brilliant!

MST3K shades

a philly gunn

I'm really digging Steve Gunn's latest LP Boreum Palace (Three-Lobed Recordings) right now.


The opening track, has some killer Dobro from Marc Orleans (Sunburned Hand, Juneau, etc).
Listen:
Mr. Franklin

Watch:
Gunn & Marc Orleans. Brickbat Books, Philadelphia. 06/05/09

spoof or no, it made me laugh

Apparently, the Tea Baggers picked up one of them there facsimile machines. Read about what happened next here.

when johnny donned a stolen shook

This book is fantastic and Wurlitzer is a new favorite.Up next and, apparently long overdue, is Nog.

a few compelling reasons to read The Drop Edge of Yonder:

1. the opening chapters
2. you dig Pat Garret & Billy the Kid
3. "Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise."
4. Pop Matters, Maud, Ain't It Cool
5. you dig Two Lane Blacktop
6. Erik Davis' excellent Bookforum review
7. a Pynchon endorsement of a previous novel turns you on
8. Arthur: Did you write Zebulon for Peckinpah?

RW: Sam was going to direct the first Zebulon script that I had written, but he died. Then Hal Ashby was interested in it and he died. I was going to direct it up in Canada but I couldn’t get it on. I came close. After a while I just dropped it because the whole adventure was beginning to feel cursed.

Arthur: Jim Jarmusch was interested in it too, right?

RW: Right, Jarmusch was going to direct it but after talking about it for a few weeks it became clear that we each had a different point of view of what the script was going to be and we went our separate ways. I was surprised when he lifted some important themes from the script for his film Dead Man. Let’s just say that was an awkward situation. [laughs] At least for me.

Arthur: I’d seen Dead Man before I read Drop Edge but some of the similarities are striking.

RW: Yeah, he took a lot. But I think the book is sufficiently different. And in a way, the good part of it is after a while I felt compelled to write my own version to get away from what had essentially been contaminated. Not just by Jim, but by the whole long journey of the script. I’d done a lot of research in each variation, along with a script on the gold rush that I never got on. So I had all this stuff in me. And after years of reading and inhabiting that world, I became very much at ease with the vernacular. And that always seemed to me to be very important in a so-called historical novel. I didn’t want it to just be a novel about historical information. So all the film stuff provoked me to go underneath, to explore some other layers.

Arthur: I like the idea of a character being stuck between worlds.

RW: The first draft of Drop Edge was more directly about the experience of somebody who woke up dead, so to speak. So in a dharmic sense it was more about a direct experience of the bardo. You never really knew whether this guy was alive or dead. On another level, that’s what being alive is about. Like when you know you’re going to die, really know you’re going to die, you start to feel alive. So on one level I was exploring that. But I felt that the first few drafts were too much of a plunge into that in-between state of mind. I felt like I had to set the table in a more deliberate way. So that’s why I introduced the idea of the character being cursed to float between worlds, not knowing if he was dead or alive. Before it was just being caught between worlds without any explanation and I thought it was too confusing, too alienating. I was trying to seduce the reader into the journey itself, this 19th-century journey. Sometimes I think of Drop Edge as an 18th-century book about the 19th century with 21st century overtones. [laughs]

--from Joe O'Brien's interview for Arthur

From Bold Progressives:

Sen. Joe Lieberman announced Sunday that he will join Republicans in blocking a vote on any real health care reform bill -- including any public option and even the fake "compromise" floated last week.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein writes, "At this point, Lieberman is just torturing liberals. That is to say, he's willing to directly cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score."

Enough is enough. Can you join 145,000 others in telling Democratic leaders to punish Joe Lieberman by taking his committee chairmanship?
Click here.

Then, please ask others you know to take action.

Lieberman was asked if he'd accept losing his powerful committee chairmanship as a consequence of blocking reform, and he answered, "Oh, God no." Our message to Sen. Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders says:

"Any Democratic senators -- including Joe Lieberman -- who support a Republican attempt to block a vote on health care reform should be stripped of their leadership titles. Americans deserve a clean up-or-down vote on health care reform that includes a public option."

Sign the petition here - we'll deliver it to Senate Democrats.

Then, please ask others you know to take action.

Today, we are releasing a new poll with Howard Dean's Democracy for America that shows wide support for our petition:


• Democratic voters think Senate Democrats should take away Lieberman's chairmanship by 81% to 10%. Independents also support it by 13 points.

• Democratic voters want Senate Democrats to use "reconciliation" by 73% to 13%. This requires just 51 votes to pass reform instead of 60, bypassing Lieberman.

• Voters favor Howard Dean's "We Can Do Both" proposal (a public option PLUS a Medicare buy-in for ages 55-64) by 57% to 32%. Among Independents, it's 56% to 28% (2 to 1).

• 84% of Democratic voters want progressive primary challengers to congressional Democrats who oppose a public option.

• This poll is being reported by many news outlets. Now, we need to back it up with grassroots action.


Can you join 145,000 others in telling Democratic leaders to punish Joe Lieberman?

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

--Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Aaron Swartz, Michael Snook, Natasha Patel, and the PCCC team

(via)

ZAZEN

"It’s the very near-future, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—or a neighborhood near you. 27-year-old Della Mylinek has suffered some kind of breakdown after failing to stop the construction of a local Walmart. In an attempt to regain psychological, financial and emotional stability, she’s moved in with her brother and his pregnant wife and taken a job waiting tables at a vegan restaurant. But her anger remains, and one thing leads to another…"



Final chapter of the excellent ZAZEN by Vanessa Veselka is posted over at Arthur today. If you haven't been following along serially, no worries, all the previous chapters are available in PDF.


Check it:
ZAZEN

The inimitable Holger Czukay . . .

scotch < absinthe

via

gee, haw dude

Are fellow Iditarodians/sore losers actually out to get Lance or is it just weed-induced paranoia?

"I'm going to pee in their little cup, and laugh in their face . . ."



via

military madness is killing your country

My current favorite cover:

Military Madness (G. Nash cover) -- Woods


In an upstairs room in Blackpool
By the side of a northern sea
The army had my father
And my mother was having me
Military Madness was killing my country
Solitary Sadness comes over me
After the school was over and I moved
To the other side
I found another country but I never
Lost my pride
Military Madness was killing the country
Solitary sadness creeps over me
And after the wars are over
And the body count is finally filed
I hope that The Man discovers
What’s driving the people wild
Military madness is killing your country
So much sadness, between you and me
War, War, War, War, War, War


From Woods' very excellent Songs of Shame