Subway to Philly

[Cheesesteak] Call me crazy. But I actually believed it when Subway said that their Big Philly Cheesesteak was Philadelphia Phillies slugger Ryan Howard’s “favorite” sandwich. After all, this guy can eat at Pat’s or Gino’s or Jim’s in Philly anytime he chooses, or at least during home stands. So last weekend I dropped by my local Subway to take their Big Philly Cheesesteak out for a spin. Well, what a turkey!

First, I think Subway is stretching the definition of “steak” to the limit. The steak filling seemed awfully similar to the roast beef they serve. Anyway, the steak portion was puny and where was the Whiz? The lack of grilled onions and peppers just contributed to the travesty. But the real bummer was the price: $6.12 with tax for a sandwich that weighed in at about one-third the size and one-tenth the flavor of a real Philly cheesesteak from Pat’s, which only costs 88 cents more. Just say no to Jared. (Ted Scheffler)

The SNL VP Debate

[Tina Fey] In case you missed it: Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill--nice reaction takes.



(Brandon Burt)

This Is How to Write an Endorsement

[Media] Have you read the New Yorker's endorsement of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama? The column explores the backgrounds of both Obama and his Republican challenger Sen. John McCain, examines the challenges the next United States president must face, and considers the consequences resulting from either candidate's election. Now, that's how you write a thoughtful political endorsement. An excerpt:

Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. ... His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

(Brandon Burt)

"We'll do it live!"

[Humor] A beautiful parody of O'Reilly's famous tantrum.

Oh, this kid's a real trouper. I wonder if he understands what he's saying. (Via Slog.)



(Brandon Burt)

Kopykat Korner

[Media Competition] Three days before this morning's edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, there was City Weekly.

We published this story on October 1.

They published this story on October 4.

As City Weekly intern Joseph Bateman points out in his piece, there are afficionodos of electric car and other alternative energy-fueled vehicles all over the state of Utah. It's practically become an industry for weekend mechanics and alternative energy geeks. So why would the Trib pick the same main subject, with essentially the same photos, to profile as CW did?

I mean, we're flattered over here on our little slice of Main Street. But usually the mainstream media tries to change up their derivative stories just a smidgen. (Holly Mullen)

How Utah Voted on the Bailout

[Congress] After an initial failure, the Millionaire Relief Fund, aka the $700 billion corporate bailout, passed the House on its second attempt and was signed into law with great haste by the Chimpster. The second version of the bill, hefting in at 451 pages, is obviously a vast improvement on the original, which was jotted out on a gum wrapper.

We can certainly be confident that our congressmen and -women, hardworking speedreaders that they are, diligently studied and understood every page. Here's how the Utah all-boy club voted (wow, what a sausagefest!):Love the bailout or hate it, it's too late now. That $700 billion is going where your representatives think it will do the most good: into all kinds of crazy accounts and funds managed by the people who screwed up the economy in the first place. (Remember, these are the same people who think Economics is a "science.")

Final votes: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
("The bailout bill")

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R): Yea

Sen. Bob Bennett (R): Yea

Rep. Jim Matheson (D, up for election): Nay*

Rep. Chris Cannon (R, lame duck): Yea

Rep. Rob Bishop (R, up for election): Nay**

* Matheson stuck to his guns and staunchly
opposed the bailout throughout the process.

** Bishop didn't change his vote, either--although
he may have been "on the fence."

They've worked so hard; if only there were some way we could register our approval or displeasure!

But wait--isn't there some kind of votey-thing coming up soon? Why, sure there is: Election Day is in one month: Tuesday, Nov. 4. Both Matheson and Bishop are anxiously waiting to hear how you have enjoyed their performance, and there are all kinds of interesting candidates running for Cannon's old 3rd-district seat. Try and guess which one will vote the way you want! It's fun!

Want to join in? Sure you do! All you need is to be a registered voter. If you are an American citizen who will be at least 18 years old by Election Day and are not currently incarcerated, it's your right. (Just out of jail? No problem! In Utah, a convicted felon is eligible to vote as soon as he/she is released from prison, even on probation or parole. Were you railroaded by the legal system? You know what to do--vote against that judge or prosecutor who sent you down the river. It'll make you feel better and, considering that delivering a hard shank to your enemy's gut is no longer an option, voting is one of the few legal ways available for expressing your seething hatred and resentment, you impulsive outlaw, you.)

If you've been waiting till the last minute to register, this is the last minute. You need to register now. You can still register by mail, but you must send in the form no later than Monday, Oct. 6.

