B12 Solipsism

Boy, does watching this video take me back. I saw the Horsies a few times that year. Not the best sound quality, but good enough to groove too.

The Horsies recorded live in Austin, Texas - January 18th, 1993

A bunch more related videos from the so-called Austin Slacker years are linked to at Metafilter. Missing a couple of favorites (2 Nice Girls, for instance), but a pretty representative sample.

“If You’re Feeling Sinister” (Belle & Sebastian)

For some reason, I was humming this song when I awoke today. Probably related to some now forgotten dream, but am passing it along for you to decipher.

The lyrics are something like:

Make a new cult every day to suit your affairs

Kissing girls in english, at the back of the stairs

You’re a honey, with a following of innocent boys

They never know it

Because you never show it

You always get your way

They never know it

Because you never show it

You always get your way



Have you and her been taking pictures of your obsessions?

Because I met a [boy] who went through one of your sessions

In his blue velour and silk

You liberated

A boy I never rated

And now he’s throwing discuss

For Liverpool and witness

You liberated

A boy I never rated

And now he’s doing business



The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field are beautiful people



Could I write a piece about you now that youve made it?

About the hours spent, the worldliness in your training

You only did it so that you could wear

Your terry underwear

And feel the city air

Run past your body



Could I write a requiem for you when you’re dead?

“She had the moves, she had the speed, it went to her head

She never needed anyone to get her round the track

But when she’s on her back

She had the knowledge

To get her into college

But when she’s on her back

She had the knowledge

To get her what she wanted”

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field are beautiful people

“The Johnny Cash Show: The Best of Johnny Cash 1969-1971″ (Michael B Borofsky)

I feel strongly that Louis Armstrong was one of the foremost geniuses of the 20th Century. Not just for the jazz world, or the music world, but in every aspect, Louis Armstrong accords respect as an innovator, and creator of themes emulated, copied and echoed by others. A genius, in other words.

I would have never guessed, but Louis Armstrong was a guest on the Johnny Cash Show. This and the story about Satchmo and Jimmie Rogers show how diverse musical tastes these men had and once again that music is a great connector.

This is from episode 38, Oct., 28, 1970 and must be one of Satchmo’s last performances. He was such a great performer right to the end and the Nashville audience and Johnny just loved him.

Louis Armstrong cracks everybody up at the start of the song: Let’s give it to ‘em in black and white.

THIS AND OTHER GREAT PERFORMANCES ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON A 2-DVD-SET “BEST OF THE JOHNNY CASH TV SHOW”

Jason Kottke links to this Paris Review sampler of some of Louis Armstrong’s visual art:

When not pressing the valves on his trumpet or the record button on his tape recorder, Armstrong’s fingers found other arts with which to occupy themselves. One of them was collage, which became a visual outlet for his improvisational genius. The story goes that he did a series of collages on paper and tacked them up on the wall of his den, but Lucille, who had supervised the purchase and interior decoration of their house in Corona, Queens, objected. Armstrong decided to use his extensive library of tapes as a canvas instead, and the result is a collection of some five hundred decorated reel-to-reel boxes, one thousand collages counting front and back. The collages feature photographs of Armstrong with friends (like the snapshot captioned “Taken at Catherine and Count Basie’s swimming pool, at his birthday party, August 1969”) and with fans (Armstrong seems never to have refused a photo op or an autograph); congratulatory telegrams and clippings from reviews of his performances; a blessing from the Vatican (as reassembled by Louis, the first lines read: “Mr. and Mrs. Most Holy Father Louis Armstrong”); and cutouts from packages of Swiss Kriss herbal laxatives, which, judging from the label’s ubiquity in these pieces, were as much a staple of Armstrong’s daily life as playing the horn. Only occasionally do the collages indicate the musical content within; usually there is no correlation. Armstrong made generous use of various kinds of adhesive tape not only to attach images to each box but also to laminate, frame, or highlight them. The works are untitled and undated, but he was making them as early as the 1950s; in a letter from 1953 he wrote, “Well, you know, my hobbie (one of them anyway) is using a lot of scotch tape . . . My hobbie is to pick out the different things during what I read and piece them together and [make] a little story of my own.”

[Click to read more of The Paris Review - Reel to Reel]

and we posted this a year or so ago…

As mentioned on a Bob Dylan XM radio broadcast, Louis Armstrong appeared in a Betty Boop short.

One of the classic Depression-era musical cartoons created by Max and Dave Fleischer. Satchmo’s soundtrack obviously inspires the artists - even if the visuals aren’t in any way “politically correct” 70-plus years later.

Yes, besides the wince-inducing racism, this piece is a great meld of Fleischer brothers cartoon, live action of Louis Armstrong’s crack jazz band of the 20s and 30s - The Hot Fives and Sevens, and Mr. Armstrong’s floating head.

“The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings” (Louis Armstrong)

Jimmie Rodgers and Johnny Cash are important musical icons too, any fledgling musical historian should own multiple albums by both, but Louis Armstrong transcends them.

