Archive for November, 2009
Geoffrey Becker’s short stories in Black Elvis have a tendency to leave me scratching my head—but that’s just the point. Becker’s characters are frequently left scratching their heads, too.
Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Black Elvis collects a dozen of Becker’s stories into a collection that could best be described as a handbook for people trying to find themselves. It’s no “How-To” guide, though; consider it more of a “misery loves company” companion because Becker’s characters find themselves as lost at the end of each story as they were at the beginning.
In the title story, for instance, a blues guitarist who goes by the stage name “Black Elvis” suddenly finds himself supplanted at the local club’s open mic night. Full story »
Most of what I have shared so far has been some variety of full image manipulation with some layering and effects. Today I have a different type of image to share. These images were painted using words as brushes. They are also my first two attempts at doing this (and remember, on my phone!!) so be kind!
This first picture is of one of my friends shooting pool. Look for the words: Light, Shadow, Rob, Shirt, Cueball, Cue, Table and Background.
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by JS O’Brien
In case you missed it, the Daily Show’s John Stewart called out Fox’s Sean Hannity during his November 10 broadcast. It seems that Hannity’s show covered the anti-health care bill rally in Washington, and Hannity asserted that more than 20,000 people showed up (his guest, Michele Bachmann, asserted that the number could be as high as 45,000). Hannity then went on to show footage of the demonstration and, sure enough, it appeared that there were many thousands of people on hand. Or were there?
Stewart’s staff discovered something curious about Hannity’s footage. Though the recent demonstration took place on a crisp, sunny, fall day, (as demonstrated by the initial images in the segment) the footage of the crowd showed a cloudy sky and the dense, green foliage of summer. Stewart correctly pointed out that Hannity had used footage from Glen Beck’s 912 rally in September.
Last night, Sean Hannity acknowledged Stewart’s assertion and apologized for “an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.” Full story »
Posted on November 13, 2009 by Dr. Denny under Business & Finance, Economy, Internet, Telecom & Social Media, Journalism, Media & Entertainment, Music & Popular Culture, Politics, Law & Government, Race & Gender, Scholars & Rogues [ Comments: 6 ]
 I have three stuffed animals at home that I hide when I expect visitors. (Guys don’t do stuffed animals.) But my fuzzy critters serve a purpose. Four years ago, I destroyed my living room TV set by throwing a beer bottle at it in anger and frustration. I had been watching Lou Dobbs.
So, for years, I have been throwing stuffed animals at Lou instead of beer bottles. But now I need throw them no more. Lou no longer haunts my 7 p.m. viewing. He quit his CNN program in a multi-syllabic huff this week. CNN’s venerable, respected chief national political correspondent, John King, will take over in January. I’m sure I won’t have to throw stuffed animals at Mr. King.
But I once considered Lou venerable and respected. He’s a Harvard grad, y’know, a self-touted intellectual giant in matters of finance and economics. That’s why I began watching him years ago. I learned from him things I did not know. But for the past few years, Lou has only taught me the face of intellectual arrogance, bigotry, and unexceptional reporting masquerading as “advocacy.”
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 They say money can’t buy happiness. The same also goes for celebrity, and even the status that accompanies being among the best in the world at your profession. We’ve had ample demonstration of this in recent days.
Robert Enke, the goaltender for Hannover 96 (who currently hover in the middle of the German Bundesliga standings) and a potential member of next year’s German World Cup team, died the other day. His death was apparently a suicide.
“At 1825 (1725GMT) he was run over by a regional express train running between Hamburg and Bremen,” said police spokesman Stefan Wittke. “The train was travelling at the speed of 160-kph.”The player’s friend and consultant Joerg Neblung told reporters: “I can confirm this is a case of suicide. He took his own life just before six (pm).
Enke lost a child in 2006 and has left behind a wife and eight month-old daughter. Full story »
Climate disruption deniers have been claiming for years now that the global temperature has been cooling down, even though the temperature data clearly shows that it isn’t. Scientists and statisticians have pointed out that, mathematically speaking, the recent reduced warming trend is well within the noise, or put another way, it’s weather, not climate.
A new report by the Associated Press reveals what many of us knew already – the denier’s claims don’t hold water, statistically speaking. The report is intriguing because the AP provided their data to four independent statisticians without telling them what it was, and all four found that the slower warming of the past decade was statistically insignificant with respect to the actual data. Full story »
 THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Nuclear disarmament is usually approached from three directions. They who pursue the middle way might, by definition, be capable of appreciating the charms of those following the two paths which diverge from it. But chances are that each of those parties — one of which is an outlier; the other an in-lier — views the other with a jaundiced eye. Full story »
 Fifty-seven steps above me, behind twelve great pillars, President Lincoln sits impassively, looking out from his memorial chamber toward the Washington Monument, illuminated against the dark backdrop of night like a needle pointing heavenward. The very top tip blinks red to ward off airplanes and, perhaps, low-flying angels.
In the reflecting pool, the monument points directly at me.
I look back at Lincoln. For the moment, he has company enough—busloads of school kids and vanloads of families. A gaggle of middle-schoolers in red sweatshirts that say “Redwood City, California” race past me, the adults looking every bit as anxious to get up the stairs as the kids.
Instead of following them, I peel away toward the south, toward the Korean War Memorial, just a few hundred yards away. Full story »
Results: It was a see-saw battle where each artist surged dramatically, but Zep surged hardest and latest. The numbers: #1 Led Zeppelin 60%; #5 Jimi Hendrix 40%. Led Zeppelin is into the Great 8.
