Yeah, I know it's late, sorry; I got the email last night & didn't get a chance to slap the info up here right now. The show, which was set up by Room 101's Roburt Reynolds, is a benefit for a hospital in the impoverished/ coup-stricken country of Honduras, run by a guy named Dr. Luther Castillo, where the poorest Hondurans can get healthcare.

The new Honduran government has repeatedly threatened Dr. Castillo and cut off the salaries of the doctor's at Castillo's hospital, so they need whatever assistance they can get to keep helping people. Definitely a worthy cause, I'd say.

The bad part? Well, the benefit's already going on right now, today -- the show started at 2PM. It'll run through 7PM or so tonight, though, and features a bunch of bands, plus veggie/Mexican food, drinks, and presentations and films on the hospital and the situation in Honduras. Here's the schedule Roburt sent out:

2:00-2:45p Okinawa
2:45-3:30 Evelyn Zuniga Presentation
3:30-4:00 Student Presentation
4:00-4:30 Permanent Vegetative State
4:40-5:15 Anarchitex
5:15-5:30 Geltab
5:30-5:45 Student Presentation
5:45-6:15 Short Film on Honduran Hospital
6:15-6:35 Room 101
6:45-7:15 The Delta Block

Anyway, the benefit's at Sedition Books, over at 901 Richmond -- good bands (esp. Roburt's own one-man-band), good cause, good food, good everything, so get on over there, eh?

Labels: Charitable Things, Flyeration, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

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Yep, I'm a fan of H-town's very own anarchist bookstore (the only one I've heard of, anyway), Sedition Books (901 Richmond) -- I certainly wouldn't call myself an anarchist, but I think it's crucial to have some kind of a clearinghouse like this in our city, to provide access to information most Houstonians aren't going to be able to find otherwise.

They call themselves an "infoshop," which kind of makes sense, as they do more than just sell books -- they have a fairly large lending library that's open to all, they provide meeting spaces for nonprofits and activists, they have a zine library, and even offer free Internet access. All of which is very cool by me, at least.

They've hit some setbacks along the way to where they are, though, including a near-crippling arson at their original Washington Ave. location. They've bounced back, sure, but this stuff takes funding to keep going, so they're celebrating their "first year of rent paying and regular hours" with a series of benefit shows at Super Happy Fun Land, the first of which is today, Saturday, August 15th.

The cover's $7, the show starts around 8PM, and it'll feature some of Houston's rawest punk and strangest/most intriguing experimental acts: The Delta Block, A Thousand Cranes (whom I enjoy blissing out to), Anarchitex (old-school H-town punk rock), Room 101 (who rule, seriously), & Police State America (or P.S.A., for short). The proceeds go both to Sedition and to SHFL, so it's a good cause either way.

Labels: Charitable Things, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

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Um. What the...? Okay, so I happened to be looking through my Google Reader pile today, and I'm scrolling along through all the posts on various things related to H-town, music, or both, and -- whoa, hold on, is that The freaking Skyline Network, posting again?

And yes, yes, it is. Apparently ADR has decided to pick up his digital pen, done a bit of redecorating, and and is back at it. Except that, uh, he's no longer posting about the various in-jokes and coolnesses of the H-town scene. Instead, these days he's posting about oil-related stuff, stuff relating to his job (I'm guessing, anyway).

Which is cool, and he's still the damn good writer he always was, making all that geophysical stuff sound a lot more intriguing than I remember it being in that former life of mine when I used to write about drill fluids and environmental regs and whatnot. Plus, I really like his Top Five Movies About Oil Ever Made.

Good to have you back, man. Hopefully one day you'll grace us again with some more pretzel-twisted prose about music, eh?

Labels: H-Town News, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Read

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Okay, so I've gotten word that a band I don't know much about called Achachay! is playing Super Happy Fun Land this coming Monday, May 25th. Which wouldn't elicit more than a shrug from me, normally (folks, you have no idea how many damn press releases I/we get in a day; it's a little insane), but then there's the manifesto attached:

Houston, TX -- Funk Rock band Achachay! plays Super Happy Fun Land, TX on Monday, May 25th at 930PM. The Austin, TX trio is touring to promote their first studio-recorded EP and to stimulate discussion about national drinking laws.

After rocking a 1 hour show, Achachay! guitarist Jordan Myska Allen and drummer Ryan Greenblatt will hold an informal discussion, sharing their viewpoints on lowering the drinking age to 18, providing a reasonable way for states to accomplish this, and addressing counter arguments. They also encourage and provide a means for fans to get involved with Choose Responsibility, a non-profit created with the same purpose.

This campaign matches the unusual pair's musical philosophy to think outside the box and motivate people to act--be it by dancing to their music or signing a petition. Achachay! shows are energetic. Ryan's dance rhythms and Jordan's funk guitar complement lyrical topics that range from existential crises to absurd and imaginary rock people.

The May 29th show at Super Happy Fun Land is one of many on Achachay's national tour. With 18 dates in 10 different states, the band hopes to gain more fans for Achachay! music and raise awareness about a different possibility in American alcohol culture.

Wow. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the drinking age being lowered -- as a kid, I didn't ever drink, so it didn't bother me -- but basing an entire tour around it's an intriguing idea. I dunno that they're going to have a lot of trouble convincing their fans that they're right, given the crowd at SHFL on a typical night, but hey, preaching to the choir can help, too. Are they serious, though? I have no freaking idea, which almost makes it more entertaining.

Anyway, before Discussion Time begins, you can also check out openers The Manichean, who're interesting so far, the always excellent Gretchen Schmaltz, & Clory Martin, who I don't know. And Achachay!, of course. Come out, enjoy the music, then work on fulfilling the fondest dream of half the college-age kids in America.

Labels: H-Town News, Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

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Damn, that sounds like a Chumbawumba song... (And for the uninitiated, no, the band didn't begin & end with that asinine "I get knocked down / and I get up again" football-lad singalong.)

Local "infoshop" Sedition Books is a welcome anomaly in our Metropolis of Greed and Conformity -- they're an out-and-out anarchist collective, lending library, meeting space, and book-/zine-seller that stocks stuff you really, truly can't find anywhere else in this city. I swear, they're like a funky little chunk of Portland or old-school Berkeley plunked down in the middle of Montrose.

As such, they deserve all the support they can get, especially when they come up with fun-sounding fundraisers like this. This coming Saturday, May 23rd, Sedition's holding a Kickball in the Park fundraiser at Dunlavy Park (4502 Dunlavy), with teams playing from 4PM 'til I dunno when -- $5 gets you on a team (and obviously, goes to benefit the bookstore -- er, infoshop, sorry). The info's on the flyer to the right; apologies for it being teeny-tiny, but that's the only size they had on their Website...

And hey, this is kickball we're talking about, as in "that awesome game you played as a kid but probably forgot about 'til reading this just now." I can't speak for everybody out there, but some of my fondest memories are of the 50-plus-kid kickball games we'd have back in the old neighborhood up in Fort Hood, TX., playing our hearts out from the moment the bus dropped us off until the sun went down & our moms called us in for dinner. At the very least, when your coworkers ask you, "what did you do this weekend?", you will have an utterly badass answer to give.

Labels: Charitable Things, H-Town News, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do, Things To See

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Yeah, it's already begun to happen to me, too -- secure in the knowledge that Obama's headed for the House of Whiteness (I can't help but think of the classic George Clinton track, "Paint the White House Black," whenever I think about it), I've started to feel sorry for ol' Dubya. He looks more and more like a stuffed shirt, an ineffectual do-nothing who's just marking time 'til he gets to go back to private life. (And hey, now he won't even be Cowboy George, since he & Laura are trading up from the Crawford ranch to swank digs in Dallas.)

And then I take a look around and realize, "holy fuck...he's the guy most responsible for all (and I do mean 'all') of the bad, scary, horrible, soul-destroying shit that's going on all around us." It's him, believe it; regardless of how the ever-loving Media is currently trying to sell the man or trying to shift the blame, Dubya was a wretched president. Not even a wretchedly ineffectual, idle president -- in spite of all the vacation time -- but a president who actively, knowingly pulled all kinds of bad shit and make America are weird, uncertain, sometimes scary place to live.

It took this article, though, by the awesomely erudite William Rivers Pitt, to really encapsulate all of the multifaceted badness wrought by Texas's best-known ex-governor. Pitt hits absolutely everything, even shit I'd apparently suppressed, blanked from my memory. I succumbed a while back to what The Onion wisely dubbed "Outrage Fatigue", so I found myself reading Pitt's article and going, "oh, yeah -- I'd totally forgotten he did that, dammit!"

