A few years ago, I was having breakfast with my old roommate. I stumbled across a story in the entertainment section. "Hey, check this out," I said. "James Brown is addicted to painkillers."

"That's oddd," my roommate said. "I'd have thought that would have been his wife."

James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul," whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, he said.

Copsidas said the cause of death was uncertain. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," he said.

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's "Fame," Prince's "Kiss," George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" and Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

"James presented obviously the best grooves," rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told The Associated Press. "To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close."

His hit singles include such classics as "Out of Sight,""(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,""I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud," a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.

"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black," Brown said in a 2003 Associated Press interview. "The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society."

He won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living In America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.

He triumphed despite an often unhappy personal life. Brown, who lived in Beech Island near the Georgia line, spent more than two years in a South Carolina prison for aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police officer. After his release on in 1991, Brown said he wanted to "try to straighten out" rock music.

From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, "Please, Please, Please" in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" and often tried to prove it to his fans, said Jay Ross, his lawyer of 15 years.

Brown would routinely lose two or three pounds each time he performed and kept his furious concert schedule in his later years even as he fought prostate cancer, Ross said.

"He'd always give it his all to give his fans the type of show they expected," he said.

With his tight pants, shimmering feet, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for younger stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince.

In 1986, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And rap stars of recent years overwhelmingly have borrowed his lyrics with a digital technique called sampling.

Brown's work has been replayed by the Fat Boys, Ice-T, Public Enemy and a host of other rappers. "The music out there is only as good as my last record," Brown joked in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me," he told the AP in 2003.

Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he was abandoned as a 4-year-old to the care of relatives and friends and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it. There he learned to wheel and deal.

"I wanted to be somebody," Brown said.

By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3 1/2 years in Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Ga., for breaking into cars.

While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.

In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later "Please, Please, Please" was in the R&B Top Ten.

Pete Allman, a radio personality in Las Vegas who had been friends with Brown for 15 years, credited Brown with jump-starting his career and motivating him personally and professionally.

"He was a very positive person. There was no question he was the hardest working man in show business," Allman said. "I remember Mr. Brown as someone who always motivated me, got me reading the Bible."

While most of Brown's life was glitz and glitter — he was the singing preacher in 1980's "The Blues Brothers" — he was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.

In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private restroom.

Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia. The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck.

Brown received a six-year prison sentence. He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.

Soon after his release, Brown was on stage again with an audience that included millions of cable television viewers nationwide who watched the three-hour, pay-per-view concert at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

Adrienne Brown died in 1996 in Los Angeles at age 47. She took PCP and several prescription drugs while she had a bad heart and was weak from cosmetic surgery two days earlier, the coroner said.

More recently, he married his fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, one of his backup singers. The couple had a son, James Jr.

Two years later, Brown spent a week in a private Columbia hospital, recovering from what his agent said was dependency on painkillers. Brown's attorney, Albert "Buddy" Dallas, said the singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.

Brown was performing to the end, and giving back to his community.

Three days before his death, he joined volunteers at his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he planned to perform on New Year's Eve at B.B. King Blues Club in New York.

"He was dramatic to the end — dying on Christmas Day," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. "Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way."

Christmas with commissioner brian lang.

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I'm on the road. Right

I'm on the road. Right now i'm at george bush airport in houston. My friend who drove me to seatac told me it was named after shub.

I've never been to texas

I've never been to texas before. Lot of hot chicks, but i keep smelling something awful. A nice old lady just said she was married 48 years.

The performance artist known as

The performance artist known as __ has died again at the age of 37.

Viv la revolution!

I love this band's name.

I just saw Jonathan Richman. After his second song, my friend Lila turned to me and said, "Everything is going to be all right." It was a wonderful show.

It seems like a good career, you know? I'd like to play guitar and sing my words, with a small backing band. I have an idea who would be my Tommy Larkin. And I think I have another guitarist, too.

Wow, groove on this awesome camera phone photo of Jonathan Richman. It accurately captures my perception, after three drinks and a vicodin.

DIABETICS IN THE NEWS

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died today at the age of 91.

