What I did for NYE

Man, sure are a lot of cobwebs in here....

We saw two very excellent shows in SF for the new year. Phil and Bobby put on a nice set of shows at the Bill Graham civic center. They alternated sets between ratdog and phil and phriends with phil and bobby doing a 5-7 song semi-acoustic jam in between the two. Also they dropped a third set NYE...it was a very nice time...

and upon returning home...

The "Dead" just announced a spring tour. the lineup will be Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, joined by guitar monster Warren Haynes and RatDog keyboard ace Jeff Chimenti
Only 2 shows on the west coast...may 9 LA forum and may 10 SF shoreline

I hope everyone (anyone?) had a nice NYE and extend happy vibes for your new year...

and for the audiophiles, here is the Dark star jam from the first night mid set it was more jazzy than the second night mid set Dark star (not a bad audience rec., but only 3 min):

I believe this riff might have actually been responsible for the destruction of a small city

Back when I thought "rock star" was a plausible career option, I'm fairly certain that White Denim is the band I would've applied to be in.

PRM

It's been awhile, so let's see if I remember how to do this. Live clips of some band, right? Of Montreal qualifies as a band, no? Okay then! Your last PRM of 2008!

"Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider"


"Lysergic Bliss"


"Gronlandic Edit"

Merry Xmas, it's a distasteful collaboration

Okay, so Dave already beat me to name-checking the Onion's very funny list of obscene, absurd albs ("least essentials") from 2008. But I'm left with a question from the otherwise-semi-all-knowing women and men in the a/v control room: how in the motherfudge did Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis' Two Men with the Blues get omitted?

Listen. I am not wet behind the ears when it comes to the business of Willie albs. I know this guy'll pretty much roll tape with whoever the bleep can put together a few thousand clams and a session band [ed. note - wait, it's a live collection! live from the ever-bluesy Lincoln Center, baby!]. But nonetheless... this is the sort of thing that deserves at least some perfunctory remarks from the peanut gallery, non? Did everybody else decide just to bow their heads and zip their lips about it while I was out getting a Sun Drop?

See, here's an example of the New Me I was talking about previously. Old Me would say, "who knows what the future holds?" But New Me is not afraid to see the future, to know the future. There are three things I know for sure about 2009:

1. This alb cannot not be terrible, but will enjoy strong sales in Lane County, OR .
   
2. I will have to hear it at some point(s). I will eventually seek it out. In particular I will eventually need to know what "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" sounds like avec trumpet (blues trumpet!)
   
3. Only the recession conditions will keep me from buying it for our friend Robes. (That and the fact that I still feel kinda bad about a live Bobby McFerrin slab I bought for him. If yr ever over at Robes' house, please ask him to play said slab for you.)

Oh, and if the prospects for this alb excite you, be sure to check out the Amazon customer reviews (here.) Hell, I think I'll chuck a few choice quotations in the damned comments section. It's Christmas, you know? Blues Christmas.

Year-End Self-Horn/Holiday Horn

While my role models Wobs and EZ patiently await their Xmas Phish albs, yours truly's present to himself is a blog spree. For starters, the first of three long, grand, bestuv 2008 music posts is up on le prisonship! Get to it, if yr the sort that "gets to" that sort of thing.

Aye, this's what passes for thrilling on my holiday eve, but don't take that as a complaint. The loved ones I love are safe and hopefully warm and that's enough, and it's so much gravy on the ice-cake if I get to write to "you," too. Maybe I'll write to U2 while I'm at it. ("Dear Bono, what the eff happened, mahn? And when did it dawn on you to appropriate Mark Arm's style of sunglasses...?)

2008 was a great year for politics and a tough year internally. But here's one thing I've noticed that's blog-worthy and un-maudlin: 2008 seems to be the year I've put down the gtr and picked up the pen (again.) Writing hasn't seemed so important or so fulfilling since Sewanee. I don't know what it means, and I don't know where it'll go, but web-blogging is not going to be enough for 2009, and I'm not sure a dissertation will be either... So what does that mean? Do I re-visit the faux-Beckett, semi-autobio-roman? Do I turn back to churning out poems - actual poems, the kind I actually revise/edit/try to publish? Or mebbe the world needs a mystery novel featuring socialist-stoner-art-sleuths? You think? I don't know, but it's time for something, and that passes for a "positive" in my mind.
Another thing, this one a rare ur-resolution from somebody who mostly cannot distinguish between resolve and Palmolive: I'm going to back off on the lex-as-insufferable-agnostic meme. It already goes without saying, you know? If you know me, you know (and I already know) what I do and don't doubt and what I do and don't believe. Like no less a mind then Tom Scharpling, I figure that we've got a grown-up president coming, and if Tom takes it to mean that 30+-year-olds should stop shopping for Star Wars memorabilia, I take it to mean that there's gotta be something else worth grumbling about then the godheads and politics-s that I already know are nowhere to be found. There are other "known knowns" and "known unknowns," the seeds of which are way more under-sewn. God - (not) the one whose existence I question - knows I'll revert to my Bergman and Beckett and much-ballyhooed practice of negative dialectical doubt. But I've seen that movie, and I've cut that solo alb. It's about time to stick dandelions and daisies in the eye-holes of my Converse.... (Another ur-resolution, natch, is to do something about the oft-evoked bag of balloons north of my midriff.)

