Panic in Atlanta!

Serendipity. I had to be in Hotlanta for some teacher-stuff over the weekend, and lo and behold, lookee who was puttin' on a show at the same time:


Yep, Widespread Panic.

I navigated the MARTA successfully to Lakewood Amphitheater for (probably) the only chance I'll get to see Panic live.
Fun.

A music review?

Music reviews...and spacejace does 'em well.

But it makes me think about creativity and politics....

What musicians does McLame have on his team? Hank Williams Jr.? John Rich? Lee Greenwood? (be nice, stop asking "Who?")

mmmkay.

Williams' latest gem has a line containing the oh-so-poetic "This old union's got problems. That is plain to see. The Democrats bankrupted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, just like 1-2-3. The bankers didn’t want to make all those bad loans. But Bill Clinton said "you got to!" Now they want to bail out. What I'm talking about, is a democrat liberal hoodoo!"

Well, you get the picture. I'll ignore the obvious (if you pay any attention at all) complete FRAKKIN' IDIOCY of these 'lyrics' and just say, poor old Hank needs a beer or six.

Does anyone think for a second that Hank Williams Jr. has any -- seriously, ANY -- cultural import/credibility/gravitas to convince anyone with more than seven brain cells to vote for McDoucheNozzle?

'Washed-up' seems to be the theme for the McLame campaign, from the senator on down to his supporters (all three of them) in the entertainment industry.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah. Remember who opened up the festivities at Obama's acceptance speech in Denver (you know, with 85,000 friends)? YONDER! (yes, do click on this link)

UPDATE 2: My bad. Jace's music review was a reprint. But still cool.

Rising Down...

…the new Roots record. By FAR their best in years. I haven’t loved any of their last few records, but this new one rules. Get it. Review below.



The Roots:
Rising Down
[Def Jam; 2008]
Rating: 7.8

It's gotten to the point where I can't even imagine the Roots being soft anymore. Not to be dismissive of their first few albums, which were thoughtful without being mushy or maudlin, but their three recent records-- the underrated/overhated alleged-sellout The Tipping Point, the Def Jam-released tightly knit return to rawness Game Theory, and now Rising Down-- are so singularly focused on a kind of distilled, uninhibited force that it's now difficult to think of the Roots as anything but intelligently aggressive firebrands.

You don't throw on these albums if you want to chill out, and Rising Down does more than any of them to express, precisely and without compromise, a specifically African-American but increasingly universal strain of anxiety and frustration. A lot of Rising Down's urgency and immediacy owes to the massive guest roster. The Roots' Philly core of affiliates-- vets Dice Raw, Peedi Peedi, and Truck North, former member Malik B., and relative newcomer/search engine nightmare P.O.R.N.-- appear on more than half the record's songs, and they help give the record a sense of a communal strength in numbers; their appearances on vicious throwdown "Get Busy" (with the some deft cuts from Philly's legendary DJ Jazzy Jeff) and a stretch of tracks in the middle ("I Will Not Apologize", "I Can't Help It", and "Singing Man") feel like the spiritual and lyrical core of the album.

The guests from outside Philly work just as well: Talib Kweli spits with an atypically growly delivery on the anti-defeatist anthem "Lost Desire", Common displays glimpses of his late-1990s shine ruminating over tour fatigue on "The Show", Wale kills it with some so-corny-they're-great metaphors ("good rappers ain't eatin', they Olsen twinnin'") on "Rising Up", and Saigon's final verse on "Criminal" is the fierce peak of a three-MC slow lyrical burn. And while Styles P's turn on the title track works well enough (it's something to hear the dude behind "Good Times [I Get High]" go after the pharmaceutical industry), Mos Def's verse-- the first one on the whole record-- is one of the best he's ever done, and probably the best guest spot on Rising Down: "Identities in crisis and conflict diamonds/ Blindin', staring at lights till they cryin'/ Bone gristle popping from continuous grindin'."

But despite the massive ensemble cast, Black Thought is still the core of the record and the well-worn accusations of him being anti-charismatic feel largely false here. Most of his great moments come on tracks which feature a lot of other MCs' great moments, and after getting overshadowed on "Rising Down" (can any MC make the subject of global warming into a dope lyric?) he comes out swinging for the rest of the record. On "Singing Man", even with P.O.R.N. portraying himself as a vividly realized school shooter and Truck North putting together a disturbingly evocative characterization of a suicide bomber, Black Thought's depiction of an African child soldier justifying his violence ("13 year-old killer, he look 35/ He changed his name to Little No Man Survive") is both sharply written and unsettling. His delivery is a bit more varied than you might expect, too, particularly when he's rapping about getting underpaid like he's got a clenched jaw in "I Will Not Apologize" or sweating his way through a pills-and-stress panic attack on "I Can't Help It". And when he's turned loose on a hookless lyrical exhibition, Black Thought is nearly unstoppable; it's scary the way he blazes through the one-take assault of "75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)", throwing out endless Big Daddy Kane-level proclamations of untouchability ("My hustle is long, my muscle is strong, my man put the paper in the duffel I'm gone/ Y'all still a light year from the level I'm on/ Just a pawn stepping right into the head of the storm"). The abrupt way it ends, it sounds like he could've gone on full throttle for another two hundred bars if someone hadn't taken a cleaver to the tape reel.

