Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Hey, whattaya know---we have an actual, bona fide prayer meeting tonight! Hurry: step right up!



Somewhat prescient, eh? The only somewhat false note is Zappa's use of the word "friendly" to describe Jesus Freaks. In my experience at a nominally Presbyterian college during most of the 1970s, that term was rarely applicable (mostly only in the early years of the decade). And today? They long ago joined a club that coheres solely by expressing its collective disapproval of, and superiority to, America's undesirables (i.e., everyone who doesn't belong to the club). This makes them feel so good about themselves, at least until they get home, that they give the preacher bales of money to run lucrative, tax-exempt business enterprises so he can live the lifestyle of a Renaissance-era Cardinal.

And, seriously, we ain't Number 3, either. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing, Frank Zappa (October 1978, Saturday Night Live, NBC), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Won't need to search in Pakistan this time

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So Vice President Biden made news today by telling House Democrats today that the teabaggers have "acted like terrorists" during the debt ceiling standoff. President North Star will probably give him a scolding for saying so, but what he really should be doing is setting up a secure conference call with SEAL Team 6. Maybe a nice black-helicopter tour of the Potomac for a few properly selected chiefs of think tanks and cable news operations would be just the thing to lower the temperature in the glistening swamp on a hill. JK LULZ!!!

Meanwhile,at the bottom of the TPM piece linked above, we learn that Republican National Committee (RNC) chair "Reince Priebus" has "tweeted" that VP Biden has "more than crossed a line today when he called fiscal conservatives 'terrorists'. I demand an apology." Haha! I hope Biden gives "Priebus" an apology by way of his posterior annular ring.

By the way, I never make fun of a person's name, but I'll make an exception here. What the fuck kind of name is "Reince Priebus" supposed to be? I mean, really? And I'll add to that rhetorical question the amusing discovery made awhile back by some unnamed wag: if you remove all the vowels from his name, you're left with RNC PR BS. If that's not evidence that witty time travelers from the future have modified our current timeline, then I'm a monkey's uncle and so are you.

Stockholm, DC

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Paul Krugman, paraphrasing Jonathan Chait in The New Republic (and himself on many other occasions), boils the so-called deficit crisis into its irreducible essence:

As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

In the Stockholm Syndrome world of Washington, DC, and the corporate media that sustain America's political withdrawal from consensual reality, this kind of talk from a liberal is condemned as "partisan bickering" or "uncivil."

Putting that childish, dishonest perspective aside for later discussion, preferably on someone else's blog, I simply suggest that a skeptical reader simply  at the evidence that has been right in front our our noses from the moment we learned about Grover Norquist's quest to drown the federal government in the bathtub. Use Occam's razor. Is there a simpler, more direct statement that explains the state of our political discourse today?

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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During the so-called Summer of Love, this peculiar composition was "in the tube," chartwise, for The Beach Boys. I never understood the song at the time, but it's grown on me after 40-odd years. I still don't understand it, though. And just to make matters a little more inscrutable, here's an alternate version that didn't make it out of the studio until a few decades later. But it's the one Brian Wilson originally intended for you and me to hear.



This track was supposed to be part of Wilson's "psychedelic" masterpiece album, Smile. But his well documented crackup overtook him before he could get the whole thing right to his ears and ego. The completed pieces---the releasable ones, at least---were issued on a disc called Smiley Smile. Yes, "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" were basically salvage material from the Smile project. The version of Smiley Smile that I own, a 1990 reissue that also includes the Wild Honey album, includes the present track.

Wilson, morbidly depressed over the whole matter, claimed to have destroyed all the 1966 - 67 Smile masters. He "reconstructed" the project in 2004, unwisely in my opinion. I've unintentionally heard snips from it, and prefer not to hear any more.

So here's a summer song for you, simmered in vinegar by Brian Wilson 44 years ago, presented to commemorate both our current brain-denaturing heat wave and the slide of much of our populace into a state of desperate mental illness. Brian was far ahead of his time on that score, as well.

Heroes and Villains (Alternate Take), The Beach Boys (issued 1990, Capitol C2 93696), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

The Little Theater Screen

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OK, this is for Saturday morning. But pipe down when you watch it---Dad's still sleeping!



I think this is one of Fleischer Studios' best and most diabolical cartoons ever. I can't think of another with so much nonstop visual invention. The only breaks in the action are there to inject suspense or move the anti-plot in a new direction. And the surreal thread that these scenes are strung upon writhes like something that the coroner might have tweezed out of Edgar Allen Poe's brain through a nostril. Except for the appearance of our special canine guest star and the awesome, fetishistic Radio City Music Hall finale.

Yes, they really did show these cartoons on TV in the 1950s, when there was a scarcity of made-for-TV animation. As I've mentioned before, though, Fleischer cartoons were not produced for Depression-era tots... at least not until Hollywood set up the Hayes censorship office and they put a dumpy housefrock on Betty Boop.

As a point of semi-interest, this short was released to theaters 80 years ago last Sunday (24 July).

Bimbo's Initiation, Dave Fleischer, Director (1931, A Fleischer Studios Talkartoon; Grim Natwick, Animator), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"The Little Theater Screen" was invented by Frazier Thomas.

Ennui in the 22nd century

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At home in the early 1990s, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a favorite of two of the three men of my house. Big Rock Head sort of pretended to like the show, but he confessed in much later days that it bored shit out of him and made him fall asleep. But Beer-D was fascinated by the bald-headed Shakespearean captain, the animalistic-looking Klingon security chief, the bozoistic first officer, and all the Industrial Light & Magic infrastructure. Over several recent years we revisited all seven seasons over biweekly dinners, episodes in order, as we affectionately decomposed all the instances of internally inconsistent logic, bullshit motivations, bogus technology as judged by 15 years of hindsight, and so on... not diminishing our enjoyment one iota. And since that time, we have also revisited every episode of that show's successor, Deep Space 9.

Despite the undeniable lack of "gravitas" reeking from the entire Star Trek enterprise (LULZORS!!!), as TV adventure fare goes, these shows generally achieved a reasonably high level of production value, attention to detail, and philosophical speculation. Owing to these attractions, I think, Beer-D had to be coaxed a bit to plunge into the original Shatner series, and I myself had not followed it closely as as a youth, and wasn't sure about the ultimate entertainment value.

I hunted down the original DVD release from an Amazon affiliate in order to get the undoctored Star Trek experience, without new special effects or any embellishments other than a clean transfer from the masters to a high-res medium. I did not want any of the "fakiness" sanitized away, both for aesthetic and historical reasons. I hereby declare that my purchase has amounted to a major entertainment score. The show is a true laff riot from bottom to top.

Tonight I won't offer any reviews or critiques of Gene Roddenberry's universe, but will help you dip a toe into the water of Trek context. The catalyst for all this exposition is a Tumblr photo site I saw mentioned on BoingBoing, which you can view directly here. The "Space Trek" site presents the enterprise in the full glory of its 22nd century banality. Behold: the Sick Bay!

Note the clean, modern architectural lines, painted in county-jail green. The rippled medicine cabinet glass elegantly secures the contents of the meds locker. We are viewing a workstation where the curvy space nurse can pose in a vinyl office chair while sterilizing the formica surfaces. Note the highly advanced, Space-Walmart-type sanitation devices. At least there's no danger of running out of Space Lysol on this tub, because our leggy nurse has two backup bottles at the ready... just in case. No need for labels, though. If she forgets what's inside, she can just summon Mr. Spock to logically infer the contents.

The S&P coup

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I want to add a little to my previous post on S&P's implicit threat to blackmail the federal government into adopting a specific piece of legislation (i.e., $4 trillion spending reduction over the next 10 years).

Paul Krugman seems a little skeptical that an S&P downgrade of US debt would be huge deal because, basically, bond traders already know that ratings agencies don't know what they're doing:

The point is that when S&P or Moody’s speaks, that’s not the voice of “the market”. It’s just some guys with an agenda, and a very poor track record. And we have no idea how much effect their actions will have.

I don't doubt that. But to me the important point is not so much what financial traders do with an S&P intervention of this nature, but what the media and politicians will do with it. A ratings agency downgrade of US debt will be presented as something like scientific evidence that we need to finish drowning the federal government in the bathtub now! now! now! It's hard for me to see how our disinformation economy could get any worse---how it could further accelerate America's decline. But my intuition tells me we haven't reached terminal velocity yet. We'll be even closer when the press, the Congress, and the President anoint Wall Street as the new fourth branch of government.

