NO MATCH FOR ISRAEL

But there are a couple attractive Iraqi police-ladies.

Holy crap, Australia is about fifteen pounds of ridiculous.

Why do we have to ruin a perfectly good inauguration with a poem?

GOODBYE PRESIDENT ASSHOLE

It sounds like maybe one person is clapping for Bush. Ha.

BUSH BY THE NUMBERS

Some are brilliant:

Minimum number of close-up photographs of Bush’s hands owned by his current chief of staff, Josh Bolten: 4

Number of vehicles in the motorcade that transports Bush to his regular bike ride in Maryland: 6

Some engrossing:

Estimated total calories members of Congress burned giving Bush’s 2002 State of the Union standing ovations: 22,000

Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0

Some sickening:

Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime: 3.6

Factor by which the cause of death was more likely to be violence: 120

And of course:

Average percentage of Americans who approved of the job Bush was doing during his second term: 37

Percentage of Russians today who approve of the direction their country took under Stalin: 37

DONN ROGER MILLER

OCTOBER 21, 1936-DECEMBER 30, 2008

Donn was born October 21, 1936 in Wichita, Kansas, to Fern and Wilkie Miller. He was the fifth of the couple’s six children. He wed Lorene Sausser on December 23, 1962 and the couple had one daughter, Karen Elizabeth. He studied business at Wichita State University and Emporia State University, but dedicated his life-long career to his passion for music.

As a jazz musician, he formed the Donn Miller Trio, which played in Topeka and Kansas City in the 1960’s and in Denver in the 1970’s. He also played solo piano, and lent his talents to many jazz groups and combos throughout his life. At the same time, Donn developed his skills in piano tuning and repair, reaching the level of Registered Piano Technician (RPT) and Certified Tuning Examiner (CTE) within the Piano Technicians Guild. After working for Jenkins Music Company in Kansas City, he moved to Denver in 1967 and opened his own shop, The Piano Spotlight. In 1980, Donn became the tuner for the music college at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and later held a similar position for Denver Public Schools. In his 20-year service to DPS, he mentored other tuners and continued to tune for private clients.

Donn retired in 2004 and moved to Kansas City to be closer to his daughter and her family, where he was a loving “Daddad” to his granddaughter, Lili Caroline. He was preceded in death by his parents; brothers Wilkie and Bill; and Sisters Irma and Marilyn. Survivors include his wife, of Leawood; daughter Karen Plummer and her husband Jonathan Plummer of Kansas City; granddaughter, Lili, 5; Brother James David of Aiken, S.C.; and many cousins, nieces, nephews and in-laws.

In accordance with his wishes, Donn will be cremated. The family requests memorial donations be made to the Piano Technicians Guild Foundation, the Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ, or a charity of your choice.

The above clip is Donn playing a song he composed to celebrate the birth of my cousin Karen.

Something clearly happened here while I was away.

This has the looks of an absolutely fucking brutal accident scene.

There's a shoe lying up the sidewalk.

Really, what a fucking stupid place to put an enourmous fucking ashtray.

HOLY SHIT, J.D. SALINGER IS STILL ALIVE

Happy birthday, Mr. Salinger.

THOUGHTS ON THE ILIAD AND OTHER THINGS

Virginia Ledoyen was once described as "ridiculously beautiful," and Diane Kruger could not be described so, which I think is a requirement to be Helen of Troy.

On the other hand the ancient Greeks were a highly gay people, so it’s possibled that Helen was a simply fabulous drag queen. Six foot two, mustache, adams apple, and a clownishly made-up face that launched a thousand ships.

It always seems like whenever we try to talk about the good points of Nazism, somebody always has to bring up the Holocaust.

I hate Ted Haggard, and his shitty song Okie From Muskogee, and it figures he’s a meth head

Kate Winslet plays a concentration camp guard trading sex for reading lessons from a 15 year old boy. I could make that movie perfect wih those ingredients.

I was the most interesting and successful person at my high school reunion. I envy my classmates who had the opportunity to interact with me.

Happy New Year!

HOLIDAY MOVIE OBSERVATIONS

Chasing someone out of the house with a scythe is a sure way to cure agoraphobia.

More wisdom from the crazy bastard who does the signs on the 45th Street Chevron.

"This is a farewell kiss, dog."

In case it isn't obvious, I'm wearing a fur.

Snowman coming soon...

BUSH LOOKS BACK

Turning to domestic matters, on the Supreme Court, the president expressed happiness with his picks of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. “My regret is I didn’t get to name a third judge,” [Bush] told us.

Translation: "I wish John Paul Stevens had died."

AND A MOTHER FIGHTS.... TO SAVE THE LIFE OF HER OWN CHILD

Tonight on ER. Seriously, this show is still on?