A revamped production style accompanies the deeper, darker lyrical tone, taking the aesthetic of Game Theory to its grimiest conclusion. Most of Kamal's keyboard work here isn't with the archetypal Fender Rhodes of Roots albums past; he's using a number of grimy analog synths that snarl and spit and hiss, the kind you hear in dead prez's "Hip Hop" or Outkast's "Stanklove" (or the J.B.'s' "Blow Your Head", for that matter). That racket combining with ?uestlove's fierce, crisp percussion makes for some diabolical rhythmic low-end, and since it dominates Rising Down's personality it gives the album the feeling of being this bionic monstrosity that just so happens to have a lot of headknock to it.

There are a couple of exceptions, like the guitar-driven midtempo Fela pastiche of "I Will Not Apologize" and the unexpected country-blues tinge to "Criminal", but they're rare breathers in an album that otherwise closes in on you. Only when the triumphant, old-school Roots return on the demi-go-go of "Rising Up" does it feel like the weight's been lifted, and even then something about it-- the endless Oprah/Travolta namedrop hook, the mawkish Chrisette Michele vocal about a crying b-girl, the overly tidy-sounding keyboards-- seems a bit out of place. (Maybe not as out-of-place as the now-infamous and super-creepy Patrick Stump collab "Birthday Girl", however; excising that disaster singlehandedly saved the album's character.) Rising Down isn't always an easy listen, but it's an exciting one, and its abrasiveness never gets in the way of a good throw-your-hands-up beat or a well-crafted lyric.

If you've been paying any damn attention to the world around you, most of Rising Down's messages ring familiar, and frequently true: This is an album that tells you the entertainment industry is turning into a coon show, the climate (both environmental and cultural) is getting fucked up, and broke people are still struggling. But this record states these ideas with respect to the notion that you know them already, and puts all the revelation and subtext into its unyielding sound. You could call it preaching to the converted, but it also feels like a reminder to the lapsed, less a wake-up call than a shot of renewed adrenaline.

Quote of the day...

...“Women voting for Sarah Palin is like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.”

don't have it on me, who said it. If anyone knows, please post in comments section.

friggin eagles (your Philadelphia Eagles...)

When the schedule came out in early spring I couldn’t decide if the Eagles were gonna be 9 & 7 or 10 & 6. I ultimately settled on 10 & 6 as my “official” prediction, due to then having the easiest schedule they’ve have in YEARS. That being said, I had them missing the playoffs due to 10 wins not being good enough, due to the Cowpatties and Gints being in their division and much better teams than them. I had them 3 & 3 at the BYE week, which is coming up for them after this week’s game vs the 49ers. If they beat the 49ers, they’ll be 3 & 3 at the bye. If they lose, they’ll be 2 & 4.

Here’s the bottom line folks: The Eagles are an extremely average football team. They’re simply not good enough. They don’t have enough talent on their team, and they don’t have a good enough coach. And Coach Reid is responsible for both of those facets.

He’s been in charge of picking and drafting the players here since he got here 10 years ago, when the naive and ignorant ownership, stewarded by Jeffrey Lurie and Joe Banner foolishly handed him that duty, with no prior experience on Reid’s part whatsoever. Seriously, Reid is the only one to blame for the actual players we have on this team currently.

And while Reid is a good coach, he’s far from being a great coach, or even a good ‘enough’ coach to get this team where it needs to be consistently. In this 10 years here, he’s 1 & 3 in Conference Championship Games. Period. While others will talk about other things he’s done here (once he’s gone), that will remain his legacy. He’s just not good enough.

Something that I have never read or heard about Reid anywhere (and am surprised by this), that I believe explains a lot about his skills and makeup, is the fact that he skipped a very important rung on his career ladder: He was never an Offensive Coordinator. He went from being a QB Coach at Green Bay (during Brett Favre’s formative years), to Head Coach AND General Manager at the Philadelphia Eagles. The fact that he skipped that rung, has everything to do with his dysfunction here at both of those levels.