Fourth branch, Third World

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I think that Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, like the few other reports I've seen about the Standard and Poors threat to downgrade US debt to Third World status, just misses the point.

Yes, insane Republican ideology and The Conceder In Chief have done a swell job creating an existential economic threat by tying approval of the debt ceiling to the politics of government spending and taxation. This is the "Worst. Congress. Ever." Blah blah blah.

In journalism lingo, there's a "buried lede" in Klein's piece:

And having upset S&P, appeasing them might not be so simple. Beers repeatedly emphasized that he wasn’t just looking for a number. He was looking for something “credible.” And credible, in his view, was something that both parties had embraced. After all, he argued, deficit-reduction plans have to be continuously implemented over a decade or more, and if there’s not “buy-in from both parties,” there’s no reason to believe that the plan will survive the inevitable changes in political control.

On the one hand, the S&P view is a reasonable analysis. But on the other, sinister hand:

You might ask whether all this matters. S&P got the financial crisis almost entirely wrong — in fact, their analytical errors, alongside those of other agencies, substantially contributed to it — so why should we listen to them now?

But the question isn’t whether S&P should be listened to. It’s whether the market will listen to them.

Yes, that's right. The once-respectable financial rating agency, which is as tarnished by the 2008 economic implosion as any Wall Street investment bank, has made federal legislative politics an evaluative criterion for assessing the full faith and credit of the US government and the debt it issues.

And as a small digression, it's probably worth inserting here that there really is no deficit crisis. The deficit is high-ish in relation to conventional yardsticks, but interest rates are so low (near zero as applicable to government borrowing, in fact), that there is no problem servicing this debt... unless the ceiling isn't raised promptly. The "deficit crisis" is an invention of right-wing politicians, corporate media, and as a johnny-come-lately, President North Star.

But back to the libretto: There is nothing benign whatsoever about what S&P is up to here. They aren't trying to serve as a voice of reason: they're emphatically inserting itself into the political fray with the power of a fourth branch of government, but one outside of federal checks and balances. "You motherfuckers attend to the 'deficit crisis' ," S&P seems to be saying, "or else we'll sic The Market on you." With "you," of course, meaning both politicians and voters. It is an aggressive, unconscionable lobbying assault on behalf of The Corporation---a protection racket that the federal government must now subscribe to with an initial payment of $4 trillion extracted from middle-class taxpayers, the poor, and the elderly. If they pull this off, there will be no end to the racket until we're all living in sheet metal shacks on dirt lots.

The S&P threat gives every politician in Washington enough cover, or terror, to cave in to the demands of the Republican legislative caucus and The Conceder in Chief for "the good of the nation." Once this smelly, syphilitic Wall Street camel has its nose all the way into the tent, S&P might conceivably become as powerful as the Federal Reserve in dictating the grim economic future of America. No accountability; just the perpetual threat to shit everybody else's nest if some warty bankers and corporate chieftains don't like the drift of public policy.

Cavalcade of marsupials

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It turns out I was correct about the massing of the terror prowling the night kitchen here in my private domain, The United State Of Moronica. Not a mouse. And happily, not a rat. Fifty50 reader Carlos Magnus was kind enough to lend me a small steel live trap, which I deployed Monday night somewhat arbitrarily in front of the basement door against the breakfast nook wall. I loaded the bait tray with a nice Japanese rice cracker thinly coated with peanut butter on each side (for good adhesion to the tray).

At about 0330, around the corner from the head of my bed, I heard something fairly large but sluggish rattling around in the cage. Since I hadn't set the catches on the trap correctly, my prey almost worked himself out before I got him out the front door. Not a raccoon, either: a possum that was almost too large for the cage! Since this drill interrupted a sleep cycle I could barely navigate or perceive what was happening, but felt satisfied with my high-level trapping achievement and quickly drifted off as soon as I hit the mattress.

On a whim, "just in case," I reset the trap again the next night. And I'll be a suck-egg mule if I didn't hear the goddam cage rattling around at the crack of 0230! Luckily, this coincided with the conclusion of a sleep cycle, apparently, and I had the presence of mind to grab the Nikon D80 and take a mugshot of this guy.

Not the same prisoner I took the previous night. Significantly smaller. For reference, the baseboard behind him is about 3 inches high. I was pleased that the creature remained calm and also well behaved, elimination-wise. Having set the trap latches correctly this night, I carried the trap onto the porch and gave him early parole. Of course, on the third night, when I caught another motherfucking possum (same trap, same place, at about 0130 this time), it occurred to me that the specimen pictured above might have found his way back into the crib from the staging area of my porch. He seemed a bit smaller than Two of 4, though (that's right---four!), so it may have been another sibling. Anyway, with great cunning I released the latest addition to my collection all of 15 feet away from the porch, and he made a beeline across the street to hopefully break into a neighbor's house.

Last night, I deployed two live traps (one in the basement) and came up with No. 4 at about 0230; possibly even a bit smaller than No 3. This time I let my captive chill in the cage on the porch for the duration and took him into work with me. While tempted to release him in the foyer of Rudy's apartment building or inside of Walmart on Prospect, I found an unkempt field for the release. Understandably, Four of 4 was showing some teeth to reflect his poor attitude after a noisy, bumpy ride in in the back compartment of the station wagon, but still behaved well enough.

So tonight, in a few minutes I'll swallow a handful of pills and wash 'em down with 8 oz of gin in preparation for bedtime. But again with double-barrel traps baited with a succulent midnight snack for the herd of marsupials in the basement.

Saturday After Hours

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About 40 minutes ago I sent the manuscript of the book I'm editing to the author. It's a monster job, and there will be plenty more editorial work to do after author revisions, but it should be much less intensive than what I've just completed. The immediate significance of this milestone should be a big drop in subliminal stress, a possible moderation of blood pressure, and a general boost to my quality of life. Also, slightly less-lazy blogging behavior.

Speaking of monsters, last night while trying to sleep I heard something very ungainly-sounding that was ratfucking the dirty dishes on my kitchen countertop. It sounded more massive than a mouse, and got into things that mice haven't gotten into before. Coming downstairs just now to call it an evening, I heard some more sounds, this time apparently coming from the basement. As I started to descend the stairwell to investigate, I heard some very peculiar sounds that may have been vocalizations---low and suppressed, short impulses mostly, that could have come from a bird (crow, grackle, or starling), a squirrel that is unhappy, or even a raccoon. I shut the basement door and won't think about it any more until the motherfucker has starved to death.

Enough. Nighty night.

Happy Independence Day, Soldier!

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Beer-D is watching Independence Day fireworks tonight in a small town called Mahomet (yes, I agree---it's a much more peculiar name for these parts even than "Podunk" is). It is a Champaign County bedroom community to which affluent people flee from our twin cities for the "good schools" and other mythical quality-of-life perks. Any-hoo, I received a text message from him shortly before the fireworks began, commenting on how well received some patriotic Toby Keith song was by the Proud Americans in attendance. Then, this exchange between him and me:

Beer-D: There's some bugler actually playing Taps right now. The fuck?

RubberCrutch: He must think it's Memorial Day.

Beer-D: Oh my god, they played it for a guy who's ABOUT to be deployed to Afghanistan!

Well, yes, I understand that Taps is played at lights-out on Army installations every night. Likewise, I am familiar with the fact that the sounding of Taps by a bugler is universally recognized by Americans as a musical salute to a deceased soldier at his or her funeral. I am not a military veteran, but I'm pretty sure that Taps is not a song that a soldier wishes to hear immediately before being deployed to a theater of operations. I wonder if this untimely gaffe even registered with anyone other than the soldier and his family.

A Word From Our Alternate Universe Sponsor

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From the land of pines
Lofty balsams



I actually picked up a 6 of Hamm's at the package store this afternoon because they only had a "five pack" of Schlitz (which Leo Durocher used to call "Slits Beer"). I had no idea they still "brewed" this stuff any more. Will report back as to it's purportedly "crisp, clean cut to the taste." Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here's Jackie Wilson, singing lead for Billy Ward and His Dominoes.



I really like this performance and arrangement, but it certainly is a noodle-scratcher.

