Just had a brilliant idea: Why not make November 22nd* American Firearms Day? We can each take a few moments to remember the Freedom & Liberty brought to this country by armed crazies wandering the streets while we gloss over the millions murdered, dead or permanently damaged because people like you are trusted w/ firearms in these United Snakes & to remind us all that were it not for guns, we wouldn't need guns!!
Although, in all fairness, to be balanced & objective, no skin off our teeth, so whatevs:
I remember when I was five
We were sittin' in school when the teacher cried
She told everybody that the President died
But that didn't bother me 'cause I was still alive!
Cobbled together from ranted droolings chez moi & a Twit.
Hey Patriots: Let's make 22 Nov. American Firearms Day, to celebrate the Freedom & Liberty guns have brought America. No? How about June 6?
A young fogey at the American Spectatordeplores the popularity of Rock Memoirs -- i.e., autobiographies and ghost-autobiographies of Rock Stars -- because Sammy Hagar's popular reminiscences are self-serving and full of glaring omissions. Therefore, ergo, and to wit:
To say that rock itself, considered in light of the Western
classical tradition, is a fundamentally unsophisticated musical
form is like saying that Boucher’s portrait of Marie-Louise
O’Murphy is slightly better than a stick figure drawing of a naked
woman. A course in rock theory will (one hopes anyway) never be
offered at Juilliard, not because conservatories are bastions of
cultural atavism but because it would be over after a week of
lectures.
Gosh.
These are two very precious sentences, to be tenderly cherished forever: they are enwrought with golden and silver light, the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half light, and also too horseshit.
Wherever do they incubate these specimens?
Our young fogey, whose name I have linked to up there but cannot be arsed to remember, is probably right that lots of Rock Memoirs follow a similar Organizational Pattern, but my sweet lord, does this tit not acknowledge the Structural Censorship that makes him speak lamentable gibberish such as the foregoing, or else this:
“All happy families,” Tolstoy
wrote in 1873, “resemble one another,” an observation with which
many have since disagreed.
Tolstoy said that -- in 1873? How far-ranging your intellect!
And mas:
the above outline might well serve as the RM
equivalent of Joseph Campbell’s influental work of comparative
mythology, Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Or this:
Richards’ antinomianism is not of a
fundamentally different order from that of, say, Criss or Tyler
Yeah, probably not.
And let's spelunk:
For one thing, when
one takes a long view of the matter, it becomes difficult to judge
rock talent in any meaningful way. Between the 4/4 tempo and
snare-driven beat (not rhythm) fleshed out by simple
instrumentation and throwaway lyrics (“Yeah, she’s straight / Just
won’t wait”) of the “first” rock song, “Rocket 88,” and the abrupt
time signature shifts, Mellotron noodling, and pseudo-mysticism
(“Nothing is real”) of the “best” rock song, “Strawberry Fields
Forever,” there is far less musical progress on display than
between two successive symphonies by a minor 19th-century composer.
So much for the Beatles, then. "The White Album? Piffle!"
This is great:
I’m not trying to be a snob.
No, nobody thought you were making any effort in this regard.
An honest list of the records
sitting on my shelf right now would include dozens of rock albums,
including more than a handful of items by some of the idols whose
memoirs I’ve just panned. But I put on albums like Some
Girls on what I think are suitable occasions: while playing
poker or peeling garlic cloves or polishing glasses.
How charming you are!
When I sit
down to listen—really listen, while doing nothing apart from maybe
smoking or drinking a cup of coffee—it’s Purcell or Stravinsky I
want to hear.
That is very impressive.
Here are some other terrific sentences.
TIBOR FISCHER ONCE WROTE that Martin Amis’
Yellow Dog “isn’t bad as in not very good or
slightly disappointing. It’s not-knowing-where-to-look bad. I was
reading my copy on the Tube and I was terrified someone would look
over my shoulder.”
I have also come to accept that it’s better for
me not to think about what I might have read instead: more than
half the published fictional output of Henry James, say, or the
first three volumes of the Pléiade Voltaire.
Townshend, who is probably the only RM author who can
claim to have once been an acquisitions editor for the venerable
London publishing house Faber and Faber (a position held by T.S.
Eliot)
Yes, you aced sophomore year. Could you now... not talk anymore?
Here, a Mormon uses the original verse from the Psalm while detailing his porno addiction. (I wonder if that all began at a Marriott.)
Righteousness:As to whiny complaints about being accused of talking through one's magic Mormon hat, "who the cap fits, he must wear it."— M. "Zen Rasta" Bouffant
Hi. I'm new. If you've known of me in the past, it's because I spent a few years toiling in the gay rights movement at a place called Truth Wins Out. I've written a few things for the Wonkette as well. I still write a few things for the Wonkette, though I have Left The Gay Rights Movement And Not A Second Too Soon, Thank Jeebus, so I am not at the other place anymore. After the whole White Hot Summer of Chicken Protests, where all sides just sort of embarrassed the fuck out of themselves over, ahem, chicken joints, I think I can safely say I don't really want to talk about gay stuff at the moment. I mean, I still want equality, but Jesus Christ.
That said, I firmly agree with the ethos of this place, which, I believe, is "civility is bullshit," so I figure I'll pop in here and say hi a few times a week, do the same at the Wonkette, and otherwise pursue my real career goals, which involve music. Not chicken protests. Music.
For now, though, mostly because I haven't opened up my Google Reader today and have no idea what's going on, other than that Republicans are really doing everything they can to lose the lady vote at the moment, I'm just sayin' hi. And I'll post a song, which has no significance whatsoever except that I've been listening to it all day. So here is some Björk and then I'll see you next time I feel like yelling about something, 'kay? 'Kay.