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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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July 26, 2003
Carl Jung's birthday
Carl Jung was born 128 years ago today, on July 26, 1875.
He created analytic psychology. His work seems to me to be more philosophy than clinical psychology. His ideas about archetypes and collective unconscious seem more relevant and widespread year after year.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 07:09:00 PM
Gracie Allen's birthday
Gracie Allen was born 108 years ago today, on July 26, 1895.
Most of us know George Burns' name much better than his wife's, but that's mostly just because he lived a lot longer. In fact, she was really the funny one. Burns always insisted that SHE was the one who made them famous, and he was mostly along for the ride. Partly this statement could be seen as the loving devotion of a husband.
Looking at old Burns and Allen shows, though, there's some substantial element of truth in his praise. Gracie had a very sharp mind to be able to play so silly. Her crazy riffs had their own sublime logic that no one else could duplicate.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 05:27:00 PM
William Jennings Bryan's one worthwhile achievment
William Jennings Bryan died 78 years ago today, July 26, 1925. One time senator and even presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan famously dropped over dead just days after the Pyrrhic victory of being the winning prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.
This was detailed in slightly fictionalized form in Inherit the Wind. Bryan's doppleganger in the movie rates as one of my top movie villains.
Now, this guy was just shit, another hack demagogue politician. I wouldn't notice much less write about him.
One little accomplishment, however, partly redeems his life: his death inspired HL Mencken to write an obituary that might be the most beautifully caustic obit ever written, which concludes:
Bryan was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. His career brought him in contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignormuses. It was hard to believe, watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.
I would like get it down that cold someday.
Of course, hearing of the arrest in Tennesse, Mencken famously hooked the accused up with a fancy shyster, and personally rushed south to cover the trial/mock the rednecks. Gene Kelly played his character in the movie.
Sparking all that is an above average accomplishment for someone of Bryan's ilk, even if it was unintentional. This sudden death bit did graciously give Mencken a good punchline for the whole Scopes thing. That's one worthwhile achievement.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 05:27:00 AM
Mary Jo Kopechne's birthday
Born July 26, 1940 Mary Jo Kopechne would be 63 today if she hadn't gone driving with Ted Kennedy.
Ah, yes, the lion of the senate.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 05:21:00 AM
Aldous Huxley's birthday
Take your happy pills and celebrate: Aldous Huxley was born 109 years ago today, July 26, 1894.
Brave New World may be the best dystopian novel not written by George Orwell. The "soma" happy drug seems particularly prescient in the post-Prozac era.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 04:18:00 AM
Stanley Kubrick's birthday
Stanley Kubrick was born 75 years ago today, on July 26, 1928.
His great movies and intellectual rigor are well known. The precise chess-player's logic of, say, Dr. Strangelove impresses me as much as the brutal humor. He was dead on in the logic of why such a scenario would IN FACT have to be possible, as crazy as it was laid out to be.
His last finished film got mediocre to weak reviews, and a disappointing box office- especially considering the big name stars involved. I predict, however, that Eyes Wide Shut will be regarded as a classic 20 years from now.
Also not getting proper credit yet, the Kubrick mind can be seen all through Artificial Intelligence. Spielberg may have been the one to actually end up making the movie, but it looks to me much more like the thinking of Kubrick than of Spielberg. Either way, it's brilliant and terribly underrated. Again, it will be much more highly regarded in 20 years. Hear me now, believe me later.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 04:14:00 AM
Mick Jagger turns 60
Insert your own wheelchair joke here
Born July 26, 1943, Mick Jagger turns 60 today, and still gathers no moss. Happy #60! Insert your own old man rock singer/wheelchair joke here.
One advantage for Mick is that blues guys age better than pop guys. The older and more weathered he looks and sounds, the better. Plus, Mick sure didn't get rich because of his good looks in the first place.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 04:13:00 AM
The vote for ex-cons
Matt Welch has a column up on the Reason website about the issue of voting rights for ex-felons. Giving or recognizing voting rights for ex-cons would tend to help the Democrat Party. I do hate that, obviously, as any decent person would.