First, consider the most prominent facet of this track: Wilson belting out the lyrics with depression and mania, bundled under tension tighter than a gnat's ass. But he sounds like nothing so much as a freshly minted graduate of the Dudley Do-Right School of Voice.

Then there is the chart, which definitely has the upbeat "fish-fry" feel as a frame for some pretty "prayer-meeting" lyrics. I'd started to post this several times in past months but couldn't figure out which rubric it belonged under. But since it's in a tempo suitable for shagging at a Carolina beach music club with sand on the floor (it's a dance, perv!), here it is on a dog-day Saturday night.

And, as a production artifact---but not one engineered into the original---there's this cheesy post-production reverb hovering conspicuously over the recording like a cloud of corn aphids wanting to get into your ear canals.

Frankie Sinatra recorded this tune the same year as the Dominoes---1955. The lyrics sound like a natural for Sinatra, and with a Nelson Riddle arrangement one might expect his version to be the definitive one. I'm sure most people familiar with it agree with that sentiment, but not me. The way I hear it, Riddle's chart doesn't surpass "OK" and neither does the orchestra performance. And Frank's fiddling with the melody at the margins, which is a key to his interpretive genius, falls flat on this one and actually weakens the line considerably. If you want to compare it with Wilson's interpretation, go look for it on YouTube---Sinatra's version doesn't rise to the level of interest that I need in order to be bothered to embed it and track down the catalog data for you.

But Wilson's peculiar version of this composition totally kicks ass. Not sure why it didn't hit in 1955, but they didn't even try because it was the B side of another Dominoes tune few people have heard of---"May I Never Love Again." I'd guess the studio chumped it as a throwaway track because the lyrics were too mature of a take on getting the bum's rush from a lady to have broken through on the emerging rock charts of the day. That is, it did not reflect the standard teenager-style sentiments about such matters.

Learnin' The Blues, Jackie Wilson with Billy Ward and His Dominoes (1955, King Records 1492), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Rich asshole framed for rape?

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Based on what New York prosecutors have discovered about their client regarding the DSK rape allegation, we may actually have a case here in which a bona fide member of the global elite community may have been falsely accused of something. Sez the New York Times:

Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

But then again, maybe not. Press leaks about an allegedly lying rape victim do not constitute an acquittal of the accused. Outside of the Gucci law office that is a privilege of a gentleman of DSK's standing and the Manhattan District Attorney's office, we  know only a few things for certain. One is that a person is innocent of an accusation until proven guilty. Another is that raping a woman who lies, or may even be a "gold-digger," is a crime nevertheless.

Beyond those things, there is a certain conjecture (for a hypothetical case, naturally) that may not be automatically false; namely, a case in which two nasty, cynical people might simultaneously try to do something horrible to each other at different coordinates of human experience, so to speak. For example, a hardened woman without conscience might be willing to entrap a rich asshole into raping her in return for a huge payday, and a misogynist asshole may follow his dick and the woman's "script" into committing an act of sexual violence. Interesting legal and existential questions follow for the ages, not to mention a zillion insipid talk show interviews, a tell-all book by those "who have knowledge" of the situation, and a Hollywood blockbuster based on a true story.

Many other conjectures are possible, too, so the one put forth above means approximately nothing.

Meanwhile, based on what I heard on NPR this morning, irrespective of what may have happened in that Schrodinger's cathouse of a hotel suite, I think that a majority of French citizens will jump at the chance to greet DSK as if he were a returning war hero and rid themselves of the ridiculous President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's national election. After all, at least one conspiracy narrative emerged very quickly on the heels of DSK's May arrest. It's feasible that Sarkozy could find himself as an unwilling partner in a metaphorical menage a trois.

Editor's note: I saw this story first at Balloon Juice.

Friday Evening After Hours

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You ain't so well-to-do
Unless you got a little koo-chee-koo



Sad but true. However, most of us weren't endowed at birth with the considerable talent, charm, and other assets of Mr. Bull Moose Jackson. There's a nice, concise Wikipedia bio of him at the other end of this link. He blows melodic lines with a big, smooth classic tenor R&B sound during intermissions from his vocals. His lyrics are always full of good humor, especially when he steps a bit over the line into lewd territory (not here so much as in fan favorites like "Bow Legged Woman" and "Big 10 Inch [Record]"). And he sings in a voice of the people---unremarkable in terms of sonority, maybe, but delivered with punch and excellent phrasing.

Editor's note: to enhance your enjoyment of this song, it is recommended that you close your eyes for the duration. The video is an excruciatingly embarrassing thing to behold and will distract you like the stare of a cobra. Also, the catalog information below may not be correct since the discography typesetting on my Charly (record label) compilation is garbled and misaligned. Thank you for your attention to these matters.

If You Ain't Lovin', Bull Moose Jackson (1955, 78 rpm single King 4775), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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If you have about 8 minutes to spare, go grab your earbuds, jam them in your earholes, and give this a listen.



The personnel and sound of this ensemble are so different from the original lineup that it always seemed odd to me they would retain the name King Crimson. (Compare it with this sound, which I posted last year.) It's an assemblage that might still be considered experimental today for its combination of Mellotrons, other deftly deployed electronics, violin and viola, and more percussion devices than you can shake a stick at. And that's not to mention Robert Fripp's guitar, John Wetton's vocals, or drums by Bill Bruford, who flew the coop from Yes as that group was stagnating into a mess. King Crimson can and does sound sweet, dense as a rainforest canopy, art-rocky, fraught with portent, and even lummoxy in turn, as they please.

"Exiles" and the tune that precedes it ("Book of Saturday") comprise the "pretty" passage of the album, with moody but heartfelt lyrics about loss and healing. This one begins with a swelling, impressionistic collage of electronica that evokes the narrator's "banana boat ride" from the prior track. The "actual song" begins about 2 minutes in. Every musician stays in his own register, integrated well enough to sound whole while clearly conveying the sense of isolation that the lyrics paint.

There's much, much more to this album, though, and I wish I could play the whole thing for you, loud as hell, in hi fi, with a nice pair of Sennheiser cans clamped to your skullbone.

Exiles, King Crimson (1973, from Lark's Tongues in Aspic, Atlantic SD 7263), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first, a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



I say "alternate" because Camel studs were only my second choice of smoke back when I was immortal. At heart (and lung) I was a Philip Morris Commanders man. Pall Malls were inferior to both, but acceptable when Commanders weren't available. Luckies, however, were the only cigarette that burned your mouth even before you lit the goddam thing.

What Americans think about "big government"

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Steve Benen, who writes the Political Animal blog for the Washington Monthly, pointed the other day to an opinion polling question that probably doesn't get asked enough in an impartial way---and certainly the results of this question rarely emerge from the black hole of corporate newsrooms. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asks this of its respondents:

“I’m going to read you two statements about the role of government, and I’d like to know which one comes closer to your point of view: ‘Government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people’ or ‘government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.’”

If you click through to Benen's post you'll see the responses provided in this poll as graphed over time (1994 to the present). From the early Clinton years through 2007, the trend lines for both responses are clear, and track in opposite directions as you'd expect. I have no idea what might have happened starting in 2007 to ratfuck the trends, or why the stats today haven't reverted to their 2007 peaks (considering what the crash has done to employment and the safety net), but the basic reality is clear: a majority of Americans want government to do more to solve problems experienced by ordinary people.

I suppose the tangle of trend lines at the end of the record might make fodder for some informed speculation, but I'm just not feeling that well informed this pee em.

In my opinion, though, the significant datum here would seem to be the fact that we never hear a whisper by US corporate media (including NPR) about this curious fact that most Americans want the government to do more to solve the nation's problems.

All of us can have a good laugh about what Jon Stewart confronted Chris Wallace with on Fox News Sunday last weekend (i.e., that the Fox News Network is Lies, Inc.). But the "polite" corporate media are the most important perpetrators of misinformation about public affairs in the US. They do it by ignoring whole swathes of reality. I'll have some more examples in a few days because it's somewhat off-topic here.

(Incidentally, if you look at the Stewart clip at the second link in the previous graf, the apology he offers at the beginning was unnecessary: Politicfact "factfuct" him.)

RIP Clarence Clemons

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Yikes---the E Street Band's imposing saxman, Clarence Clemons, died of a stroke yesterday in Florida. He was 69. I did not know he was that old---an age that is not that far in the future of any Baby Boomer, but pretty old for a touring rocker in a rowdy band. Live performances by Bruce Springsteen can never be the same, in my opinion.