Up next – since our quest for the greatest band of all time tortured Boomers in the last pod, it seems only fair that we provide equal opportunity for Gen Xers to tear their hair out trying to decide between two of the bands that defined th-th-th-their generation. There aren’t any wrong answers here, although there are lots and lots of bad reasons. Let the anguish commence.
Full story »
Happy Veteran’s Day
All right, all right. I’m ashamed to admit this, but confession is good for the soul, so here goes: I entered the Washington Post Pundit Contest. Yes, me, a good liberal, trying to write for the Post. The Post is conservative, right? I guess I should have looked that up, but it doesn‘t matter now. Was I sleeping with the enemy? No, of course not. I was just trying to get close enough to the enemy to give her my phone number, because she’s hot in a weird sort of financial way, and I wanted to impress her so we could hang out together with her successful friends. Ah, but she is a fickle tart, and she threw my heart and my entry away.
But I don’t believe in waste, so I’m posting my entry, my losing entry, here. They would only let me write 400 words, and for long-winded old farts like me, that’s barely enough for a decent introductory paragraph. But I digress. Here it is. Be gentle. And if you see Washington Post out there somewhere, tell her I’ll be all right. Someday. Full story »
 I can almost hear Thomas Jefferson calling from across the tidal basin, from across the centuries: “What about me? What about me?”
I hardly give the Jefferson Memorial a second glance. I see it, like a glowing turtle that has crawled onto the bank, on the far side of the basin. Beneath the memorial’s domed ceiling—modeled after the ceiling of Jefferson’s home, Monticello—Jefferson calls, “What about me?”
It reminds me of that great little scene from “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” from season three of The Simpsons. After seeking advice and inspiration from Abraham Lincoln, who’s inundated with advice-seekers, Lisa seeks out Jefferson for advice instead. The place is deserted. “No one ever comes to see me,” a bitter Jefferson laments. “I don’t blame them. I never did anything important. Just the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the dumbwaiter….”
Lisa, her patience already frayed, leaves him. “Wait!” Jefferson calls. “Please don’t go. I get so lonely….”
The scene always delights me—in part because of what may be an irrational grudge I hold toward Jefferson. Full story »
The iPhone art continues. Three shots from this past Friday’s Day of the Dead artwalk outing.
Cass of the Dead
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Results: I suppose when a #3 seed beats a #2 seed and the #3 seed is one of the most important and influential bands of all time it’s hard to call it an upset, huh? The numbers: #3 The Who 66%; #2 Bruce Springsteen/E Street Band 34%. The Who are our first band into the Great 8.
Now let’s truck the tournament to name the greatest band of all time out to the Fillmore region and see if we can’t incite fans of incendiary hard rock guitar into a galloping hissy fit.
Full story »
Well I figured I’d give you all a break Full story »
The crickets and katydids still trade chirps between the trees and the bushes that line the Potomac River’s great tidal basin. As I walk along the basin toward the FDR Memorial, the insect song see-saws back and forth—but then it’s drowned out completely by the rumble of a low-flying jet making its descent toward Ronald Reagan International Airport on the far side of the river.
 It’s 7:00 p.m. The last trickle of the evening commute has drained from the capital, and the busloads of school groups haven’t yet arrived from dinner. It’s the perfect time to visit. It’s me and the insects and perhaps ten other visitors. Three Muslim women walk past me, their heads covered with scarves so brightly colored I can see them in the dark.
And there’s the president—a bronze, life-sized statue of FDR in a wheelchair that sits near the entrance to the memorial. Writer Christopher Buckley once said the statue looked “exactly like James Joyce on the toilet,” an image I can now never shake from my mind. What a way to dethrone one of the Twentieth Century’s towering figures. Full story »
 Here’s what Ken Kesey had to say about Wendell Berry:
“Wendell Berry is the Sargeant York charging unnatural odds across our no-man’s-land of ecology. Conveying the same limber innocence of young Gary Cooper, Wendell advances on the current crop of Krauts armed with naught but his pen and his mythic ridgerunner righteousness. One after the other he picks them off, from the flying bridges of their pleasure boats as they roar through his native Kentucky rivers, from beneath the hard hats in the Hazard county strip mines, from the swivel chairs in the Pentagon where they weigh the various ways to wage war on all forms of enemy life beyond the end of their own friendly chin. He’s a crackshot essayist and, for those given to capture, a genial and captivating poet. He boasts a formidable arsenal of novels, speeches, articles, stories and poems from his outpost in one of the world’s most ravaged battlefields where he writes the good fight and tends his family and his honeybees. Consider him an ally.”
The thing is, Kesey said this in 1971. Full story »
Welcome back to the Scholars & Rogues quest for the greatest band of all time. Let the Sweet 16 commence. It’s now one-on-one, and our first head-to-head features two of the most dynamic bands – both in the studio and in concert – in history. Your contestants:
Full story »
THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Recent statements by its chief representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest that Iran may be backing away from an agreement to ships it low-enriched nuclear fuel to Russia for further enriching. Even, though, after agreeing to the deal, President Ahmadinejad, ever the master of the sweeping gesture, said the West had “moved from confrontation to cooperation.”
Among reasons to hope that Iran relents is a fact of which many who proclaim Iran has a right to a nuclear program seem ignorant. Turns out that transubstantiating the fuel used for nuclear energy into nuclear-weapon fuel, far from a miracle, is all too commonplace. Full story »
Please have a look at the Tournament of Rock – Legends logo.
As you can see, it features a red guitar. But that’s not just any red guitar, ladies and gentlemen. That’s a very specific and very famous guitar.
For ten points, name that guitar.
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