That's it, friends. I'll soon bury this unsolicited-but-necessary bit of solipsism/sentiment beneath a far more characteristic bit of non sequitur whatever... but I needed to perpetrate this exact spew just exactly now. And as always, froonds, there's nobody to whom I'm better fit to spew than "you."

Finally, OG regulars: Merry Holidays. I love you jerks!

Holiday traditions

You know my favorite thing about the holidays? The carols. Who doesn't have memories of gathering around the tree with family and loved ones and singing this chestnut?



God, I fucking love Christmas! What's your family's twisted tradition (aside from your uncle getting drunk and ruining the holiday)?

SoCal in the House!

I love this article from market watch:

Worker Advocate: Solis Nomination Slap in the Face to America's Independent Minded Workers

Last update: 6:21 p.m. EST Dec. 18, 2008
WASHINGTON, Dec 18, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Mark Mix, President of the 2.2 million member National Right to Work Committee, has released the following statement about President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) as the next Secretary of Labor:
"Obama's appointment of Hilda Solis is very disturbing news for America's independent-minded workers.
"Congresswoman Solis is a die-hard forced unionism activist who apparently believes that all workers should be gathered into union collectives -- whether they like it or not. Throughout her political career, she has unfailingly carried water for Big Labor and voted in favor of every forced unionism power grab that has come before her. In fact, she had a 100% voting record from the AFL-CIO, in support of their radical forced unionism agenda.

how much can an independent minded worker in a forced union collective expect to bring home?

We may get our progressive yet...

Latest dirt on the DoL search is centering on Harley Shaiken out of Berkeley. And I'm saying that a Shaiken nomination is definitely "not crap."

Here's Shaiken's 2007 House committee testimony in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, and here's that testimony distilled down into an LA Times op-ed.

OG needless suffering/essay contest

whoever downloads, digests and most thoroughly reviews this "vintage" Pearl Jam demo gets a fancy piece of vinyl from me for a trophy (or a fancy cassette: your choice, i've got cool trophies available in both formats.) i'll be looking forward to some earnest, scholarly, scathing whatever. may the worst person win!

Next We'll have Tony Blair and Jeff Tweedy...

...talking about Harold Wilson and the other fall of the house of labour.

(h/t Washington Note)

".exactly these cans." horn

[i'm working through an obstacle with exactly these cans on my ears. dual volume controls! i am enjoying very much the new Deerhunter and Lambchop records, and speaking of Lambchop the newest Giant Sand would go well between your Lambchop and your Testface records.]

The Interview: Barack Obama - Person of the Year 2008 - TIME

don't even think about not reading this, because it's lengthy and candid.

Palin leads top 10 list of memorable political economic quotes - Politics- msnbc.com

what a year of politics we've lived through? huh. this is a pointed kind of scrapbook, this list.

Electrical Audio - Best Albums of 2008

outside of our immediate circle, this is where the real top 10 conversation goes on. i am having a great time preparing my top ten...especially since i've already leaked the identity of my #1 on the other blogo.

Golden Girls Jewelry! » Is The “Thank You For Being A Friend” Necklace The Best Christmas Gift Since Christ Was Born?

i come to Best Week Ever exclusively for Paul F. Tompkins. but they've got me by the elbow now. shoegaze and pop-gossip, merry New Year!

blog.aflcio.org, "double-standard-critics-of-big-three-loan-subsidize-foreign-competitors"
again, i keep wondering why it took labor so long to get this winning message out to people!

back to work.

marxist nerd adult comedy here

from an email list i won't name because i don't know who would or wouldn't want their identity revealed. and Human Subjects is the order of the day, people.

>From Engels: "Hungary, Poland and Russia are the only countries in Europe where invasion is impossible in winter."