Finally remembered the source of this speech:

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

which was quoted by a character (Chief) on a recent Battlestar Galactica episode….

original version spoken by here on the UC Berkley Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964.

(direct link to video here)

And seems sort of familiar, doesn’t it?

In 2004, it was revealed that Mario was the subject of a massive FBI surveillance program even after he left the Free Speech Movement. The FBI trailed Mario Savio for more than a decade after he left UC Berkeley, and bureau officials plotted to “neutralize” him politically, even though there was no evidence he broke any federal law. [1] According to hundreds of pages of FBI files, the bureau: Collected, without court order, personal information about Savio from schools, telephone companies, utility firms and banks and compiled information about his marriage and divorce. Monitored his day-to-day activities by using informants planted in political groups, covertly contacting his neighbors, landlords and employers, and having agents pose as professors, journalists and activists to interview him and his wife. Obtained his tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service in violation of federal rules, mischaracterized him as a threat to the president and arranged for the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies to investigate him when he and his family traveled in Europe. Put him on an unauthorized list of people to be detained without judicial warrant in event of a national emergency, and designated him as a “Key Activist” whose political activities should be “disrupted” and “neutralized” under the bureau’s extralegal counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO.

“The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series)” (Ward Churchill, Jim Vander Wall)

more from the SFGate

There’s a difference between a tough-guy and being just a dick. McCain sounds more like the latter, especially when you consider his cowardice on the campaign trail.

John McCain made a quick stop at the Capitol one day last spring to sit in on Senate negotiations on the big immigration bill, and John Cornyn was not pleased.

Cornyn, a mild-mannered Texas Republican, saw a loophole in the bill that he thought would allow felons to pursue a path to citizenship.

McCain called Cornyn’s claim “chicken-shit,” according to people familiar with the meeting, and charged that the Texan was looking for an excuse to scuttle the bill. Cornyn grimly told McCain he had a lot of nerve to suddenly show up and inject himself into the sensitive negotiations.

“Fuck you,” McCain told Cornyn, in front of about 40 witnesses.

It was another instance of the Republican presidential candidate losing his temper, another instance where, as POW-MIA activist Carol Hrdlicka put it, “It’s his way or no way.”

There’s a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years: McCain pushing a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on the night of his own 1986 Senate election and many more.

[From McClatchy Washington Bureau | 09/07/2008 | McCain's history of hot temper raises concerns]

John McCain is not presidential caliber.

Then there’s McCain’s sensitivity to the POW-MIA issue. So highly strung on the topic, you’d think there was some festering wound lingering just below the surface.

Back in Washington, families of POW_MIAs said they have seen McCain’s wrath repeatedly. Some families charged that McCain hadn’t been aggressive enough about pursuing their lost relatives and has been reluctant to release relevant documents.…

In 1992, McCain sparred with Dolores Alfond, the chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America’s Missing Servicemen and Women, at a Senate hearing. McCain’s prosecutor-like questioning of Alfond — available on YouTube — left her in tears.

Four years later, at her group’s Washington conference, about 25 members went to a Senate office building, hoping to meet with McCain. As they stood in the hall, McCain and an aide walked by.

Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.

As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.

“McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him,” according to Eleanor Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967.

part the 234,432nd.

and Biden:

In case you hadn’t already watched this elsewhere

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

[Click to continue reading Keating Economics]

Higher resolution QuickTime version available for download [148 Megs]

Now I’m really curious to see the ad, I wonder if it is available.

Google-owned YouTube has pulled a Barack Obama ad from its site at the insistence of NBC, which charged that the spot infringed on its copyrighted content and that it did not give Obama’s campaign permission to use the material.

The ad, titled “Bad News,” is designed to get out the vote by appealing to voters and potential voters who do not want John McCain to win the election. At one point, NBC’s Tom Brokaw and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann are shown — with Olbermann announcing that McCain has “won.”

NBC has demanded that Obama stop using the clip altogether. But his campaign balked and instead attached a disclaimer to it that said, “NBC and MSNBC did not cooperate in the making of this video.”

[From YouTube Pulls Obama Spot]

I checked YouTube, and found the ad, removed, with this disclaimer: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC

If I find a copy, I’ll post it. Must have really irked NBC to be hoisted with their own petard.

Angry McLame strikes:

Tuesday, during a question and answer session with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in Iowa, that infamous McCain temperament seemed to surface. The entire interview is fascinating, with McCain appearing far less restrained and carefully managed than he has for much of the campaign.

McCain became testy when asked about whether Sarah Palin had enough experience to assume the role of president if necessary, answering, “So, with due respect, I strongly disagree with your premise that she doesn’t have experience and knowledge and background.” McCain added that Palin has “been a member of the PTA, been a governor, been a mayor.” Then, seeming to realize that he’d lost his cool somewhat, McCain said “I’ll stop there.” He went on anyway, however, concluding, “But you and I just have a fundamental disagreement and I’m so happy that the American people seem to be siding with me.”

McCain became especially sarcastic when asked about backlash from some conservatives over his selection of Palin. “Really? I haven’t detected that,” he said. “Now if there’s a Georgetown cocktail party person who quote calls himself a conservative and doesn’t like her, good luck.”