However, it is necessary. By what right can we expect someone to obey laws and pay taxes where they haven't had even a lousy stinking vote in picking those who make the laws?
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 03:31:00 AM
Are we thuggish enough?
I fear that we are not being violent enough in Iraq and the Middle East generally. I'm a nice guy- really. I'm not particularly violent, certainly not sadistic or cruel. I try to play nice wherever possible.
However, I fear that we have not sufficiently gotten the message through to our enemies that the US is not to be trifled with. Sure, we pretty well walked right through the Taliban and the Baath party machinery.
Thing is, our military was so precise and controlled in getting just the most necessary military targets that a lot of these people haven't figured out that they are beaten. By any objective standard, the US beat the stuffing out of their regimes. However, some of the people are in denial. Epistemology is not a strong suite in Arab culture.
People were as wicked and more in Germany and Japan during WWII. Yet after we beat them, we didn't have guerilla warfare against our soldiers. They changed their tunes right quick like, and were acting like decent civilized countries again in a fairly short order.
Of course, we just goddam destroyed their countries. We firebombed Dresden. Then of course, there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We devastated them past any point where anyone could trick themselves into thinking they had any choice other than repentance and capitulation.
I have no desire to nuke Baghdad, or anyplace else. However, if we dick around with these Muslim extremists long enough, eventually some of them are going to throw something really nasty at us. If we get 20 or 30 thousand people (or more) killed with poison gas in Atlanta or Kansas City, something on the order of nuclear retaliation will be inevitable.
We have to break through the mental and social dysfunctions of all these cultures enough for them to get the message that you can't try to kill Americans or have anything to do with those so inclined. We're not doing them any favors by playing nice if it ends up with us having to hit them 10 times worse down the road. Yet we've got people arguing that we're being too rough just by releasing pictures of the dead Hussein boys.
Are we getting through? The efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have certainly changed the behavior of Uday and Qusay Hussein, among other nasty customers. There are 10s of thousands of jackasses who have been so neutralized.
We've also had some other significant ripple effects coming out of our efforts to date. Syria has quieted down. The Iranian government is at least pretending to be helpful- though they are likely responsible for a good portion of the jackasses shooting at US now in Iraq. Even the Palestenians are becoming a little more amenable to reason.
Still, there are people shooting at our troops in Iraq. Still there are people planning more attacks on US civillians. Can we get sufficient understanding and co-operation from their countrymen to stop them before they perpetrate evil bad enough that it will cause US to have to get all Old Testament?
What is the least amount of killing and destruction that will put the fear of Yahweh into our enemies? That's the $64,000 question.
posted by Al at 7/26/2003 03:25:00 AM
July 25, 2003
Draft Resistance Org
On the one hand, I support the war on terror and specifically the war in Iraq.
On the other hand, I vehemently oppose a military draft. The government shouldn't be getting into wars that they can't convince people to voluntarily fight. That makes an important check on the government.
We haven't had an actual military draft in years. However, we STILL have draft registration. [Thank you, Jimmy Carter.]
An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, check out Draft Resistance Org.
The first line on their site just gives me a little thrill: "This site is a crime against the Military Selective Service Act."
Sweet.
posted by Al at 7/25/2003 03:38:00 AM
July 22, 2003
George Clinton's birthday
Born July 22, 1941, George Clinton turns 62 today. Time for some GC birthday partying. Fathers, lock up your daughters; farmers, lock up your goats.
I won't profess high authority on Parliament and Funkadelic and all the other groovy things Mr. Clinton has done. However, even Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk would have to know that Clinton has been the freakiest funkin' party master going for many decades.
My personal pick in the repertoire has been Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome, but what do I know? It's all good.
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posted by Al at 7/22/2003 11:51:00 PM
Hell's population increases by 2
The US military has verifiably killed Uday and Qusay Hussein.