Wow. If only Hitler had read some more Engels!

-(Poster 1).

^^^
(Poster 2): Actually, I'm kind of glad he didn't (smile).

(some of) NAM's Greatest Hits - Then and Now

National Association of Manufacturers, (1895-???)

*On the need for Employers to Organize (against the free press and direct democracy, etc):

We must co-operate – we must get together and stick together to uphold our honor and honesty, we manufacturers and merchants, or rampant labor men, socialists and demagogues will be our undoing. All these new fangled ideas about the initiative, referendum and recall, and all these attacks on capital, no matter how honestly obtained, are for the sole purpose of putting more power into the hands of the papers and politicians. In fact, I think the greatest menace that our country has today is a so-called “free press,” bidding for popularity with the thoughtless mob.

* Contra the eight-hour working day, from a pamphlet entitled, Eight Hours by Act of Congress: Arbitrary, Needless, Destructive, Dangerous:

The National Association is committed to an unrelenting opposition to this vicious, needless, and in every way preposterous proposition…The worst that can be said of it is none too bad.

The chief work of the Association is an educational one – the molding of public opinion. [If successful] the public spirited masses of the country will rally to their side, and the featherheads and mountebanks who have been casting discredit on many of the labor unions will drop back into obscurity from which they were originally dragged.

We must point out to the people that all this legislation that is going on affects them; shorter hours increases the cost of living, raises taxes, creates a condition for them that is really worse than it is for the manufacturers. We owe that to them. We must do it. That is the most important thing for this organization to do.

* Contra the Employee Free Choice Act

Union bosses have made it clear that their highest legislative priority next year is passage of EFCA.

The card check bill would eliminate over 70 years of precedent established under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 by taking away employees’ freedom to choose under a federally supervised, secret ballot election when deciding whether or not to join a union. It would replace the private, secret ballot election with a system called “card check” which allows a union to organize if a majority of employees simply sign an authorization card. Under this system, the employees’ signatures are made public to the employer, the union organizers and co-workers.

Trading federally supervised private ballot elections for a card check process tramples the privacy of individual workers. Secret ballots are the only way to protect an individual’s freedom to choose without subtle or overt coercion.

(Good to hear this defense of the secret ballot/democracy from a group that has publicly opposed the free press, direct democracy and the direct election of U.S. Senators, eh?)

OG commenter/AFT guy Martin on Arne Duncan

from 11/20/2008, back before Obama tapped this bleeping "CEO" for the Education Sec. gig:

As a Chicago Public School teacher, I get very worried when Arne Duncan is mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education. The number of CPS students who have been murdered continues to rise on his watch. The number of neighborhood public schools who are closed (and replaced by charters) continues to rise each year. The only schools in CPS which are not segregrated (mine is 99.7 % African American) are the magnet schools. Working in this system, I see very little the federal government can do to actually help inner city schools (policy-wise anyway, we haven't received money from the state of Illinois to build or maintain school buildings in 6 years. That's for the entire CPS district. So, some infrastructure money might help). If Arne Duncan is put in this post, he offers no real education change.

Praise to Martino for being way out front on Arne Duncan. But heaven help those galldarn teachers' unions! [update, as of 12/16, Wobs tells me some higher-ups say it could be a lot worse. and Ezra Klein has a nice summary post that portrays Duncan as a sort of "Switzerland" between/among the unions and the reformers.]

Let's talk about restructuring for a moment, shall we?

To the Senators from the Deep South who decided that clinging to a dying ideology was more important than thousands of middle class jobs:

I couldn't help but notice that many of your home states receive much more federal revenue than you pay in taxes. Hardly the model of self-sufficient, pull yourself up by your bootstraps-tuitiveness, eh? Yet somehow you manage to pony up massive subsidies in order to lure automotive manufacturers from overseas into your states. In other words, the hippy-dippy West Coast, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and yes, Michigan - the very people you just completely fucked over - are making it possible for your state governments to give massive handouts to automotive companies (some based in "socialist," big gummint countries with free shriek! health care) that are directly competing with the domestic industry.

Let's say we withhold highway dollars, medicare funds, and social security payments until your states "restructure" those sweetheart deals. What's that? That will hurt people whose jobs and livelihoods depend on the flow of those federal dollars? That didn't seem to keep you from fucking anyone over, now did it?

clumps

(so anyway i have a long nite ahead of work tonite so i thought i'd send out a relay.)

*goes without saying politico clump
Robert Kuttner on the current BHO conjuncture
Bidenland will be Laborland!

