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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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March 01, 2003
Justice Department needs their budget cut
Even though I'm a lifelong big-L Libertarian, I've tried to be sympathetic to the Bush administration and Ashcroft's Justice Department. I'm not real thrilled about everything they do, but they have a tough and critical job to do in tracking down terrorists and preventing further and even worse attacks than 9/11. Idiots who carry on about Ashcroft being a "fascist" or a "nazi" get nothing but the back of my hand.
However, even trying to be sympathetic I must come to the conclusion that the Justice Department simply has TOO MUCH money and manpower, and badly needs to have their budget cut. I reach this conclusion on the basis of THIS STORY and THIS STORY.
This ISOnews story particularly un-thrills me. It strikes me especially wrong to see the feds seize control of a website and turn it into a government propoganda site. They justified this on the basis that the owner trafficked in a few hundred computer chips the government declared illegal on the basis that they could be used to play bootlegged video games. Bogus, bogus, bogus. This site featured speech that the feds (or more particularly the corporations that fund the campaigns of the sponsoring congressmen) didn't like, so they found an excuse to squish it.
The bong story doesn't much impress me either. Again, the feds have seized websites they don't like, and posted government propaganda messages.
"The illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without the knowledge of their families," Ashcroft said. What a load of crap. A website doesn't invade your home. You can go look up a site that sells water pipes. That does not constitute any form of "invasion." Even worse: "People selling drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers," said John Brown, acting DEA chief. "They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide." Yup, selling pipes is the same thing as being a mob hitman. Can't argue against that.
These stories show pretty bad behavior from the Justice Department in their own right. They are even much worse, however, in light of the problem of terrorism. Mother humping Al Qaeda operatives are apparently absolutely planning an attack on Pearl Harbor -besides their other ongoing efforts- yet John Ashcroft thinks these websites are just (much less worthwhile) uses of limited federal manpower.
How many millions of dollars and thousands of man hours went into these efforts? Obviously they've got more than sufficient resources for everything related to the war on terror. If they've got money to waste on this kind of nonsense, then they have too much money, and they need their budget cut.
posted by Al at 3/01/2003 09:34:00 PM
February 28, 2003
YOU are the last DJ
God love Tom Petty. He's created one of the greatest recorded legacies of anyone in the rock music tradition. Even though it hasn't sold much, the title song in particular of his newest album, "The Last DJ" will be considered a classic.
I respectfully suggest that Tom has the wrong idea here, though. This is not a musical argument. It's an outstanding, catchy song. It has a strong emotional content. Structurally and emotionally, the song rings true.
However, Mr. Petty perhaps doesn't quite get the modern world. The point of the song is that it is a elegy for the last independent voice, which is finally being squished by the establishment.
there goes the last dj
who plays what he wants to play
and says what he wants to say
hey, hey, hey
there goes your freedom of choice
there goes the last human voice
there goes the last dj
This does not jibe with my experience, nor that of most Americans, at least. We have more freedom of choice in most things than ever, particularly media.
I for one have never had near the access to more different music than in the last couple of years. The advent of Napster and Kazaa and CD burners give us more choices than ever before, especially in relatively isolated rural areas.
Satellite tv offers us HUNDREDS of choices of programming, not the three networks of my childhood. There's usually something worth watching on cable, if only by accident. Also, satellite and cable tv offer vastly underappreciated music programming, dozens and dozens of channels of all kinds of music -with no damned DJ yammering on or even commercials. Hell, I can listen to commercial free Hawaiian music 24/7 off the satellite.
I know I didn't have anything like this kind of choice when I was in high school 20 odd years ago. The 16 year old AL would have KILLED to have access to music the way I do now. I remember what a big deal it was that the local Danner's department store in Rushville actually stocked an 8-track copy of Sgt. Pepper's. Wow- an album not by Kenny Rogers or the Bee Gees! If you'd told me that I'd be able to sit in my room and conjure up pictures and album titles and reviews, and then just order nearly any commercially available album [or movie] in the world on a credit card for delivery to my door- well, I'd have probably just creamed my jeans.
Now, apparently Clear Channel does own every commercial radio station in the country. I'll grant Mr. Petty that. Presumably Montgomery Burns owns Clear Channel and carefully programs their stations to make you extra stupid or something.