[GO HERE for the CNN story with the actual pictures of the Hussein boys. Look for the box labeled "US GOVERNMENT PHOTOS" to get the pop up box with the pics.]
First of all, I send MY CONDOLENCES to their families.
It's a good day to be an Iraqi. Much celebratory gunfire on news of the deaths of #2 and 3 on the food chain o' Iraqi evil.
Yet interestingly, Chris Matthews still considers the story with the 16 words in the SOTU about Hussein seeking African uranium to be his main lead Hardball story. That Bush's words turn out to be true and accurate does not dissuade Matthews from thinking this a huge scandal.
It's odd to me that a knowledgeable journalist like Mattthews would think that day 12 or more of this half-assed excuse for a scandal was a more significant story than today absolutely killing two of the three biggest dickheads in the whole country.
I don't even mean this as a criticism of Mr. Matthews. He seems to genuinely believe this one marginally questionable sentence in this six month old speech is some awful wrongdoing. No kind of success on the battlefield, nor any reasonable explanation dissuade him, or many liberals.
Still, if you can't find cause for celebration in the demise of nasty bitches like the Hussein boys, then you've got your priorities all f'd up.
posted by Al at 7/22/2003 11:50:00 PM
July 21, 2003
Don Knott's birthday
Don Knotts was born July 21, 1924. Happy #79!!!
Don Knotts developed his basic personnae working on Steve Allen's show as the Nervous Guy. He made an outstanding cameo as a notably neurotic army psychologist in Andy Griffith's 1958 early career hit No Time for Sergeants.
This of course led to his casting as Barney Fife in The Andy Griffith Show in 1960, and into the legend books of our culture. Make no mistake, Barney's fidgeting, incompetent and shame driven (but good hearted) deputy was fully as integral to the success of the show as Andy. Indeed, he was a considerably more interesting character, and nobody could have done it like Don. The show didn't last long once Hollywood finally lured him away with movie money.
He became one of the biggest names in family movies for a decade or more, though I don't think most of them were really up to his talents.
He actually did surprisingly well as landlord Ralph Furley on Three's Company. That homely aging would-be swinger was a fairly memorable character for such a minor sitcom already several years old.
One late period appearance that perhaps hasn't gotten enough attention was his role as a tv repairman with seeming magic God-like power in Pleasantville. He managed to be just slightly creepy and scary without ever really doing anything harsh.
posted by Al at 7/21/2003 09:34:00 PM
July 20, 2003
Bastards really want my money
From Billboard:
Rhino's upgrade of Elvis Costello's back catalog will continue with a staggering expansion of three early 1980s albums. Due Sept. 9 are two-disc versions of 1980's "Get Happy," 1981's "Trust" and 1983's "Punch the Clock."
A total of 73 additional tracks have been added across the three titles, which only comprised 47 songs in their original incarnation.
This constitutes quite a few more bonus tracks apiece than the generous Rykodisc re-issues of these albums a few years ago.
Even better, they put all the bonus stuff onto a separate disc. I'm happy to see the original order and content of the albums intact. I'm happy to get the bonus material, but it's good to have it separated.
Plus, we're expecting extensive new Elvis penned liner notes.
Note that all this bonus material and extensive liner notes and packaging might be just the kind of things to cause people to go out and buy factory copies even of albums they've already bought. Indeed, it'd probably make me sick to think how many copies just of Trust I've bought over time.
I swear this will be the last time I buy this album.
posted by Al at 7/20/2003 11:56:00 PM
Tiny, ain't it?
Oh the prestige. I'm proud to report that the #1 result of a Google search for "Kurt Cobain had a small penis" is a page of mine. Mom would be SO proud.
I'll note that I found this by following backwards from my referrer logs. I did not go looking for such a thing.
Nor do I wish to speculate what would cause someone to be doing such a search.
posted by Al at 7/20/2003 11:55:00 PM
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