"TEAM OF RIVALS"

Now Bill Richardson is rumored as Obama's Secretary of Commerce. John Edwards the only Democratic primary contender left without a job in the administrative branch. I'm trying to think if this sort of thing is unprecedented.

Permanent wave machine

ACTUAL GOVERNEMENT ORDER

“An Administrative Review Board has reviewed the information about you that was talked about at the meeting on 02 December 2005 and the deciding official in the United States has made a decision about what will happen to you. You will be sent to the country of Afghanistan. Your departure will occur as soon as possible.”

"[T]he information that was talked about the meeting" doesn't even sound like legal language, It sounds like something I would say in traffic court. I wonder if Bush wrote it himself.

Wtf?

I'm in the south

Tranny hookers?! Sign me up!

Hope even finds its way into public restrooms.

FUCK BRIAN WILLIAMS!

FUCK BRIAN WILLIAMS!

I bet Savannah Guthrie likes

I bet Savannah Guthrie likes to rock the party. I sure wish I were in Phoenix tonight.

Just to be clear, I

Just to be clear, I Called the election for Obama like ten minutes ago before it became obvious.

As I write this, Obama

As I write this, Obama has 200 electoral votes. When you considr that the entire west coast is in the tank, then that's it. I'm calling it. Obama

DEMOCRACY!

What I did after Yonder.

And that's a wrap!

And that's a wrap!

Big time producer Dave Miller spends his final night of Yonder production engaged in what we'll charitably call prop management.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

In this video, mankind launches a valiant rescue effort, and hundreds of penguins march hilariously into the sea.

More from the dream factory.

SNOW ON MARS

I don't know why this story made me tear up a little. Probably because I'm tired. But still, snow on Mars, that never touches the ground...

A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

Making a movie is like fighting a land war in Asia.

Today I am wrangling ants

Today I am wrangling ants for a major motion picture.

For a music nerd, I discovered the 1968 Rolling Stones masterpiece Beggar's Banquet far too late -- like a few months ago. This song, No Expectations, is a beautiful wail of exhaustion and resignation.

RICHARD WRIGHT 1943-2008

And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do; I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it—you've gotta go sometime.

LET US NEVER FORGET LET US ALWAYS REMEMBER

I almost let the anniversary of the Iraqis bombing Pearl Harbor go by without some commemoration. Let's link to this classic post of two men too in love with Al Quaeda's power.

My favorite quote unsurprisingly comes from me at my most articulate:

Fuck, this shit is crazy.

Hard to believe this is the same iconoclast who once wrote so eloquently about french-kissing George Bush.

I FOUND MY FIRST GREY HAIR THIS MORNING

Fuck.

Is there any reason to

Is there any reason to hold off on the nuclear option?

SO I WAS RIGHT AGAIN

Biden it is.

I hope McCain picks Mitt Romney for his VP, so they can continue the house debate, with two homes versus 17 or whatever.

MY VP PREDICTION

Okay, I've a new one. I've become really excited by the possibly of... Hilary Clinton! It would be exciting. It seems like all of Obama's options are unexciting, and Clinton sure would keep things exciting. And this race needs more excitement!

MY VP PREDICTION

Guiliani. Our country needs unity, and a transvestite ex-mayor. Do it, Obama.

THIS HAS BLOWN MY FRAGILE LITTLE MIND

Imagine a form of life so unusual that we cannot figure out how it dies. That’s exactly what researchers are finding beneath the floor of the sea off Peru. The microbes being studied there — single-celled organisms called Archaea — live in time frames that can perhaps best be described as geological. Consider: A bacterium like Escherichia Coli divides and reproduces every twenty minutes or so. But the microbes in the so-called Peruvian Margin take hundreds or thousands of years to divide.

I don't appreciate it when bloggers I like make fun of John McCain for being a fan of ABBA. I like ABBA. They're great. I think the world would be a better place if McCain used "Take a Chance on Me" as his campaign song.




Check out the hilarious showmanship in that video. They really don't look like they know how to perform live, in their awkward attempts to work the crowd. I love the silver -- is it mesh -- that Benny and Bjorn are wearing, and it's pretty cool just how sweaty Frieda -- and yes, I had to google which one was Frieda, but my hunch was right.

I liked this comment from something called "Movie Guy" at Matt Yglesias' blog (this part of it, at least): "It was [in Florida] that he met his next wife, Cindy, while still married to Carol. Of course, he remembers this song well as it happened in 1976, the year that Abba released Dancing Queen." The rest of his comment is dickery, but he understands why people like music.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

This is amusing. If Paris Helton started making massive ad buys, I'd start tp respect her.

HEH

BARACK HITLER OBAMA

I laughed out loud at this line from Ross Douthet:

Here's a tip for liberals: If your candidate is going to stage enormous rallies in front of tens of thousands of chanting Germans (with monuments to Prussian military might in the background) in the middle of his Presidential campaign, it isn't the GOP's fault if the footage comes out looking a little like Hitler at Nuremberg.