Don't fall for it, folks -- no matter what wonderful, back-patting odes to the wonders of Dubya you get smacked with these next several months (years?), do not forget all the things this guy did. Never forget, never forgive. Because once we do, we run the risk of somebody else trying to repeat it all again.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Yes, Jack Black irks me. I like some of his movies, admittedly, but a lot of the time his shtick wears thin fast. So when he showed up and was hysterically funny in the awesome, awesome Prop. 8: The Musical on FunnyOrDie.com, I nearly spit out my morning coffee. Seriously, it's pretty great.

Oh, and it features nearly every funny person in the universe, apparently, from Margaret Cho to Maya Rudolph to John C. Reilly to Andy Richter, the latter of whom I seem to keep seeing more on shows my daughter watches than anywhere else (he cracks me up on the Sesame Street video Happy Healthy Monsters just by being there), which makes his an especially nice cameo. Just watch:

Labels: Cool Web Junk, Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To See

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While I definitely do like our new President-to-Be quite a bit and am over the freakin' moon that he won, I'll admit to being a little nervous about what he'll actually do once in office -- based on his Senate record, I have a feeling he's a lot more business-friendly than some of his grassroots (me included) are going to be completely happy with.

That said, can you imagine Dubya saying something like this? Never in a million fucking years, y'all. Wow. Color me impressed.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Meant to put this up sooner, but as it always is with life, things intervene. Time will tell if it's the reality (I've got pretty high hopes), but right now, a week after, I'm still feeling like celebrating the fact that a smart, practical, rational guy who looks a heck of a lot like America will be entering the White House. In spite of the retarded "Impeach Obama" bumper stickers I've seen (memo to those drivers: please ho back to H.S. Civics class and learn how the system works before making the rest of us look bad), even some conservative friends of mine are breathing sighs of relief, having endured 8 years of Big Guv'mint Dubya and watched in horror as the Sarah Palin trainwreck unfolded. The next four years (or more?) promise to be a 180 from the 8-year nightmare it feels like we've all been staggering through.

So here you go -- some music to celebrate to, even if it's just all by your lonesome, smiling as you ride the elevator up to work with the headphones on. First, to get that anti-establishmentarianism jab in:

NOFX - "You're Wrong (live)"

Then there's some cheerier stuff, once all the bitter sarcasm's out of your system. The first is a cover, of course, of the Sam Cooke classic, the second is probably the best hip-hop track I've heard yet -- you can hear the awe and wonder in Ali's voice -- and the third is one that's by a bunch of Canadians who can't vote here anyway, but heck, it's just a bleak and beautiful song that somehow captures for me the uncertainty of our times:

Cory Chisel - "A Change Is Gonna Come"
Brother Ali - "Mr. President (You're The Man)"
The Stills - "Being Here"

I can't forget this track, though, 'cause it's by a Kenyan/American band and, um, it's about Obama (oh, and it's beautiful, too):

Extra Golden - "Obama"

And then, of course, there's this, which was honest-to-God the music that burst into my head, unasked-for, when I realized it had actually, really, truly happened:

Labels: Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To Download, Things To Hear, Things To See

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Decidedly non-music-related, but this guy's my dad's personal hero, right up there with John Wayne. Travel guru, TV star, author, & all-round strange guy Rick Steves will be speaking this coming Friday, November 14th, at the University of Houston Cullen Performance Hall. I'm not entirely sure what the heck he'll be talking about, but he's got a new book out called Backpack Diplomacy, and the guy's a fount of travel-related knowledge. Tickets are a little pricey, sadly -- $20 for HoustonPBS members and $25 for non-members.

Now, I'll be honest -- while I like the guy okay, he's not my favorite travel writer (that's a tossup between Redmond O'Hanlon and Lawrence Millman, although they admittedly do somewhat of a different type of travel writing from Steves), or even my favorite travel TV host (current winner? Andrew Zimmern, hands down -- I'll never, ever eat the bulk of the things he tries, but hey, at least now I have a vague idea of what they'd taste like if I did). He is however, pretty much a travel biz icon, and well worth listening to. And going by what I've heard of his latest book, he and I see pretty much eye-to-eye on foreign relations and travel, in that we both believe the best way to coexist with our neighboring nations is to send real-live Americans out to the far corners of the world with backpacks rather than guns.

Plus, I have to respect -- albeit in a back-away-slowly-and-keep-smiling kind of way -- a guy who includes such handy phrases as "I have no venereal diseases" in his Spanish-to-English phrasebook. Truly, truly classy.

Labels: Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Things To Read, Things To See, Travel Stuff

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Holy crap. I knew it was a big deal that Harris Co., in which a large chunk of Houston happens to be located, went for Obama yesterday, but I didn't realize 'til looking it up just now on Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections that it's the first time since Lyndon Johnson ran for re-election in 1964 that the county went blue.

Heck, even Bexar Co., which generally seems to me to be more conservative, with all the military folks over there, went blue for Clinton in '92 & '96, for Carter in '76, and for Humphrey in '68.

Harris Co., though, hasn't voted for a Democrat for President in 44 years. 'Til now. Wow.

We may not have been enough to take Texas, but I'm proud to have been a part of that historic moment. Great work, y'all.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Please, God, please let it be real. Seriously. I went to bed in 2000 thinking Al Gore would be President and woke up with Bush. It better freakin' not happen again.

And y'know what? I don't care that he can't -- or won't -- fix everything that's wrong with this country. I'm just happy to have someone in the White House who's intelligent, practical, and thinks before he speaks or acts. Thank you, America, for proving me wrong about us.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 2 comments

I don't care who you vote for -- okay, that's not strictly true, but I'm not gonna go through that here -- but you seriously need to vote. This is a big, big one, folks, even for redder-than-red Texas.

With the right to vote comes the responsibility to actual do it; historically speaking, people who don't (or can't) take part in their government are always, always, always screwed. Go here to see where and how, then get on out of the house tomorrow and do it.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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This one seems so damn obvious I'm a bit irked at myself for not twigging to it before somebody had to tell me. (Big thank-you to Marshall at life is a thrill for pointing this out, btw...)

Yes, Sarah Palin, the much-loathed (and rightfully so, to my mind, for making being ignorant and closed-minded popular once again, if nothing else) GOP veep candidate, is the Governor of a socialist state. Hell, she's even admitted as much to (badass) New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, speaking about her supposed "battle" against those gosh-darn-greedy oil companies (and if you believe she was really fighting on the side of The Common Man, I've got a Bridge to Nowhere to sell you):

"...[W]e’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

And here's the first definition of the word "socialism," straight from Merriam-Webster:

"1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods"

Those two statements sound at all similar? The more I think about it, the more ludicrous Palin's whole attempt to tar-and-feather Obama as a "socialist" seems -- pot, meet kettle. Lady, you come from Alaska, which is the only state in the union that actually pays people to live in it, out of oil royalties that go into the Alaska Permanent Fund. This year, for example, each eligible Alaskan -- which apparently includes children -- will get $2069 from the state.

Any guesses what supposedly-despicable, evil, America-hating (according to Fox, anyway) foreign country does something like this? Venezuela. Yep -- in Venezuela, windfall oil revenue goes to impoverished Venezuelans. And here I was under the impression Ms. Palin hated Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, even going so far as to call him (incorrectly) a "dictator"; turns out they've got more in common than she thought...

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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...but lo and behold, I find myself nodding in agreement to his Slate pieces not once but twice. Which is somewhat weird, considering the right-turn the guy took six years back, prior to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; I would've sworn then that he was a goner, a convert to the Far Right who'd never step back across the line. (Wars do funny things to people.) These are odd times, indeed...

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Jesus, this is getting insane. Every time I think the McCain/Palin campaign and its supporters couldn't possibly do or say something more insane, mind-melting, or scary, somebody fucking rises to the occasion. If it's not a right-wing loon stuck in the '50s comparing Obama to Jim Jones, Mao, & Hitler, it's a whackjob (from College Station, yay!) either fakes her own mugging or gets mugged and lies to the police about the "Obama supporter" black guy who attacked her (and is apparently dyslexic), or -- best of all -- it's a terrifying, terrifying woman declining to label abortion clinic bombers "terrorists."

Part of me wants to cheer these lunatics on -- with each and every gaffe, lie, and scam, they dig themselves in deeper and deeper, after all. But that last one? It makes me want to flat-out puke. Did I hear that right? Did a candidate running for the second-most-powerful office in, hell, the world just waffle on whether or not slimeballs who murder innocent people in the name of religion are really terrorists? Did she suddenly forget what it was that happened in NYC, oh, seven years ago this fall? That kind of thing is suddenly not that big a deal?

