'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Baron Dave Romm
New Music for '04
By Baron Dave Romm
Roy Zimmerman has two new CDs: Homeland and Security. They're a matching set, and connecting the front covers makes one image, and connecting the back covers make another. You can see the front covers (and read a bunch of the lyrics) on the page of Roy's solo albums. The cuts are taken from several live concerts with a few studio tracks. As usual, Roy's songs range from the political to the religious and back, and as usual they're hilarious.
Roy Zimmerman started off his musical life with The Foremen, reviewed here several times. The Foremen sang highly charged political satire with earnest savior faire. They existed in that large arena between The Capitol Steps, who skewer current events, and Tom Lehrer, who added an erudite touch to satire. As much fun as the Capitol Steps are, their humor is biting but ephemeral. Few songs work after the story is no longer making headlines unless you're a political junkie with a long memory. Meanwhile, Lehrer's songs, grabbed from the headlines at the time in the 60s, still work today. Roy wrote all The Foremen songs and, even though many are about current events of the time, they're still funny and relevant today. It helps that many Foremen songs circa 1990 are about a war in Iraq and about a president named Bush. The songs are timeless even as they talk about today's pop culture. Hell Froze Over Today and Building For The Future will cause hysterics forty years after they were written, in the same way that Lehrer's National Brotherhood Week still holds true from his 1964 viewpoint.
When The Foremen broke up, Roy's solo concerts were, if anything, sharper and deeper. In concert, he can use language that isn't necessarily suited for airplay (such as ****ing for Chastity off Security). Roy's strength has always been a keen eye for detail and the linguistic chops to draw just the right image. He writes bouncy, singable songs. If you are of his political viewpoint (and I assume most of you reading this are), then his songs are what you need. Homeland contains such great work as My TV (which, believe it or not, is about Bush stealing the presidency) and Jerry Falwell's God (would you really want him at your party?). He urges Let's Go After the Buddhists (because they're pacifists and won't fight back) and asks his wife Would You Let Me. Pumping Irony, one of his two songs about the California Recall, is done nicely here. While I can see that he kept this one, about Schwarzenegger, I'm sorry he didn't include the more timely one, Mock in Democracy. Homeland has the aforementioned Chastity song exposing some of the double standard prevalent on the right while talking about how sexy Dick Cheney is, the Norwedish Hate Song (works well here in Scandahoovian Minnesota) as well as delicious commentary about Homeland Security and One World, One Bank.
Unlike many live albums, these two (especially in combination) serve as a good introduction to Roy Zimmerman's slightly tinted worldview. I highly recommend both Homeland and Security, separately or together but especially together.
It's not quite a new CD, but as long as I'm catching up on old friends let me mention Chaston and Groditski's 30-Year Reunion Sessions. If you want virtuoso performances of ennobling music that will infuse the listener with dignity and determination... run away from this CD. Run far and run fast. If you want to listen to two guys having a lot of fun, and maybe you want to sing along to some catchy but stupid songs, than you've found home. Their previous effort, reviewed here a while ago, is Rugged Hoarhadees. After thirty years, they've slipped away from most of the in-jokes (I kinda missed Aunt Sauerkraut). But they haven't grown up. Dupa Dupa Toilet Bowl, We Burned The Christmas Tree and Shower Rock Blues are fun, in an arrested developmental sort of way. The latter song has lyrics: I'm gonna put on my rock-n-roll shoes i'm gonna jump in the shower and wash away my blues. Requiem for my Girl is one of the I'm glad my ex is so miserable songs that are cropping up in my collection more and more these days. I suppose love songs aren't that much fun. From Volvites (about Yuppies) to Ubiquitous Sphee (about Viagra), the two Polish adolescents have kept their innocence and whimsey. If you liked Rugged Hoarhadees, you'll like their 30-Year Reunion Sessions.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here.
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Reader Links
Re: Dave Letterman
Here's a good article about David Letterman:
Dave Letterman
or
Dave Letterman
Bruce
Thanks, Bruce!
from Mark
Another Bumpersticker
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The hot weather has returned - hit 102° today. Argh.
Tha Alaskan grandmother arrives Tuesday morning.
Looks like the kid & I will be in the Valley this coming Saturday - there's a birthday party involved.
