July's Travesties

Here's the full list of songs (34 different songs in total) that I sang at karaoke in the month of July:

  • Aenima - Tool
  • Babe - Styx
  • Big Bang Baby - Stone Temple Pilots
  • Cult of Personality - Living Color
  • Deacon Blues - Steely Dan
  • Denial Twist - White Stripes
  • Eton Rifles - Jam
  • Everlong - Foo Fighters
  • Five Years - David Bowie
  • Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger
  • Girlfriend - Matthew Sweet
  • Golden Years - David Bowie
  • Green Eyed Lady - Sugarloaf
  • High and Dry - Radiohead
  • Jeepster - T-Rex
  • Kid Charlamagne - Steely Dan
  • Kiss Me - Sixpence None the Richer
  • Layla - Derek & the Dominoes
  • Lean On Me - Bill Withers
  • Let's Go - Cars
  • Let's Spend the Night Together - Rolling Stones
  • Me Myself and I - De La Soul
  • Missing You - John Waite
  • Never Tear Us Apart - INXS
  • Peace Train - Cat Stevens
  • Roll With It - Oasis
  • Say It Ain't So - Weezer
  • Stepping Out - Joe Jackson
  • Sunday Morning Coming Down - Johnny Cash
  • Tears of a Clown - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
  • Twice As Hard - Black Crowes
  • Under the Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • Wanted Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi
  • When Doves Cry - Prince

Lithium Is No Longer Available on Credit

I know a lot of people feel that John Lithgow's crowning achievement is Raising Cain, but his madcap cross-dressing antics don't hold a candle to his crazy Italian scientist/exiled Red Lectroid overlord shtick in Buckaroo Banzai. Which, of course, is on TV right now.

Laugh while you can, monkey boy!

Cha-Ching

Gosh, I wonder why the US can't cobble together a decent health care system...

The GOZP

The Great Orange Satan, with one little poll question, illustrates perfectly why the Republican Party is already dead but too stupid to realize it. Even if those numbers are fudged to make the Grand Old Zombie Party look worse, they're still appalling.

On the other hand, those 42% of them who are actually confident Obama was born in the USA will be needed to form the core of the new, sane right-wing party the country needs, so maybe it's good that someone has begun the process of identifying who they are.

Someone start up a breeding program for them, quick! (Insert tasteless Meghan McCain joke here.)

My People


I've been asked more than once why I still live in Toronto, instead of moving back south of the border. I'll tell you why:

I met up with my friend Keith for a meeting about the Top Secret Project we're working on. On the way there, I bumped into a guy I barely know at the subway.

Walking south on Ossington after the meeting, we bumped into my friend Tyla riding her bike.

After parting ways with Keith on Queen Street, I bumped into my ex-co-worker Ib who I hadn't seen in many years.

And after chatting with him for a bit, I headed north and bumped into a karaoke acquaintance (Denise, to be specific) I vaguely knew on College.

Toronto isn't just home. It's my city. It fits me.

Imprison Michael Schmidt

Seriously. He is guilty of violating a court order. Here's his confession:

The information about Xxxxxx and Xxxxxx emerged through interviews with multiple lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information is under seal by a court order.

Whatever laws exist to shelter whistle-blowers, and whatever Constitutional protections exist for journalists and their sources, should not apply to sports gossip.

Someone please throw the book at these asshole lawyers and media idiots who enable them.

UPDATE: Names redacted from the quote to avoid doing the very thing I'm bitching about the NYT doing.

Even More TIFF

New Jeunet!

'90s Flashback!

Jose Rijo is facing off against Raul Mondesi in the San Cristobal mayoral race.

Letter-Writing Time!

To: Andrew Sullivan

I'm sure you've heard this a-plenty by now, but your central premise -- that the presentation of Obama's actual birth certificate would "make it go away" -- is just false. The story is not fueled by Obama's reluctance to 'answer it'; no answer will suffice for someone who's decided that Obama must somehow, in some way, be illegitimate, because their world view falls apart when someone like him can become President.

I do appreciate that you're trying to be even-handed in your treatment of this with your treatment of Palin's pregnancy, but the two circumstances just aren't the same. Palin's story had internal inconsistencies that required further explanation. It just didn't make sense, on the face of it, for a woman to fly thousands of miles after her water broke. Questioning her story was logical.

There are no such internal inconsistencies in Obama's life story, unless you think there's something inherently implausible about a mixed-race couple in America in the late '50s. There are no loose ends to account for, no threads for a journalist to tug at to see if something unravels.

There's no story here, only vicious partisanship.
And vicious partisanship won't dissipate, no matter how many documents Obama produces.

Politico is Teh Sukk

If you've ever wondered why I don't link to Politico, Glenn sums it up nicely.

I don't care if a pundit has a bias. Hell, Al Giordano reminds you of how uber-leftist he is every other paragraph. I do care if a pundit has a bias but pretends that they don't. And Politico is easily the worst offender in the modern newsosphere.

Thursday

The Senile Old Lady does the math, and notices that Thursday will mark 40 days since the murder and martyring of Neda.

It was those 40-day mourning periods that were the backbone of the 1979 revolution. They fed on themselves; more demonstrations meant more martyrs, and more public displays of grief. The Khameini/Ahmadinejad regime has done everything they can to try and short-circuit that cycle from starting again, but the fact that we even know Neda's name indicates how unsuccessful those efforts were.