This is what we're looking at, America. McCain/Palin fans? You're voting for a woman who thinks the other guy ought to be hung out to dry for having as an acquaintance a domestic terrorist who set off bombs in government offices when the guy in question was 8, but who doesn't think people who shoot doctors and blow up or set on fire fucking doctor's offices within the last decade are not worth calling "terrorists"? Governor Palin, ma'am -- before now, you were simply wrong, dumb, and possibly-maybe dangerous. Now, however, you're officially big-E Evil.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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I've been meaning to do a big ol' rundown of all the cool things other media-ey people here in town have been doing lately, but I know that's gonna take me a while, and dammit, I just can't let this one fall through the cracks. The best thing I've read lately, locally or otherwise, is Houston Press staffer Chris Rasmussen's brutal, yet insanely funny, dissection of Hank Williams, Jr.'s latest opus, "McCain-Palin Tradition" (which I'm going to go out on a limb and assume is just a badly-thought-out rewrite of his old classic "Family Tradition"). Rasmussen's "please, help us, daddy" bit cracks me up every time.

As for the song itself: wow. Mr. Williams, you're one of the few country performers I actually like, but damn. That is just not good. In fact, it's just about new-Guns-N-Roses-track bad. Out-and-out political songs suck in general, but this one sounds like an SNL sketch gone horribly awry. At the same time, though, I feel compelled to note that the original "Family Tradition" was basically Williams defending his right to get stoned out of his head and get into fights every damn night of the week. Which, when you think about it, makes the rewrite of the song into a Republican hymn pretty damn hysterical.

Labels: Entertainobabble, Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To Read

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Nope, not that Chris Bell, this one. Tonight (Tues., October 22nd) up at ever-excellent The Continental Club, longtime Houston music scene fixture Jesse Dayton will be playing at a benefit for Chris's Texas Senate run, and it sounds like a good time.

Chris Bell is good people, one of the few local Houston politicos whom I really, truly respect, and I sincerely want to see him back in public office. I was in his district 'til he was targeted by Tom DeLay's redistricting scam and had to watch as it got shifted out from under him (and into more Repub-friendly territory, naturally; ah, Texas politics...), and as a former constituent, I can attest to Bell honestly giving a damn about the people he represents. And hey, Jesse Dayton's pretty great, too. Get on out & support.

Labels: Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling, Things To Do

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This is really beginning to get old, not to mention scary. I know the "lib'ruls hate America!" meme is nothing new, but it sure feels like the Republican Party has been dragging it out into the spotlight lately.

Now they're talking about Congress and the media investigating "liberal" Americans and politicians, conservatives being the "real" Americans, as opposed to liberals, who supposedly hate "real Americans," apparently defined as people who believe in God and work for a living (not that anybody asked me if I hated Americans, "real" or not, mind you), and blasting anybody they disagree with as "Marxist" or "socialist". And that's on top of people yelling racist epithets and declaring Obama should be killed at McCain/Palin rallies. (Does the Secret Service not bust people for that sort of thing anymore?)

Kudos to Larry King, btw, who rightly recalled that the last bunch of people who took power by riling up the masses to root out the Marxists in their midst were fascists. And to the shmuck who declared that "fascism is about celebrating the country" -- yes, it is, and I don't suppose the GOP ever does that, does it? Of course not. Just make sure you're wearing your flag pin at all times, or you obviously hate America.

This is disgusting, pathetic, and divisive beyond belief. There hasn't been an election this dangerous since I've been alive, and that's scary. McCain, once considered a relative moderate who occasionally stood up to join hands with the people on the other side of the aisle, has transformed himself into a lightning rod for the most terrifying, most knee-jerk elements of the American populace. They've dredged up the people who truly do hate America -- like McCain pal G. Gordon Liddy, who thinks it's a good idea to shoot government agents -- and handed them a big, big stage to yell from.

Don't get me wrong, now: I think it's going to blow up in their faces. I think it's a sign of desperation, and I think the bulk of America still has the decency to recognize hate and irresponsibility and, to put it bluntly, evil, and I think they're going to vote against it. And I'm very, very happy about that.

What scares me, though, is what happens after an Obama win. Are the folks at these rallies, getting amped up on the anti-liberal, anti-Obama, anti-Democrat frenzy, just going to get back in their vans and head back to wherever they came from? Or are things going to get ugly and violent? The stuff these folks are saying now is what spurred on lynch mobs and witch hunts fifty, seventy, a hundred years ago, and I, for one, don't want to see us dragged back there.

Open memo to all the McCain/Palin fans, then: be a responsible citizen and exercise your right to vote, and then let the chips fall where they may. And no matter who wins in the end, let's all agree to work together to make the country a better place for everybody, regardless of belief, color, political affiliation, or home state. Isn't that what real Americans do?

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Okay, I've mostly kept mum on the whole Sarah Palin thing, partly because I haven't felt like anything needed saying that somebody wasn't already saying in the news and partly because the sheer volume of insane crap that comes out about her makes my head spin. Now that she's decided to come out and attack Obama for some of the people he's associated with, going so far as to say he "pals around with terrorists," I feel compelled to chime in and ask: do you really want to go there, ma'am? You sure about that?

Because y'know, some of the people you hang out with are scary-ass nutjobs, lady. Like, say, Thomas Muthee, the famed "witch-hunter" of Kenya who came to teeny-tiny Wasilla, Alaska, and prayed over you at your hometown church back in 2005. Muthee, for one thing, equates Islam and Buddhism with witchcraft and sorcery, and earlier this fall apparently exhorted members of the Wasilla Assembly of God to stomp on the necks of unbelievers. His primary claim to fame, by the way, is that he drove a supposed witch named "Mama Jane" out of Kiambu, Kenya, riling up the villagers to the point where angry townspeople were ready to stone the poor woman to death.

Things got so out of hand the local police had to intervene, and in the end, the "witch" fled the town. Palin's got this guy as one of her spiritual advisors, and she thinks Jeremiah Wright is too much? Hell, whatever you think of his politics, at least Wright operates in the same reality the rest of us do. And just to head off the naysayers who want to say Muthee's just a visitor who Palin didn't really deal with, it should be noted that Palin herself credits him with helping her get elected Governor.

Beyond Muthee, though, there's also Ed Kalnins, the pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, who's just as scary in his own right. Why? Well, he thinks Alaska's going to be where all U.S. evangelicals will be able to take refuge when the "End of Days" comes. (Guess I'd better visit soon, then, before it gets real nuts up there...) He's okay that our world's currently being rocked by wars over oil, by the by, because he thinks that's a sign the end of the world (and the Rapture, naturally) is nigh.

He's also hinted that people who voted for Kerry back in 2004 or have criticized Dubya are headed for Hell and has claimed that God gives him sneaky secret information, John Edward (the psychic, not the candidate)-style. So he's an apocalyptic, Democrat-hating psychic who wants all his fellow Armageddonites to come hang out in Alaska and watch the world implode. I'm guessing the sermons are entertaining.

Keep in mind, as well, that this isn't just some church Palin attended for a few years -- it's the one she grew up in, and the one she attended full-time 'til 2002 or so, before switching to the more buttoned-down Wasilla Bible Church. The WBC's more low-key than the Assembly of God, certainly, but they're still an "End Times" church that's keeping its eyes on what they see as the coming Armageddon (and if that bit sounds familiar, it's because a certain recent President believes in the same general thing).

The church also recently had Jews for Jesus director David Brickner speak there, with Brickner blithely calling terrorist attacks in Israel God's "judgment of unbelief" for all those pesky Jews who haven't seen the supposed light and converted. Ah, fun. And this is the more mainstream of the two churches Palin's associated with, which says a lot about her and about mainstream Christianity in this country in general...

Freakier still are the right-wing, anti-government militia types who supported Palin's run for Mayor of Wasilla a few years back. She was so grateful for the help of one guy, Steven Stoll (nicknamed "Black Helicopter Steve" locally for his far-right paranoia) that he was one of the first appointments she tried to push through as Mayor. When she couldn't get him on the city planning commission, she then managed to fire the city museum director, a longtime enemy of Stoll's, seemingly as a friendly bit of political payback for Stoll's financial & organizational support.

Then there's fellow nutjob Mark Chryson, who's apparently known Palin for more than a decade, supported her political runs, and has heavy ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, which wants the state to secede from the rest of the U.S. and go it alone. (Palin's husband Todd also has ties to the AIP, registering as a member of the party for a while.) The AIP themselves are affiliated with the hard-right Constitution Party, which is a big booster of the militia movement and has been called a fascist organization. The AIP also hang out with other pro-secession groups, including a bunch that want to do fun things like, say, create an all-white nation or impose their own taxes on people who live in the western part of the state of Texas.