I was privileged to see Clemons twice in during fall and early winter of 1975 at the Auditorium in Chicago, when for a brief period a sort of SpringsteenMania swept the nation (for young adults, at least). Apart from Springsteen, Clemons was the salient presence on the stage and in the music. This 1978 clip gives a few glimpses of the Big Man and what he contributed to the lineup.



10th Avenue Freeze-Out, Clarence Clemons with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (19 September 1978, videotape transfer of live performance at the Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Has this ever happened to you?



It didn't happen to me, exactly. However, my 7th grade teacher, Miss Kilmartin, left the employ of Woodland School, Illinois School District 152 and a half (no joke!) around Thanksgiving 1966. Coincidentally, it was about that same time I'd laid my hands on a copy of Playboy (stole it from Timmy Rogers big brother, if I remember correctly) and what to my wondering eyes appeared but a Playmate falling out of her sweater who was a dead ringer for Miss K. I was preoccupied with this mystery for a few weeks late in 1966. My dad, who was a member of the school board during that era, might have shed some light on the subject for me, but I couldn't think of any way to approach the subject with him.

Ahem. Anyway, "Chicago's own" Cryan Shames never hit the charts very hard in other parts of the country, but "the Shames" were one of the Windy City's big three rock bands in terms of local pride during the mid-1960s. In my personal mythology, the golden age of Chicago pop bands (including the Buckinghams and the New Colony Six) was 1965 through about mid-1967, with the Shames coming on fast in 1966 and then pretty much finished along with The Summer Of Love.

That's too bad; I wonder why. It's easy to hear that this band had a lot going for it in this 2-minute gem. Listening to it tonight I was surprised how "California" it sounds, with impressive four-part harmonies like the Beach Boys, jangly Byrdslike guitars, and the peppy good-clean-fun pop sound of The Turtles. Very catchy; very slick. A flawless piece of pop that totally flashes me on getting too much sun during the summer of '66---heard it coming out of transistor radios everywhere.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the story of which band member was infatuated with which model from which magazine, or if he ever got his gal. Probably not. But feel free to chime in if you know the tale.

I Wanna Meet You, Cryan Shames (1966, 45 rpm single Columbia 43836), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

You've been having more fun than me lately

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About half a year ago I made the ace move of overcommitting myself editorial work that competes with the important things in life such as booze, pills, and frails.

In particular, an oversize chicken came home to roost earlier this month in the form of an upbraiding from an author with whom I'm working---completely understandable and justifiable on his part, incidentally---with respect to my epic procrastination on a book manuscript I'm editing. In terms of my professional craft, it's an interesting project, but my procrastination hasn't been along my usual lazy lines: I've been about two-thirds baffled by this job, which involves converting a web site about construction management into a dummies-style text for general contractor types. But since I'm a fucking genius, as all my dear friends know, I've made great strides over the past 2 weeks to tame this monster. But it has left me depleted in terms of fulfilling my duties to the Fifty50 community.

I've found this state of affairs to be intolerable, so I'm trying to wade back into it now. But the water feels a bit cold. (Deep, too.) Posting may be light through the end of the month, but not if I can help it. Please stand by, and thank you for your attention to this matter.

Saturday Matinee!

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This nut may prove dangerous.



Here's a nice cartoon to let all my babies know I didn't abandon them! This is the very first Superman animated cartoon, dated late 1941, produced by the Fleischer Brothers. Dumb plots told in a setting of gorgeous eye cocaine. Unfortunately, this transfer is "ass," but there are a few affordable DVD collections that are very faithfully restored, and the visual style and animation "physics" are still astounding.

Let's say this cartoon is a parable. What do you think it's about? (Audience participation time!)

Posted quickly; will follow with information on provenance later. RubberCrutch is a busy man these days.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Here's something out of the ordinary for this place. I first heard this track playing in the defunct and missed Record Service in Campustown almost 20 years ago. I bought the album without hesitation. Being out of touch with emerging pop music styles back then, I wasn't really sure what the hell I was listening to. The kid in the store told me.



The Digable Planets made liberal use of samples from jazz classics, which was what immediately caught my ear in juxtaposition to the rap setting. But throughout the album the Planets repeatedly profess their adoration of Jimi Hendrix... and yet, no Hendrix samples are used anywhere. Their lyrics were readily intelligible to me, which has been a relative rarity throughout my entire life when listening to rock, blues, or soul (ear dyslexia?).

On every track, the lyrics present vivid impressions of black urban life; not always pretty (but, then, often they are), and there's not one word dedicated to misogyny or glorified violence. The difficulties of urban life come through loud and clear, though, without sweetening.

The trio delivers psychedelic hiphop poetry in mellow rap cadences, with some kind of backstory involving extraplanetary aliens, bugs (or alien bugs), and Hendrix. (Yes, the album has many amusing facets, too.) The horn sample used on this featured song was lifted with permission from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; other tracks borrow from Sonny Rollins, Curtis Mayfield, and the Crusaders among others.

There is one problem with this otherwise-tight video, though. Someone in postproduction seems to have overdubbed highly "stereoized" synth fills in places, and they sound kind of ridiculous and out of place. I can listen through that, though, because before tonight I'd never seen a video of this group. I think they're cool. I hope you like it.

Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat), Digable Planets (1993, from "reachin' [a new refutation of time and space], Pendulum Records 61414-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Soon it can be told

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What happens when a 3/32 in. titanium hex-shank drill bit goes through the heavy-duty washer cycle with a large load of cotton knits, that is.

Happy Beer-D to you!

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Yes, it's that time of the year again---the 140th day of the year, to be precise. On this day in history, a green morsel of life emerged into the world, both bilious and blue. The folded ears made me think I'd spawned a Vulcan Emissary (details not clear). The little fellow took to the soil quickly, though, and honors us with his presence for the 27th year in a row, excluding gestation.

As befits a gentleman whose breakthrough appearance into the world was fraught with thrills and peril, like being the 10 cm peg wrenched from a 9 centimeter... well, you understand... May 20 throughout history has exuded a certain black-metal miasma.

Who among you wouldn't want to have been born on the same day as the Cambodian National Day of Hatred, I ask you? Not brutal enough? Then how about the 1940 Grand Opening of a certain unspeakable enterprise in Poland? (Too metal?) Something more slapstick, maybe, like that time in 1896 when a six-ton chandelier at the Paris Opera fell on a crowd below, the bad news being that one person died and the good news being that only one person died. (Had it been an Acme safe, no lives would have been lost.)

But would a bunch of lightweight entertainers really be preferable to the commemoration of evil and mayhem, if it were you who was born on this day in history? Well, pick your poison: David Hedison, 1927 (Captain Crane on the Seaview); Ron Reagan, 1958 (son of That Guy); or Bronson Pinchot, 1959 (nuff said).

No, that can't be nuff said: there are Jimmy Stewart, 1908; and Honore de Balzac, 1799 (badass French realist author).

Now, the boy has only himself to blame for these birth date historical associations. He insisted on prying his way out 3 weeks early. Had he waited until June 10, as expected he'd have less ignoble birthday mates, such as Gustave Courbet, The Howlin' Wolf, Saul Bellow, Maurice Sendak, E.O. Wilson, and Judy Garland (as opposed to Cher). But Beer-D has a highly developed sense of the unjust and the absurd, so I think it's likely that he planned it this way and he likes it just fine. Happy Birthday, Little Man.

Predator on the premises

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I've been watching this impressive little raptor this spring as he has scouted my bird feeders for victuals. Two weeks ago he, or someone very much like him, slammed into my house---the siding, I believe, not a window---presumably while trying to pick a morsel off the two-prong pole near the back of my house. When I got to the back window to investigate, I saw some feathers swirling around and a hawk standing on the ground between the house and the feeder. He hopped to the top of the pole, then flew away, probably embarrassed with himself. Didn't get a good look at him then, though.

Then, a week ago, I came upon this guy with a freshly caught juvenile starling in its talons. He hopped over the fence for more privacy, but I went around and was able to observe him for several minutes at a distance as he picked at his still-living captive.