A CYNICAL CRACK ABOUT THE LAST LECTURE

I haven't watched the video, because it is so very long, but today my boss gushed about this line: "'We have these ideas, we have a couple of ideas. This idea here is very safe. This idea here is risky.' He said, 'Go for the risk. It's better to fail spectacularly then to pass along and do something which is mediocre.'"

I replied, "that's a pretty ironic statement from a man who made his living as a college professor."

Not that you can tell from thiss picture, but seeing an elephant in the morning is considered good luck in some cultures.

WHERE CAN I GET ONE OF THESE $500,000,000 BILLS?

Not one of these, obviously. One of the new ones. It'd sure be nice to be a billionaire.

I'm at The Dark Knight

I'm at The Dark Knight waiting for the 8:15 screening to start. Sixty years of superhero movies reach their culmination tonight!

What does this mean?

MAN DOES THIS MOVIE LOOK GOOD

My Big Fat Sisters Wedding
Uploaded by waldo05

MY NEXT FILM WILL LAST 200 YEARS

More than 1,000 music-lovers showed up on Saturday, July 5, in a German town to hear a change of note in the longest-running and slowest piece of music ever composed. Eccentric US composer John Cage (1912-1992) planned his composition to last 639 years, meaning more than a dozen generations of musicians will be needed to play it on an automatic, as-yet unfinished organ at Halberstadt, Germany.

Entitled ORGAN2/ASLSP, it began in 2001 and has so far reached its sixth note. The second part of the name means "as slow as possible."

Neighbors have got used to the monotonous tone coming out of the former Church of St. Burchard, which was used as a pig-sty in the communist years of East Germany. At first the all-day-and-night tone sounded something like an air-raid siren.

The audience hushed on Saturday as two more organ pipes were added alongside the four installed so far and the tone became more complex at 3:33 p.m. local time. The second of the new pipes is set to kick in this November. A machine keeps the sound coming out.

Since some notes will not be needed for decades, pipes need only be added when donations suffice.

Organizers in Halberstadt rejected questions about what it all means.
"It doesn’t mean anything," one of them said. "It’s just there."
Other works by avant-garde composer Cage include one piece that consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

MY NEW JOURNALISTIC CRUSH

Marie Colvin. She looks like Cate Blanchett and lost an eye to grendade shrapnel. Bad ass.

The joy I felt upon reading the news of Jess Helms' death -- I actually cheered -- was quickly lessened by this sickening observation from the article:

He joins the second and third presidents of the United States – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams Jr. – who both also died on Independence Day.

I actually uttered, "Ugh."

Kudos to Matthew Yglesias for accompanying what I'm sure is a fascinating blog post about the economy or something with the above photo of U.S. Air Force Capt. Sheila Carlson, who is attractive enough to fight in the Israeli Defense Force.

UPDATE: Dammit, the link in that old post to the "Hot Women of the IDF" thread at Israel Military Forum is gone. How could those monsters have nuked that thread?

UPDATE 2: The thread is gone, but the pictures are there, is a less user-friendly format. Probably the best way to find them is to search for "women," but that is pretty creepy.

OTHER THAN THAT, HOW WAS THE PLAY?

"With the exception of the cross-burning episode ... I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district," says Freshwater's friend Dave Daubenmire, presumably in Freshwater's defense. Actually, the cross-burning episode, in context, is not what you'd expect, but it still doesn't make him look any better.

MY HOPES ARE RAISED AND THEN DASHED

I was briefly super-excited when I heard the Mars Phoenix rover was sending Twitters from the red planet. Could this be a spunky artificial intelligence? The future is now, right?

Wrong. A plucky NASA flack named Veronica McGregor is behind the messages, which bare sent from somewhere on Earth. Drat.

This is some pathetic graffitti right here.

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OVERHEARD AT THE HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

As I was buying coffee this morning, I attended a few minutes of Center School's 2008 commencement ceremony. It's an alternative school. Which apparently means everybody gets an award. Including the teachers, weirdly enough. A couple teachers were given an award for "making sure there were enough condoms for everybody." Yes, I am certain I heard that right.

HOW PC ARE WE?

In this Politico article about the Right's pounding on Michell Obama, there's a curious evasion:

... [Obama] was forced to respond to rumors of a video showing his wife using a derogatory term for white people.

I'm sorry, is "whitey" such a loaded word that it can only be alluded to in polite journalism? I mean, come on. There's nothing offensive about calling a honky "whitey." Wake me when Michelle starts railing against "ice mutants."

Are there witches in Wallingford?

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Is this a penguin or a member of the Klan?