Try this: It only takes about 10 minutes. And it's easy: Go to this Website, click the "Begin Registration" button at the bottom of the page, and fill out the form. All they want is your name, address and driver's license number (or the last four digits of your Social Security number). There are a couple other fields to fill out; nothing traumatic. It's a hell of a lot easier than setting up a Facebook profile or an eBay account.

Notice there is a box you can check for "permanent vote-by-mail." If you check that box, Sherrie Swenson--she's the Salt Lake County Clerk, and she's really very nice--will mail you a ballot three weeks before the election. Then you can vote in the comfort and privacy of your own home. On Election Day, while everyone else is forced to go hang out at some crowded, germ-ridden elementary school, you can slap on your "I Voted Today Two Weeks Ago" sticker, lean back with your feet up, and smile.

After you fill out the brief questionnaire, you will be given a link to your PDF voter registration form. Download it, print it out, sign it, put it in an envelope, lick a stamp, and snailmail it to Sherrie by Monday at the latest. (The address is on the PDF; it's Salt Lake County Elections Division, 2001 S. State Street #S1100, Salt Lake City, UT 84190-1051) Look at your watch: Only 10 minutes have elapsed. Maybe 15 if you're methodical. You' can spare a few minutes; it's the weekend.

DO IT NOW; do it this instant. Don't wait until Tuesday, or you'll be forced to drive to Sherrie's office and register in person. (The last date to register in person is Monday, Oct. 20, only two weeks away.)

Just do it! DO IT, DAMMIT, DO IT!

(Brandon Burt)

RadioActive Tonight: Veep Debate Redundancy

[Radio] City Weekly's Bill Frost (apparently representing urban liberals who love drive-thru abortions and free-trade weed at the Farmers Market) and other panelists (possibly including experts like a gun-totin' Republican hockey mom and a bar bouncer) will review last night's Vice Presidential Debate between Lurch (D) and Peggy Hill (R) on KRCL 90.9's RadioActive tonight, 6-7 pm. Likely to be not as boring as the actual debate, you betcha ... (Bill Frost)

And the winner is ...

[The V.P. Debate] ... the winner is Gwen Ifill. I'll admit I've got a thing for Ifill--she always strikes me as absolutely genuine, and she's just so damn good at her job. She kept this debate going right on schedule without once losing her cool, and so deftly handled topic changes that the viewer hardly noticed that Sarah Palin kept answering questions that had not yet been asked. (Also, Ifill's smile makes me feel all warm inside, as if everything's going to be OK, and like she runs such a tight, friendly ship that one of her intern assistants is about to take a batch of cookies out of the oven at just the right moment.)

Thankfully, Palin announced from the get-go that she wasn't even going to try to answer the questions, but preferred to speak "to the American people" directly. This was wise, not only because Palin tends to go off the rails when she's not reciting from a memorized statement, but, by comparison with Joe Biden's off-the-cuff style, Palin will play well with those who expect everybody on TV to exhibit a glossy, anchor-desk exterior. (Palin's pronunciation of "nuclear" was interesting--any news anchor knows how to pronounce it, and Palin managed it once or twice, seemingly by mistake. The rest of the time, she made a studied effort to say "nucular." Was it an attempt to prove that strange, belabored GOP talking-point that the "alternate pronunciation" favored by George W. Bush actually exists?)

Still, between McCain-bashing sessions, Biden was the only candidate to show any interest in the actual questions. Astute viewers--former debate-squad geeks, mainly--will recognize that there is a considerable amount of intellectual flexibility beneath Biden's rumpled exterior. He thinks about things, and his principles seem based on reason rather than ideology. To avoid disaster, Palin had to cling rigidly to her speechwriters' prepared material; Biden is better at extemporizing, but he had to avoid losing his cool and reacting with Al Gore-like huffs and grimaces whenever Palin cheerfully blurted out some GOP-style whopper about economic policy or the Iraq War.

I listened to the first 15 minutes of the debate on KUER, on my way home from work, and viewed the remainder at home on KUTV-2--so I missed out on features like CNN's pleasure graph, which measured from moment to moment how viewers of both sexes were enjoying the onscreen action. Both Democrats and Republicans, of course, will claim victory.

