Daily Archives: May 23, 2008

one of the finest things ive seen the LA Times do recently

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is a special tribute to the 491 Californian veterans who have died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

in order to best acknowledge the fallen you can search for them by name, age, high school, hometown, date of death, place of death, cemetery, and several other ways. the most heartbreaking, to me at least, is to see how many were engaged when they died.

we just launched this today. i recommend that everyone visits it throughout this memorial day weekend because its pretty amazing and sobering.

photo of Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood by Steve Lyons

thanks for your questions!

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here, after the Luna Halo video are my anskers

Dan threatens: so uhh… *ahem* uhh… Vancouver next month? I swear I will ask this every week from here on in until you say yes!Also, do you have any tips for avoiding (or better, reversing) job/industry burn-out?

not going to van next month. id go if foxxy would return my calls. id go if i wasnt changing the world. id go if i wasnt going to oregon early in the month. id go if i didnt have the best job ever.

the way to avoid or reverse job/industry burn-out is quit your job immediately and only sign on with companies who you respect and who respect you right back. also surround yourself with smart people at work. only smart people. if the smart people around you all agree that your workplace blows then be the smartest one and quit.

timmay!!!!! lists: 1. anything to say about obama filling in for kennedy at the wesleyan commencement?

(damn “watershed moment” is taking place just three miles from where i grew up)

2. will the dems narrowly defeat mccain or trounce mccain in a telephone free landslide victory?

3. will the celtics win one of the next two games?

1. i feel badly for the grads because when i saw obama he wasnt all that awesoma.

2. the winner of the next election will be the one who has control over the voting machines.

3. the celtics are like the yankees. they bought that team. bought teams always lose on the road. they dont deserve to play the lakers. itd be nice if they did cuz the lakers would sweep em. but they dont deserve it. if you cant win in atlanta you will never win in staples.

bicyclemark offers: Can I get you anything from Thailand?

1. one of everything please. and some tom kha kai. extra spicy.

panajane asks: There is a bar. It’s full of badasses and bad seeds, mean motherfuckers. As you enter the bar what song would play?

Tsar “Straight”

People try to talk, try to waste my time
everybody’s chatter puts a weight on my mind
but I fake it and I make it like I don’t understand
Got a chemical smile
I’m a moustache man

And I’m straight (straight)
each and every way
People come from miles just to hear me say
that I’m straight (straight)
I’m bent like a stick
Goin out with a bang, comin’ in with the click
Cuz I’m stra-i-a-aight
stra-i-a-aight
stra-i-a-aight
stra-i-a-aight
And now

People think they’re straight but they’re bent like a hook
See Dick Jane every trick in the book
Gonna get your mini van
get your Vons Club on
There’s somethin’ here to steal from everyone

And I’m straight
and this is the style
every Dianetic on the Miracle Mile knows
knows I’m straight (straight)
I said Hell yeah
Goin’ through the Devil like a bat outta Hell
Stra-i-a-aight
stra-i-a-aight
stra-i-a-aight
stra-i-a-aight
And the whole world has to answer right now
tell you once again, who’s straight?

There’s gonna come a day
maybe wont be long
flippin’ through the funny papers of who’s come and gone
You can try to glean a meaning in the message I leave
you’ll find I’m straight and will beyond belief

Straight!

zona doles up: would you ever give it up to teach it at a college or university?

Yes but first I would like to have something worthwhile to teach em.

Mike wonder: have you heard of Luna Halo? Do you like their sound?

Havent. No. They should go back to being hair dressers.

Smelly Danielly offers: Ok so I asked you questions last Friday but then missed your Saturday answers so I don’t know what they were and I can’t go back to read it. Do you have archives or no?! How do I find them!?

I do have archives but theyre hidden. I want people to come here every day. No backsies. No wait till Fridaysies. Just nowsies. Like now, see?

Weezer has just made another classic video

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Pork & Beans from their new cd “The Red Album” embraces some of the more popular YouTube vids of this young century. it’s great to see the weeze partying with pop culture. and it helps the song go down easier.

yesterday the band released their first in hopefully a long series of “webisodes”, this one is webisode 0 starring your boy Rivers

whats great about this webisode is that longtime friend of weezer Justin was just telling me that rivers built a studio next to his malibu home that was sorta like his room growing up. and bam there it is in webisode 0.

god i love this band

update Valleywag has all the videos that =w= referenced in pork n beans here

everclear is going to play guantanamo bay

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the LA Times blog Soundboard has a long interview with Art, the singer. These were my favorite parts.

Are they going to let you see any other parts of Cuba while you’re there?

I asked them if I could go into Cuba, and they told me no. I get to go to the fence that separates it from the base. I would love to go. I want to go to Havana big time. It’s a moment out of time with all these ’50s cars driving around. You know that when the Castro brothers die, its going to turn into Disneyland over there. I wanted to see Cuba, but I also wanted to go over there to get a pulse of the soldiers that were there about what happened [in the prison]: What their family’s viewpoint on being at Guantanamo is about, and are they proud to be there? Do they think they’re doing a good thing? Are they ashamed? They’re put there, and there isn’t much you can do about it in the armed forces. I’ve got a song I’m thinking about playing there for the first time, called “Jesus Was a Democrat.”

Wow, really? What kind of ideas led up to that?

It’s actually a pretty flagrant challenge to the conservative view of Jesus. Even if you’re not a Christian, if you read Jesus’ words in the Bible, there’s nothing conservative about him. He was a full-on liberal. There’s a line in it that goes, “Jesus would be locked up in Guantanamo Bay if he were alive today.” I consider myself Christian but not in any traditional sense. I was brought up in a serious evangelical home, and always had problems with Christianity, like there was something great there, but that I wasn’t seeing it. I see why most people, especially young people, are afraid of Christians. There’s a line in the song that says, “I wonder if Jesus is as afraid of Christians as I am?” They’re scary!

How do you think it’ll go over in Guantanamo Bay, a place you cite in the song as imprisoning Jesus?

What happened in Guantanamo Bay, that was blood-chilling to me. It goes to show you that anyone can get caught up in it, anyone can be the bad guy. Any collection of people from any culture. It was sobering for a lot of people. It was sobering for me. I’ve got a daughter who’s 16, and I don’t think she’d ever go into the service, and I’d fight her if she did, but if she does, what’s my perspective then?

I’m just trying to be compassionate and put myself in the other guy’s shoes. This song is pretty angry. I think we’re in better place now than in ‘88, when I worked on the Dukakis campaign canvassing, but I was so pissed at Republicans, that conservatives co-opted the term “family values”; they made being a liberal a bad word. I’m an ACLU card-carrying liberal. I have no bones about it. I might be conservative on some things, but you’re going to tell me that to have family values I have to glom on to your way of thinking? No way!

At least now I’m not alone. The great thing about [Barack] Obama, he’s unabashedly a liberal or a progressive. Isn’t that great? Even in the Clinton administration, no one was using the word “liberal,” they were using the “moderate” word. Seems like in the last few elections, the right has pulled the left to the center, and now it seems like the left has pulled right center. [John] McCain started playing ball with the Bush administration, thinking he could ride his coattails if he got the call. Now, it’s dragging him down.

read the rest of the interview here.

above my favorite Everclear song, “Heartspark Dollar Sign”