Music Video of the Day: Tilly and the Wall's "Beat Control"

If, back in the day, Keith Haring impregnated Gloria Estefan in a vat of toxic stew, composed of discarded I Love the 80's video footage and neon spandex, this video is what would result.

Famous for DC

While I didn't grow up blowing rails with Brian Austin Green and Mark-Paul Gosselaar in a bathroom stall everyday at Beverly Hills High, I can imagine how, if you did, that just might be part of your daily routine--living. loving, being in LA.

Instead, I grew up in DC, and DC is like Hollywood, but instead of the silicon-breasted and cranially empty, we have the poorly tailored and terminally wonkish. As such, our celebrity sightings aren't quite as exciting. For instance, I once saw Colin Powell buying produce at the grocery store. Another time, I waited for the Metro with David Broder. These things kind of just happen, and when they do, you think about telling someone, but then, you sort of lose momentum. Yeah, whoah, David Broder waits for the Metro--he's just like me. (Except he's even older and more decrepit than you'd think.)

Part of the problem with seeing famous-for-DC types is that in the end, you never catch them doing anything incongruous, anything mundane, at least, compared to what they would be doing otherwise. When Colin Powell isn't buying groceries, he's sitting at a desk, reading intelligence prepared by some middling hack who can't speak Arabic and probably doesn't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia. Big whoop. But if you see Brian Austin Green blowing rails in the bathroom--or, better yet--if you're doing it with him, you're participating in the devil-may-care, party-all-the-time lifestyle of hip young Hollywood. In a way, you've kind of made it.

Or if you see Mark Wahlberg at Jamba Juice, you're all like, whoah, Mark Wahlberg doesn't just blow rails in his Calvin Kleins at the Playboy Mansion. He's. Just. Like. Me. He's totally into the Aloha Pineapple too.

Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of saying that while I've grown accustomed to being disinterested in the political and media types who traverse my old burg, never, never ever, did I expect Tim Russert's corpse--okay, just his casket--to be put on display in my old school cafeteria. His second to last resting place, the somber site of his public mourning, is the same black-wood-paneled room a sadistic Mr. Kennedy once made me eat apple pie out of the trash can. That learned me good for getting up out of my seat without asking permission!

God speed you Tim Russert! I don't know why our self-obsessed media vortex is covering your death like you were Nelson Mandela, but still, you seemed like a nice guy. I hope the beef stew in heaven tastes better than the kind Dolly and Mr. Dunne used to make.

hockey night in canada

it's not exactly news to disclose that i often fantasize about exit strategies.

well, a convergence like this one happens, oh i dunno, never in a lifetime. it turns out cbc sold the song for reasons that i don't understand (nor care to - you can listen to the original song here). i knew my parents forced me to play piano all those years for some reason. finally, a purpose in life! considering the strength of the canadian dollar i better find a canadian resident on whose behalf to submit my entry.

btw, did you see this interview? i dare you to not tear up at least a little.

sadness

well, this is depressing.

tim russert was more than the affable yet incisive host of meet the press. i was in such shock over this news that my officemate thought a friend of mine had died. i admired him for a host of reasons, like how he managed to draw great pride and comfort from his working-class roots, instead of abandoning them altogether or letting them fester into ruinous resentment and paranoia. he bridged the two worlds and made it look so easy. he also was on that coveted and elusive list of people with JDs who are not lawyers.

anyway...this is too sad. RIP, tim russert.

gocanada

two big canadian events today:

1) the greatest hockey player ever (at least to me) retired. this guy was my idol growing up - he wasn't the flashiest or the most dominant, but he always gave it his all. this was especially evident in the 7th game of the '94 stackley cup playoffs, when flash-in-the-pan pavel bure (who inexplicable beat out nicklas lidstrom for the calder trophy) completely choked while trevor linden scored 2 goals.

trevor, thanks for 20 years. you make me feel very old.

2) in a monumental move, canadian prime minister stephen harper apologized to the first nations people of canada. i wrote a very shoddy paper on this subject in law school. yeah yeah, i also submitted the paper 2 years after the deadline. that's not the focus here.

essentially, the canadian government, in conjunction with the anglican church, removed first nations (native) children from their homes and put them in "residential schools" in rural areas all across canada all for the the goal of assimilating or, to put it less politely, "kill[ing] the indian in the child." most of the children were sexually and/or physically abused. even those who somehow managed to escape such abuse were hardly educated, and forced into hard labor in these cold rural schools. if i remember my research correctly, i believe the last school was closed some time in the 1970s.

yes, the 1970s.

unfortunately, there has been some "residential school" fatigue among canadians since this has been in the news for decades now. nonetheless, the government created a compensation fund for the victims and a truth and reconciliation commission will conduct further studies on the lasting impact of these schools. now only if the japanese would issue a proper apology and some fracking compensation to the comfort women...

A Good and Decent Man

RFK died 40 years ago today. This is Ted Kennedy's eulogy of him, set to some shamelessly maudlin music.

HUNCKLEYTOWN!

oh detroit, how you've been forgotten. your basketball team doesn't even play in your city.

in any case, the great game of hockey concluded its season today, with the always likable red wings emerging as the victors. well, aside from chris chelios, who is the dirtiest player pretty much ever.

anyway, here's to you, stevie yzerman. i know you're no longer even in the game, but as a certain michigander said, i'm sure you're out there being tough and handsome.

Music Video of the Day: True Love Waits...on Lollypops and Crisps

Thanks to blog-reader, Manan, for pointing out that the abstinence pants discussed below are really just old concert promo wear from when Radiohead was touring in support of Kid A and Amnesiac, and that "True Love Waits" was on a "WILDLY "popular live record Radiohead put out, the existence of which I am too decrepitly unhip and too many days past 30 to have known about. Or maybe this is disinformation: maybe, kids, maybe Thom Yorke subscribes to the Tina Turner school of good times, and wants you to keep it in your pants.

Abstinence Pants -- Like Coke Pants, But Without the Nosebleeds

These pants are totally ZOMG. When one of the pioneers of our post-war, American consumerist fantasy pays Nicaraguan children pennies and rice to make abstinence-promoting, ill-fitting leisure-wear, which in turn is marketed to our thrifty, lazy, totally insincere, criminally stupid teenagers, well, you know, we're just one day closer to completing Hu Jintao's apocalypse...

E, were these the pants Jeffrey Wright was wearing at the flea market?

ps -- Why does the Blogger program keep asking me if I want to blog in "my native Indic script"? E., does it ask you if you want to blog in Korean? And if it did, would you sing Blogging in Korean a la Stephen Colbert?

once you pop...

wow, you really can't stop.