestants ... couldn't care less. However, tonight's the night for Marcus on NBC's Last Comic Standing--and you'll only read about it here! Ha! Marcus on last week's episode:
(Bill Frost)
SLC's Keith Bryce has kept a low profile on Project Runway thus far; so much so that, if he gets eliminated soon, viewers might ask, "Who's that guy? I haven't seen him in a sewing-room catfight." He survived this week to maybe make a future splash--behold the recap (don't blink or you'll miss him):
As for the local So You Think You Can Dance? contestants ... couldn't care less. However, tonight's the night for Marcus on NBC's Last Comic Standing--and you'll only read about it here! Ha! Marcus on last week's episode:
(Bill Frost)
For the "Alternative" Bride
[City Life] City Weekly ... what every smart Salt Lake City bride is reading!A Salt Blog hat tip to photographer Tawsha Hannig. (Holly Mullen)
Dissed! By Mormon G.A.s
[Un-Affirmed, Again] The international support group Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons was supposed to meet with LDS Church President Thomas Monson on Aug. 11--the culmination of years of work by the group to get a sympathetic ear from church hierarchy.On July 24, church leaders abruptly canceled the scheduled conversation and requested the meeting take place "next year." Affirmation's executive committee, however, doesn't plan on taking no for an answer. In an e-mailed press release, the group says it will meet at Salt Lake City's Pride Center at 10 a.m. Monday, and make itself available to any LDS poobah (my word, not theirs) who cares to show up to the breakfast meeting. The media is also invited.
The Mormon Church's official stand on gay members is the old "hate the sin, love the sinner" idea. That is, gay and lesbians are welcome in the church so long as they remain celibate.
As to the Monday breakfast meeting, well, I wouldn't yet order up the cinnamon buns and decaf, Affirmation.
Nevertheless, Affirmation Executive Director Olin Thomas plans to fly in from his home in Alexandria, Va., for the non-meeting. The group was to have focused on what it says is a shockingly high rate of homelessness and suicides among young gay and lesbian Mormons. Affirmation says it has 30 documented cases of suicide that can be directly linked to the isolation and depression gay church members experience.
"In recent years, the Church’s view towards gay and lesbian people has changed, and church leaders now recognize that being gay is a biological characteristic,” says David Melson, Affirmation’s senior assistant executive director, in the press release. “The items that we had planned to discuss all focus on education and on toning down some of the rhetoric. Nothing that we will be proposing requires any change in doctrine.”
“We are concerned at the church’s decision to not attend the meeting on August 11. The deaths, the homelessness, and the grief that occur because of well-intentioned but misguided practices are real, and they must all stop, now.”
Good luck, I say. I've always found it deeply mysterious people would want to remain in a club that wouldn't welcome them--unequivocally--as members. But that's just me.
Above: Affirmation members in 1979, during a march in Washington D.C. (Holly Mullen)
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Darfur Days Part II
[Activism Update] Sorry about the confusion, I had hoped for the previous Darfur Days blog to link to the SaltLakeSavesDarfur group's website but at the time I wrote that blog there were some technical difficulties with the site. It is now up and running and you can check it here for a list of this weekend's activities and how you can learn more about the crisis and get involved right here in Utah.
The subject may be dire and the problem may seem impossible but there are some very easy options for how to help, like the dining for Darfur event this Friday. Below is a list of participating restaurants and coffee shops who this Friday the 8th will be donating a portion of their sales to support on the ground humanitarian work being done by the International Rescue Committee in Sudan. Don't forget to let the restaurants know you're coming out to support the Darfuri people with your patronage so that more dining/fundraising can be done in the future.
*The Dodo Restaurant
The subject may be dire and the problem may seem impossible but there are some very easy options for how to help, like the dining for Darfur event this Friday. Below is a list of participating restaurants and coffee shops who this Friday the 8th will be donating a portion of their sales to support on the ground humanitarian work being done by the International Rescue Committee in Sudan. Don't forget to let the restaurants know you're coming out to support the Darfuri people with your patronage so that more dining/fundraising can be done in the future.