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I admit to having an agenda--I want Barack Obama to be president. But, to be honest, I didn't hate Sarah Palin. She really is likable, if you don't think about what she's actually trying to do. I still fear her as much as I fear any stealth-Evangelical Manchurian candidate but, if it were possible to take her at her word, she would be the type of person I wouldn't mind having a beer with. (Of course, by far, the best evening of all would be margaritas with Gwen Ifill.) Unfortunately, we've seen where that kind of voting gets us.

They both are very nice candidates, and, even though the likability contest was obviously stacked against Biden, he's a fighter. He got in his licks. He absolutely hammered the Bush administration on the money it's spent on the made-up war in Iraq vs. the justifiable war in Afghanistan. He scored the evening's highest emotionally charged moment discussing the struggles of American families in his statement, "I know what its like to raise a child where you are not sure he's going to make it." His criticism of Dick Cheney and the "unitary executive"--a staggeringly important issue, but one not easy to articulate in two minutes--rang true.

And, in the end, Biden was absolutely correct: This could be the most important election since 1932. The prospect of four more years of irresponsible Republican rule is terrifying. So I'm going to say that, in substantive terms, Biden won--which is to say that, if they were playing by Lincoln-Douglas high-school forensics rules, the teachers would have given him an A-. Palin gets a C, but after some grade-grubbing and a stern note from her parents, she manages to change it to a solid B-.

Which was much better than we expected.



(Brandon Burt)

Architectural Atonement

[Downtown] I've been watching with interest the restoration of a beautiful old façade just on the other side of Sam Weller's Books from the City Weekly offices. I don't know a lot about architecture, but I believe the style is neoclassical. (I was calling it "Egyptian revival," which is a term I may have simply made up, but for some reason that's how it strikes me. You know, it's all kind of mystical and Rosicrucian and fraught with symbolism, the way all things were back at the turn of the 20th century. Perhaps the style is more accurately termed Greek revival.)

In the mid-20th century, people wanted buildings to look sleek and, well, as bland as possible so as not to detract from those big, swashy, modern brush-script signs and logos they liked in those days. So they covered up the old building façades with flat panels. Even after big, swashy logos fell out of fashion, however, the boring, flat-panel façades remained--for decades contributing an opaque joylessness to downtown's general air of desolation.

It's exciting that property owners such as this one care enough to restore the original integrity of their buildings. It gives me a strange feeling--one that I haven't had for a long time. I'm having a hard time identifying it ... what is that feeling? You know, the opposite of dread and despair? The emotion you feel when you think that things might, one day, stop getting worse, or even improve?

Oh, yeah! That feeling is hope. Hope that, in 10 years, downtown is going to be an amazing and beautiful place to work and play.

I wasn't able to determine the architectural term for this interesting panel on the front of the building. (I almost called it a "medallion," but I think that applies to ceilings not walls. I'm curious, though, so if any architecture geeks know the term, let me know.) It once gave the building's construction date and, I think, the name of the architect--or maybe the original owner:

"B.G.R. *OULD, 1**8."

It, along with other details, was damaged during installation of the steel beams used to support the secondary flat façade. That is, it's not the fault of the people who are restoring the building. A group of us were chatting recently about what the original lettering might have been. My wild guess is "B.G.R. Gould, 1918."

(Brandon Burt)

CarCrashLanded

Last Saturday, Portland's CarCrashLander touched down at Slowtrain, performing for a decidedly modest crowd of maybe ten people. Shows you how much sway I have in this town.

Oh well.

Low turnout notwithstanding, the amiable quartet played as if they'd sold out Madison Square Garden, taking advantage of the live setting to pump up the volume on songs whose recorded versions are much softer, less keen on distortion.

Fronted by multi-instrumentalist Cory Gray who plays in several popular Portland groups including Norfolk & Western, CarCrashLander produces beautiful, piano and trumpet-driven material buoyed by Gray's hushed, but confident vocals. Guitarist Alexis Gideon (formerly of cross-dressing rap dup Princess and proud owner of a solo project headed to the Woodshed Oct. 28, along with Shelley Short whose harmonies on CarCrashLander's "Gold Sunset" are truly something else) turned heads (well, at least mine) with crazy noisy effects pedals that helped transform the set into a psychedelic frenzy. Totally loud and enjoyable.
I highly recommend checking them out and begging them to play again, both at Slowtrain (whose acoustics seem to be getting better and better) and perhaps a larger watering hole.

Before and/or after, we can all go to Twilite.

(Jamie Gadette, Photos by the lovely Ayn Averett)

Rant & Roll

[No Rescue Rally] Are you mad as hell and not going to take it anymore? Then head to the Federal Building at 150 S. State on Friday, Oct. 3, from 5-6:30 p.m. and tell Congress and Wall Street just what you think of the Fail-Out plan.

