Halloween Music

This Halloween, don’t get bogged down in the same old crappy music. Instead, listen to what I tell you to.

First, Stevie Wonder doing an extended funk jam on “Superstition” on Sesame Street of all places, in 1972:

Then in what just might be the greatest rock performance captured on film, the Edgar Winter Group doing “Frankenstein” in 1973. Seriously, this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The Great White One plays a pre-keytar standing keyboard, saxaphone, and drums. It’s amazing.

You may thank me for your enlightenment at any time.

Bah

I’ve been meaning to chime in on quite a number of intrablog conversations, but I’ve been hampered by work and general laziness.  I hope to devote a large chunk of time to blogging tonight between feedings of the ravenous hordes.

Fun fact:  if the cute “searches used to get to your blog” stat is in any way reliable, my readership now consists entirely of Gregg Easterbrook haters.  Here’s some red meat then:  he’s still a fucking moron.

Selling Crazy

Avi Klein has an excellent piece in the latest Washington Monthly on the newest insanity coming from the Lyndon LaRouche movement. I suggest that anyone with even a faint interest in political cults take a look.

I live in DC, so until recently I was subjected to the brainwashed drones in the LaRouche Youth Movement all the time. Probably the weirdest episode occurred a few years ago on the Metro. I was sitting on the train minding my own business when four of the LaRouchies got on the train, all young college-age kids dressed fairly normally. They began singing, quite well and harmoniously, a tune excoriating Dick Cheney. As DC and its suburbs are fairly liberal places, this sentiment was appreciated and well-received by the crowd on the train.

As people began to take a look at the literature handed out by the singers, however, the smiles and laughter abruptly stopped. It’s as if every single person on the train thought, “Ha, Dick Cheney sucks ass and…oh fuck, LaRouche.” I’ve never seen a crowd go from receptive to indifferent in such a short span of time. The LaRouchies were seemingly happy just to hand out their agitprop, and they transferred to another car at the next stop.

Every single holiday, a dick in a box

Photo by Ezra Klein

Now that Halloween’s over, I’ve shaved off the beard. There was no way I was showing up to work in the ridiculous chinstrap pictured above, and I was probably due for a change anyway. The most common comment I’ve been getting is, “You look so much younger!” Now I’m currently 27. Did people really think I was in my thirties? Dear lord, this was more serious than I first thought.

I’ll update this post with a picture of my clean shaven self later on.

Update the First:  I was also captured in costume by Project Beltway (scroll down).

Pick it up, Rudy. Oi!

Over at Hit & Run, Jesse Walker tortuously works in a Specials reference while discussing Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre decision to root for the Red Sox in the World Series. To which commenter “mlt” then replies:

I had been expecting an entire primary season filled with Rudy-Ska puns, jokes, clips, etc. Why the delay?

Ask and ye shall receive, my child. Below is the official guide to using ska songs while referencing Giuliani’s candidacy.

Abortion does not cause breast cancer

Sciencebloggers Orac and Marc Chu-Carroll tag team to produce the most authoritative takedown of the “abortion causes breast cancer” canard that I’ve yet seen.  Short story:  the study’s author simply dropped data that didn’t fit with his desired outcome, and he apparently can’t standard deviate his way out of a paper bag.

Also interesting is that this research comes from the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, whose work I’ve seen cited by anti-vaccinationists of both the conservative and liberal variety.  I bet this guy gets published there all the time.

We fear change

As promised earlier this month, I’ve redesigned the blog a little. I like the overall layout and design, but still have a few reservations, so consider this new look to be a probationary period.

Any comments on the redesign are appreciated. As are any comments that tell me how I can get my name back on every post (that’s one of the major reservations right now).

Road Rules: West Africa

My former roommate Jay is currently halfway though a Peace Corps stint in Pama, Burkina Faso. On his MySpace blog, he posts an account of the trials and tribulations involved trying to vacation in Ghana via Togo. It’s a captivating read, illustrating the ease which one adapts to regular bribery and how the Bush administration is still managing to screw with him all the way over there. Check it out.

(I accidentally deleted this post earlier. My apologies.)

 

Also: Pope Catholic

Via Skeptico, I see that Dinesh D’Souza is still a complete moron.  Is anyone really shocked that he has no idea what the logical fallacies are?

I’m a bad fan

This has been a bad year for me and live music.  I haven’t really seen anyone at all, save for the many Frustrations shows I’ve gone to since leaving the band, and the Hello Tokyo show I ran sound at this summer.   Part of this can be explained by lack of follow through on my part.  I’d often notice a band I like is coming to town in few weeks, then promptly forget about it until a week after the show transpired, at which point I’d utter “d’oh”.

Additionally, I tend to have fairly eclectic tastes in comparison to the rest of my friends, leading to difficulties getting even one person to join me at any show I’d want to attend.  If I want to see, say, a ska band, the Dave Matthews Band, the Killers, or some obscure rock band from Brooklyn, I’d have no problem getting a crowd together.  If I want to see the Brand New Heavies, I’m most likely going alone (this is exactly what I did in 2006).

So as my not-quite-New-Year’s resolution, I plan on redoubling my efforts to attend live music.  The criteria are only that I enjoy the band (obviously) and that they’re playing at a club in the DC area (I abhor arena and festival shows).  Tops of the  list for desirability right now is the above lady, Corinne Bailey Rae, although it doesn’t look like she’s coming to town anytime soon.  Amy Winehouse would also be spectacular, but her show would probably violate the “no arena” rule.  After that, I start drawing a blank.  I turn to you, dear readers, even if you hate me:  what artists kick ass live and should be on my list?  No, DJs do not count as live artists (how on earth do you go to a Fatboy Slim show?).