godthedog

GROUP A "Build me up Buttercup" by The Foundations good clean fun. i never liked ring of fire that much, truth be told. Respect" by Aretha Franklin "Cupid" by Sam Cooke not his best song by a longshot, but i would like to see him push through. "She's Not There" by The Zombies great great great song. cream has worn a little thin on me. "The House Of The Rising Sun" by the Animals fucking best use of an organ ever. "She Loves You" by The Beatles "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan very tough decision. "Good Vibrations" by Beach Boys not a very tough decision. GROUP B "Dance to the Music" by Sly & the Family Stone not a big fan of this one, but i just hate eight days a week. "Hey Jude" by The Beatles no contest. "My Girl" by The Temptations too bad this one is so overplayed. awesome, simple song. "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles duh. "Visions of Johanna" by Bob Dylan "Jumpin Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke i would really love to see this one make it to the final 4. so god damn beautiful. GROUP C "Space Oddity" by David Bowie "Can't Help Falling In Love" by Elvis Presley "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals "My Generation" by The Who "Purple Haze" by The Jimi Hendriz Expierence "The Weight" by The Band "Heroin" by The Velvete Underground "Reach Out, I'll Be There" by The Four Tops GROUP D "Catch The Wind" by Donovan "Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles "Green Onions" by Booker T. and the MGs "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan "Gimme Shelter" by Rolling Stones "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" by James Brown "Norwegian Wood" by Beatles "Come See About Me" by The Supremes i have a feeling that in 2 rounds or less, all the songs by black people will be gone. obama is but a hollow victory now.

it takes roughly the same time to type "I don't know that song" as it does to listen to a sample of it on itunes.

GROUP A "Sold To The Highest Bidder" by Electric Prunes "Psycho" by the Sonics "8 Miles High" by the Byrds "I Can't Explain" by The Who "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys "Cupid" by Sam Cooke "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis Presley "The House Of The Rising Sun" by the Animals "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle "Bonnie and Clyde" by Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot "She Loves You" by The Beatles "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan "Good Vibrations" by Beach Boys "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash GROUP B "Eight Days A Week" by The Beatles "Alone Again Or" by Love "Unchain My Heart" by Ray Charles "Hey Jude" by The Beatles "My Girl" by The Temptations "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin "Sloop John B" by Beach Boys "I Fought The Law" by The Bobby Fuller Four "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King "Visions of Johanna" by Bob Dylan "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees "Jumpin Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke GROUP C "Unchained Melody" by Righteous Brothers "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison "Reflections" by The Supremes "The Witch" by The Sonics "Dark End of the Street" by James Carr "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells "My Generation" by The Who "Don't Worry Baby" by The Beach Boys "All Along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan "Georgia on My Mind" by Ray Charles "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival "Time of The Season" by The Zombies "Heroin" by The Velvete Underground "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys "Reach Out, I'll Be There" by The Four Tops GROUP D "Venus in Furs" by The Velvet Underground "Catch The Wind" by Donovan "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 "Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles "In The Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett "Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Birds "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson "Gimme Shelter" by Rolling Stones "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" by James Brown "Break on Through" by The Doors "Norwegian Wood" by Beatles "Scarborough Fair" by Simon & Garfunkel "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes "Come See About Me" by The Supremes

dark end of the street - james carr try a little tenderness - otis redding tears of a clown - smokey robinson & the miracles venus in furs - velvet underground

with the constant twists-for-the-sake-of-twists and cycling of new & old characters, it occurred to me halfway through the movie that it felt like watching 'arrested development'. except it wasn't funny.

first one of the series that manages to look like it was edited by a bored ferret on crystal meth. usually it's easy to ignore how horrible the actors are, but this one really brought that badness to the forefront.

the "B-woman" incident happened about half a mile from my house, a block away from the coffee shop i frequent. this, however... was much more interesting, and really makes clear the matter of image over character in winning the election. if obama wins, it will be more than anything else because he's run an extraordinarily disciplined campaign and maintained a steady direction. mccain comes off in the article as quite a measured and genuine guy, and it's a shame that the whole election is going to be decided because his staff didn't really know what they were doing. obama had been pushing the "3rd term of bush" message since the primary, and i remember thinking then that it wasn't a very convincing case, but the mccain people just never bothered to counter it till 2 weeks ago, and obama just repeated it so many times that it started to stick. between that piece & another piece on mccain in today's "week in review" section (which is also very good), i'm pretty amazed that the most compelling cases i've seen made for him so far have been in the fucking new york times.

tons of fun. like a really great episode of 'cops', except with zombies, except the zombies have rabies. some really poor marketing decisions though. the trailers gave away way too much. the movie plays a lot with the amount of information the people are receiving, and things like the army sealing them in the house with plastic wrap and AK-47's would've been a lot more chilling if we weren't already expecting it. and there's the poster. and i realize the title 'quarantine' already points you in that direction, but it's another matter when the trailers have already given you specific sounds and images to look for. like when i saw 'the strangers' and people were waiting for the girl to say "you're gonna die."

i thought so too... DAVID FINCHER directed that?

probably all those injuries she sustained when he threw her under the bus.

colin powell's endorsement isn't terribly ringing or stark, and from what i understand the reasoning he gave was purely around the campaigning styles & the economic crisis. if he had expressed some faith in obama's foreign policy philosophy, like "i believe a diplomacy-first policy would make our military forces safer in the world" or "i don't believe that a phased withdrawal from iraq means defeat or shame," then it would make some news. an endorsement from a military man ON MILITARY MATTERS would be a big difference-maker. this seems like it was sort of engineered to not really be a big deal. he's still got general name-value and whatnot, but nobody asks, "what does our great colin powell think of the recent fiscal crisis?"

except for the last bit, i agree with all of this.

i'll grind your anium.

i picked up a sunday new york times this morning, and then watched '60 minutes' tonight. i feel really smart and cosmopolitan.