*The Dodo Restaurant
The Gateway at 152 S. 400 West
801-456-2473
*Baxter's Cafe
1615 S. State
801-363-8322
*Rusted Sun Pizzeria
2010 S. State
801-483-2120
*Michelangelo
2156 Highland Dr.
801-486-0332
*Carlucci's Bakery
314 W. 300 South
801-366-4484
*Rusted Sun Pizzeria
2010 S. State
801-483-2120
*Michelangelo
2156 Highland Dr.
801-486-0332
*Carlucci's Bakery
314 W. 300 South
801-366-4484
*The Sage's Cafe
473 E. 300 south
801-322-3790
(Eric S. Peterson)
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Local Band Tour Diary: Day 1
Hey City Weekly Readers,
The Stag Hare and Chaz Prymek tour is off to a pretty mellow, good start. We drove down to Cedar City, UT the first night, just listening to Django Reinhardt and spacing out. The drive was way pretty, until, we ran into a dark brooding cloud of intimidation and security: The Hells Angels. We made it by safe and sound, so don't worry everybody.
We got to Josh Cash's house, where the show was scheduled. It was way nice and mellow, a house full of kids ready to listen and take part in the music. We played with a projector showing the film Robin Hood, the classic cartoon version, projected on a big white wall behind us. So us, the music, the film were one in the same. We tossed our friend "Okay Okay," In the lineup to open. She's coming on tour with us now. The sets were all really nice, Hannah (Okay Okay.) played great, I played pretty well I thought hah, Garrick (Stag Hare) set was a beautiful transcendent ten minutes, so good. Garrick's music is some of my favorite music there is. Hands Down.
We just chilled for a while and played around on the projector, talked to kids, blasted Aphex Twin, and just kicked it. We took off for camping that night and drove till we hit THE VALLEY OF FIRE!!!!! (natl park). Garrick drove till he found some campground. We crashed under the milky way and shooting stars, one after another, in silence, on top of a huge rock formation. Awoke to the sun trying to kill us, and were in awe of our surroundings.
The rocks were bright red and covered in miniature caves and climbing friendly stubs and nubs. What a nice way to wake up. Each of us found our own rocks to zone out, meditate, look at stuff, whatever each of us was doing, our morning ritual I guess. And headed to Tempe.
The hoover dam doesnt deserve to be capitalized.
Tempe is always such a good place, welcoming, beautiful, the nicest people. This place has become like a second home for me. The show was sooo good. Okay Okay, B, Bri White, Hell-Kite, Myself, Stag Hare. We played at this very nice and vibey cafe named 3 Roots Coffee House. Aside from the sound of death that came with the door slamming it was perfect. Every reader needs to listen to those bands that played tonight. Some of my favorite bands and good good friends. Our host was and is the kindest heart. She showed us nothing but hospitality and welcomeness. (apparently welcomeness is a word because word check didn't underline it).
And now, breakfast and swimming, then off to Joshua Tree!
Hope all is well blogger readers. Till next time.
Oh yeah my guitar broke. ... it's fucked up. We'll fix it though.
Sincerly, Chaz Prymek (on behalf of Stag Hare)
The Stag Hare and Chaz Prymek tour is off to a pretty mellow, good start. We drove down to Cedar City, UT the first night, just listening to Django Reinhardt and spacing out. The drive was way pretty, until, we ran into a dark brooding cloud of intimidation and security: The Hells Angels. We made it by safe and sound, so don't worry everybody.
We got to Josh Cash's house, where the show was scheduled. It was way nice and mellow, a house full of kids ready to listen and take part in the music. We played with a projector showing the film Robin Hood, the classic cartoon version, projected on a big white wall behind us. So us, the music, the film were one in the same. We tossed our friend "Okay Okay," In the lineup to open. She's coming on tour with us now. The sets were all really nice, Hannah (Okay Okay.) played great, I played pretty well I thought hah, Garrick (Stag Hare) set was a beautiful transcendent ten minutes, so good. Garrick's music is some of my favorite music there is. Hands Down.
