I am really enjoying the newly released (in the States) debut album by Alt-J, An Awesome Wave. While comparisons to Radiohead have been made, I find Alt-J’s music unlike anything I’ve heard (well, maybe Yeasayer) - pop music from another planet. Joe Newman may be singing in English but it sounds like something I imagine might be sung in the townships of Mars by pale-green boys with dreadlocks down their backs and interstellar cellphones implanted in their foreheads. Eek-A-Mouse pad.
Alt-J has appeared out of the firmament fully formed. Their mix of electronic pop, ambient vibes, Madrigals, bursts of poly-rhythmic dance grooves, Bhangra, dubstep and multiple shifting moods, all within one song, is mighty sophisticated stuff from a group of young cats who look like they’ve been hiding out in their parents’ basements for most their lives. But sounding like they do, those parents could be Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. And they seem to be drawing influence from some pretty hip writers. This tune, “Fitzpleasure” is inspired by a chapter in Hubert Selby Jr.‘s book Last Exit to Brooklyn titled “Tralala.”
Tralala, in your snatch fits pleasure, broom-shaped pleasure,
Deep greedy and Googling every corner.
This photo was taken before band pictures on railroad tracks became a cliche
It’s nice to know that in this crazy world, there are some things you can count on; this drunken 1987 radio interview with The Replacements does not disappoint.
Infamous for shooting themselves in the foot professionally with hard partying, frontman Paul Westerberg got sober in 1990, prior to the band’s fizzling breakup. He still produces awesome solo stuff, though he gives off the impression that he’s somehow in hiding because he keeps a pretty low profile these days.
The above painting titled “Happy Little Cthulhu” is just one of the many pieces for an upcoming (actually it starts today:September 27th - October 21st) Bob Ross-themed show at Portland’s Screaming Sky Gallery.
Have you seen the brand new Mitt Romney ad yet? The one where Mittens tries to show his concern for us average Americans? You know, the little people?
The new commercial has already made its online debut, but as reported by The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, starting Friday, in all of Romney’s media markets, in nine swing states, it will be the only ad they’ll air.
This underscores that the Romney campaign is betting all of its chips on the new approach represented in the minute-long ad, which is about cleaning up the mess made by Romney’s remarks about the freeloading 47 percent, and about reframing the Romney message as a forward looking one. The Dem source says ad buy info indicates that other currently running spots — one hits Obama as soft on China; the other is a positive ad touting Romney’s plan for the middle class — will be replaced by this one
The new ad features Romney speaking directly to the camera; he allows that he and Obama “both care about poor and middle class families.” The size of the buy behind it suggests the Romney campaign sees the need for a major effort to reverse the damage caused by Romney’s disdainful comments about nearly half the country. After a months-long campaign by Dems to paint Romney as uncaring when it comes to working and middle class Americans, video of Romney himself playing to type is potentially devastating. Today’s NYT/CBS poll found that only 38 percent of Ohio voters think Romney cares about the needs and problems of people like them.
The new ad’s acknowledgment that Obama, like him, cares about ordinary Americans also suggests a shift to a somewhat softer approach to the president. While the ad paints a dire picture of the Obama economy, it seems less harsh in tone than Romney messaging that suggests Obama harbors sinister redistributionist leanings that will take away the wealth and health benefits of middle class Americans and hand them out to those other people.Obama’s favorability ratings remain high, and there is no sign swing voters see Obama in the more lurid terms the Romney campaign had been employing, so this may be a shift, too.
The ad also represents a significant reframing of Romney’s message. The previous, backward-looking frame — “are you better off than you were four years ago?” — is replaced in this ad with the forward-looking assertion that we can’t afford another four years like the last four. So the investment in the new spot suggests an admission that the previous framing failed and a heavy bet on this new messaging as his best shot of salvaging his candidacy.
Take a peek, won’t you? I’ll wait. (Note how Romney refers to struggling Americans as if to distance himself from “them,” rhetorically. In the now infamous hidden camera video, he called, uh, “them” “those people.” Richie Mitt just can’t help himself, apparently)
The problem is… Well, the problem is the Democratic rapid response video that really rips the whole high stakes, last resort Romney “I have empathy for ‘them’” rebranding gambit a new asshole.
Imagine for a moment that you are Mitt Romney. Walk a mile in his $3500 hand-made Italian leather shoes. Your team of highly-paid, expereienced campaign professionals have convinced you to go “all in” on just one single very, very important ad to humanize yourself in voters’ eyes and show “them”—“the 47%”—that, oh boy do you really, really care about “them.” All the pre-debate chips are being bet on this one, single commericial that is perceived as the (current) last best hope of turning around one of the all-time worst, most idiotic, painfully inept national political campaigns in all US history. It’s a tall order, but as Sargeant reports, they’re dropping stuff right and left that just didn’t work and placing their hopes on this new 11th hour strategy.
So you’re Romney and you approve this new strategy to show that you’re not a heartless rich bastard like everyone seems to think you are. By George, you’ve got compassion and empathy! This’ll show them!
And then you see the video embedded below. Wouldn’t you just puke blood?
This new anti-Romney commercial is one of the most withering, vicious, nastiest kicks in the nuts that Romney has yet recieved from the Obama camp, and let’s face it, they’ve landed some real body blows already. All of them so far in this election. Now Romney gets to absorb another punch to his throat and his entire ad buy—which hasn’t even started yet—is about to get trumped in the news cycle by this cheap little web video.
It’s hilarious to watch Romney flounder. He seems to have no idea of what to do next. May I politely suggest curling up in a fetal position on the floor?