Today, interrupting myself from a writing task upstairs, I saw him perched atop the two-prong feeder near the ground-floor back windows. I observed him for probably 5 minutes total. Only after about 3 minutes, when he hopped first to the ground then farther away to the patio, did it occur to me to grab a camera. The best I could do was the Sony F717, a fairly high-end older point-and-shoot setup with a fixed Carl Zeiss (i.e., high-quality) zoom lens. I fumbled with it just to find a suitable auto configuration and managed to snap five or six frames while he perched on the arm of the heavy-duty captain's chair normally reserved for Rudy. I wasn't optimistic by the results, but was pleasantly surprised to see the large-scale snapshots. This is the best one, cropped at full resolution but compressed somewhat as a jpeg file. If you click the picture, you should see a decent enlargement with a critical detail for identification purposes.

I am officially identifying this creature as a juvenile or near-adult Sharp-Shinned Hawk. I'd been thinking he was probably a Cooper's hawk, but he is smaller than one I saw last year, and based on previous glimpses he appears to be more aggressive than Cooper's are reputed to be in chasing prey into foliage. The telltale clue is the yellow eye, which aren't found on Cooper's hawks. When comparing this picture with photos on Cornell's bird website, All About Birds, I was satisfied that his head configuration and feather patterns match those of the Sharp-Shinned Hawk.

Beer-D and I call this guy "Omar," in tribute to the oddly ethical "stick-up boy" from HBO's series The Wire. I can't actually verify his gender, but we choose to consider Omar to be a male unless the contrary is proved by an ornithologist.

My lesson learned for the day was to move my Nikon D80 from the closet to a hook by the back windows, set to fully automatic mode with a freshly charged battery and a zoom lens attached. Duh. (Slow learner.)

Telling on himself

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FireDogLake has a small post about an unwisely candid remark by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

When you do something together, the result is that it’s not usable in the election. I think there’s an understanding that if there’s a grand bargain, none of it will be usable in next year’s election.

That's what all these Gang-of-whatevers in the Senate are really about. A small group of members from both parties collude in closed meetings to strike a "grand bargain" on a major issue. These bargains reflect implement the goals of powerful elite interests at the expense of ordinary Americans. On their behalf, elite political commentators lecture us all about how we must swallow our medicine, like big girls and boys. Even when a grand bargain is highly unpopular, voters who want to punish the responsible party have no practical recourse. Politicians know this, and that's why these "gangs" emerge from the mud as predictably as locusts. And most politicians know not to actually admit to this. But not poor Mitch McConnell.

Saturday After Hours (Prayer Meeting)

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That's death
That's what all the people say

On this day in history, 14 May 1998, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra flew the coop (i.e., this mortal realm) with the parting words to his wife, "I'm losing it...." (I believe the Wikipedia account of this is incorrect or incomplete based on my memory of news coverage at that time.) But tonight I will bypass the obvious choice for commemorating the occasion---"That's Life"---and defer to my ultimate Sinatra cut.



For my money, his phrasing on this is perfect---immaculately understated, which often it was not when he felt the urge to play the aging ring-a-ding hipster or just goof around in live performances. As much as I esteem the vocal, I feel that the real star of this cut is the Nelson Riddle arrangement and the way he conducts his orchestra through it. It sparkles, reflecting the interplay of reedy cross-breezes both near and distant, with clear water surfaces lapping easily at beachfront sand. I've never been able to describe to myself in words what I find so artful and organic about this chart, where string tremolos emerge at the end of a jaunty, muted-horn line and muscular but laconic reed figures leave holes for the similarly reedy organ in the higher registers. Speaking of the organ, the way it is "stopped" fascinates me. In any other setting I think it would sound cheesy and trivial, but here it supplies an essential vibe to the entire mix; the sound would be impoverished without it.  (Editor's note: Mr. Crutch does not consider this to be an adequate verbal account of the "feel," but he tried nevertheless. Please make a note of it.)

As an aside, I don't think it's too geezerly to argue that in 1966, in Chicago and all over America, both radio (AM!) and pop music were much richer and more urbane than they ever were again. It was the closing of a sort of innocent era in broadcast mass media, where the music sales charts weren't fragmented ad infinitum by age group, region, race, and purchasing power for the benefit of advertisers. "Top 40" really did mean "Top 40," and it didn't matter whether the performers on "the survey" were the Stones, or The Four Tops, or Simon and Garfunkle, or Sinatra, Roger Miller, The Sandpipers, Dusty Springfield, Ramsey Lewis, or Mitch Ryder, the Hollies, Martha and the Vandellas, or... Nancy Sinatra. If you listened to WLS or WCFL during this brief era, you heard it all on an equal footing, presented by trusted curators such as Dex Card and Ron Riley. Sure, a kid wouldn't necessarily admit to his friends that he liked "A Walk in the Black Forest," by Horst Jankowski; or "Sweet Talkin' Guy," by The Chiffons, but many of these sounds wormed their way through his tender little auditory cortex to next in the memory stacks, there to vibrate deep within for decades or more.

Anyway, back to the libretto: here's hoping that Frank didn't really lose it on that 14th day of May. And as for the sarcastic-seeming epigraph at the beginning of this post; no disrespect is intended. I intended it as a tribute of sorts to Sinatra's legendary crudeness on and off stage, well documented in Kitty Kelly's biography of him. These things about Sinatra you have to take alongside the pensive stylings of this gifted, juvenile, complex, and often-tortured guy.

Summer Wind, Frank Sinatra with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (1966, from "Strangers In The Night," Reprise Records, catalog information not available), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Pauper wages

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I saw the video embedded below linked on Eschaton by one Avedon Carol (an Atrios confederate who lives in Merrie Olde England). I'm certain it's worth 13 minutes of time to anyone who tiptoes around an inner dread about America's future---especially the health of the economy for ordinary people and the outsized influence of excessive wealth on public policy.

The "hook" for this interview is that the marginal income tax rate on top earners during the Eisenhower administration was 90%. I'm certain that fact would shock the vast majority of Americans today, especially with a general knowledge of how prosperous America was during that era. As you watch the video, consider whether Michael Hudson's words, as alien as they are to the conventional wisdom today, are relevant to your everyday status as a wage-earner, provider, and citizen.

Take note of the term "pauper wages" to roll around inside your noodle next time you hear news about the extermination of the nation's few remaining viable labor unions. To whatever extent Hudson is correct on this topic, it should be difficult for any American worker to understand how he or she will benefit from government-driven downward pressure on union pay and benefits; or from creating trillion-dollar federal deficits by cutting taxes on the wealthiest (and most powerful) Americans.



The gist of Hudson's viewpoint expressed here is that two dominant beliefs central to free-marketeer conventional wisdom are demonstrably wrong. Those two beliefs are that (1) higher wages reduce worker productivity and (2) higher taxation of top earners hurts the economy.

For supporting evidence, Hudson refers to readily accessible data and asserts his credentialed perspective on classical economics as founded by philosophers like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill). And further, he makes an unexpected statement (to me at least) that doesn't sound completely outlandish: that modern free-market "neoliberal" economists have falsely co-opted Smith and his successors while ignoring major aspects of classical economics that don't fit neoliberal ideology. That's an argument I've never heard or read in either corporate-sponsored news media or public broadcasting. In fact, the first hint of that idea only came to me this morning when reading this blog post by Paul Krugman.

As a wildly alternate viewpoint on the timely topic of US wages and taxation---at least compared with Beltway conventional wisdom---Hudson's words express a general and consistent logic to my ears. Nothing he says strikes me utterly at odds with either reason or observable reality, and the sources he refers to can readily be checked by anyone with the time to look at public economic data and read a book or two by the founders of modern economics. You and I don't have that kind of time or intensity, though, so we have to rely on the interpretations of others, and fair argument between alternate viewpoints.

Before this afternoon I'd never heard of Hudson. More importantly, I'd never heard this particular point of view expressed with this level of clarity on the radio or any corporate-sponsored news outlet. On the rare occasions when a genuine liberal or progressive point of view is even examined on air, a competent spokesman for that point of view may not be present in the studio. And meanwhile, the mouthpiece for the standard neoliberal viewpoint---who happens always to be present---is allowed by the moderator to rebut the alternate perspective simply by branding it as "liberal" or "socialist."

It really doesn't matter whether you and I are persuaded by what Hudson has to say here. What does matter is that content providers are deliberately shielding news consumers from important, credible ideas that seriously challenge or even explain away the conventional wisdom that happens to be failing most ordinary working people today.