THE OTHER ME ON MYSPACE



On my super-secret private home email account, I started getting Myspace emails for one Cheryl. As far as impersonations go, this is pretty benign. But interesting.

Looking over her profile, Cheryl appears to be a member of a clique of teenagers from Puyallup, Washington who like to joke on Myspace that they're from Australia. Or maybe they're all from Australia, and and they're stuck in Puyallup for the nonce.

Cheryl has this to say about herself:

I'm not like most other girls.
I have dreams, visions, goals.
My morals are higher than high in the value of my life.
My name is Cheryl.
I am originally from Australia.
I lived in Perth, The Gold Coast, Melbourne, and many other areas around that "oh-so-small" continent. ;)
I moved to Puyallup this November,
I currently attend Rogers High School.
I start school this Monday.
But I might move back to Australia this week if plans change.
Who knows.
I'm not prone to cliques.
I'd rather be friends with everyone,
Rather than be hated, or hate, because he, she, or I am someone.
I am a model.
I do not have a label.
Please do not label me.
My modelling career is off to a good start,
And I'm ready to conquer the world.
Besides.
You're wasting your time if you don't give it a try.

I sent Cheryl an email letting her know our wires have crossed. Then I went ahead and send "friend requests" to all of her friends, figuring if Cheryl wants to use my email address, then I should be able to pillage from her friend count. Amusingly, [[ALL I WANT 4 CHRISTMAS IS... to be loved bii u! approved me immediately -- like, within fifteen seconds.

I suppose email addresses get confused all the time, so this isn't like some kind of cosmic identity coincidence. But I find the cross more interesting than with Toronto Mayor David Miller, for example, or the many Dave Millers who work in craft services in the film industry. I can only agree with a few of the statements by Cheryl about herself (I, too am a model, and I share the optimism), but really can't get behind the pink colored font she used (I don't know how to change font color in html). But we're both the kind of people who use very specific syringe references in an email addresses. Strange. It's amazing the kind of connections you find, in the strangest ways. I always suspected my life might oddly intersect with a group of teenage girls someday. It's a little Twin Peaks-esque. I'm realieved I'm not a drug dealer in this situation.

Second class dungeon.

Republicans are often accused of wrongdoings simply because so many of them lead secret gay or criminal lifestyles.

Paedo hid under girl's bed

A PAEDO seduced a girl of 12 — then lived in her bedroom for THREE MONTHS without her mother finding out.

Scott Jennings, 22, cut a giant hole in the bottom of the youngster’s divan bed then used it as a secret den to evade detection if somebody came into the room.

He systematically abused the girl. And when she went to school in the morning, Jennings slipped out of the house to find food. Jennings, of Ashton-under-Lyne, Gtr Manchester, befriended the girl on a bus last year.

He began chatting her up, persuaded her to give him her mobile phone number and then arranged a date.

When they met, Jennings said he had nowhere to live and confided that he was wanted by police for a minor dishonesty offence.

He told the girl he needed somewhere to hide and was taken into her home unnoticed. The pair then cut a hole in the bottom section of her bed enabling him to hide in it whenever her mum came in.

Oh, here's an artist's conception of the perv's hiding place:

"Unusually large" fight leads to arrests

About 15 Seattle police officers broke up a brawl early Sunday morning outside of Jillian's, a billiard club in the South Lake Union neighborhood.

One of the 20 people involved in the fight punched an officer in the face with a cellphone, said police spokesman Sean Whitcomb. The officer, a five-year veteran, received three stitches over his left eye.

A 26-year-old man was arrested for investigation of assaulting an officer.

Police responded to the 700 block of Westlake Avenue North about 1:24 a.m., after a call from Jillian's, and found an "unusually large" fight in progress.

"Oftentimes when we arrive people will cease their criminal activity and try to make a getaway," Whitcomb said. "Not so in this case."

Police used Tasers on two other people who were arrested. One was transported to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of minor injuries.

Other participants in the fight fled the scene, Whitcomb said. Neither police nor club workers know what led up to the fight.

Today a cashier said to me: don't people realize that time isn't real?

