April Travesties

Only 24 songs this month, as allergies messed with my throat a bit.

Aenima - Tool
Changes - David Bowie
Cult of Personality - Living Color
Everlong - Foo Fighters (w/live band)
Fairytale of New York - Pogues w/Kirsty McColl (duet w/Kate Awesome)
Father & Son - Cat Stevens
I Was Wrong - Social Distortion
I Wish - Stevie Wonder
In Bloom - Nirvana
Lean On Me - Bill Withers
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Put a Little Love In Your Heart - Annie Lennox & Al Green (duet w/Tyla)
Rebel Rebel - David Bowie
Regular John - Queens of the Stone Age
She Caught the Katy - Blues Brothers
Silent All These Years - Tori Amos
Solisbury Hill (live 'Little Birdie' version) - Peter Gabriel
Starlight - Muse
Substitute - Who
Too Much Time On My Hands - Styx
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
Virginia Plain - Roxy Music
Whole of the Moon - Waterboys
You'll Never Find - Lou Rawls

An Idea

This post at Volokh gives me an idea: adapt and update Dead Souls to set it in the crazy 21st century milieu of subprime mortgage-backed securities.

UPDATE: I see KevinM in the comments at Volokh had a similar thought...

Welcome Aboard

With financial reform a-brewing and the Goldman Sachs suit moving forward, I've adding another voice to the chorus of the Damned over there on the left: Bank Lawyer's Blog, which has a relatively self-explanatory title.

I Give It Four Episodes

I just watched the premiere of Happy Town. Crazy cast: Sam Neill, Amy Acker, Steven Weber, Tom Friendly, the ex-member of the Canadian Ad Mafia who scored a sitcom, that guy who isn't Peter Krause, Parker Lewis' former nemesis... it's a heck of a cast.

Too bad they'll all be unemployed in about a month.

The show seems to be aiming for some kind of midpoint between Twin Peaks and Picket Fences, skewing a little bit more David Lynch's way than David E Kelley's, and based on the first episode it certainly seemed to have some possibilities. And I guess, with Lost winding down, now's as good a time as any to try and get that audience hooked on another cock-tease of a show that will never pay off its mysteries. But I just don't see Happy Town taking off.

For one thing, it's set in Minnesota, so the hotties on the show will be wearing parkas and not skimpy torn clothing and/or bikinis. For another, the writing is kind of silly, and not in a tongue-in-cheek way. It's hard to take a show seriously when the big bad is called The Magic Man. I kept waiting for a Wilson sister cameo.

I'll probably keep watching -- Neill's having fun being creepy, and Acker is still the cutest second-cutest woman (my apologies to Karen Gillan) on television, although hopefully they give her more to do down the road. But at this point, it doesn't look like the show will be anything special.

Jeebus H, Crist

Whoops. Crist was supposed to be making an announcement tomorrow on what he planned to do going forward, but word apparently leaked out today that he was going to run as an independent, so now he has to deny that he's made a decision yet.

The fun bit:

But two Crist confidantes say he told them in phone calls he planned to announce he is running as an independent. They requested anonymity because the announcement hasn't been made. One cautioned that Crist frequently changes his mind.


So, he might be in a snit Thursday and decide he isn't going to run as an independent after all. Be warned.

Raising the Stakes

Tom Schaller, one of Nate's new grunts over at 538, gives an indication of what the downside might be if the Dems don't make a serious push for immigration reform before the midterms.

The Arizona nonsense has pretty much forced the administration's hand anyway, but just in case there was some thought to trying to manage the situation and back-burner reform, the numbers Schaller lays out should decisively scotch those plans.

The Dems need to get Latino voters energized. It's their only chance to minimize the potential damage in 2010, and have a chance of retaining control of the House.

Out of Her Weight Class

Fareed is having a round table right now about the Goldman Sachs lawsuit, with Eliot Spitzer, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and Andrew Ross Sorkin of the NYT. They quickly get to the heart of the suit (what it's about, how much merit there is in the case) and also the broader implications for Wall Street and the economy. It's a great discussion.

Oh, yeah, Amity Shlaes is there too, and contributing nothing. Zakaria tossed her an easy one about how Ben Bernacke's actions in creating liquidity were informed by his study of the Great Depression, and she babbled something barely coherent about Bernacke thinking he's a cardiologist. The other three are making precise, informed statements of fact, and Shlaes keeps trying to talk in generalities and metaphor. It's embarrassing, frankly.

As for Goldman Sachs? Still hemorrhaging value. Their stock price has dropped about 15% since the SEC's announcement last Friday. As Spitzer said during the panel, the suit is an almost existential crisis for Goldman and Wall Street. It's finally starting to seep out to the public exactly what it is they do, and how completely superfluous it is to the economy.

Whether they win or lose the SEC's suit is almost irrelevant.