Which may be the case, but so what? I for one don't give a rat's ass about commercial radio. I haven't spent this much money on CDs for all these years to listen to whatever random crap some marketing guy in Jersey picked out to pimp to the teenagers this week. Commercial radio becomes less and less critical to the dissemination of music by the day.
Tom Petty famously went to bat for consumers aka his fans when his new, now classic Hard Promises album was slated to be one of the first albums to carry the newly jacked up $9.98 list. He went as far as having an album cover photo shot with a box of LPs marked for $8.98, making it basically politically impossible for the record company to carry out their evil scheme. This nearly quarter century old controversy probably was still resounding in his mind when he wrote:
all the boys upstairs want to see
how much you'll pay for
what you used to get for free
This part of the song particularly does not ring true today, though. The boys upstairs may WANT to figure out better ways to rape the consumer, but they're fighting a losing battle. What with Napster and CD burners, they're struggling with figuring out how to keep us paying the price for what they've been use to screwing us for. Now that we're getting used to burning CDs ourselves, the purely abusive nature of seriously demanding that people pay $15+ for a 10 cent disc ain't looking so good. We may pay some premium to buy factory CDs in order to get nice printed jackets, a full professional quality product, to save fooling around with downloading and slinging files, and just to blend in with society and see that everyone gets paid.
Let's not get stupid though, Mr. Record Dude. Your prices get TOO stupid, we CAN just buy one copy and pass it around amongst friends, or download the damned overpriced things FOR FREE from the net. You can't stop us. You're fighting a losing battle. At this point, people do in fact have the power.
In Tom Petty's prime days, we couldn't make our own records. If we wanted music, we had to buy their plastic. We don't now. The record companies can work with the consumers, or they can get swept away. The bastards can't BUY enough congressmen and judges to stop us. Ha!
Indeed, there are more people out speaking their minds for public consumption than ever before. How many MILLIONS of people have websites now?
well, he got him a station
down in mexico
sometimes it'll kinda come in
Well, if the guy would just invest a modest few bucks on some decent server connections, he could make that sucker available in full digital worldwide 24/7. Indeed, before long it'll be so cheap and easy that everyone can have their own custom internet radio station running off a hard drive of mp3s on their desktop pc and beaming down to your car via satellite link -and coming across to anyone else who wants to join the flow. Brothers and sisters, YOU are the last dj.
Viva the last DJ!
posted by Al at 2/28/2003 10:21:00 PM
The Shield
THE CONSCIENCE GETS IT WRONG
[Morethings index for The Shield]
Season 2, Episode 8 �Scar Tissue�
Air date: 2-25-03
Detective Claudette Wyms most generally acts as the conscience of the show. Young Julien tries to do right, but he�s young and hasn�t faced a lot of the real tests. Aceveda mostly tries to color within the lines, but he�s compromised by his political ambitions. Then of course there is Vic Mackey, who has been known to kill a snitch, much less beat a suspect. This character Claudette, then, was designed to be the fulcrum on the scales of justice.
Indeed, the principle conflict within the station in the second season has come to be NOT the original setup of Mackey versus Aceveda, but Mackey versus Wyms. She knows about everything except his original sin from the �Pilot� episode. Even not knowing that, the conscience has become increasingly skeptical of Vic. He seems to have reached the limits of her ability to abide by the �don�t ask, don�t tell� policy she articulated in the first show. Fair enough.
However, she has arguably gone well over the line in this case. She�s seriously getting up into Vic�s life when she went to work on the estranged wife. �Is that what he told you?� She was purposely and consciously driving a wedge between husband and wife. It�s none of your business between him and the wife. Her claim to be interested simply in their safety doesn�t ring very true. She has to know that Vic is seeing to his own family�s security. She�s looking for goods on Vic. Let�s be honest with ourselves first, and then also with others.
Specifically, I object to her summary scene with Vic. Understanding fully the true basic actual facts of the Armadillo case, and Ronnie getting burned, she renders the judgment of the court of her own conscience by telling Vic �It�s all on you.�
So Vic is officially the goat here? How figure? The �bad thing� that Vic really did in this whole story was offering protection and taking payoffs from Tio, Armadillo�s late business rival. However bad that was or wasn�t, it had nothing to do with Ronnie�s torture session.
No, basically Vic was after Armadillo because the guy was an evil sociopath, responsible for numerous particular gruesome necklacing deaths and some nice kiddie rape for good measure.