And I quote:

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"She has her head up her ass so much she might as well hang a makeup mirror in there."

---RubberCrutch, Champaign, Illinois (13 May 2011), discussing a sociopathic former program manager with the current one, who is now responsible for undoing 3 years' worth of damage done by the former one. Thanks for asking!

Friday after hours

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If memory serves me correctly, there is a birthday boy out there on the World Wide Web tonight (May 6) who isn't me, yet shares a birthday with those two international icons of love: the Eiffel Tower (1889) and Rudolph Valentino (1895). He has a number in his pseudonym, and this song is dedicated to him. "Blue Turk" is the touching story of a young man who gets all wound up on booze with a babe, and then discovers both delusional wicked delights and the true meaning of post-coital depression.



From one of my favorite albums, and not performed in a musical style that most people would associate with Alice Cooper.

Blue Turk, Alice Cooper (1972, from "School's Out," original LP release Warner Bros. Records BS 2623), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Further wise sayings

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Direct from Cowboy Monkey, Champaign, Illinois, by RubberCrutch to his entourage:

"There are probably a dozen 58-year-old motherfuckers in here that look stupider than me!"

Wise sayings

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Direct from the Cowboy Monkey, Champaign, Illinois, by Rudy:

"Long face, deep throat." [Wise nod.]

Guantanamo grapevine

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As it turns out, nuclear blowback evidently has been discussed by US authorities as one possible retaliation mode in the event of the hypothetical---now real---capture or killing of OBL.

I don't claim any particular knowledge of international security issues, but it does seem farfetched to me that AQ, even with sympathizers in high places, could have a nuclear weapon deployed in Europe, let alone America. I can imagine no coherent "conspiracy theory" that would have US national security personnel turning a blind eye to this sort of infiltration even given the bale of unanswered questions and unresolved contradictions that linger a decade after September 11 itself. Many, many of those questions seem to plausibly address some kind of heinous untold story about that day. (You'd have to read the book to know what I refer to.) The idea of a foreign nuclear weapon being deployed on US soil doesn't remotely have the same ring of plausibility, conspiracywise. The same goes for Europe, I think, because their secret security agencies have been working the terrorism beat for decades.

Nevertheless, that leaves a lot of real estate in the world to cover. Anyone who thinks about it could come up with scenarios that involve, say, a corrupt Pakistan (with either an internal target or with India in the crosshairs); Iran (located in quite a target-rich region with a lot of US interests); and The Desert Kingdom itself (where it's apparently an open secret that radical members of the royal family have been financing AQ for a decade or more).

Sensational and speculative? Yes. But a nihilistic force with a sense of moral infallibility and no fear of death (i.e., insane by a reasonable person's standards) could concoct dozens of justifications for a paramilitary nuclear attack that would shred the global status quo.

All things considered, I think these idle speculations at least provide one more good reason why we should avoid celebrating the assassination of OBL with a Super Bowl party.

Now, this

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Today I read about a lot of celebrity Republican politicians---both of today and yesteryear---praising President Obama for "wisely" following the lead of George W. Bush's antiterrorism strategy in order to bag OBL.

Steve Benen of Washington Monthly has, in response, provided a nice collection of linked articles documenting the lack of concern Bush and ultraconservative personalities publicly displayed about OBL's whereabouts and significance dating back to March 2002. (!)

For a "bonus level," Benen throws in a link to a 17 April 2002 Washington Post story about bin Laden slipping through Tora Bora to Pakistan in December 2001 thanks (reportedly) to strategic cockups by Bush's Afghanistan operations chief, General "Tommy" Franks. I leave it to the reader to assess any potential relation between the 2001 Tora Bora failure and Bush's cavalier attitude toward OBL in 2002.

So, no: if you are among those who think the world is better off without Osama bin Laden, you owe precisely zero thanks to George Walker Bush for the terrorist's demise.

Yes, but what now...?

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Rudy, knowing that I don't have an antenna connected to my TV, called about 20:05 to tell me that Osama bin Laden was killed tonight. The news says bin Laden was killed by "US personnel," without mention of a drone, and his body is in US "custody." This happened at an Islamabad-area mansion---interesting place for OBL to be hanging out, by the way, but not that surprising. I wonder who gets to collect the reward.

A sampling of blog comments at HuffingtonPost shows how eager wingnuts and yoginis alike are to gloat in this event. They need to stop and think: bin Laden was a symbolic figure, not a strategic one. And now he's a martyr. A martyrdom is red meat to organizations and the Taliban, especially if there are bellicose infidel crowds assembling outside the White House gates chanting  U  S  A !   U  S  A !  and wagging giant sponge-rubber "#1" fingers at the sky.

Assuming that bin Laden was guilty for the planning and logistics of the September 11 attacks---and I guess it's totally unpatriotic and unwise for an American to not assume that, anyway---no normal US citizen will be sorry to see him go. But jingoistic glee is just plain stupid. This event does not cripple al Qaeda, and there will be blowback. Maybe on US soil. But certainly in Afghanistan and Iraq.. to US military and civilian personnel. So with that in mind, I hope our stupid media and politicians will show some circumspection and restraint.

Won't happen, because it's already not happening tonight as I listen to the BBC chat with US "experts." Good night.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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I do not dedicate this song to the royal newlyweds. But it is not because of any malice in my heart. I do dedicate this song to you, though, who choose their blog-reading material with care, intelligence, and taste. More specifically, I dedicate it to those of you who have a sweety pie, a libido, appropriate precautionary technology, and a pure heart.



Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes stuck with the style of music, which was what originally made me a Springsteen fan for a short time. Dig Springsteen's sustained "altissimo" vocal note near the end. "The Fever" is a Springsteen composition, but I always knew it as a Southside song. I wish the sound were better in this clip so we could hear the full power of the horns and their slinky accompaniment. As heard from a good audio source, this tune is a tour de force. But at least on this video we can enjoy Clarence Clemons lumbering around the stage, without his tenor but clad in a very tasteful yellow jumpsuit and giant Panama hat, grabbing the mike on cue to belt out his profundo embellishment on the refrain. It's fun!

The Fever, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, with Bruce Springsteen (1978, live performance at the Agora Club, Cleveland, Ohio), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

I just have no opinion

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Greetings from a member of one very small minority lurking at the edges of The Global Village. I'm speaking of me, part of the community of people who have no opinion about the Royal Wedding that was executed and consummated on 29 April 2011 in Merrie Olde England. I can cook up nothing whatsoever to say about it, even knowing that civilization has been waiting for me to weigh in on the topic. I do apologize, and thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

As an indirect comment, though, I do express hope that Marginalia and his clan thoroughly enjoyed the day, whether sentimentally preoccupied with the majesty of the event, or festively stumbling through a series of pubs with or without the wedding in mind, or acting out bawdy parodies of certain events likely to have happened in the royal wedding chamber at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, here in that Shining City Upon A Hill, what thinks it don't need no royalty stuff because some guys dumped tea into a harbor one time, operatives for America's corporate pride and joy---Facebook, Inc.---helped the British Establishment to celebrate Wedding Day by eradicating 50 protest groups from their special cloud (via BoingBoing). Here's the damage:

Open Birkbeck, UWE Occupation, Chesterfield Stopthecuts, Camberwell AntiCuts, IVA Womensrevolution, Tower Hamlets Greens, No Cuts, ArtsAgainst Cuts, London Student Assembly, Beat'n Streets, Roscoe 'Manchester' Occupation, Bristol Bookfair, Newcastle Occupation, Socialist Unity, Whospeaks Forus, Ourland FreeLand, Bristol Ukuncut, Teampalestina Shaf, Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut, No Quarter Cutthewar, Bootle Labour, Claimants Fightback, Ecosocialists Unite, Comrade George Orwell, Jason Derrick, Anarchista Rebellionist, BigSociety Leeds, Slade Occupation, Anti-Cuts Across Wigan, Firstof Mayband, Don't Break Britain United, Cockneyreject, SWP Cork, Westiminster Trades Council, York Anarchists, Rock War, Sheffield Occupation, Central London SWP, North London Solidarity, Southwark Sos, Save NHS, Rochdale Law Centre, Goldsmiths Fights Back 

Mark Zuckerberg is American royalty, by the way, or at least he must think he is.