Granted, Palin wasn't an actual member of the AIP, no, but that sure as hell doesn't make it okay that she hangs out with these people. Obama may know Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader, but he sure as hell wasn't a member of the group himself, either. He wasn't around when Ayers was blowing up buildings -- he was 8 at the time -- but has only known the guy in his old age, 30 years after he did what he did. Palin's been hanging out with people who right now, at this moment, have as their stated goal that they want to split off from the U.S. We're not talked about quasi-reformed Klansmen here, but full-on militia whackos. And I sure haven't heard Palin denouncing Chryson and his buddies the way Obama's denounced Ayers' past actions.

And, of course, I can't forget Pat Buchanan, whose 2000 Presidential run Palin supported. Say what you want about Louis Farrakhan endorsing Obama -- Obama never helped raise money for the guy, and in fact rejected the endorsement. Palin supposedly helped out ol' Pat with cash and rallied the troops when he came through Wasilla.

So, there it is. My suggestion to the Obama campaign is to hammer these folks right back -- Palin's political and religious allies are a hell of a lot closer (and scarier) than any of Obama's supposed "skeletons." Oh, and this was a nice bit of rhetoric from Palin, here, speaking to William Kristol about Obama knowing Ayers:

She continued, "To me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."

Nice. She certainly doesn't want to bring up Wright unless McCain approves it. Oh, no -- that would be the height of rudeness. Unless, of course, she's having a friendly chat with a fucking reporter for the fucking New York Times. All that spinning got you dizzy yet, Ms. Palin?

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Way, way, way smarter than me, anyway. Not only was I impressed that Jon Stewart was willing to go head-on with the GOP last night on The Daily Show (in front of Peggy Noonan, no less), but he and fellow news-satirist Stephen Colbert made me laugh so hard I wept while reading the joint interview they did for Entertainment Weekly (hey! I read it online, dammit, so it doesn't eat my soul quite as much...). This was the capper of the whole thing, for me:

STEWART: We've got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, "I don't know!" It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, "I don't know what the f--- is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?" By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what's salient anymore.

Thank you both for being who you are, guys. America needs you, possibly even more than it needs hope & a new direction & love & everything else. Big thank-you also to Marshall for slapping this up on his lifeisathrill site so I could steal it...

Labels: Entertainobabble, Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To Read

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Holy freaking crap. Didn't I see this in a movie somewhere? It's horrifying, to be sure, and I feel for the Ukrainian crew of the ship, but damn, it's somewhat mind-blowing that this shit actually happens. In the Real World, and not just on television or the big screen. Where's Steven Seagal when you need him?

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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The fictional, damn-I-wish-Martin-Sheen-really-had-been-President one, that is, offering sage, world-weary advice to the guy who'll hopefully run the real thing some day soon. Maureen Dowd & Aaron Sorkin, you both rule.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To Read

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I've been somewhat out of the political realm the past few years, after diving head-on into it back in 2001 or so; when my daughter came into my life, I simultaneously realized I needed to quit worrying about this shit quite so much and that I really, truly enjoy the music side of things more than the political. The Kid and Good Tunes are a hell of a lot more fulfilling than Political Wonkery. Plus, they have the added advantage of making me feel good, which politics almost never has. I mean, even on a good day, I still walk away feeling dirty & disillusioned.

That said, I do still love to indulge my armchair politico-geek. And right now, the awesome-awesome Electoral-vote.com site has me giggling like a GOP staffer watching Ann Coulter. It's very cool, a nicely-done encapsulation of the state of all the major races in the country, plus good links & some nice political musings, to boot. My grungy baseball cap's off to the anonymous(?) Votemaster for all his/her hard work...

Labels: Cool Web Junk, Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To See

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Okay, not exactly; that's just what pops into my sugar-addled brain every time the topic of oil comes up (my daughter now thinks it's hysterically funny to say, btw, particularly w/a silly accent). I'm getting a bit irked about all the pro-drilling stupidity going on, and, well, Daniel Day-Lewis's insane-yet-still-kinda-right declaration seems appropriate to the ridiculousness going on with the debate over whether or not we should open up more of the U.S., offshore and on, to drilling. So here's my own take on it -- those not wanting to hear the politics and/or my ranting, tune out now.

I'm going to put this in as blunt and straightforward a way as possible: if you think that letting oil companies drill in more places here in the States is going to lower the price you pay to fill your SUV, you've either been conned by the propaganda or you're just a flat-out moron.

For one thing, the traditional economics of supply-and-demand have little to do with the price U.S. oil companies are gouging us with at the pump -- they're just trying to make as big of a buck off of us as they can, raising prices as high as we're willing to stand. It's not that oil companies don't have enough oil for us, so therefore they're forced to raise their prices; from some pundits I've heard, you'd think the reason those po' widdle oil companies have raised prices so drastically in the past few years is because they just can't pull enough petroleum from our cherished U.S. soil, and so they're forced (forced, I tell you!) to go overseas for oil, where it's more expensive.

This is utter crap. We Americans consume 25% of the world's oil yet have only 2% of the world's proven reserves, including the areas where the Bush admin & their cronies want to open up drilling. So oil companies are going to have to go to overseas oil no matter what the hell we do, just like they have for years, even back when gas was below $2 a gallon. There's no way with the current demand for us to get all our oil from beneath U.S. soil. The only way to fix that problem is to lower the demand, but that's apparently something our government's not real concerned about (and, for obvious reasons, neither are the oil companies).

Plus, the rhetoric sure makes it sound like all those dastardly, America-hating environmentalists have somehow blocked 'merican oil companies from drilling in the dirt of their native-born home; I mean, they wouldn't be so hot to drill in new places if they already had places they could drill here at home, right? Not quite. Lookie here. From the looks of that map -- taken from Dept. of the Interior & Bureau of Land Management data -- oil companies can already stick a drill bit into most of the western United States and much of the Gulf of Mexico (apparently the eastern area's thought to be tapped out, since it's an extension of the western area, and, yes, I drink your milkshake! -- sorry, couldn't help it), plus most of northern Alaska, with just about all of Alaska's offshore areas wide-open. Roughly 80% of the country's offshore oil fields are open for leasing right now, and only 20% of the areas already leased are producing.

And, contrary to what Sean Hannity apparently thinks (or chooses to lie about, however you'd like to look at it), yes, there is oil in all those existing leases. In the offshore areas alone, there's an estimated four times more recoverable oil than the total amount the pro-drilling crew is saying we could get out of those untapped areas they're trying to get open. That's 86 (or so) billion barrels of oil in areas oil companies already lease. We think, anyway. Because it's all guesswork, on some level -- nobody's really got any clue for sure how much is out there, on either side.

If we did know for absolute certain, though, would that make a difference? Hell, there are apparently fewer oil rigs operating in North America now than in past years, despite the fact that these folks could drill in a ton of places. And drilling in ANWR, where right-wingers and business-firsters have been dying to drill for years? Yeah, that'd lower the price of gas by about a nickel, a decade or two from now. Assuming the oil companies even bother to exploit their newly-granted concessions. Which they might not do.

Why don't they drill where they already can? Got me. I'd guess it has to do with drilling being costly business; any oil company that tries to drill in too many places at once is going to run out of capital eventually. Plus, rigs themselves take time to build -- the hardware just doesn't currently exist to exploit every single possible oil field. Of course, there's also the reality that it's in some ways cheaper to drill overseas (since that's where the finished product's going to end up anyway, but I'll get to that), in places like Nigeria where oil companies can pay the government to look the other way and do whatever the fuck they want, consequences be damned.

Why bother drilling at home, with all those pesky "no-toxic-sludge!" regulations and oversight bodies, when you can drill somewhere nobody in your home country thinks twice about? And no, that's not likely to change if domestic drilling gets expanded, despite the promises of people like Charles Krauthammer, who somehow got temporary amnesia and forgot that yes, we did have spills when both Rita and Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Barring a colossal shift in power in Nigeria and other oil-rich/cash-poor countries around the world, it's going to remain cheaper to drill there than here.

(Okay, so Nigeria's a bad example, since the Nigerians have taken matters into their own hands and are trying to make it too costly for companies to drill there; they've done enough damage that now they're not the biggest exporter in Africa. The new no. 1, though, Angola, isn't much better.)

As I hinted at above, by the way, even if we did let oil companies drill wherever the hell they wanted to, where's the guarantee that it's "our" oil? That's the point of an oil lease, after all -- you get to take the oil/gas out of the ground and sell it to whomever you want. Meaning, in this case, probably to China, which is our biggest competitor for petroleum world-wide.