Actor Michael Douglas reacts to hitting the pin during the Lexus $1 million Hole-In-One Shoot-Out at the Sixth Annual Michael Douglas & Friends Presented by Lexus celebrity golf event at Cascata Golf Course in Boulder City, Nev., Sunday, May 2, 2004. Douglas did not make a hole-in-one, but landed in the inner circle to win $10,000 for the Motion Picture & Television Fund for working and retired industry people in need.
Photo by K.M. Cannon
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Needs To Revisit Own Failures
US Media
While resident George W. Bush takes heat from the media over the Iraq conflict, US journalists have started an introspection of their coverage of the administration's pre-war arguments for ousting Saddam Hussein.
"This has been the most shameful era of American media and for American democracy," argued Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer during a March conference on the war and the media at Berkeley University in California.
The media failed to question the links being made between Saddam's regime and the September 11, 2001, attacks and the "war on terror," Scheer said.
"There couldn't have been a single intelligent person in the media who actually thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Yet they went along with the line," he said. "The media has been sucker-punched completely by this administration."
For more, US Media
Magician Siegfried Fischbacher, center, of the magic team Siegfried & Roy arrives with his sister Sister Dolores, right, and protegee Darren Romeo at the 'For Roy With Love' an evening dedicated to Roy Horn during the 36th Annual Academy of Magical Arts Awards Show & Banquet Los Angeles, on Saturday, May 1, 2004.
Photo by Chris Carlson
Denies Anger At Canada, Ultra-Right Label
Bill O'Really
Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly wants it known he's not really as rabidly controversial as he's being portrayed by other media outlets, including at least one in Canada.
On Friday, O'Reilly took exception to reports that he is an "ultra-conservative" and that he does not like Canada. In recent days, the outspoken American TV personality has been involved in a running dispute with Toronto's Globe & Mail newspaper, and in particular its TV columnist, John Doyle, who wrote that Fox News should be allowed on Canadian cable and satellite services because viewers in this country could use a good laugh.
"Hey you pinheads up there, I may be pompous, but at least I'm honest," O'Reilly was quoted as saying in a New York Times story. But the commentator says he was referring to Globe & Mail staff, not Canadians in general, who he says are good people.
Doyle says he still finds O'Reilly hilarious.
"He's been stung by Canada because a writer at a Canadian newspaper said he was entertaining in his operatic arguments and revealed that many of his followers are only capable of writing abusive, foul-mouthed responses to those they disagree with," says the columnist. "He's a joke and Canada needs to see this joker. We won't take him seriously and that's what really annoys him."
To read the rest, as well as delight in a free press, Bill O'Really
Screened Personal Print of Dean Film
Martin Scorsese
Hundreds of people crammed into a school auditorium to watch director Martin Scorsese's personal print of "East of Eden," the film that solidified James Dean 's status as a Hollywood star.
The 1955 film had a big influence on Scorsese, director of hit movies including "Gangs of New York" and "Taxi Driver."
Scorsese, who grew up in a tenement on Manhattan's Lower East Side, said the movie's portrayal of working class people was the most authentic he'd seen.
Martin Scorsese
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Facing Surgery
Larry Wachowski
Sounds as though Larry Wachowski -- one half of the Chicago-born, super-successful brother team (along with Andy Wachowski) that created the "Matrix'' films -- is about to make a life-altering move.
According to those close to the extremely reclusive duo, Larry is about to finally become "Linda.'' Wachowski, who has been living and dressing as a woman for some time, reportedly is preparing to take the final step and have sex-change surgery. As always, it was impossible to get any comment from the press-shy Wachowskis, but several longtime friends of the Rogers Park native confirm Wachowski is planning to complete the process of becoming a woman.
Larry Wachowski
Arpapat Boonnarong (C) waves to the crowd after winning the Miss Jumbo Queen competition, at an elephant ground and zoo in Nakhon Pathom, south of Bangkok, May 1, 2004. The Jumbo Queen contest is held to select the contestant who best exhibits the characteristics of an elephant, by virtue of her grace, elegance and size, to lead the jumbo banqlegance and size, to lead the jumbo banquet and help elephant conservation causes in Thailand.
Photo by Sukree Sukplang
Iraq Should Serve As Lesson
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
Spain's prime minister said Sunday he hopes the deteriorating situation in Iraq will serve as a warning to countries against using preemptive wars in the future.
