Ulla! (1)

Today, a quick pictureless rant on one of the greatest stories ever told, Jeff Wayne's "The War of the Worlds". Hm? Whats that you say? H.G. Wells wrote "War of the Worlds"? Oh, yes, well, if you're going to get snippy about it, okay, Mr. Wells wrote it. It's still the greatest story of the 20th century. What other story can you think of that a hundred years later it has not one, not two, not three, but four major retellings / reworkings, all of which are classics in their own right? Astounding.

The original, of course, is another Wells masterpiece, and one can only imagine how terrifying it was to Victorian England to read of giant, three-legged Martian machines striding up the Thames, knocking down bridges and setting London afire; malignant red weed growing over everything in its path; no hope, no defense (or "defence") until the tiniest of things, the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water, defeated the ugly, drippy, leather skinned Martians by catching them a good dose of the flu or something; the Martians, able to leap the depths of interplanetary space, had not thought to immunize themselves before departure.

In '38, of course, another upstart Welles, Orson, scared the living crap out of America by doing the War as a newscast, and created a legend for this Welles he only barely eclipsed with the release of Citizen Kane. Every Halloween since, and probably forever, the story of the Night that Panicked America will be told as a metaphor for something -- communist and/or Nazi fear, something -- and so the second great War of the Worlds became legend.

In the '50's, the genius of George Pal recast the War in "modern" America -- complete with the trashing of Los Angeles and the dropping of The Bomb. As a kid I think I saw the movie about fifteen times, every time it was on TV, and it is suffused with the creeping terrors. I find the ruined, abandoned L.A. sequence compelling to this day, and the menacing flying "tripods" (look for it, they're there) flying out of the ineffective mushroom clouds like the most menacing dinosaurs you've ever seen. It is one of the best of the nuclear nightmare horror films of the decade -- we have this immense power, and we cant control it -- in fact, even more chillingly, the fact is the only thing that can stop our destruction at the hands of this unleashed power is another thing we have no control over -- disease. If the nukes dont get us, the microbes will.

Finally, though, the War of the Worlds that has captivated me for years (by the way, I havent seen the Spielberg one yet, because, well, I'm still mad at him for setting it in the present day and not making the aliens Martians somehow) is the aforementioned Jeff Wayne version. I'm still not entirely sure who Jeff Wayne was, but he created the weirdest hybrid album that works I have ever heard: an 80-minute, rock/disco opera featuring members of the Moody Blues and Thin Lizzy, narrated by Richard Burton, telling the original late-Victorian War of the Worlds -- the Wells version, which I hope that somebody in the next 20 or 30 or so decides to make into a film, cuz it still hasnt been done -- it shouldnt work, but it does, and almost 25 years after I first heard it, I still love it.

The night I first heard it is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. This is one of those stories, children, in the days before the internet, before CD's, before MTV, before cable, before even most video games. This was 1978 (or so). There was one shopping mall in Portland -- it's no longer there - known as Eastport Plaza.

There wasn't much there to hold my interest, except maybe HK Limited, a bookstore / office supply store where I might score some decent sci-fi paperbacks on occasion. There was also one of those weird little record store-cum-head shop places called "DJ's Sound City" in and among the Hallmarks and whatever else was there. On this particular night, we went to do, oh, heck, I dont know, and I went along because, well, that's what you did with your parents back then, you went along.

I was always just a tad scared when I would venture into DJ's -- there were records there with names and covers that I knew I, as a young Church of God boy, should not see (anybody remember the Ohio Players?), and there was an air of menace among the probably harmless teenage and young adult staff that I probably largely created because, well, they worked in a place with blacklight felt marijuana posters on the walls.

This night was different; tonight there was Something Going On; a hustle and bustle around the front of the store, and (whoa!) posters in the windows of some record called the War of the Worlds with the whole tripod thing blowing up a ship and holy moley maybe they're going to do something with this....

Next: Hippies and Martians

The Mole: 6

My Evidence for Intelligent Design...

...is also this week's episode of....



Okay, so today I was reading an article on a Federal Court Case in Pennsylvania where a judge appointed by Bush will be ruling on whether a school board was wrong in forcing science teachers to offer alternative information to evolution, namely, the theory of intelligent design.

As I read this, this latest salvo in the fundamentalist attack on rational thought made me suddenly think that this whole idea of an outside forces directly causing man to walk the earth has been explored before.