As a representative in Vic�s defense in this instance, Vic�s burning of Armadillo was fairly brutal and certainly way over the line legally. Still, take into account the proportionality of Armadillo�s offenses. What Vic did to him was not the tenth part of what he was regularly visiting on other people. Armadillo perfectly well knew this, and indeed turns out to have purposely courted some kind of brutality from Vic, thinking he was purchasing some kind of get-out-of-jail card.
Armadillo burned Ronnie as a message to Vic. Therefore, Armadillo is the bad guy, not Vic. Armadillo declared war on cops who were trying to stop him from killing and raping. He lost.
Claudette Wyms, the voice of conscience, simply made a bad call in declaring Vic Mackey to be responsible for the recent unpleasantness. What was Vic really supposed to do when a truly wicked person like Armadillo comes along? He should have regarded himself as lucky, and as having been treated leniently in that Vic didn�t just goddam kill him instead of merely burning him. Vic does his share of bad things, but not everything is his fault.
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You could even fault Vic for sometimes in the series not being thuggish enough. In �Scar Tissue� he was, as Shane observed, �holding back.� In the pilot of the series, Vic committed a cold blooded murder. Since then, however, he has not absolutely assassinated anyone � even a couple of times when arguably he should have.
He�s restrained by some small burden of guilt that he glancingly references from time to time, such as when he asked his old training partner about having �gone too far.� The old trainer replied something like that going TOO far gets you kicked off the force for brutality, not going far enough will get you killed.
I suppose Vic deserves to feel some guilt over the original sin, but he�s had a couple of cases now that really screamed for assassination. Gilroy shows up at the house threatening MY people and planting a murder weapon in my child�s room, he�d best get where I�ll never, ever find him. I�d consider that self-defense. From that point, my family would not be considered safe as long as this guy was walking around. As a juror, I would absolutely acquit a guy charged with murder under those circumstances.
This case with Armadillo was another. He was not simply a dope dealer, but a uniquely cruel and murderous bastard, clearly the worst customer in the entire run of the series, probably by numbers even worse than Shawn the serial killer. He pretty openly declared war on the Strike Team. Again, here�s a guy who was willing to go after his family. Arguably Vic�s mistake was burning Armadillo rather than just outright killing the satanic bastard.
posted by Al at 2/28/2003 01:58:00 AM
February 24, 2003
Grammy analysis
Well, in fact our Blogcritics awards came out better than the Grammys- except that they got to announce theirs during a three hour network show with a full complement of top talent to perform. Some of the award choices didn't particularly impress me, but they did put on a better than average show, quite watchable.
Norah Jones won nearly every possible category in the awards for 2002. She was the safest, most conservative choice they could have made. She has a nice voice, and she made a very pretty recording of a pretty good song. Frankly though, she made a fairly mediocre, lukewarm album. I want to be kind, cause she's really hot, and serious minded, and seems like a very nice girl. However, I'm having trouble imagining the critical values you'd have to hold to think that THIS of all things was the best song or album of the year. "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." -Revelation 3:16
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Naturally it was nice to see Simon and Garfunkel's reunion at the start of the show. The simple understated presentation with just the two of them was pure class. They both looked older, naturally, and generally more haggard and worn. This only made "The Sound of Silence" even maybe a little convincing than in the old days, and they sure sing as good or better than ever.
*************
The No Doubt performance was outstanding. Neither "Hella Good" nor "Underneath It All" is much of a song, but the whole staging of the thing made the most of the songs. The acrobatic stuff with the ropes really set off the whole production.
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Seeing that Etta James got a special lifetime achievement award or some such, I'd like to recommend a couple of obscure recordings of hers that I just recently discovered. She made a couple of recordings of Randy Newman songs for Chess Records that are just outstanding, "Sail Away" (oh yes) and -even better- "God's Song." They're on her Chess box set, or try hunting them down on the net for instant gratification.
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I'm a marginal fan of the Bee Gees at most, and less than that for NSync. So then, I'm doubly impressed with their a cappella Bee Gees medley. Those boys can actually sing, and the lack of orchestration underscored the high quality of the compositions. I might even hunt down an mp3 of the performance just to listen to.