Heard that myth about the Chinese drilling off the coast of Cuba? It's total bunk -- they haven't drilled a thing yet, although they've got an agreement with Cuba to drill on their land one of these days. But heck, they don't need to drill in American waters to get our oil. All they have to do is offer more per barrel than we're willing to pay. If we get oil out of newly-opened Atlantic or Gulf waters, a decade down the line, where's the oil going to go? To the highest bidder, folks. Think appealing to the oil companies' sense of patriotic duty is going to do a bit of good? Somehow I suspect the only color they're going to answer to is green...

The funny thing is that the oil companies' pump-side price-gouging appears to be shooting them in the foot; they've apparently pushed us Americans too dang far, to the point where we've taken matters into our own hands and -- gasp! -- quit using as much gas & oil as we used to. Seriously; according to the Energy Information Administration (part of the Dept. of Energy), when gas prices leapt up last summer, consumer demand started falling like a rock, with people cutting back pretty severely because they just couldn't afford the price of gas.

Oh, and they're flocking to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, abandoning those monolithic Excursions in favor of Accords and Focuses (Foci?). And now that people aren't buying the gas, the oil companies are forecast to start dropping prices back to somewhat-saner levels very shortly, bringing demand back up, although the EIA's prognosis is that consumer demand won't get back up to what it was in early '07. Check out the graph (the vertical line is where we are now):

Now, to me this begs the question: how is it that the U.S. is supposedly so severely strapped for oil that we desperately need to drill in previously-protected areas, and yet when people go cold turkey and quit buying it, the price can magically drop back to what it was a year or so ago? Is the EIA projecting that the oil companies will miraculously find their old, sucked-dry oil leases happily refilled with Texas tea, with the likeness of Jesus's face mysteriously appearing on the derrick girders? Or is it just that the oil companies, their media lackeys, and the governmental shills they pay to smooth things out for 'em are all full of shit?

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Nope, it's not here in H-town, but it's still damn ridiculous. I've been a fan of Austin rockers The Boxing Lesson for a few years now, since their 2005 EP, so the news out of Austin about the band left me stunned.

Apparently Boxing Lesson drummer Jake Mitchell got busted for growing pot and has been declared...um, a terrorist? The hell? Regardless of what you think of the farcical "War on Drugs" (hooray for trying to claim victory over a nebulous, unbeatable "enemy"!), it's utterly ridiculous to think that somebody could be branded a "narcoterrorist" and tried under the fucking Patriot Act for growing marijuana.

I mean, c'mon -- if the guy's a pothead, fine. But most of the potheads I've met could barely muster the energy to get off the couch, much less engage in any kind of "terrorist" activity. It's nuts. And, uh, don't first-time offenders generally get probation for shit like this? Or is every two-bit pot-smoker now the moral equivalent of Pablo Escobar?

Here're the details from the Lesson's PR guy, Ryan:

You know The Boxing Lesson aren't ones to keep their mouths shut after several interviews and appearances since the release of their full length LP Wild Streaks & Windy Days. The real truth of the matter is that The Boxing Lesson have kept one of the most important parts of their story a secret. It is with much sadness we make this announcement but its time the public knows what is going on. It is with much sadness we make this announcement but its time the public knows what is going on.

Jake Mitchell, drummer for The Boxing Lesson and most importantly, a dear friend, will be put in Federal jail at the beginning of Sept for some marijuana growing charges. What makes this story unique and what has enraged every single one of our close friends, is that Jake has been branded by our government as a Terrorist under the Patriot Act. In fact, they have thrown the Narco-Terrorist tag on him. What this does legally for a defendant is mind blowing in terms of the new laws waged against them. If you are branded a terrorist, your wife doesn't get spousal protections and will go to jail. If you are branded a terrorist, each party involved in the crime gets full responsibility for the scope of the crime. Then there are strict sentencing minimums. And remember we are talking about Marijuana here.

It is obvious from anyone who has ever met, hung out with and gotten to know Jake Mitchell that he is anything but a terrorist. This incorrect and unfair branding on our own US citizen and friend, Jake Mitchell, is a disgrace and this has caused untypical hardships on his life. He has sold his house, lost his cars, and his freedom. We are asking our friends in the media, in bands, in t-shirt screen shops and really, anyone who can help, to send the message of his story to the public eye. We know there was a crime involved but branding him a terrorist has set unfair sentencing guidelines on a person who is anything but a terrorist.

We are accepting PayPal donations to help Jake's mounting legal bills at : freejakemitchell@gmail.com

Jake Mitchell is available for interviews before jail or in jail and has a lot to say right now about the music biz, The Boxing Lesson, the system, playing drums, recording, Fecal Shock, Austin bands, marijuana laws, and life in general. Final performances from Jake Mitchell until he gets out will be next week in Austin,TX!

August 27, 2008 @ Emo's Lounge 101x Homegrown Live show w/ Frontier Brothers
August 28, 2008 @ Carousel Lounge (Monkey Wrench Benefit)

Come out and celebrate life with Jake before our government intervenes. Fans of The Boxing Lesson have no fear, you can keep hearing your favorite songs live. Keeping the seat warm for Jake Mitchell behind the drums will be Kevin Sparks, a veteran of the Austin music scene who has played with many bands including Bad Motivators, Say Hello to the Angels and Megatron Triggerdick. Until next time, we?ll see you on the Dark Side of the Moog.

Do what you can, folks; this guy and his family need all the help they can get.

Labels: Entertainobabble, Musical Crap, Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements

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I've sung the guy's praises before, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I'm happy as heck to see Chris Bell once again running for office. He was my Rep. for a very short time before being redistricted down to the Texas/Mexico border by Tom DeLay and his state legislature cronies as payback for going after DeLay for ethics violations (seriously; look it up), and he always impressed me quite a bit both there and in the H-town City Council. I backed his run for Governor in '06 and watched in dismay as he lost to Governor "Goodhair" Perry, so I'm glad he hasn't given up but is trying to get back on the horse, albeit at a lower level.

He's running for the Texas (not national; see Rick Noriega, who's also a good guy, for that) Senate this time out, trying for the seat left open by Repub Kyle Janek, who moved from Houston to Austin last year & therefore couldn't represent his H-town constituency. The Repubs appear to be falling all over themselves to find a replacement for Janek, but Bell's stepped in strongly, and his push for better healthcare & education for Texans, more oversight on Big Bidness, and real-live ethics up in Austin has made him an impressive contender, at least from where I sit.

To put it bluntly, I really like the guy. He's honest, straightforward, and smart, and was astoundingly responsive back when he was in the U.S. Congress -- to date he's the only politician I've ever gotten a non-form response from, and I think that says something. Excellent local politiblogger Charles Kuffner over at Off the Kuff has a really nice interview up (in MP3 format) w/Bell on his site; check it out here.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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From ThinkProgress (via life is a thrill; yo, Marshall!), yes, it seems that now pretty much anything can make right-wing nutjob demagogues quiver with outrage, including a movie about a cartoon robot. Who, um, works on cleaning up a polluted planet. And is looking for love. Did I mention this is a cartoon, and not the new Michael Moore movie?

What, did these folks run out of ways to compare the Iowa floods to Katrina and find themselves at a loss for something to freak out about? Yeesh. The next time some right-winger sneers at some liberally-minded person for being "P.C." and being insulted/threatened by everything, I may have to slap 'em across their imbecilic face. If I'm not doubled over laughing, of course.

(In the interests of fairness, I feel compelled to note, that not all Repubs are quite this stupid/nuts. My dad, for one, is a lifelong Republican, and he saw the movie last weekend and liked it. Dad's always been a big outdoors lover, however, and I think he now secretly loathes Bush, so maybe he's the oddball here, not the foaming-at-the-mouth talking heads.)

Labels: Entertainobabble, Political Stuff, Random Rambling

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Quick note, 'cause I've got to run home to feed kittens & eat pizza (why do I hear Rowdy Roddy Piper in my head right now? weird...). There's what sounds like a very cool documentary playing tonight @ 7PM at Avant Garden, called BRAD: One More Night at the Barricades -- it's about Brad Will, a longtime activist and videographer who was shot and killed (possibly by a local governmental official) while filming the teacher strike/protests in Oaxaca, Mexico. I'd heard of Brad through Indymedia stuff, but sadly didn't know he was dead until I saw the note about this film...sigh. Damn shame; he sounded like quite a human being.

Anyway, the film promises to be impressive. From the organizers:

When Mexican paramilitary forces shot Brad Will in the chest, killing him, his camera fell from his hands. But it didn't stop recording. It continued moving from hand to hand telling Brad's story, as well as the story of the movement of movements that he was part of. From the squats of New York to the forests of Oregon, from the anti-globalization protests in Seattle, Prague, Quebec to the popular uprising in Oaxaca, Brad's camera paints us a picture of what his life was about, and what so many of his friends continue to struggle for.