(By the way, this whole evolution vs. creationism argument is really based in fundamentalist fear that those of us who dont agree with them think they are stupid. Well, let me go on record as saying, Yes, They Are Stupid, They Are Dumb As a Box of Hammers.)

In any event, while this has all been addressed by our friend the Flying Spaghetti Monster (see link, right) but it was addressed much earlier for me by the King Himself, Jack Kirby. The proof is, as usual, in his greatest comic book work of the '70's, the Eternals. Now that's some serious Intelligent Design!!!

From Eternals #1, 1975 (click for larger images):
































From Eternals #4, 1975:

A Little More Than Kin, and Less Than Kind

Man, I wish I coulda seen that! Who says the theater's dead? I see Jackie Chan for the movie...

I'd Like To Help You Son But You're Too Young To Vote

Okay, so, I was talking to my son on the phone and went to pick up this little glass snowglobe thing that was sitting next to my air conditioner (thankfully back on after the fuse blew again and this time there werent any to get out of the basement of the other apartment building but thats another story dont get me started) and the little globe shattered, spreading teeny tiny and nearly invisible shards of glass all over my kitchen "area" and cutting my middle finger in two places so now I have enough bandaids on my hand to make it look like a major laceration but at least the bleeding stopped; this is how the day ends that started with me forgetting to take my watch with me to work.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is one of those things I am interested in but somewhat ambivalent about; after all, there are plenty of artists that I personally believe are very much worthy of inclusion (Rush tops the list, again, dont get me started, see below -- oh, yeah, and Warren Zevon) but no self-respecting rock "historian" as the voters for Hall membership are called would ever put them down on their list. Then there are those who are inducted and I cannot for the life of me figure out why -- Bob Seger? Dont get me wrong, I love Bob, he's done some classic stuff -- but does he go in the pantheon with Little Richard, the Stones, Elvis, U2? I just dont see it, but apparently a good chunk of the Hall's 70 "historians" did. Go figure.

So today they released this year's list of nominees, which the historians will vote on for inclusion, to be announced in December. I actually think this is a pretty good group, and maybe a last gasp for these nominees before some of the great groups and artists of the '80's (R.E.M. tops the list in two years) start hogging the limelight. Here are my mercifully brief thoughts:

Iggy and the Stooges: Dont know much about the Ig-man but he seems to be very influential in the punk world, a role model to many who followed after. If voted in, I will give him a pass.

Grandmaster Flash: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes -- the first rappers to really talk about the Hood in political terms and harrowing images; the forebears of Public Enemy and so many others. Absolutely. The Hall will do history a great disservice if rap is not prominently included.

John Mellencamp: No. Love the Little Bastard, but he is the latest in a long line of others (including Bob Seger!) who followed in the footsteps of the Boss. As much as I have been a fan, I dont really think he deserves to be in the Hall.

Miles Davis: Mmmm....hard to say. Certainly influential in attitude, intensity, and insistence on his own personal vision, but not sure if he really belongs in the Rock Hall. I will abstain on Miles, but if you put a gun to my head and made me make a decision, I think I would vote no.

Blondie: Absolutely -- still influential; I think Rolling Stone made the point that the Killers's "Mr. Brightside" is a reworking of "Dreaming"; bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Donnas, the Killers, and so many others who've tried to walk that pop-punk line owe it all to Blondie. A definite yes.

Cat Stevens: No. Love Cat, one of my favorites, but I dont see his lasting influence any more than a number of other major song writers of the '70's -- I put him in the same school as Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, the whole school of laid-back folky singer songwriters. He's special, but not that special.

The Patti Smith Group: Again, a lack of knowledge here, though I understand her influence on what happened with the punk scene. I would tend toward Yes but solely on the basis of reputation and a few songs. And the fact that she said the F-word live on network television, on purpose.

The Sex Pistols: What has taken so long to put the Pistols in? The chronology goes: Velvets, Iggy, Dolls, Pistols, and then everything else. There is nobody who calls themself a punk today who doesnt owe it all to the Pistols, and it doesnt take acres of Greil Marcus gobbledy gook to figure it out.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: No. The Allman Brothers did it first and did it best; I think Skynyrd's rep is mostly nostalgia and a few good songs.

Black Sabbath: There are two progenitors of heavy metal, one is Zeppelin, the other is Sabbath. I do not personally like Sabbath and would not vote for them -- however it will not surprise me if they are voted in because they have been tremendously influential over a whole host of musicians -- and if you want proof turn on MTV2 Saturday night at 10.