And adding to the confrontational nature of the interview, McCain challenged a questioner who asked whether the Straight Talk Express had been derailed by less than truthful attacks on Obama. Saying that he “always had 100 percent truth” in his political career, McCain supported the claims made in one of his campaign ads, that Obama supports comprehensive sex education for children in kindergarten. Many news organizations have judged that a perversion of Obama’s actual policy stance on the issue.

Perhaps McCain’s reaction to his Iowan inquisitors came out of the fact that he seems to have little chance of winning the state. Polling results consistently show Barack Obama firmly in the lead there.

A clip from the interview is [here]. The entire series of videos can be found on the Des Moines Register’s Web site. (While you’re there, you can also check out the paper’s footage of the Iowa Oktoberfest festivities, which included keg rolling and beer balance beam competitions, assuming you can watch that sort of thing without being jealous because you’re stuck at a computer.

[From McCain gets testy]

Hey, sign me up for beer balance beam contests, I’d do great! As far as Angry McSame, I would doubt if that aspect of his personality emerged in the constrained atmosphere of a debate, but I’d love to see it. Well, as long as it doesn’t cause McCain to have another stroke. I don’t wish death on McCain, just electoral defeat, humiliation even.

John McCain seems uncertain whether Spain is located in Latin America, or on some unnamed plain that gets heavy rainfall. Josh Marshall has the back story, if you missed it.

Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian UK writes:

So, to clarify matters for McCain: Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is the lefty prime minister of Spain. The Zapatistas are armed revolutionaries who have declared war on the government of Mexico. Zippy is an irascible non-human character in the children’s TV series Rainbow, and Captain Zep was the star of an awesome 1980s British children’s sci-fi drama. Franco Zeffirelli is a celebrated Italian film director who I once pretended to know the first thing about in order not to look stupid in a conversation in a restaurant.

By the way, this must be a truly depressing day for our friends at Spain For McCain. We can assume they’re not Zapatero fans, but still: their hero isn’t even sure where their country is located? How dispiriting.

[From Oliver Burkeman's Campaign Diary: John McCain's Spain gaffe | World news | guardian.co.uk ]

Foreign policy expert indeed, like his intellectually-challenged running mate, Sarah Palin. No wonder McCain hasn’t been doing many press conferences of late: either the election is tiring him to the point of mental exhaustion¹; or he’s had some minor stroke or similar.

1. which doesn’t bode well for his ability to be president - that’s a hard job [↩]

John McCain strives to be as successful a President as Herbert Hoover

Responding to the collapse of several major investment banks this week, John McCain reassured us, “I think still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” That move comes from an old playbook: On Oct. 25, 1929, Herbert Hoover declared, “The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.”

The day before Hoover insisted that the fundamentals were strong was the day that came to be known as Black Thursday, when in heavy trading the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 9 percent of its value. And while, in endless stock-footage documentaries showing images of dumbfounded traders over a soundtrack of mournful jazz clarinets, the crash is supposed to begin the Great Depression, it wasn’t quite so. The real cause was the collapse of the banking system, which followed the crash in part because Hoover believed strong fundamentals would protect the economy from disaster.

For the likes of Hoover and McCain, asserting the strength of fundamentals is shorthand for saying that business leaders, with maybe a little cheerleading, can sort out the crisis and that Congress should not try to regulate their behavior. It’s too soon to know if McCain will be proved right (I doubt it), but Hoover certainly turned out to be wrong.

[Click to read more of McCain's Dangerous Do-Nothing Economics | The American Prospect]

Of course, Herbert Hoover did actually win an election first, so he’s already more successful than John McSame.

Here’s a Palin I could support. I mean, I’d rather Bill Moyers ran for President, but Michael Palin wouldn’t be a bad second choice

The ad is actually pretty funny, and McCain did admit he is a relic from a prior age.

“Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in a campaign strategy memo. “We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people.”

The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early ’80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik’s Cube.

“1982, John McCain goes to Washington,” an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t.

“He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,” it says. It shows video of McCain getting out of a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush and closes with a photo of him standing with the current President Bush at the White House. “After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

[From The Associated Press: Obama mocks McCain as computer illiterate]

Don’t know who either of these people are, but Tucker Bounds is unembarrassed to lie and evade the question about Sarah Palin’s vast experience taking over the Alaskan National Guard:

Campbell Brown interviews Tucker Bounds on Sarah Palin’s national security experience

Via TPM

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds on CNN with a new line on Gov. Palin’s foreign policy experience: McCain and Palin have more combined military command experience than Obama and Biden put together.

This might be the funniest¹ talking point I’ve seen in years.

According to the Republican Party, Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is so close to Russia. Uhh, yeah, I guess it does border on the eastern tip of Siberia.

By this reasoning, I am an expert on Japan² because I lived in Guam for six months, even though I was only ten!

1. albeit unintentionally funny [↩]
2. perhaps I should claim foreign policy experience regarding North Korea, that’s more sexy [↩]