They're asking for $5-$10 donations, but say that nobody will be turned away. Go check it out, y'all.

Labels: Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do, Things To See

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Fuck. I've been steaming about this for a couple of weeks now, but I just can't get over it -- I'm still mad as hell that Jericho got cancelled for the second damn time, this time permanently.

Beyond the fact that the CBS rocket scientists, in their infinite wisdom, put the show in a weird-ass spot at 9PM on Tuesday nights, when/where nobody could apparently find it (hell, I had a hard time watching it at that time & on that night, for some reason), it just feels like a total shame that such an honestly good show got shafted like this, particularly when total crap like Big Brother, My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad, & Don't Forget the Lyrics! are still on the air. (I can't even remember the name of that god-fucking-awful "spill the beans about all your past infidelities" show, sorry, or that'd be first on the list.)

In fact, I've been thinking about it and thinking about it, and I just can't shake the feeling that it was a truly great show, although arguably still in its early stages. (Warning: for those who have yet to see the show, some spoilers to come...)

It was really that good; I mean that seriously. I'd initally written it off as some kind of right-winger's wet dream of a show -- survivalism after the bomb, every-man-for-himself bullshit -- but it turned out to be something that crossed all lines and hit upon some of the deepest, darkest shit that's roiling under the surface of our wonderful, soul-shattered Modern America. It was all about community, about banding together to help one another rather than just looking out for your own (well, within your own town, anyway), about loss and grief beyond measure, about people not being all bad or all good but just being people, and about being able to pick up the pieces after disaster strikes and making a new life.

Oh, and it was also about some fairly radical ideas, like localism vs. nationalism, the government not always being in the right, screwing up and living with the mess, and unchecked corporate power. Heady stuff for a show about a small town in Kansas that's been all but ignored by the rest of the world (barring the desperate, warlike next town over and some ominous corporate mercenaries, anyway) after somebody decided to nuke most of the population centers in the U.S.

Plus, despite me & the wife making ruthless fun of some of the characters, particularly in the first season -- sorry, Sprague Grayden/Heather Lisinski, but for the bulk of the first season you were pretty much just some kind of combination between a hapless '50s housewife and Velma from Scooby-Doo -- the characters and actors showed some impressive development. Everyman semi-hero Skeet Ulrich/Jake Green was likeable as all hell, as resourceful as MacGyver, and yet still susceptible to things like, well, the urge to run out and blow the head off the guy who got his dad killed. That's what I'd call human, personally.

Not everybody was always right or wrong -- even Michael Gaston/Gray Anderson hit a few things on the nose, despite pulling such legally questionable shit as co-opting deputy Jimmy to interrogate Lennie James/Robert Hawkins when Anderson, um, didn't actually hold any kind of position of authority. Hawkins, for his part, was nicely vulnerable and real when it came to his utter failure as a dad and/or husband, in spite of being a badass at everything else. Which, honestly, makes perfect sense; I'd find a combo SuperDad/Secret Agent Man totally unrealistic, personally.

My favorite character-related bit, though, was the convoluted, Odd Couple-esque, growing-in-spite-of-everything relationship between Brad Beyer/Stanley Richmond & Alicia Coppola/Mimi Clark, which was -- for my money, anyway -- the best, funniest, sweetest, most believable on-screen chemistry I've seen since Rob Morrow & Janine Turner fought nonstop up there in little Cicely, Alaska. I can't honestly remember the last time I actually wanted a relationship to work out between two characters on a TV show as much as these two. It kills me not to be able to see what happens between the two of 'em.

The reason this is all coming to me right now, though, is more about the plot than the characters. While watching Season One on DVD (missed most of the first go-round, myself) and catching up to Season Two pretty much in time for The End, I've also been reading Michael Eric Dyson's excellent Come Hell or High Water, about the Katrina disaster/clusterfuck/tragedy. Dyson dissects the whole thing quite nicely, laying blame on everybody, Democrat & Repub, but primarily smacking down the federal government for utterly dropping the ball, whether due to patrician ignorance of how The Po' Folk live or good ol' cronyist incompetence.

It was the part about all the no-bid contracts that flew into effect quickly (but not quite quickly enough, as it happened) after Katrina that made me see the parallels between Jericho, KS, and post-Katrina New Orleans, LA. Two disasters, two inadequate responses from a fractured, self-interested federal government, and two near-takeovers by corporate power. 'Cause c'mon, that's exactly what's happening in New Orleans since the water came, believe it, starting with all those Big Red H rebuilding contracts.

Seen in that light, Jericho seems downright Mother Jones-ish in its condemnation of BushCo, USA. Hell, even the eventually-revealed blueprint for the attacks -- a contingency plan for a nuclear strike on 25 different American cities, written up by a contractor -- is ripped right out of the shady world of real-life, no-bid government contracting. A plan very much like that really does exist, although it's focused primarily on preparing logistics for the event, things like the number of bodybags to purchase and the distance a wastewater zone needs to be from a tent city. It's real and it's creepy as shit, trust me.

I know it'll sound eerily like I'm echoing the show here, but I know because I worked on the damn thing. Not as a writer, mind you, but doing editing and formatting and making it look purty/readable. The plan's part of a set of contingency plans created for a DOD program called LOGCAP, which stands for "Logistics Civil Augmentation," that gets awarded out to one of a handful of super-big contracting companies (including KBR, Fluor, and, I believe, Dresser & Bechtel). The contracted company commits to being able to provide all the services, facilities, manpower, etc., specified in the contingency plans they come up with, should the U.S. government activate one or more plans. Think of the whole thing as government outsourcing for big, bad events.

LOGCAP was how Halliburton got its foot into Iraq. It's also how they started billing the U.S. insane amounts for laundry, non-functioning trucks, and awful food for the troops. Don't get me wrong -- there are a lot of good people who work for Halliburton. It's just that that much $$$ flying around makes it real easy to start overcharging, scamming, and skimming. LOGCAP isn't that bad an idea, really, but when you hand off something like that to people outside the government, it gives those people a whole lot of money -- and power -- whether you're talking about Baghdad, Jericho, or, well, New Orleans.

See, there's also a contingency plan out there for a catastrophic event in the Caribbean or Latin America, with an ensuing mass of refugees in urgent need of shelter, food, water, and medical care either somewhere in the southern U.S. or at Guantanamo Bay. Sound familiar? Weirdly, I didn't see any sign of that particular plan being activated for New Orleans, but other LOGCAP plans were -- supposedly, the Blackwater mercenaries sent into The Big Easy after Katrina were part of a LOGCAP contract.

This is why I like/liked Jericho -- the people writing the show basically went head-on at both KBR/Halliburton (which are now two different companies, I know) and Blackwater, tying them to an ambitious Congressman from Montana who, it turns out, had close ties to KBR analogue Jennings & Rall/J&R. (And just to make the Jericho connection to Blackwater more explicit: "Blackwater" == "Ravenwood." Capisce?) All of which is pretty ballsy for a Big Three primetime TV drama. We're not talking Democracy Now!, here.

Anyway. I'm just wanting to express how impressed I was with the show, not to mention how sad it makes me that it's gone away. I've heard rumors that it might come back on cable, but I'm not real optimistic, as great as that'd be. And yeah, it'd be pretty great. (Watch the Season 1 DVDs and the Season 2 episodes online or on the SciFi Channel, if you don't believe me.) Keeping my fingers crossed that we haven't seen the last of Jake, Hawkins, Stanley, Eric, Mimi, Emily, & the rest.

Labels: Entertainobabble, Political Stuff, Random Rambling, Things To Read, Things To See

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I've always thought of myself as being relatively environmentally-aware, but man, having a kid puts that whole thing into overdrive, believe it. These days I find myself become maniacal about checking labels, avoiding super-processed crap, and feeding as much organic food as possible to the curly-haired, Gogol Bordello-/Hannah Montana-loving midget who lives in my house. Since having Abbie, we've become hyper-sensitive of hormones, preservatives, sugar, and all that other fun junk that regularly gets pumped into food to make it more "appealing." Uh-huh, right.

Luckily, several friends of ours are into the same sorts of things, so a couple of 'em (one of whom works for local nonprofit Urban Harvest) eventually prodded the wife & I into meandering over to the Bayou City Farmers Market one Saturday. The market's held every Saturday morning (getting there early is best, I've found), from 8AM-12PM, in a parking lot back behind the building at 3000 Richmond, on the north side of Richmond at Eastside, just east of Buffalo Speedway & north of 59. Our first experience was a little underwhelming, admittedly -- it was hot as hell w/almost no shade in the parking lot, and there weren't very many vendors there that day -- but since then we've been trying to go back as often as we can.