Look for the folks from Utah Jobs With Justice who'll be there demanding that Congress:

• Make the guilty execs who profited from the mess pay for the clean-up
• Ensure capital infusions have binding public ownership requirements
• Restructure and rein in reckless private financial institutions
• Pass a real recovery plan, for Main Street as well as Wall Street, paid for with progressive taxation, that addresses the needs for good jobs, affordable housing, health care, pensions, infrastructure and green economy.

The only question is, will someone be listening? By 5 p.m. Friday, most fed workers are history. (Jerre Wroble)

Cuckoos Against Kokopelli

[Community Activism] A story in the Trib illustrates that's it's possible to make a difference in this world, even if you're a misguided idiot. Scandalized and titillated by a statue of an American Indian fertility god at Edge of the Cedars State Park, some puritanical scolds formed a pressure group and had it removed. Blanding is not just a place, it's a process.

(Originally, the group called itself "Citizens Opposed to Carvings of Kokopelli." Then, after they printed out T-shirts printed with the group's acronym, they became opposed to themselves, organized a leaflet campaign, and wouldn't stop protesting each other until they had forced themselves to change their name to the "Values Committee.")

Park management refused to clear a patch of locoweed, however, evidently reasoning that a group that was so obviously insane to begin with has no standing.

Popular images of Kokopelli, of the type found in corporate logos and on wind chimes and serenity desk fountains in gift shops all over southern Utah, typically omit the vital appendage, rendering the "fertility god" infertile--which, if you think about it, is much more offensive and perverse than otherwise. The effect this has had on the the popular imagination is obvious.

(Brandon Burt)

The Palin Prep Vlog

[Campaign '08] How's Sarah Palin preparing for tonight's Vice Presidential Debate against Joe Biden? When she's not creekside, that is? Not this vlog, though it is mildly entertaining. We all know SLC's own Deena Marie could do better; we'll be waiting, DM ...



(Bill Frost)

Hold The Onion

In case you were wondering what to look for during tonight's much-anticipated debate between vice-president candidates Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden, the most useful tidbits come -- as usual -- from The Onion. Trust us, everything will make so much more sense. (Scott Renshaw)

UtahFM.org: Pinpoint SLC 5

[Media/Podcast] This week, UtahFM.org's local entertainment podcast Pinpoint SLC features SLUG's Angela Brown chatting up Spy Hop and Musicology--not related to Prince, far as we know.

Hear Pinpoint SLC now:

UtahFM.org

Podcast RSS Feed

Subscribe using iTunes

(Bill Frost)

Band On The Run: BOA Tour Diary Continues

Day 23. Stop Buzzin' My Harsh: A list of things you've missed.

1. No gas in Nashville, due to Hurricane Ike. The BOAs slept at The Basement: Jay, Trever, and Kirk in the parking lot on the pavement, the rest in the van.

2. Jamie almost got hit by a truck jay-running across the street to catch Robert Plant. Mr. Plant was startled and slipped into a shop, but to no avail. Jamie caught him & got his autograph: "Stay Alive, Robert Plant."

3. Band of Annuals attend U.N. Cocktail party at the Rayburn building in D.C. (snacks & booze? yes please)

4. That night we slept in an abandoned middle-school. In the morning we were kicked out by an angry old man, the blanket torn from a groggy Jimmie Timm (if you've ever seen Jamie in the morning...)

5. In NYC waiting at our friend Lauren's apt door, Trever and Brent were hit with an iPod charger! A crazy woman threw it from the second floor. She then came downstairs, we thought to let us in...but instead gave us a doubled handed flip-off yelling "Get the Fucking Point!!!"

6. Later that day she barged into Lauren's apartment, twice. We called the cops.

7. The van smelled more like death than usual. Charlie tracked down the smell: a little cooler filled with hotdogs we got in Nashville, ten days prior.

8. Brent and Trever rode bikes across Manhattan Bridge. Kirk (the merch dude) took off and popped his tire in Chinatown--took the subway and met us in Brooklyn.

9. 30th Street Guitars fixed Trever's bass & provided a box to ship the loaner bass back to Little Rock. (thanks guys!)