"The mission in Iraq, which is showing itself every day to be a failure, should serve as a lesson to the international community: preemptive wars, never again; violations of international law, never again," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said.
Speaking before some 20,000 supporters at a meeting celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Socialist party, Zapatero reiterated that he had ordered Spain's troops home from Iraq April 18, a day after he was sworn in, "because they should have never been sent there."
Zapatero vowed his government would never break, nor support the violation of, international law in order to fight terrorism.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
Naples Relieved - Blood Liquifies
Saint Gennaro
Inhabitants of the southern Italian city of Naples relaxed when the blood of their patron Saint Gennaro liquefied in mid-morning, a day late, and so put off any imminent disasters.
According to the city authorities the blood, in two small vials, turned to liquid at 10:29 (0829 GMT) in the presence of a congregation of the devout and local dignitaries gathered to celebrate mass in the Treasury chapel of the cathedral where the blood is kept in a safe under the altar.
The phenomenon can happen three times a year: on September 19, the festival of San Gennaro, who was beheaded in AD 305, on the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in May, and on December 16, the anniversary of the AD 1631 eruption of Mt Vesuvius, halted, legend says, by the saint.
Saint Gennaro
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Feds Probe Donation
Smithsonian
Federal investigators are looking into the multimillion-dollar donation of rare musical instruments to the Smithsonian Institution from a philanthropist-turned-fugitive, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Authorities are looking into whether Herbert Axelrod committed tax fraud when he claimed that the four Stradivarius instruments were worth $50 million, The Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark reported.
Axelrod - living in Cuba since fleeing unrelated federal tax charges in the United States - also sold 30 rare stringed instruments to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra last year at a large claimed discount.
Smithsonian
Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, left, talks with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a cocktail party before the start of the White House Correspondent's Association Dinner Saturday, May 1, 2004 in Washington.
Photo by Charles Dharapak
'Divine' Laws
Pakistani Women
Death by stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, and the prospect of an adultery conviction for women who cannot prove they were raped: these are aspects of a medieval justice system that still prevails in Pakistan under its grim Hudood Ordinances.
They are a series of 25 year-old Islamic laws which run parallel to the mainstream British-inherited Pakistani Penal Code.
An estimated 80 percent of women prisoners in Pakistan are in jail because they failed to prove rape charges, and found themselves locked up on adultery convictions, according to a 2004 report by the National Commission on the Status of Women.
Under the Hudood laws, anyone unable to prove rape, but equally unable to disprove extramarital sexual intercourse, can be convicted of adultery.
For the rest, Pakistani Women
Quietly Going Away
Drew Carey
For all the attention given to this week's "Friends" finale, another long-running comedy taped its final episode a few weeks ago - and few people outside its Hollywood set were aware of it.
The finale of "The Drew Carey Show" is expected to air on ABC sometime this summer.
That the show still exists at all for its ninth season has more to do with a classically bad business deal than any sense viewers want to see it.
The show's popularity was fading in 2001, but it still seemed savvy when ABC reached a deal with Warner Bros. Television, the show's producers, to keep it on the air through 2004.
ABC didn't even bother putting it on this season. New episodes will premiere on June 2, and the network will show two first-run episodes a week during the summer - the television equivalent of an afterthought.
For more, Drew Carey
In Memory
Allen Cohen
Counterculture pioneer Allen Cohen, who helped put Haight-Ashbury on the map as founder of the San Francisco Oracle during the 1960s, died of liver cancer, according to a friend, Lee Houskeeper. He was 64.
In 1967, the Oracle announced the "Gathering of the Tribes" in Golden Gate Park, an event publicized as the first "be-in" that would feature Beat generation regulars like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder.
Later the same year, Cohen urged young people to come to San Francisco for became known as the "Summer of Love."
In 1966, he published the first edition of the San Francisco Oracle, which featured Beat poetry, fiction and artwork. The publication soon became required reading on the streets.
Recently, Cohen was the coeditor of "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," a poetry anthology dealing with the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. The book won the 2003 PEN National Literary Award.
Allen Cohen
Princess Stephanie of Monaco plays with dolphin 'Magic' after christening it in a small ceremony at a Dolphine Lagune in Lipperswil, Switzerland, May 2, 2004.
Photo by Andreas Meier
'The Osbournes'
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