I replied: and all this is a dream.

Prediction: at some point this week, Bush or another prominent Republican will mention Saddam Hussein's death sentence, and express bewilderment that more Americans didn't rise at the opportunity to deliver some desert justice. Especially when the Iraqis were so excited by it they rushed it out before the election.

Panama just joined the UN Security Council. For some reason, probably because I'm an American dick, I laughed out loud when I heard that.

I'm watching PBS. They just aired a piece on the Capitol Steps. Jesus, what a bunch of witless hacks. That "maloprism" guy is beyond worst. I hope the Democratic Party Junta puts them to the blade.

Uh, by the way, my predictions are: Senate goes Democrat, House stays Republican. I know the second one is pretty dumb at this point, but I'm too honest to edit my original posting time, and I've been making that prediction for weeks. I gotta get better at this blog.

6:38 PM, PST

I'm kind of buzzing right now. This election is finally producing the bipolar euphoria I was owed in response to the suicidal depression caused by the election in 1994.

I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. A new day is rising. Man, it says something about how bad this country is when the election of some Democrats actually seems like hope a' bornin'.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

If a religious leader has a personal inclination toward homosexuality - and nonetheless can look past his own inclination to defend the institution of marriage and to affirm its benefits for the raising of children - why should he likewise not be honored for his intellectual firmness and moral integrity?

David Frum

After seven long years, I just now figured out how to use the defrost setting on my microwave oven. I am celebrating by defrosting some chicken.

LEGENDARY, FINAL CALVIN & HOBBES STRIP

I have like six friends I could photoshop a varient of this picture with. In fact, the last time I had a beard, I went to the post office and saw a police composite sketch of my evil twin -- or my good twin, depending on your perspective, I guess -- menacing the customer line from the "most wanted" sheet.

Shoot the Girl



This is my favorite scene from the long-in-post-production SHOOT THE GIRL.

For some reason, this makes me laugh hysterically.

I'm so excited. Roger waters.

I'm so excited. Roger waters. Gonna be so cool.

Man, having an insulin reaction

Man, having an insulin reaction while a one year old plays with his weird toys is positively surreal.

William Shatner blows $20K for a contestant

Jesus, this is incredible.

Adventures of Hard Gay

As you all might have heard, liberal favorite John McCain has reached a compromise with the Bush Administration on the interpretation of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. This “compromise” represents a capitulation on all fronts by Senator McCain, who is trying to maintain his viability as a Presidential hopeful amongst the far right, who are adamantly and disgustingly pro-torture.

You can read the “compromise” here. It would allow waterboarding, hypothermia treatment, and (let’s be honest) outright murder of prisoners, putting the United States in the same company as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Soviet Russia. Worse, it gives the President power to issue “authoritative interpretations” of treaty obligations in the Federal Register. Worse still, the bill allows the president to define “enemy combatant” as anyone “who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities,” a definition vague and broad enough to include everyone you know.

Despite the disclaiming anti-war slogan “Not In Our Name,” the fact remains that every US citizen is stained by the conduct of the war on terror, and as taxpayers, share responsibility and blame. Please contact every member of the Washington State delegation to register your opposition to HR 6054, Military Commission Act of 2006, as well as torture in general (contact info can be found here). Usually, it is best to send mail, but Congress is trying to rush a vote through before Congress recesses on Friday, so this can be over and settled before the elections. So, send your emails and faxes today.

The Republicans in the House aren’t going to care, but they still need to hear from us. The Democrats need to be urged to take leadership – or even a position – on this crucial issue that affects all of us.

This is the letter I sent (I left out the second paragraph for the Senators and Jim McDermott, who is my district rep):

I am writing to strongly urge you to vote to reject the HR6054, The Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Although I am not a resident of your district, and the issue hasn't even reached the House yet, I feel this is important enough to contact you immediately, in the hope you will speak out now, and will vote against any attempt to legalize torture and secret prisons when the time comes.