He’s always been a terrible game day coach, seemingly unable to adjust whatsoever to the opposing team’s play. He can’t manage a clock; he can’t pick the correct plays on the fly; he can’t manage a game. This is the actual job description for an Offensive Coordinator. He skipped that rung. Is it any wonder he can’t do those things? He refuses to see the obvious and what is just right in front of him constantly.

Everything you ever needed to know about how inefficient Reid ultimately would be, you could have learned (like I did) back in 2003, when, after choking in their home NFC Championship Game the season before (against the Tampa Bay Bucs who we owned the years prior and sent home packing many times), Reid stated, “our WR’s are fine,” when asked by a reporter if the WR corps, let by James Thrash and Todd Pinkston, was good enough to win a Super Bowl with. And he didn’t just say it. He believed it. And it was obvious to any idiot in the United States, that our WR corps sucked. Especially, when you consider we were and are a “pass first” offense! And then the Andy Reid’s Eagles, proceeded to will themselves to ANOTHER home NFC Championship Game against the Carolina Panthers and proceeded to choke again, this time scoring only 3 points.

It was also this year (I believe) that when deflecting another question by a reporter aimed at Reid’s insistence to continue to pass first when it never really seemed to work that well, Reid answered, “passing’s just as good as running,” when asked why he doesn’t run more. That is just flat-out wrong. Passing, by and large, is never as good as running, when discussing globally, and with regards to offensive philosophy, and proven success throughout the history of football. What a complete asinine and moronic statement to make and belief to adhere to. No other NFL coach would agree with that statement ever.

It was the aforementioned 2 statements back in 2003 that convinced me Reid simply did not possess the ability to guide a team to a Super Bowl win. Ever. And it’s why I was calling for his head on a platter after that second home conference championship loss; if I was the Owner, I would have fired him outright, the day after that abomination of a loss to Carolina. But, alas, he’s still here, and our naive and clueless ownership loves him. I don’t think he’s going anywhere for years. No matter how much he continues to fail

I could go on (how Reid has stunted McNabb’s career, his stubbornness with letting other coaches and personnel take over certain reins, etc)…and I will. Believe me. But that’s enough ranting for now.

Unhinged

On a regular day, commenting on this kind of insane idiocy wouldn't be worth much time or effort. We all know a handful of rightwingnutjobs in our lives, and usually they're harmless other than being weirdly obsessed with their paranoid delusions of black helicopters and the like.

The insane factor is rising at the McCalin events, though:





Far too many of these people own guns.

Crushed

McLame needed a gamechanger.

He got donut.

McShame couldn't even hang around to shake hands and take pictures after the "debate" ended. That croaking sound you hear may be the fat lady warming up her vocal chords.

Counting one's chickens is not generally advisable, but seriously, after the lameness of the McSame performance and the outright racism and violence-peddling of Caribou Barbie® earlier in the day, should we maybe start getting used to President Obama? Think about it: the stock market circles the drain even more, McLame proposes a mortgage bailout only a guy like Kucinich could love, his running mate seems to go off the reservation completely (and it is a BIG reservation out there, you betcha') by reveling in her crowds' cries to "kill" Obama, and then the douche-nozzle can't even hang out for five minutes to shake hands with the very people whose questions he allegedly was answering for the last hour and a half?

Seriously?

Electoral blowout in the making.

Keep the faith people, let's win.

Letterman skewers Palin.

Too funny (ouch, my ribs hurt).

John McShame's "experience"

…so I was thinking about experience and how it relates to the leaders Americans pick for President…

Does experience trump common sense and leadership? For someone who touts his military experience and world knowledge so much, John McShame’s experience didn’t do a damn thing to help him (and all of us) out when it really mattered; when the time came to make the right decision with regards to the biggest military and policy decision of this decade, he made an absolutely terrible one.

And the guy who has nowhere near the breadth, depth or type of experience that John McShame has, actually made an infinitely-better and smarter decision, when he decided it’s better for America and for all Americans to NOT start a war with Iraq (and whoever else came along for the ride).

Yes, his name is Barack Obama.

See, If Barack Obama were President, there would not have been a war in Iraq. Read that again. If Barack Obama were President, there would not have been an Iraq war.

For those of you who don’t know, Barack Obama, without all the “experience” John McShame has, voted AGAINST the Iraq war. It turns out Barack Obama didn’t – and doesn’t – need “experience” to make the correct and far better decision(s) for America. He’s got something BETTER than all of John McShame’s experience: common sense, better vision, and complete and thorough leadership.