Paging North Carolina

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I hope the onslaught of storms over the weekend spared The 59er and his acquaintances. Can't remember exactly where you are located in the Carolinas, Sam. Please post something here when you get a chance so I (we) know you and your town are OK.

"Hold it! Next man makes a move, the 'nigger' gets it!"

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Today the Standard & Poors "credit rating agency" borrowed a slick comedy move from Bart, Cleavon Little's character in Blazing Saddles. Specifically, S&P made a hollow threat to cut the rating of U.S. Treasury securities this morning---in effect, Wall Street holding a cap gun against its own head---which I assume is supposed to scare the President and the Democrats into doing whatever the right-wing deficit peacocks demand, such as abolishing Medicare and Social Security so rich assholes can have more tax cuts.

Right on cue, naturally, lame duck Senator Joe Lieberman was on my car radio this afternoon spewing turgid nonsense about the existential threat posed by current US debt levels and why it's important to cap federal spending at some absurdly low percentage of Gross Domestic Product. (I can't find a link to this, so you don't have to listen to his putrid, quavering voice here.) Why do I call it "turgid nonsense"? Because like most talk about federal deficits and debt in the corporate media today (including NPR), the somber generalities preached by deficit peacocks immediately break down to gibberish when real macroeconomists insist that the discussion include valid historic data, meaningful contexts, and other scary evidence-based features.

Nobel macroeconomist Paul Krugman, for example, quickly authenticated this S&P stunt as another episode of Wall Street's tiresome Saturday matinee serial entitled Uncle Sam and the Phantom Bond Vigilantes. It's fair to ask why I might put stock in anything Krugman and other neo-Keynesians say. My reason is simple: because his analysis have been consistently correct (i.e., consistently predictive about what would happen to the economy in the future) since I started following his New York Times blog 5 or 6 years ago, around the time he was was warning readers about the runaway US housing bubble and related phenomena. And he always backs his arguments with verifiable economic data and simple numerical models that every economist and most people with a high school diploma can understand.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Who ever said we couldn't have a multimedia fish fry on Saturday Night? Not me!



This 1933 Betty Boop cartoon from Fleischer Studios has so much going for it that I'm not sure what to start with. Almost always, Fleischer cartoons are about world-class Depression-era animation and backgrounds. But for a short time right after sound was wed to film action, the Fleischer Brothers collaborated with some of the greatest seminal northern jazz big bands to create extraordinary modern art. So I'll start with the music.

Don Redman was one of the giants of early jazz, probably much more important as an arranger than as an orchestra leader. But here he is, with his orchestra, getting top billing before Betty Boop herself in this short. I Heard presents a medley of three Redman compositions (with collaborators) that are all included in an out-of-print 1990 Redman collection called Don Redman And His Orchestra, 1931 - 1933 (1990, Classics 543). My favorite is the opener, called "Chant Of The Weed" (1931), which is based on a very unusual set of changes that quickly alternates between a major key and its relative minor (I think), the minor being remarkably avant garde and the major being a classic, upbeat jazz-age sound. The version in this cartoon is much more intriguing to me than the Classics reissue, which is faster and somewhat mechanical sounding. But in addition to the musical intro, look at all the work the Fleischers put into Redman's backdrop: a theatrical flat of Betty Boop's Saloon (it's called a Tavern in the actual cartoon) replete with live animated cutout cartoon animal heads!

Chant melds into "How'm I Doin' ? (Hey-Hey)," with the voice of Boop, Mae Questel, sharing the vocals with Redman (who also blows alto sax in addition to directing the band). As coal miners go, these fellas are really lucky: their lunch spot is, by night, a Hot Jazz club. The waiter (Redman's voice) advertises La Boop's after-hours shows to the guys, then gives 'em a taste of Betty whilst they feast on species-specific entrees.

Finally, the "story" transitions to the surreal sequence accompanied by the title piece, again with vocals by Redman and Questel. As purposely gimmicky as her voice is for these cartoons, Questel has an impressive mastery of rhythm; listen how she works ahead of the beat like a wired tommy gun during the telephone sequence.

But what you really should do, in my opinion, is just feast your eyes on everything. This world is bursting with action, visual puns, audiovisual synchronicity, violence, and the macabre. And there are plenty of the famous visual hi-jinx that characterized this series before stringent Hollywood censorship began cramping Betty's style in 1934. These include the usual mix of phallic symbols, lechery, and Betty's tendency to lose her clothing at least once per episode. To pointlessly state the obvious, these cartoons were always aimed at teenagers and adults, not the kiddies---like [adult swim] for Depression-era moviegoers.

I Heard, Betty Boop cartoon series, featuring Koko The Clown and Bimbo (1933, Fleischer Studios and Paramount Pictures, directed by Dave Flesicher, animated by Willard Bowsky and Myron Waldman), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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John Mayall twin spin twin spin twin spin DOINNNGGG!!!



Marginalia wrote from across the deep blue sea to give us a few more details about Mayall's 1960s British R&B laboratory, the Bluesbreakers, which served as a training ground for British pop music royalty, including Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, and many others. With hindsight it seems sorta weird to me that Mayall wasn't much bigger in the United States, at least in the late 1960s. Don't think I ever heard a peep about him from the Beatles, either---also strange considering their own reverence for American "roots" music and Mayall's role as a champion of it.

This cut is the opening track on The Turning Point; the YouTuber clipped off a portion of the band introductions, but the song is intact. It's a standard 12-bar blues construction, but that easily cliched form doesn't jump right out at me because the arrangement is so interesting. It's a good example of how the band uses their instruments so effectively to make percussion unnecessary. The harp is sharp as razors, the bass bubbles and pops along, and the tenor works as a rhythm instrument while infusing the sound with the jazzy warmth that is so important to this quartet's sound. There's also a bit of mouth percussion on the track, which is the central feature on "Room To Move," another track you can find on YouTube.

To my ears, Mayall on this album sounds like a graduate of the Dudley Do-Right School of Voice. I don't mean that in a mean spirit at all, but that association baked itself into my skull upon first listening. And I call this a "school of voice" because I've heard it in a number of other places; the one that comes immediately to mind is J.W. Hodgkinson, who was lead vocalist for a unique-sounding UK band called If. I have to wonder if they're emulating the style of an American blues hero I'm not aware of.

One other distinguishing aspect of this cut is the lyrics. It's an unusual protest song that invokes the memory of American free-speech hero Lenny Bruce, who fought obscenity charges in the courts for the better part of two decades. He was also a pot smoker and a junkie. Mayall makes the case that weed should be legal, but since it's not then you shouldn't blame cops if you get busted for possession---you should respond with political activism, instead. I remember thinking the lyrics were somewhat "square," but not really objectionable. Looking back, I think Mayall's presentation was remarkable during an era when the terms "police" and "pigs" were synonymous with many, many youth in the United States.

Acknowledgment: I thank my old friend Gurlitzer, known to some people in southwest Cook County as Janet, for scraping up the catalog information.

The Laws Must Change, John Mayall (1969, "The Turning Point," Polydor Stereo 24-4004), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Silly me

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My firm prediction that the government would be shut down for between 5 and 7 days, not published here but explicitly stated to friends, was based on my certainty that Republicans needed a face-saving play to keep the tea bag caucus on board with Boehner. My guess was that this would come in the form of a short-term shutdown to satisfy the 'baggers, followed by an appeal to higher authority, such as reopening the government to restore "market confidence." Then we'd get a GOP declaration of victory, and their own well founded faith in having the history rewritten by party propagandists and broadcast on Fox.

Well, I believe I got the "face-saving" aspect correct. But I truly did not predict that it would be Harry Reid and Obama who would give Boehner his political cover, and also several extra billion in cuts to sweeten the deal. Silly me.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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This may sound like too laid-back of a band to call "experimental," but that's what I'd call it anyway. Listen to John Mayall's impressions, jamwise, of California.



This four-piece string-driven band was recorded in 1969 and released on Mayall's album The Turning Point. It was a Easy Rider-era favorite amongst the high school outcasts who started growing our hair about then since we didn't fit in with any other group and couldn't get near girls except in marching band.

I don't know much about Mayall even though he was so influential in the British blues scene, and his Bluesbreakers band was a proving ground for many players I admired in other settings, including Sugarcane Harris and Aynsley Dunbar (violin and drums, respectively, with Frank Zappa), and Dick Heckstall-Smith (reeds with an under-known British jazz-rock band called Colosseum). (I'll bet Barry or Sam can offer some interesting facts.)