Please do not allow your colleagues to rush through this ill-considered bill to allow torture and secret prisons, and please vote against any legislation that incorporates the Bush Administration proposals. Even if you feel that torture represents an American value and a necessary tool in the War on Terror, surely you would agree that the issue requires a full and sober debate, one that should not be tabled as an expedient prior to the Fall elections.

I urge you to join with the former military leaders and retired judges who are speaking out against torture and secret prisons. Congress should not undermine the internationally accepted standards for treatment of prisoners articulated in the Geneva Conventions.

The brutal, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners undermines U.S. security and violates the principles on which this country was founded. Civilized nations agree that these techniques are immoral, and, according to military leaders, do not lead to accurate intelligence information. The humane treatment of war prisoners has been a principal of the United States since the founding of our country, and remains the right, principled and Christian way.

As a constituent and an American, I would greatly appreciate if you and your fellow Democrats showed leadership on this issue above and beyond casting your dissenting votes. This is an issue too important to remain silent on. Far too many Americans appear willing to trade away our cherished rights, principles and traditions, and I feel the Americans who oppose torture are not being given a voice -- and a brave, loud voice is what is needed.

Please vote against The Military Commissions Act of 2006, and all attempts to amend our laws to allow torture.

Thank you for your time.

White recycled rage.

White recycled rage.

Found on Andrew Sullivan's blog:From an article at CNN about Bush's decline in popularity among Southern women:

"There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord," Tomanio said. "I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through."

My immediate reaction to this was, I can't believe God would inflict a President like Bush on this country. After a moment's thought, I realized that yeah, it's totally something God would do. I've read some of the Old Testament -- Bush's presidency is just like the time The Lord slew all the Egyptian' first-born. It certainly is for the families of Iraq, and for the families of soldier here in the United States.

AREA MAN LIVING A DAVID LYNCH FILM

A former city official who is under investigation in an FBI corruption probe was arrested for public intoxication after claiming he was robbed by naked and scantily clad attackers at a male strip club, authorities said.

Police arrested D'Angelo Lee early Sunday outside Club Knubian Fantaciez, a dance club that becomes an all-nude male revue after midnight. Police said he told them he was attacked by three men, one naked and another in only a towel.

Lee told police the men threw him out of the club, broke his glasses and stole his wallet, though he later found the wallet. Club employees told police they removed Lee, who said he was there picking up women, because he was causing a disturbance. Lee later called the incident "just stupid, just really frivolous" and said he was only trying to get his wallet back.

Lee resigned from the City Plan Commission last year after being targeted in the FBI's corruption investigation into Dallas City Hall. Lee has been accused of voting on zoning cases where he was a paid consultant and not reporting gifts.

Watch THE PRESIDENT get snippy and agressively point his finger at Matt Lauer. What a little man.

Has it been five years already? It seems like yesterday that I rudely answered my phone after getting on the bus, and struggled to hear my sister excitedly tell me that civilation was collapsing, as it became increasingly hard to hear due to the phones ringing around me. This was before incidents were fully understood as attacks, and we all thought it was an ugly future where pilots were stupidly gliding into tall buildings, and explosions just happened at the Lincoln Memorial. Oh, for those innocent days of 6:45 AM PST, 9/11/2001.

What have we learned five years later? That everyone who hates America may have a point. I am mystified by proponents of the War, who insist everything is going hunky-dory. Don't they want to win? Bush isn't even pretending to crave victory anymore. He thinks that even establishing a objectives for victory is sending the wrong message. Heck, he wants to invade Iran, which would finish the proecess of reviving the conservatives there that the invasion of Iraq began. The cultural response from the Right has been even sicker. We must sacrifice freedom. Dissent is bad. there are conservatives who actually seem to admire Muslim societies. At least that's empathy.

I honored the anniversary the usual way, by watching movies. I screened a bunch of conspiracy documentaries, which were tedious, as well as a bootleg of World Trade Center, which was boring as all shit. The high point was when I watched 11'9"01, which was not great, except for Alejandro González Iñárritu's segment, which was mostly an audio montage, with clips from the big day. There's a part when you can hear the sounds of the WTC collapsing from the inside, each floor rythmically hammering at the ones below, accompanied by screams that sounds like they're coming from a rollercoaster. It's pretty hard to handle. Someone should post that part, and nothing else from the movie, on You Tube.