We just chilled for a while and played around on the projector, talked to kids, blasted Aphex Twin, and just kicked it. We took off for camping that night and drove till we hit THE VALLEY OF FIRE!!!!! (natl park). Garrick drove till he found some campground. We crashed under the milky way and shooting stars, one after another, in silence, on top of a huge rock formation. Awoke to the sun trying to kill us, and were in awe of our surroundings.
The rocks were bright red and covered in miniature caves and climbing friendly stubs and nubs. What a nice way to wake up. Each of us found our own rocks to zone out, meditate, look at stuff, whatever each of us was doing, our morning ritual I guess. And headed to Tempe.
The hoover dam doesnt deserve to be capitalized.
Tempe is always such a good place, welcoming, beautiful, the nicest people. This place has become like a second home for me. The show was sooo good. Okay Okay, B, Bri White, Hell-Kite, Myself, Stag Hare. We played at this very nice and vibey cafe named 3 Roots Coffee House. Aside from the sound of death that came with the door slamming it was perfect. Every reader needs to listen to those bands that played tonight. Some of my favorite bands and good good friends. Our host was and is the kindest heart. She showed us nothing but hospitality and welcomeness. (apparently welcomeness is a word because word check didn't underline it).
And now, breakfast and swimming, then off to Joshua Tree!
Hope all is well blogger readers. Till next time.
Oh yeah my guitar broke. ... it's fucked up. We'll fix it though.
Sincerly, Chaz Prymek (on behalf of Stag Hare)
Darfur Days
[Activism] The genocide in Darfur has not stopped. It's still there and it's still going on. Despite being a genocide which should get people's attention the crisis in Darfur seems to suffer from the problem that its so bad alot of people are tuning it out-- alot but not everyone.
This weekend the local group SaltLakeSavesDarfur is teaming up with SLC Amnesty International to put on a weekend fundraiser and education event. The Days of Darfur will include a documentary and panel discussion of the film The Devil Came on Horseback, Thursday at 7 pm at the SLC Library. Local restaurants Friday will donate proceeds from meals to charity efforts through the International Rescue Committee and Saturday a carwash, entertainment and information booths will be setup in Liberty Park. For more info check out SaltLakeSavesDarfur' s website here. (Eric S. Peterson)
This weekend the local group SaltLakeSavesDarfur is teaming up with SLC Amnesty International to put on a weekend fundraiser and education event. The Days of Darfur will include a documentary and panel discussion of the film The Devil Came on Horseback, Thursday at 7 pm at the SLC Library. Local restaurants Friday will donate proceeds from meals to charity efforts through the International Rescue Committee and Saturday a carwash, entertainment and information booths will be setup in Liberty Park. For more info check out SaltLakeSavesDarfur' s website here. (Eric S. Peterson)
Bands Rising And Suspended
It's an all-star night of sorts at The Urban Lounge, with San Francisco's Or, The Whale joining two Salt Lake City bands--Kid Theodore, currently traveling a steady trajectory to success, and Calico, who will be soon be taking an indefinite break as member Brady Gunnell heads off to grad school (for real this time). Gunnell will also participate in Rhys Chatham's Aug. 15 "A Crimson Grail for 200 Guitars." If you happen to be in NYC that evening, head to Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center. 7 p.m. Free.