Ahh, what might have been; what should have been….
a) John McShame’s experience, if President, would have led us to the same exact result that President Bush’s decision led us to: by taking our focus, military/intelligence might, and our resources off of the real enemy - the actual enemy who really did attack us - the Taliban and Al Qadea are currently at the same strength they were on 9/11 (based on the latest Pentagon assessment from earlier this year, as well as the latest national intelligence estimate, and also independent studies done by independent organizations). This would not be the case If Barack Obama was President.
b) Al Qadea and all the other factions we’re currently fighting in Iraq would not be there for the next several decades (Hussein kept them all under control) if Barack Obama was President.
c) Our military would not be decimated if Barack Obama was President. 33% of all military forces deployed currently are from the National Guard and Reserves; tens of thousands of troops are on their 3rd, 4th, and 5th tours; thousands upon thousands of troops are being involuntarily extended. This is a very dangerous military precedent, and amounts to a decimated and broken military that can only be repaired by a full-fledged draft.
d) If Barack Obama was President, we wouldn’t have had almost 4500 troops die largely in vain in Iraq, and approximately 200,000 maimed for life. This is to say nothing of all the broken families and Iraq Vets our kids will grow up seeing homeless on the steets, much the same way I grew up seeing Vietnam Vets homeless, uncared for and forgotten about.

It goes on…

John McShame STILL thinks it was the right decision to “fight them there so we didn’t have to fight them here!” He thought – as President Bush did - we were going to “spread democracy throughout the Middle East!” He thought – as President Bush did - we were “protecting ourselves from WMD’s!” Wow. So much for “experience!”

Obama knew better. MUCH better. He knew better than John McShame did with lots less experience. And he made a far better decision. How? Why? Because it’s not about experience, it’s about leadership and common sense.

Why do I refer to John McCain as John McShame? Here’s why…

For someone like John McShame who cares and values our troops so much, he’s sure got a dysfunctional way of showing it: If ANYONE should know an unnecessary when they see one; if ANYONE should know what troops dying in vain looks like, it’s John Sidney McCain the Third, who served in the greatest unnecessary war American troops have ever fought in (Vietnam). And he doesn’t seem to know this. Of if he does know it, he doesn’t care. Either way, his EXPERIENCE has failed him; it’s failed us. It’s failed our troops, it’s failed our national heroes (which John himself once was). Sending troops off to fight a war that is completely and wholly unnecessary is not what people do who value troops, and the ultimate price they too often pay. This is shameful. That’s why I call him as John McShame.

Plain and simple: experience is overrated as a requirement for the office of the President of the United States. George W. Bush had it. Look where we are. Heck, y’all lived it the last eight years! He is far and away considered the worst U.S. President of all time by an overwhelming amount of independent scholars, Presidential historians, professors, authors, and others. How about Sarah Palin, aka “Caribou Barbie?” John McShame picked her for a lot of reasons; experience wasn’t in the top 20.

It’s about leadership and common sense. Barack Obama has it by the boatload. John McShame apparently possesses neither.

Sarah Palin's church hopes to 'pray away the gay' and convert homosexuals to heterosexuals

September 7, 2008
Recommend (14)

FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin's church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer.

''You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality,'' according to the insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Palin has prayed for about six years.

Palin's conservative Christian views have energized that part of the GOP electorate, which was lukewarm to John McCain's candidacy before he named her as his vice presidential choice. She is staunchly anti-abortion, opposing exceptions for rape and incest, and opposes gay marriage and spousal rights for gay couples.

Focus on the Family, a national Christian fundamentalist organization, is conducting the ''Love Won Out'' Conference in Anchorage, about 30 miles from Wasilla.

Palin, campaigning with McCain in the Midwest on Friday, has not publicly expressed a view on the so-called ''pray away the gay'' movement. Larry Kroon, senior pastor at Palin's church, was not available to discuss the matter Friday, said a church worker who declined to give her name.

Gay activists in Alaska said Palin has not worked actively against their interests, but early in her administration she supported a bill to overrule a court decision to block state benefits for gay partners of public employees.

At the time, less than one-half of 1 percent of state employees had applied for the benefits, which were ordered by a 2005 ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court.

Palin reversed her position and vetoed the bill after the state attorney general said it was unconstitutional. But her reluctant support didn't win fans among Alaska's gay population, said Scott Turner, a gay activist in Anchorage.

''Less than 1 percent of state employees would even apply for benefits, so why make a big deal out of such a small number?'' he said.

''I think gay Republicans are going to run away'' if Palin supports efforts like the prayers to convert gays, said Wayne Besen, founder of the New York-based Truth Wins Out, a gay rights advocacy group. Besen called on Palin to publicly express her views now that she's a vice presidential nominee.

''People are looking at Sarah Palin as someone who might feasibly be in the White House,'' he said.