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Nelly really put on an event worthy performance. "Hot in Herre" would have been a much better choice for Record of the Year than Norah Jones. The big spectacle of the presentation just made it that much cooler. The mixing back and forth with the romantic ballad "Dilemna" turned out to show off both songs in their best light by the contrast. "Dilemna" never much impressed me, but this performance may make me reconsider.
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I probably should express appreciation for the self-restraint of the various Grammy participants for keeping their mouths shut about foreign policy, but I admit to being about half-disappointed. I had anticipated some low-hanging humor fruit, perhaps rating which jackass made the stupidest anti-war statement. Instead, the whole pack of 'em frustrated my humor needs by acting like adults.
The only such commentary struck me as ambiguous. The retard from Limp Bizkit made a quick comment wishing that the "war should go away as quickly as possible." I would assume that this was meant to be an anti-war statement, but it really isn't. The quickest way out is through it. You could take it, then, to mean that we should just do it if we're going to and be done with it.
The only other display was Sheryl Crow's "NO WAR" embroidered on her guitar strap. However, that was largely concealed by her hair. I didn't notice it during the broadcast, but only after Drudge pointed it out.
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Politics aside, that duet she did with Kid Rock was godawful. It had to be the worst excuse for a composition of anything all night. I WANT to like Kid Rock, and I even want to be fair to Crow's music, but it was just a big gaping waste of space.
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The only competiton for a worse song would be Faith Hill with her "Cry" song. Actually, in a certain sense it's not that bad a song. The Crow song just plain sucked; there was nothing there. In contrast, Faith Hill's song was competently written; it had a discernable tune, and something of a hook.
Yet it still SUCKS. Maybe partly it's just not to my taste. Partly it's the sappy orchestration. Partly it is that this sappy MOR adult contemporary crap gets a Grammy as "country" music. Most especially though, the whining tone of the basic emotional content leaves me limp.
Which is saying something, considering the sleazy, tawdry appearance she presented. She looked like a $10 whore hanging out behind the bar, or -more pathetic- some desperate slut anxious to just GIVE it away. Criminy, she must have needed a chisel to get the damned makeup off.
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Springsteen's performance of "The Rising" made me want to slap him. Admittedly, Springsteen soured me on him with every single thing about his crappy The Rising album. Even for that, though, he's supposed to be one the all time great live performers in rock.
Yet this performance struck me as wholly contrived, much like other performances he's made in recent years. He's straining away, making this exaggerated body English, flailing away like he's making a Big Statement. I find it difficult to believe that the guy even in his own mind thinks this song is all that. He was less convincing than a whore in a porno movie thrashing and moaning and checking the clock out of the corner of her eye.
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The singer for Coldplay was also writhing away physically during their performance of "Politik" with the New York Philharmonic, but unlike Bruce they pretty much sold me on the song. I haven't really been struck by the band previously, and I have no idea what the lyrics were. However, the melody, the pulse, the dramatic dynamics of this performance came out pretty convincing. Perhaps they merit closer attention.
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They absolutely did do right by giving Eminem the rap Grammy. He would have been a much more interesting choice for album than Norah Jones, but at least this was a good consolation prize. Certainly he dominated ALL the charts, and made the most compelling hip hop record. He had more worthwhile songs, and a far deeper emotional presence in the national conscience than any other musician. Not that he ain't some kind of messed up puppy, but he's an exceptional performer.
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Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters must be enjoying life. They played Saturday Night Live the night before, and they're playing Letterman's show Monday night. In between, they got a big fat Grammy AND he got to play on the Grammy show with Bruce and Elvis.
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They did finally manage to get the REAL artist of the year on the stage. Elvis Costello didn't get any awards, and he didn't even play his own song. However, he played with Springsteen for a Clash tribute to close the show, performing their best song, "London Calling." Sweet. No matter what kind of Burt Bacharach albums he makes, Elvis has that inner punk there ready to rage away.
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Then, naturally, they gave the album award to Norah Jones. Obviously that award belongs to Elvis, but the voters who think the polite Norah Jones album is great aren't even going to nominate the likes of Elvis.
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You can CLICK HERE to get the list of Grammy winners. You can CLICK HERE and HERE to get the considerably better Blogcritics picks.
Or you can CLICK HERE to get the true and correct list of best songs, and CLICK HERE to get the true and correct list of the best albums.
posted by Al at 2/24/2003 05:35:00 AM
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