10. Jamie flushed a tiny harmonica down Lauren's toilet.

11. Don't take a trailer to NYC. Or D.C. for that matter.

(Band of Annuals)

Saveuring Breakfast

[Breakfast] If, like me, you get a little teary remembering the offal and eggs breakfast at the much-missed Bill & Nada’s, you might want to take a gander at the October issue of Saveur. The Breakfast Issue is an ode to all things breakfast, from British bubble & squeak and Mexican chilaquiles to Parsi akuri and the sayur lodeh breakfast of Singapore. Did you know that in Ghana, a popular breakfast is preserved fish with an incendiary chile sauce called shitto? Beats cold pizza. You can bring on the scrapple at Saveur.com. (Ted Scheffler)

Politics and Beer

[Political Bar Crawls] Okay. I'll admit it. I'm a political junkie. Each day, I get pleas from candidates and organizations across the political spectrum seeking donations or free labor. It's my obsession that brings the influx of emails. Most of the time, I just hit the delete key. Ridiculously priced fundraisers that I can't afford or sitting in a cubicle making phone calls isn't how I want to spend my five minutes of free time. I'm not sure why but political events seem doomed to be boring.

But an email from the Young Democrats of Utah and Drinking Liberally SLC changed my thinking. The two organizations are holding a Park City bar crawl this Friday outside Mulligans Bar (800 Main St.) at 8:00 p.m. As the event states, "You don’t have to be young - and you don’t have to be a democrat -to enjoy great company and political conversation during this event."

Politics and beer. What could be better? Perhaps, a downtown bar crawl but maybe that's pressing my luck. (Joseph Bateman)

Now THAT'S Fair and Balanced!

[Media] Fox News is so fair and balanced, they count the hands of imaginary people who aren't even in the room ...



(Brandon Burt)

The Latest Economic Analysis From George Will

[Media] If we proles weren't so greedy, none of this ever would have happened. Ooh, plus a Sinclair Lewis quote! Well, lah-di-dah. Them newspaper-type folks read books!

Apparently, George Will's friends have decided that we think of ourselves as "Main Street" people--setting ourselves in resentful opposition to those "Wall Street" types. For my part, I consider myself a "university district" person--and I've learned that there are very good reasons not to hang out with stockbrokers. None of those reasons has anything to do with Will's fantasies of populist resentment. (Mainly, it's just that my spare time is limited, so I can't justify spending it with a crass asshole in a suit whose only topics of conversation are 1. crude comments about potential sexual targets, and 2. the amount of money he made last year.)

From there, Will constructs an elaborate fairy tale about the way we commoners look at ourselves and our finances. For instance, we have a nasty habit of trying to secure homes for our families. And, if that weren't bad enough, when we get cheated out of our equity and booted onto the street in droves, we have the audacity to blame the poor, misunderstood predatory lenders for mismanaging their investments. Simply because the government has been, for the past eight years, confiscating a third or so of our wages to prop up CEOs' lavish lifestyles is no reason for us to get all uppity. If we weren't prepared to sacrifice an additional five-eighths of our income on the altar of free-market consumer capitalism, we had no business attempting to sleep indoors in the first place.

Then, Will lauds some "rising generation of thoughtful Republicans" comprised, apparently, of the four remaining Americans who have failed to recognize the moral, intellectual and managerial bankruptcy of the GOP. Two of them voted for the bailout and two voted against it--but all four did so based on sound economic principals. Well, good for them. Sound economic principals are evidently flexible as far as the Republican Party is concerned, but thank goodness they're not so flexible as to encompass the dangerous and unsound principals which led Democrats to vote for and against the bailout.

Will finishes up by claiming the 2008 elections are "closely contested," and by characterizing the public's "principals" as "center-right." The Republican flak is whistling in the dark: The GOP is desperately trying to keep its losses in Congress down to a merely catastrophic level, while a McCain White House win will take either a miracle or a concerted felonious effort.

And, if it really were possible to ascertain the average left-to-right political position of "the public," how could that average, mathematically, be anything other than "center"? This is where Will's whole argument collapses: If the public--that public which Will has just spent 750 words belittling as self-serving and irresponsible--really has "center-right principals," then it must be those center-right Republican principals that have brought the economy to its knees. QED, asshole.

George Will, you can fuck right off. I am sick and tired of your intellectually lazy diatribes, and those of your corporate-media cohorts. Yeah, you're good at using dog-whistle words, and few readers will bother to rigorously analyze what you write--which is why you've been able to get away with such shoddy logic for so long. But don't you feel even a little guilty for profiting from this kind of calculated intellectual dishonesty?

If not, sir, then I'm afraid you have no soul.

(Brandon Burt)