(Jamie Gadette)
(Jamie Gadette)
Monday, August 4, 2008
Last night on Sci-Fi
[Compubabble] I was watching an episode of the 1980s/'90s version of The Outer Limits last night--which was often quite good, I think. Unfortunately, last night's was not one of the better episodes, except for the fact that it was a goldmine of fake compubabble, which is always entertaining. (Also the fist-head woman in the opening credits is a personal favorite. I mean, a woman with a head that's a fist? She is the limit!)At one point, the Evil Administrator decides to lock the Good Science Guy out of his laboratory so he won't be messing around with the "neural net" (which comprises some neon tubes enclosed in a Plexiglas cylinder). So of course, when GSG tries to use his key card, a disembodied female voice keeps saying, "Access denied." (I'm going to imagine that the source of this serenely imperious voice is fist-head woman, just because it's fun.)
GSG tells his girlfriend he has to "hack into the network and lay down a virus." Unfortunately, when he types his password in, the screen on his i386 machine lights up with big, red letters saying "Access denied."
There was nothing else he could do: He informs his girlfriend that he's going to "drop down to machine-code level." The next screen shot is of shed or hexedit or something; GSG types 8 characters, hits "Enter," and the happy green letters appear saying, "Access granted." (Obviously, no network is safe from "machine-code level!") Apparently, this was all that was needed to "lay down a virus," because now his key card works again, and he has unfettered access to the neural net glowing serenely on its chrome pedestal.
Later, Evil Administrator alerts the Burly Security Guard that there's something amiss. BSG knows what to do: he "drops down to machine-code level" and does a little o' that security-guard-style hex editing. BSG types in 8 characters; when he hits "enter," all the red lights in the building turn on and a klaxon alarm sounds, indicating he was able to do whatever it is you do to un-lay-down a virus. (Stand it up?)
I kept waiting for GSG to say he was going to "tighten up the graphics on level 3," but alas, he obviously wasn't Westwood-accredited:
(Brandon Burt)
Heaven Forbid
[God+Media] Everyone's favorite Mormon news wire the D-News' Mormon Times, regurgitated some remarks from a warning Elder Dallin Oaks from the LDS church's Quorum of the Twelve gave to members Friday about why they shouldn't trust the media.
The article framed from the context of a warning Oaks had given members in 1985 regarding the Hoffman Mormon document forgeries was a kind of 'I told you so' warning to members to make sure they realize the problem with the media these days.
He made some common sense pointers like:
* Newspapers print things out of context
* Newspapers are biased
* Newspapers can be imbalanced
I took these lessons to heart as I read the Mormon Times and began to worry that perhaps this article might have been biased and imbalanced. It did after all only cite Church leader Oaks and didn't talk to anyone who's done religious reporting. I also feared it might be out of context because the article didn't explain why Oaks felt he needed to repeat this message from 1985 (though it may have something to do with the new book that does fault Brigham Young for contributing to the hysteria that led to the Mountain Meadows Massacre).
I had a little crisis here because I wasn't sure what to believe from a religious news article warning against biased, imbalanced, out of context religious news reporting that was itself biased, imbalanced and out of context. Who do I trust?
Then the conclusion of the article cites Oaks, who like a still small voice, clearly makes some helpful indicators to befuddled readers like me.
The first was that if you evaluate articles spiritually you'll never go wrong...if you have the spirit of the holy ghost helping you. Tough luck heathens, you'll just have to decide by yourself if an article is biased by comparing it with other news sources and using your own judgment, ha!
The other indicator you can use to see if an article is biased or not and the one that the article doesn't actually do itself, is just make sure you don't read something that would dare to criticize a church leader:
Elder Oaks' 1985 talk also contained the caution that "criticism is particularly objectionable when it is directed toward church authorities, general or local."
"Evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed is in a class by itself. It is one thing to depreciate a person who exercises corporate power or even government power. It is quite another thing to criticize or depreciate a person for the performance of an office to which he or she has been called of God. It does not matter that the criticism is true." (My bold added)
Gotcha, lets break this down: true criticism of church authorities = evil speaking. Huh, enough said really. (Eric S. Peterson)
Menudo!