There’s no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude, but Romney takes it to a whole ‘nuther level!
A postcard written last month from Charles Manson to Marilyn Manson:
To Marilyn Manson –
It’s taken me a long time to get there from where I could touch M. Manson. Now I got a card to play – you may look into my non-profit, ATWA, and give Manson what you think he’s got coming for Air, Trees, Water, and you. Or I will pay Manson what you think Manson got coming – the music has make Manson into Abraxas Devil, and I’m SURE you would want some of what I got from what I got. It’s a far out balance. Beyond good and bad, right, wrong. What you don’t do is what I will do – what you did a sing-along, and let it roll and said how you saved me a lot of steps – I don’t need, it’s not a need or a want. Couped – coup. Ghost dancers slay together and you’re just in my grave Sunstroker Corona-coronas-coronae – you seen me from under with it all standing on me. That’s 2 dump trucks – doing the same as CMF 000007
Charles Manson
I can’t comment because I have no fucking clue what this means…
For the latest in totally out-of-touch bazillionaire rich people ragebait news, renowned altruist Mayor Michael Bloomberg is struggling to back-track after commenting last week that NYC homeless shelters had become a “much more pleasurable experience,” and therefor did not properly incentivize the homeless to make use of their frayed bootstraps.
Bloomberg notoriously gutted aid to homeless and housing programs last year, citing budgetary constraints. Now I’m no fancy-pants big-city economist, but Bloomberg is worth somewhere between $22 and 25 billion dollars (but really, who’s counting?), and there are over 44,000 homeless people on record in New York (about 18,600 of them are children); maybe he could just, I don’t know, use some of his own money for those programs? He wouldn’t even miss it. Or maybe we could all storm his penthouse and dangle him over the Gowanus Canal? Naw, let’s go ahead and keep setting records for the highest rate of child homelessness in NYC since The Great Depression.
In his defense, he did just ban the sale of sodas over 16 ounces so us dumb poors don’t high fructose corn syrup ourselves to death. So really, he’s got our best interests at heart, right?
The London cast of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical perform 2 songs (“Aquarius” and “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)”) on BBC’s news show Nationwide, before taking over the studio and getting the presenters, including future coke-snorter, Frank Bough, up to dance.
The original 1968 London production of Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theater, and provided a starting block for a diverse range of young talent including: Sonja Kristina, Paul Nicholas, Melba Moore, Elaine Paige, Paul Korda, Marsha Hunt, Floella Benjamin, Alex Harvey, Oliver Tobias, Richard O’Brien and Tim Curry. This was where Curry first met future Rocky Horror Picture Show writer O’Brien, and where Alex Harvey conjured up SAHB. Hair ran in London from 1968-1973, for 1,997 performances, until it was forced to close after the theater roof collapsed. It then relocated to the Queen’s Theater, where it ran for a further 111 performances between June and September 1974, when it finally closed. This was the cast performing before the final show on September 28th, 1974.
Tonight at Cinefamily in Los Angeles, where they’ll be screening a brand new 35mm print of Peter Watkins’ counterculture classic, Punishment Park (showing for an entire week, co-sponsored by BAFTA) there will be a reunion afterwards of Punishment Park‘s cast and crew:
Completely singular in the world of cinema due to his one-of-a-kind blurring of the lines between documentary and fiction storytelling, Peter Watkins is one of the most neglected major filmmakers of the last half-century. Since the early 1960s, the British-born director has managed, against trying and often adversarial circumstances, to produce a highly original and powerful body of work that engages the worlds of politics, art, history, and literature. That these films remain obscure is a function of such factors as suppression by producers or weak-kneed film distributors, surprisingly unsympathetic — at times hostile — critics, and the filmmaker’s own legendary iconoclasm.
The Cinefamily is very, very excited to bring to Los Angeles the brand-new 35mm print of Punishment Park, Watkins’ lone 1971 foray into stateside filmmaking. An astonishing all-American dystopia that’s both terrifyingly realistic and fantastically hyperbolic, Peter Watkins’ masterpiece Punishment Park melts down the righteous anger of Vietnam protest politics into a nail-biting flow of pure narrative propulsion. In the film’s chilling “what-if” scenario, a uniformly groovy panoply of subversives (featuring pacifists, feminists, professors, draft dodgers and pop stars) stand in resistance against repressive establishment squares at a lethal government-sponsored kangaroo court — but survival soon trumps articulateness, as the prisoners are plunged into the deepest levels of hell right in the open air: a grueling, Most Dangerous Game-style desert death race with no food or water, but plenty of ticked-off cops. Shot guerilla-style on 16mm camera in a Mojave Desert dry lake bed, this docudrama trailblazer is unforgiving, raw, and scorching, and features shocking performances from its non-professional actors, who were cast primarily for their ability to speak on-camera about their real-life political beliefs. While insightfully awash in Seventies counterculture, Punishment Park is no time capsule, for what’s most terrifying is how relevant its alternate-reality police state still feels forty years later.
In addition to our one-week run of Punishment Park, the series also includes Watkins’ scathing showbiz satire Privilege (1967), and his early award-winning British productions The War Game (1965, winner of the 1966 Academy Award for Best Documentary Film) and Culloden (1964).
for shooting themselves in the foot professionally with hard partying, frontman Paul Westerberg got sober in 1990, prior to the band’s fizzling breakup. He still produces 
, though he gives off the impression that he’s somehow in hiding because he keeps a pretty low profile these days. 
is due out in November; fans await with bated breath!