Dave Clark Five: No. Talented, but essentially a lower grade Beatles.

J. Geils Band: Uhm, a lack of knowlege here other than the tail end in the '80's. Based on Freeze Frame, Centerfold and all that I wouldnt put them in, but their earlier output may warrant. I would vote no.

Chic: Probably yes -- a forebear of rap, of Prince, of so much great dance music. But once we put them in, lets cut off the disco entries. That should about do it.

Joe Tex and the Sir Douglas Quintet -- and now we come to the end of my knowledge of this year's nominees. These two I will abstain and let wiser old hippies prevail. In the meantime, we shall all watch and wait and see who makes it in this year, and check back against my scorecard in December.

Please Bow Your Heads With Me

http://www.heygod.org/

Courtesy of Metafilter -- see link to your immediate right (my left). No, your right -- over there. I'm sitting behind the screen, so it's my left, your right. Think stage left. That's what bicameral minds are for. There you go. Excellent! Proof of Intelligent Design right there. I am sure the Flying Spaghetti Monster (also see link -- ah, ah -- remember, your right, my left! Excellent) will not feel slighted by your prayer to another deity.

Me, I'm going to bed. Remember, the Mole loves you all, no matter how ludicrous your belief system is.

Dreamers Learn To Steer By The Stars

Last night I was lurking about on the Internet, and on a website that shall remain nameless I downloaded an mp3 of Rush's song "The Pass": its an older song, from their 1989 album "Presto", an album which is otherwise a blank to me. I just remember this song, and the impact it had on me at the time. As with so many Rush songs, it struck a chord in me that no other band, no matter how much I love them, has been able to do.

The song has as usual, terrific lyrics from drummer Neil Peart. It is, apparently, one friend trying to coax another down from killing himself -- but not in a sappy way, like some might. They are actually pretty tough lyrics. The singer tells the friend he has nobody to blame but himself: he doesnt like life because his view of life is unrealistic, not because life has cheated him.

Proud swagger out of the schoolyard
Waiting for the world's applause
Rebel without a conscience
Martyr without a cause...

...And now you're trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Can't face life on a razor's edge
Nothing's what you thought it would be

Hearing this song again last night and today, it still speaks to me just as it did fifteen years ago when I heard it -- in fact, I saw Rush on the Presto tour, and except for a lousy REM concert ten years ago and Green Day last week, it was the last rock concert I went to. Then, I was a very young man making some very hard decisions, and not making them very well, and the song seemed at the same time to challenge the decisions I made and comfort me that the bad times do not last forever. The bridge and chorus of the song are brilliant:

All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
Turn around and turn around and turn around
Turn around and walk the razor's edge
Don't turn your back
And slam the door on me

Now, nearing 40 and feeling in many ways just as confused by the decisions around me as the 24-year-old me did, the song speaks to me again. It speaks to a part of me that Rush has always spoken to, to be honest, the same part that they grabbed when I was 14 -- the part that dreams, the part that has ideas and visions, the part that looks at the night sky and wants to go flying, the part that loves the ocean. The part that spent three hours scrambling around on the rocks of the Brandywine River last Saturday, watching the carp float gently in the summer-depleted river: they seemed to say, stand still, wait, do not be impatient -- life will float to you in its time. It's the part of me I am trying to figure out how to reawaken.

It has never been easy to be a Rush fan, primarily from the standpoint that most of the time when you would read a review of their albums in the mainstream press, they were belittled and even joked about. They were a band for stoners and geeks. Well, so be it, I fall into the geek category. They write about technology and politics and myth and mystery and mixed it all up long before cyberpunk, the Matrix, and the internet even existed. They were the rock band for every kid who wanted to be Luke Skywalker, read the X-Men, or thought Alien was the greatest movie ever made. They were smarter than 90% of the bands out there and were true to their own vision.

So, I am glad to finally have The Pass in my audio library again; it is one of those most perfect meldings of Geddy Lee's bass and vocals, Alex Lifeson's guitars, and Neil Peart's time-defying drumming ever, right up there with all of 2112, The Analog Kid, Marathon, Time Stand Still -- when the chorus kicks in, you want to open up your arms and fly. I am sure you can get it on Itunes -- go check it out. Peace.

September 15

"Why have I been longing for you? Why have I been thirsting for you all these days, and just now? ...Because it's only to you I can tell everything; because I must, because I need you, because to-morrow I shall fly from the clouds, because to-morrow life is ending and beginning. Have you ever felt, have you ever dreamt of falling down a precipice into a pit? That's just how I'm falling, but not in a dream. And I'm not afraid, and don't you be afraid. At least, I am afraid, but I enjoy it. It's not enjoyment though, but ecstasy. Damn it all, whatever it is! A strong spirit, a weak spirit, a womanish spirit - what, ever it is! Let us praise nature: you see what sunshine, how clear the sky is, the leaves are all green, it's still summer; four o'clock in the afternoon and the stillness!"

--Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

-Rainier Maria Rilke

Happy Monday

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis (1935)

Thanks to the cleverly frightening and frighteningly clever folks at:

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/galleries.htm AND

http://bulldogpolitics.blogspot.com/

Like A Zipgun On Parade: Green Day Live at the Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, September 7, 2005

While the Moms and Brads are away....

"This is totally not what I expected," said the father of the 10-ish year old girl who sat behind us at Wednesday night's Green Day show at the Wachovia Center in Philly. "I expected lots of leather and spiked hair and chains. This is like family night."

True, very true: I too had expected a sea of kids in black clothing and red ties and mascara; truth be told, I dont think I saw anybody dressed like Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day's punkily puckish lead singer/guitarist, which struck me as odd. What I saw were a lot of parents (like me) bringing their teenage and not-too-but-somewhat-rebellious kids to the show.

I have liked Green Day since they first hit the scene a decade or so ago. Their first major album, Dookie, kept the rebellious teenage stance of the best of punk but managed to have incredible pop melodies that you could hum along to. Certainly they were the most "bleeped" top 40, Grammy winning band I had heard, but I liked them. Later, like everybody else, I loved their life-affirming semi-ballad "Time of Your Life". They were a good band - not classic, but great. And, to be honest, they seemed to drop off the radar -- so when my son started raving about them last year when their album American Idiot came out, I was completely surprised.

Rage and Love

American Idiot is one of that trickiest of sub-genres in popular music, the rock opera. Usually they, well, suck. AI has a plot, one that takes some lyric reading to put together; it has characters. Essentially, it is the story of a kid called the Jesus of Suburbia, an angry suburban teenager in Bush's America, largely left alone by his divorced parents, who appears (again, this is my interp - apparently Billie Joe has a film treatment making the rounds, so we'll see) to gather something of a following around himself, only to find his status as a leader of subdivision kids is not enough. Around him, parents lie, Presidents start bad wars, and everything is constantly called into question.

Jesus leaves for the big city looking for some kind of redemption and reinvents himself as a gang leader/rabble rouser named St. Jimmy and falls in love with another rebel girl referred to as Whatsername. Jimmy apparently gets involved with drugs and a host of other things that ruin his life even further; Whatsername leaves him, and eventually he finds his way back home to the 'burbs, wiser for the experience and reflective on his life and relationship.

Or something. Anyway, thats what I think.

In any event, American Idiot is a flat-out, start-to-finish great album, which a year later we are still listening to and I dont get tired of. It is one of the best rock albums I have ever heard, at times blisteringly hard and caustic; at other times achingly sad and wistful. Green Day --which, by the way, is a trio, including the aforementioned Mr. Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool--throws out the rulebook on punk and allows Beatle-esque songs, arena-ready singalongs, and a couple of five-part, nine-minute songs that are the high points of the record.

For the MoleSon, Green Day is a religion at the moment, so when the opportunity to get really good tickets for him arose back in April I took it and kept my mouth shut. We ventured forth this past Wednesday to the Wachovia Center to pay respects.

I Got A Rock and Roll Band

I expected the crowd to be 28,000 teenagers and 2,000 parents, and that's probably about right, but I expected the teens to look more sullen and cranky. Didnt happen. To be honest, I was grateful.

After a good but not particularly involving opening set from up and comers Jimmy Eat World, Green Day promptly took the stage a few minutes after 8:00 blasting the strains of Also Sprach Zarathustra (aka the 2001 "bom, bom, bom BOM BOM" music) and ripped right into American Idiot, the brilliant 9-minute opus Jesus of Suburbia, and the "anti-war not anti-America" hit single Holiday. It was an excellent start, especially for those of us hoping this would be one of the intermittent shows on this tour where they play the entire American Idiot album, start to finish. They didn't but it was a welcome opening nonetheless.

Never have I seen more pyrotechnics, explosions, and lighting effects than at this show, which got a bit tiresome after awhile. Billie Joe Armstrong has obviously taken to playing enormous arenas, running back and forth from one end of the stage to the other and screaming "Philadelphia!!!" at least 35 times over the next two hours. He has a real charisma but unfortunately (and the fifteen year old worshipper with me concurred) they spent way too much time during the show doing goofy audience participation stuff and unnecessary (and unfunny) jokes. With all the shenanigans, they could have easily added another two or three (or more) songs to the lineup, especially for a band whose catalog is largely made up of 2 minute songs.

Still, these are ultimately minor sour grapes. Green Day is a great live band and put on 3/4 of a great show. Dirnt and Cool are one of the best hard rock rhythm units ever, as far as I'm concerned, right up there with Alex + Mike and Geddy + Neil (shame on you if you have to ask). They ended up doing about half of American Idiot (also including Wake Me Up When September Ends, Are We The Waiting, St. Jimmy, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams) and good selection of their greatest hits - including Longview, She, Maria, and Basket Case, among others.

They closed the show with Queen's We Are The Champions, and Billie Joe did a solo electric take on Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). All in all, on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best concert you've ever been to (for me, u2's Rattle and Hum concerts in Tempe, Arizona, December, 1987) and the worst concert you've ever been to (Pink Floyd with no Roger Waters, Seattle Kingdome, December, 1987), this would be about a 7.5-8.

Can You Hear Me Whining?

I always wonder when bands reinvent themselves and hit it big like this, what they will do next. I am certainly hopeful that Green Day will not turn into just another arena band and lose the subtleties and wry humor they have always put into their music. I have recently read they have no intention of rushing into the next record and I applaud them for that; they are one of the best rock bands out there and I would hate to see them disappear again.

When I hear Green Day-wannabe bands like My Chemical Romance (a very good band) say their next album will be more "arena friendly" I cringe for fear they will dump what made them so interesting in the first place. I dont think Green Day set out to make an arena-rock record with Idiot - it just turned out that way.

Everybody take a lesson from bands like System of a Down who are on a ride down a particular road and have invited us to come along -- as opposed to those who pick us up and then ask us for directions. Your instincts for your music are much better, usually, than ours - take the time to listen to them. We'll still be here.

Don't want to be an American idiot.

One nation controlled by the media.

Information age of hysteria.

It's going out to idiot America.

When In The Course of Human Events....

http://impeachbushcoalition.blogspot.com/

Exterminate the brutes. Join us, won't you?

Touched By His Noodly Appendage

I have at last found my religion here: http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

Stay tuned -- a review of last night's other religious experience (at least for my son) coming soon -- Green Day's Sept. 7 concert in Philadelphia. Watch this space.

"...And One Will Fall"

Sometime in late 1974 or early '75, just after the Mole's eighth birthday, he and his father stopped off at what we called "The Little Store" on 82nd Avenue in Milwaukie, Oregon, just before the intersection with Harmony to get bread, milk, whatever. There was a magazine rack just inside the door, and on the bottom rack were always comic books -- never consistent, as I would learn, from week to week, but the few comics I would buy over the years at the Little Store were key ones -- Kamandi #22 and OMAC #5 among them -- but this night in particular set the dominoes falling.

That night, I asked my dad for a quarter so I could buy the first comic book (not counting some handmedown Archies in kindergarten) I ever owned, and that started the long winding road that 30 years later I have still managed to be on: that comic book was The Amazing Spider-Man #140. How could you refuse that cover? It looked like Spidey would grab onto you if you didnt take it along.

Reading that comic book, I had almost no knowledge whatsoever of Spiderman, or Gwen Stacy, Harry Osborn, MJ Watson, J. Jonah Jameson or even ever-lovin' Aunt May. Actually, re-reading this issue now, one could not pick a better intro (for the time) into the Spiderman universe; in fact, there was no Green Goblin backstory, no massive story arc other than the mystery of the Jackal, who he was and why he wanted Spidey so bad -- it was, and is, just a great issue start to finish, and a fine example of what is now called Bronze-Age Marvel Comics storytelling -- lots of detail, footnotes referring you to previous issues, flashbacks well-embedded into the story. No decompression here, Mr. Bendis! Lots of words, lots of information, and to top it all off, a guy who climbs walls, cracks jokes, and can shoot webbing out of his hands, fercripessake.

Our story: the Jackal had with him one of these big-lug-goon type henchmen working for him, the Grizzly, who for some reason wanted to kill J. Jonah Jameson. The Jackal is interested in killing Spiderman, so they kidnap Peter Parker, who appears to know the webhead and is constantly getting these great photos of the hero. Knocking Petey out, they attach an arm-thing that will track Peter wherever he goes, and explode if he tries to take it off. Petey has to think -- in the meantime he goes and rents an apartment with old buddy Flash Thompson and meets his hot fashion model neighbor, Glory Grant, who would remain a mainstay in the Spidey comics for years to come. That night, Peter decides to wing over to the NYU science lab and try to take the arm thing off, because otherwise he can never be Spidey again. In a remarkably tense but ultimately anticlimactic scene, it turns out the Jackal didnt count on the fact that Pete knows his way around a lab, and Spidey chucks the offending device into the Hudson.

So, without other clues, the webslinger heads off to visit J. Jonah and find out why the old creep would have a giant guy in a bear suit trying to kill him. Turns out the Grizzly was a wrestler who Jonah ruined in the Daily Bugle years ago, trying to get revenge. Spidey does some Batman-style detective work and ultimately finds out the Jackal gave the Grizzly an exoskeleton (a popular device in Marvel Comics of the '70's -- see Ben Grimm) to make him more powerful. Spidey rips the suit off the guy, revealing him as an out of shape has-been, who is easily taken apart. See you next month!

(Whatever happened to Ross Andru? What a great artist, I almost never hear him mentioned.)

I think I read this comic about a million times before it finally disintegrated into dust and paper. Recently at the Comic Book Shop (where the Mole shops for comics - see link) a 50% off sale allowed me to repurchase the book and now it sits here with the other memorabilia. I think I read Spiderman consistently for at least another six years, till I hit high school and didnt want to buy comics anymore. But the magic of this issue, the complexity, the sense of being part of another world, a special world that only some people got to be part of, is what drew me to Marvel -- within a few years I had stacks of Marvel and even owned Stan Lee's Origins books and anything else I could get my hands on. Comics led to science fiction led to movies led to music -- all of the things that I have loved over my life started in part with Spiderman #140. I have to say I'm glad to know there's still something of that 8-year-old in me -- I've re-read this issue at least five times since getting it.

I Went To The Woods Because I Wanted To Work At Sotheby's

An interesting little blog from a British guy in his early '20's who works at Sotheby's in London and has decided to spend a year dead for tax reasons (oops, no, sorry, that's Hitchhikers Guide). Actually, with every prospect of success before him, he is living in an English ditch for a year to see what happens, and posting his reactions and adventures here. I still havent figured out where he keeps his suits.

Link to the right or go here: http://ditchmonkey.blogspot.com

Today's Hyperbole Corner: Dead and Deader

Courtesy of a couple of those clever advertising postcards one may pick up in independent record stores:

COBRA NOIR has unleashed its fury on the dead and the living. Fast and heavy, the hammering sound of this Canadian band is an assault without remorse. Contiuing the work that previous Canadian hardcore/punk bands began more than a decade ago, COBRA NOIR combines ferocious live performances with unsettling political lyrics.

I think we have achieved total heaviosity -- Woody Allen.
For more on this new album, Abode of the Dead, go to: www.cyclop-online.com (Only fair, I suppose.)

Lost Hunger is a haunting tale of a young woman Daenara and her unrelenting struggle to piece together her dark past. Venturing deep into the darkness of that world, she finds herself within the arms of a vampire. Seduced by his power and passion she finds herself embraced by a darkness, which exceeds her every fantasy. However within this darkness lies an evil, which waits patiently to rise up against Daenara. For her the battle has barely begun and the blood will surely never wash from her hands.

Who knew there was so much space in a vampire's arm? Are there no bones, no muscles? Also, exactly how dark is a fantasy about darkness, and then how dark would an actual darkness have to be to exceed your fantasy about darkness? Inquiring minds want to know. Find out more (again, only fair) at: www.losthunger.com (Lost Hunger? Does that mean you're full, or that you had a hunger here a minute ago and.....)

A New Circle In Hell

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

--Yahoo News / New Orleans