So, like, Menudo is totally playing Valley Fair Mall tomorrow! I know, radical, huh? I'm so glad I scored a new pair of neon legwarmers and a Lisa Frank shirt so one of the new members of the decades-old band's ever-changing lineup will notice me in the crowd and take me on a date to the 49th Street Galleria!
(Jamie Gadette)
(Jamie Gadette)
Bombs Away
[Media Euphemisms] So, 11-year-old Bridger Hunt is struggling after major surgery last week for injuries he suffered after a 46-year-old moron set off a pipe bomb in a driveway. Bridger was hit by flying shrapnel. Surgeons likened his massive injuries to those of an IED explosion in Iraq.But for some reason, Salt Lake mainstream media keeps referring to this bomb as a "firework."
The pyromaniac who set off the thing is deeply sorry. He says he only meant to make a firework. Except he didn't. He made a bomb. (Holly Mullen)
Pam Grier!
Tonight, Red Light Books will kick off its new Grindhouse/Exploitation film night, screening cinematic gems including 70s Italian Horrors, Shaw Brothers Kung Fu flicks, Spaghetti Westerns, late 70s - early 80s slasher flicks, Blaxploitation joints, Samurai cinema, British gangster pics, Vigilante picks ...
8:30 p.m.
(Jamie Gadette)
Friday, August 1, 2008
Friday Letters Round-Up
- I was so offended when she got to the part that goes, "Consider all the worlds thy hands hath made" and took off her blouse I had to rewind the tape three times to make sure it wasn't a trick.
- Just because I think everybody who disagrees with me is cursed by God doesn't make me a bigot. After all, God will forgive you once you start agreeing with me.
- Help! The gays are oppressing me.
- Suddenly I've developed an interest in other cultures—and you'll never guess what I've learned!
- The only thing standing between us and an Illuminati-controlled world government is John Bolton's mustache.
Ghostowne CD Release
Don't forget to support City Weekly's Steven Wells Penrod this weekend when his band Ghostowne releases "Dust 'n Bones." It all goes down Saturday at the Paladium.
(Jamie Gadette)
Joshua James
Provo resident and rising singer/songwriter Joshua James will play two shows tonight, starting with a free, all-ages in-store performance at Slowtrain. Concert starts at 5:30 sharp.
Later, James takes the stage at In the Venue. Get there early because this is Friday and the club shuts down promptly at 10 p.m. for dance night action.
(Jamie Gadette)
Later, James takes the stage at In the Venue. Get there early because this is Friday and the club shuts down promptly at 10 p.m. for dance night action.
(Jamie Gadette)
Torrey: Music Festival & Beyond
The annual Torrey Music Festival kicks off this weekend. You can read about it here. But there's a whole lot more going on in the small town near Capitol Reef. The quirky and cool Rim Rock Patio has a pretty sweet lineup in the coming weeks. Touring artists headed that-a-way include Laura Gibson, Blitzen Trapper and BearKat. Full list here. The Patio serves a mean slice of pizza, too.
(Jamie Gadette)
(Jamie Gadette)
On The Road: SLC Artist To Share Tour Diary
Ever wondered what it's like to hit the road as an independent artist? Local solo musician Chaz Prymek is leaving Sunday for a month-long tour in support of his sophomore release, Bicycles & Breakfast. Prymek is an a skilled guitarist (Rhys Chatham recently invited Prymek to record on his next project, "A Crimson Grail," for 200 guitars) and all-around nice guy who makes friends in every town he stops in. Stay tuned for frequent updates from his tour diary, right here on the Salt Blog. And any other musicians/bands interested in contributing similar tour diaries, shoot me an email: jgadette@slweekly.com
(Jamie Gadette)
The Camel's Nose?
[Liquor] Apparently, the DABC can create changes in boozelaw without asking permission from Mothers Against Adulthood and the Legislature.Could this be the camel's nose under the tent? Are our frogs about to be boiled? In 10 years' time, will Utah become a drunken free-for-all? What about the children? (Brandon Burt)
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