PAD is a moron. i don't want to vote for somebody who goes into a debate looking to make the other guy explode with rage, i want somebody who talks like he cares about the issues brought up, who answers the questions, who clarifies things, and who makes a special effort not to construct dumbass ad-hoc attacks. this "why isn't obama more mean it's making him look soft" crap has been spewed for months. the "5 minutes back-and-forth" debate format was not a good idea. lehrer lost complete control about 20 minutes in (after admirably pressuring both candidates to actually answer his question about how exactly the bailout will change their administration's goals), and never got it back. it was basically an excuse for each of them to evade hard answers left & right, and say whatever they want to by talking over the other person. obama did better with it, by picking up on specific language mccain was using and trying to follow a train of thought, but mccain was all over the place--he just tried to control the tone by saying random negative or positive things, thinking of different ways to get catch-phrases in. it's just a kiss of death to let them interrupt each other, because then it just becomes a battle of wills.

Now you know that isn't true. Of course I not only tolerate, but even embrace musical imperfections or emotion. God damn it, if I had no margin for error in music, how would I be able to listen to anything but my synthesizer playing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" on demonstration mode? The fact is that Neil Young is the guy with no margin for error: with a voice like his, he permanently dwells on shaky ground. Neil's voice is palatable because it's so often surrounded by really great melodies, harmonies, and musicianship. He's proven more than capable to successfully convey a wide range of emotions, mostly the bad ones, and still sound great doing it. As is the case with Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, John Darnielle, or any other polarizing vocalist you'd like to sub in here, the success of the song is predicated on the other aspects of the production firing on all cylinders: exceptional lyrics and music will not only forgive a multitude of sins, but turn them around into positives. The great sense of despair and wistfulness in "My My, Hey Hey" comes from the harmonic dissonance and sparse instrumentation, and that's where Neil Young shines as a performer and songwriter. Even if Neil were screeching all over the track, which I don't feel he was, the brilliance is in how well the whole thing comes together. "Mellow My Mind" doesn't come together. I mean, there's showing emotion, and then there's this, the kind of shit that gets people booed off the stage or worse at country-western dive bars. In short: it's not artfully sloppy, it's artlessly sloppy. That's all. I can't listen to "Mellow My Mind" without feeling like the whole threadbare quality is either an unnecessary contrivance to "really show the pain" or an inadequate performance that had no business making it to vinyl. I can't listen to "Mellow My Mind." To redeem myself: "New Mama" and "Albuquerque" are good songs. I think it's really just "Mellow My Mind" that I can't abide. nicely put. i don't like that crack in "mellow my mind" but i like the rest of it, which i guess puts me somewhere in the middle. i went on record before about not having any enthusiasm for 'on the beach', but in the past 3 or 4 months i've come around on it, and now it's the one i listen to most often. it's this weird mix of enjoyable stuff and bottomless depression, which i'm finding really endearing right now. the repetitiveness of the lyrics, the sloppy playing...i dunno, i like it. "ambulance blues" i think is very good. "for the turnstiles" is a perfect little spare and scary number. the only one i think doesn't work is "motion pictures"--i don't like young's lower register, and since he never gets out of it on that one, it just sounds really flat and boring.

i saw somebody doing exactly this a few weeks ago. and i was just coming out of werner herzog's 'encounters at the end of the world', which is some fucked-up imagery to begin with. i had no idea what was going on.

yes. and for his creepy-middle-aged-guy sins, he had to sit through the premiere of 'sisterhood of the traveling pants 2'. cross is way up there on my list of tremendously talented people whose work i admire but who i'd hate to meet in real life.

relatives' weddings tend to suck, but i've had great times at weddings of friends.

have the rifftrax guys ever commented on cinematic titanic, or vice versa?

there's 2 woody allens: there's "funny" woody allen, and there's "cliffs notes of great european filmmakers" woody allen. the first i can still enjoy a lot, in the way that i enjoy early beatles material: it's unselfconscious, he knows what he's doing, and his goals are modest. the second woody allen emerges after 'annie hall', and i thought was brilliant when i was in high school. then after a couple years of watching more movies, i realized how much of a shallow poser pseudo-intellectual he is. his characters are all shallow twits, and they rarely get beyond his own narrow upper-east-side-aristocrats-with-no-real-occupations mentality. (this is the main reason why i hate 'manhattan': shallow boring people who think they have important problems.) he's not nearly as deep a thinker as he believes himself to be, and this gets him into trouble a lot. see: 'crimes & misdemeanors', 'interiors', 'another woman', 'match point' (which is the same movie as 'crimes and misdemeanors', but with shitty actors). funny woody allen is good stuff. i love 'sleepers' and 'bullets over broadway', and i remember enjoying 'everyone says i love you'. occasionally he'll be able to successfully mix the 2 personalities into something original and funny. 'annie hall' and 'the purple rose of cairo' are probably the best examples of this.

i'm on my second or third pair of these. been wearing them since early 2005. the ones i have just have a slightly different tongue:

i wonder how long his suicide note was. and if it had footnotes.