It's still just a matter of time until the regime falls, but the clock will start ticking faster on Thursday.

Clearly I Need To Watch Conan More Often

Via B-J, via Sully. And yes, it's verbatim.

More TIFF

More Special Presentations were announced today, and this batch is a bit more interesting than the last one:

Werner Herzog has inexplicably made a sequel to (and/or re-make of... it's hard to tell) Bad Lieutenant, this one set in New Orleans and with Nic Cage instead of Harvey Keitel. There is a very good chance that this will be the funniest movie of the entire festival.

We get Michael Moore's latest, because Moore always brings his movies to TIFF. This one's about capitalism. Boo capitalism!

A Serious Man, the new film from the Coens, gets its world premiere. Shockingly, it's a period comedy, which would be a radical change of pace for the Coens. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut with a roller derby comedy starring Ellen Page. I predict this will be the toughest ticket to get of the entire festival.

Busted!

John Stewart just (well, in a pre-taped interview) got Bill Kristol to admit that the government can run "first-class" health care, at least when it comes to providing health care to the military. So much for that "government health care would a priori suck" meme.

In Kristol's defense, it must be tough to keep track of all the bullsh!t contradictory talking points that the right wing has cobbled together to try and scuttle health care reform.

Woof

Michael Vick's been re-instated, which begs the question: who gonna give him a job?

He might not be available to play until Week 6, which at least gives him a chance to get acclimated to the offense of whatever team signs him but assures that he won't be signed to start (not that anyone would be crazy enough to start him, with the obvious exception of Al Davis, who's crazy enough to do anything.)

The best fit, though, would be for a club jumping on the Wildcat bandwagon to sign him for that formation. Vick was always more dangerous as a runner than as a passer anyway, but version 2.0 of the NFL Wildcat requires someone who can throw the ball, not just scramble with it. So... who's planning to run the Wildcat, and who needs someone with Vick's skill set to run it?

Miami drafted Pat White specifically for that role, so they're out. Jerry Jones seems to have learned his lesson about reclamation projects, and the Cowboys have Felix Jones anyway. Chicago said they were going to add it in to some extent, but the Cutler trade probably scrapped that notion. Can't see them emphasizing the Wildcat much. The Eagles brought in LeSean McCoy, who ran it at Pitt. The Chargers have Tomlinson. Tennesse might use it to get Vince Young involved in the offense again. Baltimore has Troy Smith. Heck, even Oakland has McFadden, another Arkansas Wildcat vet. And Atlanta... uhh, no.

The best fit for Vick would be a team who has an established starter at QB, so there's no question of Vick competing for that role, and who plans to add in some Wildcat plays but doesn't really have anyone on the roster who can really execute it. That seems to leave three main options:

St. Louis - the Rams tried the Wildcat a bit with Steven Jackson taking the snaps, but don't have anyone to really be a duel run/pass threat. And Bulger's backup right now is Kyle Boller, with Brock Berlin as the #3. Neither are exactly indispensible.

New England - now this is an interesting idea. The Patriots got torched by the Wildcat the first time they faced Miami last season, and while they stifled it in the rematch that embarrassment got Bill Belichick's wheels spinning. With Matt Cassel earning the big bucks in KC, Brady doesn't have an established backup, and Belichick isn't afraid of looking like a genius by giving talented ballplayers another chance (see: Moss, Randy).

Cleveland - the Browns used Josh Cribbs in their Wildcat last season, who's all run/no pass, and while it would seem they have a glut at QB what they have are two #1's in Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson. If one finally gets dealt, Vick could make sense as the veteran backup/Wildcat specialist. Plus, Bill Simmons would die of some rare aneurysm/hard-on combination if Vick played his home games in the Dog Pound, so really it would be a win-win for everyone.

(Cross-posted to RotoSynthesis).

UPDATE: I've been reminded by my good friend Stevie Robot that Cribbs was a college QB, even though the Browns didn't have him throw much last season in the Wildcat (Cribbs was just 1-for-4 on passing attempts). That likely rules out Cleveland as a Vick landing spot.

Testify!

Couldn't agree with Radley more. The Gates incident has little to do with race, and much to do with a police officer feeling entitled to arrest someone because they annoyed him and showed him up in front of his fellow officers.

Balko's further point about conservative genuflection to power is also spot-on:

This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.
Again, take another look at that ridiculous anti-health care reform ad I put up below. The weedy little bow-tied bureaucrat is an arch-villain, menacing innocent doctors and patients with his clipboard.

Give that same weedy little man a gun and a badge from the FBH (Federal Bureau of Health) and suddenly he'd become Elliot Ness, hunting down insurance cheats and cleaning up the dark underbelly of the health care system.

I Went There

If you'll notice near the bottom of the list of This Month's Travesties, you'll see that I have now sung a certain song by a certain iconic Jersey rock band that I never thought I would do at karaoke in a million billion years.

Again, I can only blame my tendency to ask cute bar staff what they want to hear me sing.

The worst part is, I actually sang it well even though my voice was still shredded from doing Aenima at the Kickass Karaoke 10th Anniversary party the night before.

Goddess help me, I may even sing it again. Unironically.