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ALLEGED VICTIM WATCH

This time Slate comes through, in this wrap-up of the R.Kelly "peeing on a pre-teen" trial:

The defense, I'm guessing, will also send Lisa Van Allen a thank-you note. Van Allen, who testified that she had multiple threesomes with Kelly and the alleged victim, was supposed to be the state's star witness. Whatever the prosecution gained by calling a woman who says she saw Kelly and his goddaughter have sex, they lost a whole lot more as the defense chipped away at Van Allen's credibility. Rather than keeping the jury focused on the tape, state's attorneys Shauna Boliker and Robert Heilingoetter found themselves having to explain away their witness' ample character flaws: relationships with two men convicted of federal bank fraud, her admission that she stole Kelly's Rolex, an alleged attempt to solicit a bribe from the defense's private investigator. The legal lesson here: If your star witness is the kind of character who would have a threesome with R. Kelly, you probably need to find yourself a better star witness.

"HULK" IS INCREDIBLE SMASH!

I review The Incredible Hulk. Spoilers follow:

I was prepared for the worst when the movie began with the upteenth encore of Marvel's standard twisting chemical reaction opening credits. Not only was the Stark scene shit, it's placement in the movie was lousy -- what a deflating way to end the film. And I think I'm just going to have to accept that CGI will never produce a convincing giant green man. I kept thinking about how much better it could have looked with competently executed in-camera effects, like Peter Jackson sometimes acheived in Lord of the Rings.

But I ended up liking it all the same. I thought the cinematography was surprisingly interesting and beautiful -- almost painterly in some shots. I certainly wasn't expecting THAT from a Marvel movie. And most importantly, I thought the chase scenes were enjoyably tense, and they were the bulk of the film, so I give it a passing grade. Not gonna see it again, though.

THE BOYWATCH CONTINUES

I guess the Fox News "Baby Daddy" controversy qualifies for the Obama Boy Watch.

I wasn't going to bother blogging about it, but I found this quote amusing:

Here’s a quick test on whether Obama should be considered fully black: Poof! Barack Obama has been magically transported to a KKK meeting in deepest, whitest Klanistan without his Secret Service detail. There’s a rope and a tree nearby. What happens to Obama? If you say, “why, Barack Obama walks out of there alive, of course” then sure, he’s biracial. Also, you’re a fucking idiot.

I'm getting fucked over by the IMDB.

This article from Forbes is really old, but contains new ideas.

...the big problem today for large insurance companies is Russian businessmen who buy $5 million to $10 million insurance policies, go to Russia on business and fake their own deaths by a Russian mob hit. Perpetrators of these big-ticket frauds go to the trouble of finding real corpses to use in the scam.

I once bought a book about how to fake one's death, and they never suggested procuring an actual corpse. I think that touch would make the plan flawless.

1) I've been awarded a grant of $2,500 from 4Culture for my short film Love in the year 2000. I've raised more than $5 million in my time, all for other people, so it's a good feeling to have some come my way for a chance. So far, I've raised $10,000 for L2K -- about a third of the way there! Which means...

2) I'm throwing another party! Matt Wilkins, director of Yonder, the other project I'm producing, and I decided to co-opt the Seattle International Film Festival to promote our movies, so we'll be throwing a kegger at Theater Schmeater next Wednesday, June 11th from 6:30 to 9:30. By all means, come join us, and tell your friends. Click here for details.

3) A Little Crab with a Package, the dvd extra I shot with Pat Moriarity and Hans Hollstein for Crustacean Records' 15th Anniversary DVD, is now up on Youtube. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7k5Bg4vq8M

4) This coming Thursday (First Thursday, don'cha'know), I'll be making a six minute presentation about Love in the year 2000 at an Artist Trust fundraiser called Pecha Kucha ($10 suggested donation at the door). It'll be at Ouch My Eye Gallery at 1022 First Ave S in Pioneer Square. Doors open at 7, and the presentations begin at 8:00. There'll be 8 other artists presenting as well. I go on at 8:30. Details here.

That's it.

I'm sitting in the doctor's

I'm sitting in the doctor's office looking at a guy who literally has a Wolverine-style haircut. Seriously, what is this world coming to?

LIVEBLOGGING THE HILLARY SPEECH

6:28 Hilary is almost moving as she builds toward what I hope is a concession.

6:30 Jesus, is she going to concede or not? She's like Alfred Hitchcock up there. The suspense is killing me.

6:40 Um, guess not...?

6:41. Christ, I feel naive. I was almost ready to forgive her for everything.

6:43 Now I'm just bored.

6:48 DENVER! DENVER! Oh, goddman it.

6:49 I'm going to bet that Obama can't recite every state HE has won. That's to his credit, by the way.

6:50 NO DECISIONS!!? Come on!

6:51 ... I WANT TO CONCLUDE TONIGHT TOO!