And over time, we've been pretty impressed. While my wife insists she could easily be a vegetarian, I'm a can't-help-it carnivore, so I was blown away when we showed up one morning to find the Olde World Farms booth all set up, w/piles and piles of gorgeous-looking all-natural beef on display. It's a little pricey for me in general, but damn, their sausages are good. We've gotten some good organic veggies, homemade bread, candles, honey, even flowers, all grown by Houston-area folks (sometimes in areas you wouldn't expect, actually; there're apparently some community gardens down in Westbury that sell produce at the market). And the milk? Whoo, boy. When the milk people come by, it's hard to beat.

The best of the bunch so far, though, was the morning when a local shrimper had brought their catch to the market. For $9, I bought a pound of the biggest, freshest (they didn't even smell like fish, which was pretty cool) shrimp I've ever seen in my life. We took 'em home, peeled & deveined 'em, slapped 'em under the broiler w/some butter, garlic, oil, & shallots, and gorged ourselves on shrimp scampi that night. They were awesome, if I do say so myself. (Now my wife makes me make scampi every time we get shrimp from anywhere, which is cool, 'cause I don't get to do much cooking these days...)

Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning all this is because tomorrow, Saturday, March 29th, the market's having its annual(?) Kids' Market Day, where they encourage folks to bring their munchkins out to check out the goings-on, pet some animals, get their faces painted, see some demonstrations, and supposedly even take home a free tomato plant. Plus, there'll be music from singer Danielle Reich and jazz bassist Thomas Helton, both of whom I've actually heard of before, so that's cool.

Of course, it's free, and it supports strictly local growers, craft-y types, and businesses, which is a nice, consumerism-minded way of sticking it to The Man ("The Man" in this case not referring to the City of Houston, but rather to the Wal-Marts & factory-farm monstrosities we're all tied to by the purse strings. Fight the power, yo.

Oh, and if you're feeling really greenie tomorrow, you can also participate in Earth Hour 2008, where millions of people all over the planet will turn off all their lights. It's meant to be a statement about climate change and global warming, but it's also interesting to see what you can do without having all the lights in the house on. The last time the power got cut in our neighborhood, it was actually kinda cool -- we all sat in the living room and read books or scribbled in journals by candlelight. (But then, we're pretty dorky.) So there you go...

Labels: Environmental Junk, Political Stuff, Things To Do, Things To Get

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

I cannot put into words just how much this angers and offends me, as a consumer and a human being. This is what happens when the almighty dollar trumps decency and common sense.

Haven't the poor woman and her family suffered enough? I can't think of a worse hell imaginable than what she goes through every day to begin with, without a penny-pinching gigantic corporation stepping in to make things worse. I've tried for a while now to keep my shopping there to a minimum, but this tears it -- never shopping there again. Period.

Labels: Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

I've got a general distrust of members of the punditocracy, be they from the right or the left -- I loathe the likes of Ann Coulter & Rush Limbaugh, but at the same time I'm not wholly sold on folks like Arianna Huffington or James Carville. Anybody who makes their living pontificating about their personal beliefs and how the world/country doesn't fit 'em is immediately suspect, in my book.

I have to say, though, that I like Jim Hightower a heck of a lot. It helps that he's a Texan, naturally -- it's awful hard for the right-wingers to deflate somebody who sounds quite genuinely like he's from the Flyover States. I've listened to his radio show & subscribed to the Hightower Lowdown for several years now, and I always end up feeling enlightened after listening/reading. The guy's a dyed-in-the-wool populist, the kind that I'm amazed to see get into office (like Hightower himself did back during Ann Richards' time as governor of this state). If there were more pundits like him, our country would be a very, very different place.

Besides all that, I've seen him speak a couple of times now, and he's consistently entertaining, whether he's addressing a stadium full of people or the crowd in some alternative bookstore. And luckily for us Houstonians, he'll be speaking this very evening here in town, from 7-9PM over at the Landmark River Oaks Theatre (2009 W. Gray). He'll be doing a reading from his new book, Swim Against the Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow.

Tickets to get in are $10 in advance & $15 at the door, and if you feel like splashing out you can pony up $150 for a down-home "Meet and Greet" w/Mr. Hightower -- not sure when that's supposed to happen, but I'm guessing it's beforehand, since it includes appetizers & "preferred seating" for the reading itself (and hey, you also get an autographed copy of the book).

Best of all, the whole thing's a benefit for Houston's own KPFT, which -- love it or hate it -- is an out-and-out necessity in our media-lockdown city with only one paper & nothing else but Clear Channel-owned radio stations (and KTRU, too; can't forget them...). You may not like every show, no -- I myself tend to tune out when a couple of shows come on, just 'cause, eh, they don't really do much for me (not gonna name names, tho').

Anyway, that's the deal -- get on out, see Hightower speak, & support the real "alternative" radio station in town, all at the same time.

Labels: Political Stuff, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Wow...this is getting a little weird. I mean, I definitely get why people like Barack Obama, believe me, but the past couple of weeks have been downright surreal, at least by Houston standards. Tonight, just as we were putting the munchkin to bed, I got my third visit/call from the Obama campaign crew, this time in the form of a very earnest, middle-aged man with an Obama pin and a loud, booming voice. A very nice guy, who was happy to learn that yes, I did indeed vote for his candidate in the Dem primary and that I'm aware of the whole caucus thing, to boot.

Mind you, this is after two different phone calls, again from very earnest Obama volunteers. Very polite, very enthusiastic, and very happy to hear I'd voted the way they were hoping I would. And oddest of all, none of these folks asked me for a dime. Which, frankly, is weird as shit. I remember the 2004 primaries clearly, in part because I myself did a teeny bit of phone-banking for Kucinich back then, and I can't remember a time I got a phone call from the campaign for one of the Democratic candidates that didn't ask for cold, hard cash. Apparently, though, the Obama crew could care less if I give 'em the dough, as long as I vote for the guy.

Like I said, odd. But kind of heartening, really, especially considering that in yard after yard around my 'hood, I see sign after sign for Obama. I've seen a couple for Clinton, sure, but by and large, I've seen Obama signs, even in yards where they sit side-by-side with campaign signs for local Republican candidates.

And yeah, I've heard of the whole "Republicans for Obama"/"Obamicans" thing, although it mystifies me -- I don't get what people like David Duke are hoping to get out of an Obama candidacy. Are they hoping a black man running for the highest office in the land will light the spark of some kind of Ultimate Race War or something? If that's the case, I think they're on crack, but hey, if they want to help out, I'm okay with that.

The funniest part is that I've seen zero signs for any Republican presidential candidate except, uh, Ron Paul (who I hear could well be knocked out of his own constituency down south of here). All the way back when Giuliani & Romney & Thompson were still in the race, I saw absolutely no Repub signs anywhere around town. And while I tend to live on the edge of a black/Hispanic district, I also live on the border of relatively-right-leaning Bellaire, where a lot of this city's well-off live.

Which makes the whole Obama push seem even more strange, and paradoxically cool. We here in Texas tend to get ignored by national politics, since in our winner-takes-all electoral system the Repub voters in this state basically smack down the Dem voters every damn time. It feels weirdly nice to see Democratic leadership actually doing something down here, with Clinton and Obama reportedly neck-and-neck in the state -- it's like we're the plain girl at the prom, and the captain of the football team just came over to hang out and chat for a little while. We're not dancing or anything, no, but hey, the attention's nice.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 3 comments

Well, this little piece of news has definitely brought my week down. sigh. I didn't go for John Edwards in 2004 -- I was a diehard Kucinich fan back then (Kooch!) -- but this time out I liked the guy the best out of the field, having read and heard a lot about him in the intervening time (his book, Four Trials, by the way, is excellent). I respected the heck out of him for stepping down from his Senate seat to run in '04, a courageous and confident step nobody else running was willing to make. Plus, I felt like Edwards was running the most forward-thinking campaign of anybody out there, at least among the front-runners (sorry, Dennis...).

When he came through Houston back in June, stopping at the Armadillo Palace next to Goode Co., the wife & I went, psyched to be able to see a real-live Democratic presidential candidate at something that didn't cost $300 a plate (seriously, DNC folks, we're not all millionaires), and Edwards hit some impressively Kennedy-esque notes in his speech. He talked about fighting poverty, about giving people and not corporations a shot at the American Dream, about healthcare as a right and not something you just can't afford, and about hope in general.

And best of all, he seemed to walk the walk -- he's a lawyer who made his career by fighting Big Evil Corporate Entities and pledged not to take money from PACs or lobbyists, both of which made him a hero in my book right out of the gate. One of my biggest problems with Hillary Clinton is that (according to opensecrets.org, at least) she's received nearly double as much cash from lobbyists as any other candidate running, including Republicans, who're, y'know, supposed to be all about the lobbyists, yo.

