Collected Thoughts 08-27-09

• Derek Jordan is the king of individuality. (!) I get tons of bad and awkward press contacts but rare is one so worthy of disseminating for your enjoyment.

• I am revisiting the entire Steve Earle catlogue. Some of it is tough going. Everything before and just after Copperhead Road really pales in comparisson.
  

• I can't bring myself to stream the new No Age EP. I refuse to register with a website so that I can be marketed to. It's repulsive.
  
  I'll simply buy the EP without ever having heard it once it is released. That'll show 'em!

• Rock Insider has the Part Time Punks Fest lineup. Last year's festival was the best thing I have ever done for my music knowledge. Just buy a ticket.
  

• Man, the "new" "bougie" Echo Park Vons is a definite improvement upon my life. I don't care what kind of class warrior nonsense (or thinly veiled racism) some neighborhoodies might proclaim, a grocery store with fresh deli meat > a grocery store without fresh deli meat. That's a goddamned truism.
  

• The company that contracts me has a meeting at 11am on Satuday, right in the middle of the Colts preseason game where the starters actually play most the game. Fortunately I'll be watching it five minutes from the meeting location, but this is still unacceptable.

• AFC East - Pats (13-3)
  AFC North - Steelers
  AFC South - Colts (12-4)
  AFC West - Chargers
  AFC W/C - Titans, Texans
  
  NFC East - Cowboys
  NFC North - Packers (12-4 or better)
  NFC South - Falcons
  NFC West - 49ers (9-7, gimp division)
  NFC W/C - Giants, Vikings

• About that model suing the anonymous blogger: I think Google should be compelled to give the names of anonymous people when court-orded to do so. I don't think calling someone a skank on the internet is grounds of such a court order. (Also, I had just assumed the anonymous blogger was some bored 15 year old male. But of course it was a jealous female accquaintance.)
  

• Come with me if you want to live.

• GoTards of the Future!
  

• Further proof that primate biology (if not all earthly biology) is supremely flexible and outright hackable.

• I'm a liberal and half my family aren't just Democrats, but active Democrats, many whom have worked in the party, so Ted Kennedy's death touched me considerably. Besides whatever sort of ghastly thing he did in his past, his public life and career directly advanced social causes I hold deep to my heart and his political behavior was much more earnest (and preferable) to Obama's lame "bipartisan" cowering or the religious right's insane frothing. Kennedy could swear on his life to protect abortion and then go right to work on a bipartisan education bill later in the day. Obama could never be so explicit in his convictions.
  
  Generally pundits in the press, even the worst ones, are gracious enough to keep their mouths shut if not say a few kind words when a rival political figure dies. (Did anybody slam Bob Novak for outing a CIA agent while be was being put into the ground?)
  
  But Ted Kennedy undoubtedly did a ghastly thing. This time around it seems like more writers and pundits are openly questioning whether Kennedy should be remembered in a positive light. Part of that is because what he did was so terrible. But I also attribute part of it to the fact that the Kennedy family, more than most politicians, unified the political culture in Washington with the celebrity culture of the mass media. Every time I read or hear a critic bring-up Chappaquiddick, be it a left wing feminist or a right wing idealogue, I feel like Ted Kennedy is getting the celebrity treatment. To everyone other than her family, the Mary Jo Kopechne tragedy is a tabloid story more than anything else.