Joe Biden and Robert Kuttner are in their different modalities both sort-of "go-to" guys at this moment. God knows it's great to hear that Biden will be a major labor liaison in the WH. Meanwhile, Kuttner's timely and perspicacious book has rightfully won attention far and wide, and he has subsequently half-emerged even on the stodgy old Sunday Morning circuit as the farrest out left-liberal prognosticator.

*introducing some important blogs clump
Will and the Grits
Mc'CaterbaronvonBear produces fearful catalog
Elvira, embroideries.
here we encounter three figures with whom i've shared a lot of collegiate thundering, but with whom i've also done, let's face it, years of blogging going back prior to even the early prisonship days. (who else misses friendster, folks?) but seriously, here we have three evocative blogposts from three tried and true OG commenters. first, Wilbro re-engages the questions of Southern self-identity that plague the post-Faulkner, pro-Cracker Barrel (or "profauckobarro") impulse that defines so much of our crowd. secondly, recalcitrant blogger kyle mc'caterflare has delivered a terrific festoon of albs straight out of his personal wheelhouse, which is of course the horror-soundtrack milieu. thirdly, the ever-Elvira-like Elvira does outstanding work with primary texts and pedagogical anecdotes that come off with a kind of, uh, gravitas that say, your average pattyjoe clump-post doesn't. highest recommendations

*ooh, cinema! clump (featuring survey question)
gabba drops this (apparently British) cartoon The Snowman on me, and reminds me how I've been emo since way before i ever heard slint or whoever.
the a/v club on cool but unnecessary movie sequels
it's important to me that Weapon X is important to Ezra Klein.
so here's the big question...has anybody seen The Two Jakes (Chinatown sequel). i've heard it's alright - Nicholson directed it? - but i'm more than a little fearful of it, seeing how Chinatown is such hallowed ground...(seriously though, a survey question: name your three favorite sequels.)

wow

have a nice day.

Not what was intended by nature

The skateboard video aesthetic was never meant to be applied to... golf:

for the record

i've listened to Dave Emory's anti-fascist research for more than a decade, and have written plenty about his importance to my "life of the mind," which is not to say his influence on my politics. that said, i think i've only ever forced his work on to jerobaim and angelor to any serious degree.

that said, during my tenure at the OG my taste in "alternative" political theory has trended towards the libertarian and/or union-busting. for those (between/among) us who are looking for a new flavor of off-the-rails spoken prose...well welcome to Dave Emory in the BHO era. You might be familiar with some of these Rezko-Syria-Norquist-Terror associations, but never before from a nominally pro-Obama point of view. from the most recent of the web texts that now accompany Emory's weekly broadcasts/podcasts:

This program explores a web of associations in Chicago that connect Obama to the urban political machine of the Daley family and–more importantly–to a milieu of slumlords who’ve generated much of their wealth at the expense of poor African-Americans. (As disturbing as this connection is, Mr. Emory stresses that this is not necessarily to be held against Obama. Dave opined that no one can ever become President or even a major party candidate without associating with some pretty unsavory individuals.) Of greater significance for our purposes is the fact that one of the principals in this slumlord network–Syrian-born Antoine “Tony” Rezko described by some as Obama’s political godfather–has links to the Bush administration, GOP string-puller Karl Rove and to people associated with the Carlyle Group. In addition to Rezko’s links to the very Republican elements who are ranged on the opposite side of the aisle from Obama, Rezko has links to terrorist elements as well. (This is explored at greater length in FTR #655.) Interestingly–possibly significantly–Rezko’s elevation into the ranks of Illinois politicos came courtesy of Talat Othman, a close associate of the Bush family and administration, as well as the man who interceded on behalf of the individuals and insitutions targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.

See Emory's full-blown and fancy new website for way, way, way more info.

(horn) friday nite Sprites

• prisonship seasonal phonics (prisonship forensic rorschach) « The PrisonShip really, nobody's hitting up the Advent thread? do you not believe that the Prisonship has re-risen for some indefinite interval?
• Pearl Jam to reissue Ten in four different packages when i told frequent commenter robes about this development, he unwrapped his salmon wrap and cried into the spinach tortilla. anyway, that's how i remember it.
• Kids in the Hall reuniting for new series i hope this doesn't turn out to be underwhelming.
• Ben Smith's Blog: Clintonites against Kennedy i cannot get enough from this NY chasepack saga.
• Obama's Smoking Drama what brand do you think BHO smokes? i'd say either Marlboro Reds or Camel Lights. Winston Lights on the outside.