Anyhoo, although it's somewhat subtle, one will notice that this combo uses no dedicated percussion instruments. The guitars, bass, and Mayall's impressive harp-sucking are deployed throughout the album in highly rhythmic and percussive ways, yet the overall sound is predominantly mellow. In addition to that innovation, Mayall added a straight-ahead jazz component with Johnny Almond's sax and flute. Almond isn't that dazzling, technically speaking, but he really doesn't have to be---it's a goddam blues band, after all. Listen how the crowd responds when Almond hits the altissimo register at the end of his tenor solo; it doesn't require virtuosity, but he uses the sound to excellent climactic effect.

Altogether, what impresses me most about this band is how well everyone fits with everyone else. I think this is a sound that has been under-explored over the years.

California, John Mayall (1969, "The Turning Point," Polydor [catalog information not available because I can't find the damned album in my junk]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Betting against my own predictive prowess tonight [updated x2]

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Up until a short time ago I was certain that there would be a government shutdown at midnight tonight because I assumed that the lugubrious Speaker of the House (Boehner) has much more to lose by compromising than by standing with his tea bag coalition. I would have staked my prognostication credibility on it, and in fact I think I did with a few friends at work.

But today, Herr Karl Rove, "presidential hopeful" Mike Huckabee, and "whatever she is" Michele Bachmann all announced that the wisest course for Republicans would be to take the money and run. Like Josh Marshall says, this might mean that the House 'bagger caucus has been convinced by leadership behind closed doors, accurately, that it would be stupid to hold out on the Planned Parenthood assault when they've already completely rolled Obama and Reid.

By reaching this "compromise" to rob social programs at no negative political cost to themselves, the GOP can frame their Planned Parenthood "giveback" move as a "diplomatic" and "adult" contribution to the national welfare (no pun intended). Meanwhile, President North Star and Reid stand there pretending they haven't been sprayed down in shitmist.

I didn't put this together until I read on TPM that Bachmann had expressed her opinion on the matter. If she brings the 'baggers around, then her status is significantly elevated in the GOP.  If that is in fact the case, then Boehner still looks weak in terms of House majority leadership and is vulnerable to a challenge by Eric Cantor, for example, the Majority Leader. And if that happened, Bachmann might come out of it in the future with a deputy-whip-type position or even shot at Republican Conference Chair, movin' on up to the East Side so to speak, George Jeffersonwise.

Editor's note: for purposes of Truth In Blogging, RubberCrutch discloses that he is employed by a small agency inside a larger one buried deep inside a cabinet-level department that is very good at blowing up things.

Update: if this (from TPM) is true about a three-day continuing resolution in the works, then Obama gets rolled in another way. He said he would not approve any more extensions. Yes, I know that he has to do this if there's an acceptable deal on the table---acceptable to himself and the invertebrate caucus, that is---but it will still be painted by triumphal Republicans as "further evidence" of Obama's weakness. I don't think Democrats could negotiate a discount on a Cabbage Patch Baby at a DuPage County flea market....

Update x2:  TPM sez the pending deal includes two fucking billion dollars more in spending cuts plus a "symbolic" floor vote on the Planned Parenthood attack. If true, then a total win for GOP, plus the corporate media will surely give Republicans all the credit for the "compromise." And I don't have any convincing reason to think this floor vote is necessarily destined to fail. Altogether, a fate worse than a gigantic rogue asteroid smashing up the joint in terms of what this means for the system of government under which we were privileged to be born. Democrats give away the farm and provide political cover for a cabal of thugs. Plus, I was sort of looking forward to having Monday off....

Also, "Afghan Spring"?

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General Petraeus, correctly, does not think the smoke from burning Qurans in the spring smells like victory:

"We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Quran," said the statement issued by military commander Gen. David Petraeus and the top NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill.

Maybe because:

The Taliban said in a statement emailed to media outlets that the U.S. and other Western countries have wrongly excused the burning a Quran by the pastor of a Florida church on March 20 as freedom of speech and that Afghans "cannot accept this un-Islamic act."

Neither US "hawks" or "doves" have anything to cheer about apropos of an "Afghan Spring" of violence by religious zealots there, as ignited by religious zealots here. Neither do General Petraeus or the population of Afghanistan. The only two gaining parties are the Taliban and "Pastor Terry Jones."

I've noticed that mainstream reports like this one in the New York Times bury the identity of the Quran desecrator way down in the column. Suppose Minister Farrakhan publicly roasted a Holy Bible during a Friday afternoon prayer meeting, and that it drove the "good Christian people" of Chicago, for instance, to firebomb Arab nation consulates (because they are perceived to be less dangerous to "good Christian people" than local Nation of Islam properties): does it seem likely that we'd have to wait until the 10th paragraph to find out the identify of this "individual in the United States"?

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway...



This version of "Penny Lane" was first sold to fans on a US-issued 1980 Beatles anthology called Rarities. This recording dates to 1967, like the original single and album releases of the same track, but differs (very significantly, to my ears) in that it includes a piccolo trumpet flourish in the final measures. This is the version that many, but not all, radio stations played in spring 1967---the version that all of us who couldn't afford to buy records grew up with. Years later, when I finally bought Magical Mystery Tour, I thought the album version of this song had somehow been stunted in production because of how the tune ends in an anticlimactic instrumental drone with a weak drizzle of cymbals.

I first learned that the "trumpet ending" was an actual rarity when Rarities was issued. If I remember the story correctly, the trumpet ending didn't make it to the pressing of the commercial 45 rpm single, but Paul for some reason intervened and had it included on the promotional version of the record that was distributed to US radio stations, both aired by them and given away at radio-hosted "sock hops" and the like.

Today is a sunny but frustratingly chilly early April day, like weekends I remember in April 1967 when Chicagoland was slowly ascending from a brutal winter. "Penny Lane" was in solid rotation then at both WLS-890 and WCFL-1000, with its merry, surreal narrative beaming through the "blue suburban skies" on a 50 kilowatt AM signal.

Penny Lane, The Beatles (1967, Capitol promotional 45 rpm single P-5810), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Apropos of nothing

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You'll shoot your eye out, kid!



Greenie Stickum Caps!!!

Via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Tiresome question of the week

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"Why aren't we bombing Bahrain, too?"

It's all over the place. And I'll admit that I, too, have asked it. But rhetorically. Facetiously. It's easy to concoct your own variations on the question: just substitute "Ivory Coast," "Syria," even "Zimbabwe" if you want to get a little obscure.

Colonel Qaddafi was a bastard 40 years ago, and he was a bastard 20 years ago, and he was a bastard less than 2 years ago when Senator John McCain was a guest at Qaddafi's Libyan "ranch" and "discussing a military equipment deal" with this "interesting man." (Senators Olympia Snowe and Joe Lieberman were part of McCain's 2009 entourage.) And now Colonel Q is the facing a new "makeover" to append his previous one. They've probably already labeled the body bag. "They" who? NATO nations, which might in this case be considered client states for most of the "supermajors."

Even if there were a genuine humanitarian impulse behind this North African squirmish, the ways and means are all wrong for many of the reasons you've probably read about, the main one being that nobody outside of an Orwell anthology conducts humanitarian operations with heavy bombers. Libya is a sovereign nation, and it has not committed an international act of aggression against any nation in this new coalition of the willing. Past sponsorship of international terrorism is one thing that makes Qaddafi a bastard, but I'm pretty sure that is not the same thing in terms of international law as committing a current act of war.
But there is no humanitarian motive behind Operation: Odyssey Dawn during this so-called Arab Spring. This week President North Star had to wipe US fingerprints off the whole thing as rapidly as possible to create the illusion to the Arab world that the US did not leave its fingerprints all over the whole thing. I'm not promoting any imperialist "conspiracy theory," but just based on what shows from behind the curtain, the situation appears fairly straightforward: circumstances have put the sustainability of Qaddafi's authoritarian regime in serious jeopardy, so there is an irresistible opportunity to wrest power away from him, complete with a blue-chip "humanitarian" alibi for doing so. Why? Because Colonel Q is de facto boss of Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC). Regardless of which supermajors may now be making money directly or otherwise off Libya's "light sweet crude," it seems certain that all players---including NATO governments---should love to see NOC dismantled in a wave of Bush-style tsunami of peeance and freeance.