Honestly, that scares the crap out of me. I really, truly wish we could head for a political scene where it's the flesh-and-blood constituents and not the business interests that had the power (thank you so much, J.C. Bancroft Davis, you weaselly bastard), and with Edwards, I thought we had a shot of seeing that, at least in the White House. I fear that with Clinton, and maybe even Obama, all we'll see is the same old kowtowing to the people with checkbooks. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

Anyway, I'm disappointed as hell about this. I can't fault him his decision (I mean, hell, if he can't win in S. Carolina, of all places...), but damn, having a guy like that as President would've been a pretty cool prospect.

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Yep, State of the Union address is tonight, and I have to say that while I wasn't planning on watching, I think this here little tool is darn neato. I like the thought of watching the spectacle while my phone quietly tells me how much of it is bullshit.

Okay, I would like the thought, if the cost of all the texting wouldn't bankrupt me and I didn't know how much the Preznit says is bullshit anyway. (Answer: just about all of it, beyond the part where he calls the rest of us his fellow Americans.)

Labels: Political Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 2 comments

Props to Lomax over at HouStoned for this one -- it turns out this year's Peak Oil conference hit Houston last week, and author/anti-petroleum/anti-car guy James Howard Kunstler was there to finally sample all that Helltown has to offer.

Now, I should state up front that I do agree with a heck of a lot of what Kunstler says: I hate our dependence on oil to keep our lives running, I try to work as close as possible to where I live, and hell, part of the reason we're moving is so we can attempt to grow our own veggies for when The Apockyclipse comes. (No, I'm serious. Well, kinda; I do like growing my own strawberries & peppers.) My wife and I are big fans of The End of Suburbia, which is one heck of a wakeup call of a film, and Kunstler figures prominently into that.

Unfortunately for him, he also comes off in the film like a strident Chicken Little, proclaiming that we're all going down, big-time, without offering a whole lot of constructive criticism. Maybe there wasn't time for that in the flick, sure, or it got edited out; whatever. Either way, though, of all the Peak Oil experts in Suburbia, Kunstler ends up looking like a loon. (Houstonian Matt Simmons, on the other hand, a guy who Kunstler praises, comes off looking like the Sanest Man in Texas, and good on him for that.) Which is sad, because he is a smart guy with a lot of good ideas.

At least, that's what I thought before reading his post about our not-so-fair city. I'll grant that Houston's a pretty good poster child for The Bad That Petrochemical Addiction Can Do To You, but Kunstler didn't really get into that in his post. He didn't talk about, say:

• how the average Houstonian (and yes, I'm totally SWAG-ing, here, but it sure seems true based on people I've worked with over the years; I currently work near the Galleria with people who live in Fulshear, Greatwood, Copperfield, & Spring, among other areas) commutes upwards of 30 min. each way to where they work, with many people commuting an hour-plus from places like Kingwood, Clear Lake, or Sugar Land

• how housing prices in inner-loop Houston have skyrocketed in recent years, with rich folks doing the reverse-white-flight thing and moving into neighborhoods that had been considered dangerous since at least the '80s, and the fact that that's partly due to gas prices being so insanely high

• how chemical and petroleum companies have thoroughly poisoned the environment just about everywhere south and east of 610

• how Pearland's currently planning to build a landfill that's as tall as a large office building

• how overbuilding and the preponderance of cement as turned each moderate rainfall into a potentially disastrous flood that could (and has, more than once) cripple the whole damn city before sluicing out to drown the reclaimed-rice-paddy suburbs

Nope, none of those. What did he go after, instead? Um, how ugly and soulless our downtown is. Wha?

Actually, he didn't even really do that, because he only saw the area right around George R. Brown and Toyota Center, which is an urban wasteland even by Houston standards -- I mean, seriously, there's nothing there for tourists but the convention center or basketball arena, or maybe Old Chinatown if you're brave enough to walk east a block or two. And while I'm not the biggest fan of our downtown, I have to say it: that's not fucking fair. Mr. Kunstler, you barely got a glimpse of the city, only a few blocks around the convention center (and is George R. Brown really that big a convention center? I thought it was pretty much the norm for that kind of building...), and yet you're going to tar-and-feather the whole city with that brush? Shame on you.

That's just as silly as someone flying into IAH, looking around, and declaring that, gee, Houston must obviously be a rinkydink little town with lots of pine trees. Hell, if you were to judge a lot of major cities just based on what's right around the convention center, I'm guessing a lot of 'em would come up wanting. Houston's far from the prettiest place on earth, it's true, and parts of the city are butt-ugly, but it's a very large, decentralized city. If you want lots of greenery, if you want quirky art shops & kids with tattoos, if you want local activists working for change, if you want lofts built over restaurants and shops, it does all exist, just not all in one central area and certainly not in our downtown, which is still struggling back to its feet after both the '80s recession and the Main St. shutdown to build the Light Rail.

In answer to your complaints about there being nothing open after 7PM in downtown -- which you didn't see for yourself, because you apparently didn't leave George R. Brown, but instead talked to other people -- yep, you're right, there isn't. Downtown is primarily the home of business, and that's it; even the part that's more lively, the Main St. area, largely shuts down at night. And why? Because very few Houstonians (relatively) live there. Mr. Kunstler, part of your mantra for living in a post-petroleum age is that people need to live near where they work and shop and eat, right? Well, we're not all so good at living where we work, true, but almost everybody lives near where they shop and eat; Houstonians don't need to commute far to get food or buy clothes. It's one of the few benefits of our sprawl.

So, given the reality that a small, small percentage of our population lives in or near downtown, who would it benefit to have tons of shops there open all night? Our nonexistent tourists? People who commute in from Katy to go shopping? If so, wouldn't that be absolutely counter to what you're trying to bring about, with smaller, more all-in-one communities? In that respect, Houston, weirdly enough, almost works. We may look like a gigantic megalopolis, but we're actually a network of smaller communities -- nobody just lives "in Houston," but in Bellaire, or West U., or Cy-Fair, or Pasadena, or Aldine, or Garden Oaks, or Montrose. Each neighborhood (even the further-flung suburban ones I've been to), by and large, has its own restaurants, grocery stores, shops, doctors, even police.

Some of it you can even walk to, if you can brave the summer heat -- I can walk to the grocery store nearest to me, and often do when I don't need to stock up with several weeks' worth of food. Of course, we don't live anywhere near where our food comes from, which is still a huge problem, but the past five years or so have seen a crop of promising local-food co-ops and farmers markets spring up in various places around the city. It's nothing like what they have up in, say, Portland, but it's growing as more and more Houstonians become disgusted with factory-farmed meat and vegetables.

As for the crime reportage, well, I can't deny that. Houston can be a violent, dangerous place, true. Again, though, in a city this huge the violence is distributed across a very large area, and the few truly dangerous 'hoods aren't places you'll just randomly end up in (unless, of course, you're my dad, who managed to get lost in the Nickel while helping my wife & I move out of our old house in the Fourth Ward). Even now, downtown's hardly Baghdad -- since no actual people hang out there much, why would the criminals? In my experience, you're more likely to have your car broken into in front of your nice suburban home than parking in downtown. The one time somebody smashed in one of my windows was when I was parked right in front of the house I was renting just north of Rice, which is one of the highest-priced residential areas in town.

Beyond that, Mr. Kunstler, you yourself point out that it's the media who're obsessed with death and violence and the sexcapades of Senators -- doesn't it follow, then, that Houston's media skews that way, too? As somebody who tries to avoid local TV as much as possible, I can attest to the fact. If you were to watch our nightly news, you'd probably think (as you already seem to) that Houston's nothing but an orgy of pointless, sickening murder and brutal crime, and yet the majority of Houstonians go about their days without being shot or stabbed or robbed. It happens, unfortunately, but not nearly as frequently as the media would have you believe. Violence sells, remember? Don't believe everything you hear on TV or read in the papers.

At any rate, there's my meager defense of my adopted hometown. I don't know if Kunstler himself will ever read this (hrm...maybe I should mail it to him?), and the odds of him returning to H-town seem unlikely, but what the heck, here's my invitation: Mr. Kunstler, if you ever do decide to come back to Houston, drop me a line, and I'll happily show you some of the rest of the city. You don't need to bring your quinine, mind you; we got rid of malaria some time ago, although we do see other mosquito-borne diseases from time to time. And maybe we can talk about the actual real problems Houston has, like the ones I listed above, and visit some of the good and bad areas around town. (Be warned, however, that it'll probably involve some driving. Sorry 'bout that.)

Labels: H-Town News, Political Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments