Writer, Professor, and Everything Else
Three or four people have now sent me this:
I’m not sure if I am getting this because people are afraid I won’t vote, they know I would appreciate both the humor and the technology, if I am the easy butt of jokes, or some combination of all of the above. But don’t worry; I’ll do my part on Tuesday.
Annette and I went to see David Byrne on tour this evening at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater, and a very fine show it was. I’ve been quite a fan of The Talking Heads for some time, and I’ve also enjoyed Byrne’s solo work. What I have liked about his latest CD/Album/Whatever they call these things nowadays, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is that it is a sort of contemporary return to some of the Brian Eno-influenced Talking Heads songs of old. Really fine stuff, my favorite of the Byrne solo work to date.
Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to this show for a while now, and I must say it delivered. Really sharp, lots of fun, some kind of weird elements that worked, lots of enthusiasm, etc. There will be some kind of review you can read online sometime if you want to– you know how the Google works. But a few personal observations:
Okay, so for a taste of the event, here are a couple of very short videos:
So, here’s a video of a song I didn’t recognize with the “quasi-interpretive dancers” that appeared in amusing ways throughout the show:
Then there’s this short clip from one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, “Heaven:”
Finally, here’s Byrne is a silly balloon hat that someone gave him during one of the encores:
Good stuff– and now to bed way past my bedtime.
I was going to just post this on Facebook, but it didn’t work:
Kinda cool for anyone who has wondered about pop-up books.
Two handy links via my wife’s facebook page: first, a very smart piece by Frank Rich, “The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama” from Friday’s NYTimes. For reasons I myself don’t even quite understand, I found myself last night surfing about the conservative blogosphere, and the collective cry of conservative bloggers was that it was unfair to hold McCain and Palin responsible for a few nutjobs yelling stuff out at their rallies. I would agree with that analysis if it weren’t for the fact that McCain’s ads and Palin’s speeches have been fanning the flames, and Rich makes a pretty good argument in his article that it goes beyond that.
And then there’s this short video, “Obama ‘that one’ (mocean worker):”
It’s a catchy tune, and I think it’s right– knocking on wood, snapping fingers, not stepping on cracks, etc., etc.– oh, and oh yeah: getting out and voting.
Lord only knows Joe Biden knows how to say some pretty dumb things, but you have to give Palin credit for so many dumb things in so few interview opportunities. Here’s some greatest hits from Talking Points Memo:
And of course tonight’s VP debate is going to get huge ratings. But I would suggest that most people watching tonight (myself included, at least up to a point) are less interested in seeing how this debate impacts the race since it is still McCain versus Obama. Rather, I think most people will be watching today to wait for/hope for the crash, and the crash from either podium.
After the debate:
The winner was your candidate, though some of the polls posted later on Daily Kos suggest a bit of a win for Biden. To me, it was a tie; it was just cars turning left again and again.
Finally, there’s a little bit of “strike back” against the lies of the John McCain campaign and the utter confusion and flip-flops of the candidate himself. Take a look at this new ad from Obama:
Thanks to Mark Maynard for posting this; and thanks also for posting this little snippet of video that was on Huffington Post where Karl “the meaning of evil” Rove even said that McCain et al are going too far.
I’d like to see something even a more aggressive, personally. I think it would be completely fair game for Obama to go on, look straight into the camera, and say something like “John McCain and his campaign are flat-out lying and they owe me and the American people an apology for sinking to these low and desperate tactics.” Or something like that.
And something needs to be made of this too: there was a story on NPR this morning with the misleading headline, “McCain: ‘I Know Americans Are Hurting Now.” Be sure to take a listen. The stock market dropped 500 points yesterday and a slew of economists and experts have been parading through radio and TV shows saying that this is the worst financial crisis since the great depression. And yet, as this story clearly reports, McCain was muddled at best. At the same time they were running an ad about the failed economy, McCain was at a rally in Florida where he said (more or less) “I still think the U.S. economy fundamentals remain strong.” An hour or so later, he gave a different speech at a different rally where McCain repeats the phrase “our economy is at risk” over and over. Un-freakin-believable.
I found this via Henry Jenkins’ blog:
Actually, this is the winner of a contest, the Total Recut “Video Remix Challenge.” Some very cool stuff there, and some interesting ideas for video in both English 328 and (potentially) in English 516.
After Pallin spoke last night, I switched over to The Daily Show, which was absolutely brilliant. Boing-boing agreed and posted this fantastic segment:
This was followed up with a chat with that night’s guest, Newt Gingrich, and the whole thing with Palin’s pregnant daughter came up. Stewart pointed out that Palin said that keeping the baby was her daughter’s choice, which, hypocritically enough, would not be a choice at all if Palin had her way. After all, she supports the most extreme of anti-choice positions where women couldn’t get an abortion under any circumstances– rape, incest, endangering the life of the mother, nothing. If Palin’s view of the world was the way things were, there’d be no choice on the matter at all.
McCain presses along in a drowsy manner. Some protesters were removed early on. His education policy sounds a lot like the failed “No Child Left Behind” to me. Everyone got very excited about “drill now,” which might have some unintended connotations.
I am typing this just as Sarah “the Moose Hunter” Palin is taking the stage at the RNC. I have braced myself for the affair with a cocktail.
I’m not going to bother any live blogging– perhaps there will be a little reflection afterwords depending on how it goes. But I thought I would instead share a few videos I came across. First, there is this one, which I came across via Daily Kos but which is a straight-up mainstream media report on Palin:
It’s been pretty interesting seeing the mainstream media going after McCain lately, especially on Palin, and which is especially ironic since McCain and the media have had quite the lovefest over the last couple years. This has been reported in a couple of places, but McCain has apparently pulled out of a few interviews with CNN over this interview by Campbell “cute as a button” Brown with McCain spokesperson Tucker Bound. Here’s some entertaining video on that:
And then there’s this funny and “not safe for work”/filled with potty-mouth parody that might be a little too true about how the Palin choice really came to pass:
You got to watch it through to the end where Palin yells out “who wants to go polar bear hunting?”
Anyway, her speech so far has been kinda boring, at least to me. I am sure she is still exciting the base, but I doubt she’s changing minds out there in undecided-land, and there seems a lot of people in St. Paul who don’t look that excited either.
Will turned 11 today, which capped off a fine weekend of birthday oriented activities for the boy. Things got underway in earnest on Sunday with a trip to Zap Zone. Basically, it’s a place where you play laser tag, and, when not involved in combat where you shoot people on the other team with beams of light, you play arcade games. The web site says it is a “family fun center,” but it seems more like a teenage boy who hasn’t quite caught on to the whole girl thing fun center– though to be fair, there were several women/young mom-types playing in one of the rounds. I thought it was kind of fun; Will and his friends thought it was fantastic.
During the day today, Will and I took some time and went on a bike ride/picnic through Gallup park. We went out to this island of sorts in the river that Will and I had “discovered” on a previous ride. The idea was to have some quality time in a quiet place, but the park and the island were both pretty busy on this last day of the summer. Still, a nice time.
And then this evening we went with the DeWapps to Ichiban, a Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi place between Ypsi and Ann Arbor that Will is especially fond of. This is one of those places where they do the whole performance in front of the grill– probably not as good here in Ypsi-Arbor as it might be in the big city or in Japan, but still a lot of fun.
Here’s a minute’s worth of video highlights from the cake scene at the end of the Zap Zone party and from Ichiban:
I didn’t get the singing at Ichiban, but it involved more gong playing. As I think the video shows though, Will was pretty thrilled with the whole thing, so that’s all that matters. That and no one got hurt.
And tomorrow, it’s off to school. Finally.