After five years, I'm starting to develop a little empathy for the affected. I read an article about the September 11th widows, which I would link to, but I can't find it. Basically, it's all about how widows and lovers got fucked around by greedy family members, and the injection of sudden wealth. It's bad enough to lose a loved one, but to then suffer through an existential Dickensian lesson on thrift and spending is pretty fucked up.

Click here for my real-time, day-of emails from September 11, 2001.

Click here for my mordantly amusing one-year anniversary article.

I figure I'll tackle the subject again in ten years, if I remember.

"Blue Moon" by Big Star

Let me be your one light
And if you'd like a true heart
Take the time to show youre mine
And I'll be a blue moon in the dark.

While you sleep you'll see me there
Clouds race across the sky
Close your eyes and don't ask why
And I'll be a blue moon in your eyes.

Morning comes and sleeping's done
Birds sing outside
If demons come while you're under
I'll be a blue moon in the sky

Let me be your one light
And if you'd like a true heart
Take the time to show you're mine
And I'll be a blue moon in the dark.

This is an odd bit of viral marketing, isn't it? There were a dozen or more of these scattered alongside the road by my house.

Holy. Living. Fuck. Are you fucking believing this? Over.



Holy mother of fuck. The fucking moon. Over

Like anyone gives a fuck what he thinks.

Sometimes my judgement is so bad even I can tell how bad it is.

I was irritated by the report that Pluto has been officially downgraded from "planet" status. What is the new classsification? Oh, it's "dwarf planet." How lazy can you get. The worst thing is the criteria astronomers used for dwarf planets was specifically designed to downgrade Pluto, by specificying that actual planets need to have near-cirular orbits (Pluto's orbital ellipse is far more pronounced than the others in the solar system, taking it within Neptune's orbit on some rotations). What a bunch of fuckers.

Honestly, if someone had told me yesterday that this story would have upset me so much, I'd have thought they were crazy.

"I would never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me. This has nothing to do with patriotism. It has everything to do with understanding the world in which we live."

-- President George W. Bush

Seriously. Bush said that. BUSH said that.

I think we killed them.

I think we killed them.

Hempfest

Britney Spears

She's certainly acting... odd...

My favorite columnist at National Review Online is Mark R. Levin. On a site loaded with sputtering, impotent white men with a slighted sense of entitlement, Levin trumps them all. It is almost required of a writer for National Review to hold loyalty to the Beloved Leader above idealogical consistency, the good of the country and even personal best interests.

Levin is supposedly a legal scholar and author, and yet when an entirely fair comment on his torture advocacy is made, he is so unable to comprehend how anyone could question his... well, to call it faith would paint his struggles with an unearned and wholely blasphemous purity, so let's say his sense of entitlement to allow torture, the best he can do is sputter in outrage: "Why does anyone take this guy seriously anymore?"

"This guy"? I know the appeal of blogging is the insta-journalism of it all, but surely a professional writer would be a little more artful. At least one would hope.

This post deserves to be quoted in full:

Gitmo Finally Revealed
07/31 03:02 PM
I want to congratulate the attorneys who work with me at Landmark Legal Foundation for tenaciously pursuing the untold story of the systematic abuse of American MPs by the al-Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. It took us a full year to bring this stunning information to light, but the truth is now out. Thanks to Pete Hutchison, Mike O'Neill, Matt Forys, and Eric Christensen.

Because prison guards are the true victims of the War On Terror.

The other thing I like about Levin is how his mug shot at NRO is cleverly cropped to disguise his baldness.

National Review does a pretty good job with their mug shots all around. Perhaps their greatest achievement was in making David Frum, to all appearances a subhuman pig man, almost frattishly handsome.

Trunk Monkey

I had this idea a while ago, but it was as a panhandler response system. This is pretty good, though.

Holy crap, the women of the Israeli Defense Force are hot!











I read this article (hopefully a translation) about what they do.

Who'd have thought if you handed a rifle to a young Jewess she'd become so appealing?