Friday, July 26, 2013

How insidery?

None more insidery!

I really need to stop reading TPM.

This "article" from TPM is a classic of anonymously-sourced insidery bullshit. Here, just take the first couple "lede grafs" (as the insidery journamalists like to say):

The unlikeliest of alliances forged between two once-bitter rivals stands to upend the status quo of congressional gridlock and potentially resolve a bitter partisan chasm that has characterized the modern era of crisis governance.

Yes, President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are essentially working together against GOP leadership and the tea party to break the Senate out of its current situation and resolve major budget rifts that have plagued Washington for years.

Of course, if you actually read the rest of the shitty article, it's all just the typical beltway "oh, if only the two sides could just talk to each other and work out a compromise bipartisan agreement that just so happens to be exactly what conservatives want, we'd finally all get our magic tax-free rainbow sparkleponies!" Well that, and it turns out that all McCain actually cares about is the military, as usual.

But hey, it's almost August, just about time for a series of these shitty articles, D.C.'s equivalent of "Shark attacks on the rise!" and "OMG Weiners with wieners!"

Yay. I can hardly wait.

Friday, July 12, 2013

So I shut down my heart, and I turned on my TV

The title is a great lyric from the title track of the new punk/country album Mayberry by one of my all-time favorite local bands I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House.

Here, have a listen, if the links to this site work:

I Can Lick Any SOB In The House – Mayberry
I Can Lick Any SOB In The House – Bones
I Can Lick Any SOB In The House – King James

Or y'know, just buy the damn thing, it's only $5.99 on emusic or you can spend more for it at CD Baby if you don't have an emusic subscription.

They don't have any ute oobs up yet of songs from the new album, but here's an acoustic version of the referenced song they recorded at Couch by Couchwest:


Updated: Dammit, the song links are all dead now, go figure. Just preview the song at emusic. Fuckit, here are some conciliatory videos from older albums:

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Wayback Wednesday

The Iron Maiden documentary Flight 666 was on TV last night, so of course I had to watch. It was actually kinda neat to see that one of the favorite bands of my youf is still out there having a blast. Of course it's available (for now anyway) on the Ute Oobs, if you have a couple hours to kill:

And since it had been forever, I just had to listen to the Powerslave album again (digitized from my "picture" LP no less!), for old timey sake. Here's a long-ass song from that album based on the famous Coleridge poem. Who knew that an '80s heavy metal band could inspire a teenager to read Coleridge? Crazy. I saw them on this tour back in '85, good times.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Oregon

is horrible and ugly and the beer is terrible. Stay away.

(Note, I have no idea who the tiny people are in the waterfall photo. They do help to show the scale though.)

Friday, June 21, 2013

Summer!

I see that M. Bouffant (and probably countless others) has beaten me to the punch, but I just don't care.

Oh well: today we celebrate that our lovely (for now) planet, tilted slightly on its axis, continues to rotate around the sun giving us Northern-hemispherians (suckit upsidedowners!) the delightful summer season, and the longest day of the year.

Alternately, you could think, "This sucks! It's hot! And now the days just get shorter again 'til December! Why doesn't Obama do something about the seasons? He's worse than Cheney McHitler!" But that would merely get you a well paying position at any of a wide variety of journamalistic organs, and we certainly wouldn't want that.

So anyway, yay, summer! Have some obscure versions of the classic "Summertime" -- I say "obscure" but I'm sure The Zombie has seen all these people live, even the ones that have been dead for 50 years. Regardless, I like how the song can be interpreted so many different ways and always be excellent.

Sidney Bechet:

Friends Of Dean Martin(ez):

(Side note: the band was originally "Friends Of Dean Martin" but then Dean Martin's estate sued them and they were forced to change it.)

Actually, this last one is not-obscure-at-all, Billie Holiday:

Now I'm gonna go camping and drink a bunch of beer. Surprise.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Blahg Post

Contents: music.

Explanatory paragraph punctuated with witty remark.