Alright, I've Officially Picked My Pony in This Race

The only thing missing was for him to slam the mic to the ground and to rhetorically scream out, "CAN YOU SMELL WHAT BARACK IS COOKING??!!!"
This is a speech he gave on Saturday November 10 in Des Moines. You can feel as his passion and even rage feeds off the crowd who are going out of their damn minds with ecstatic glee.
This video is quite long (20 minutes or so) but it is well worth your time.



Taken from You Tube via Crooks and Liars

"We're not birds, we're a jugband"

Rabid otters are on the attack. Officials warn residents to avoid local jugband performances.

The above posting from Fark reminded me of this:



I don't suppose anyone knows if this was ever released on DVD.

"Por que no te callas?" or "Why won't you shut up?"

There was something refreshing about King Juan Carlos's ability to step in and take control of the situation. Chavez's mic had already been cut as he continued to interrupt Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero by slinging insults about Spain's former Prime Minister Aznar(Zapatero's political counterpoint).
The situation itself doesn't make much sense. Aznar (the former Prime Minister) lost the election in 2003 and wasn't even at the conference. I'm not sure what Chavez was trying to accomplish by even bringing his name up.

This Guy's Not Even Trying Anymore

http://www.newsfollowup.com

Washington Republican Representative Jim Dunn is brought up on sexual harrassment charges. His response was that he was "sure it was very inappropriate, because I do that kind of thing."

Kudos to you Jim Dunn for at least sparing us the bullshit rehab spin.

http://www.komotv.com/news/11042746.html

item taken from:

http://www.fark.com/

My "NFL who gives-a-shit-itus" has been potentially resolved

Under normal circumstances I could care less about the NFL. The problem is that I never really had a team to root for. Initially I tried to be a Bears fan, but that didn't work because really I just wanted them to get done playing so the Cubs could come back on. Then I went on to the Dolphins. That was a bleak tenure. For Christmas one year someone had bought me a Dan Marino Starting Lineup figure, so I assumed that I should like the Dolphins. It didn't last long. Then I went for the Broncos, but that was only in preparation for one day wanting to move to Colorado. It pretty much ended when the Broncos started winning superbowls and I realized that I didn't really give a shit.
I may have finally found a team. Hear me out on this. The only thing that I have been hearing about this season is the Colts/Patriots match-up that took place yesterday. I have been hearing about this throw down since September and I just wanted the damn thing to be over so my sportscast podcasters would talk about something else (like if the Cubs get a shortstop what are they going to do with Theriot). As the anticipation built up I really got tired of hearing about the Patriots, specifically. As the day got even closer I found myself really wanting the Colts to win, just because I was tired of hearing about the Patriots.
This morning I woke up and immediately checked the sports section hoping that the Colts had slaughtered the Patriots. They didn't, but they only lost by 4. After reading the articles I scrolled down to read the comments which were littered with Patriots lovers and Colts haters. In fact on the Fox Sports article, I couldn't find a single comment in support of the Colts. So, dammit that's where I go. I realize that I'm a Johnny-Come-Lately and am one season behind in relishing in my team's championship win, but I am here and now declaring myself a Colts fan. Somebody has to.
(yea Colts)

Barack Obama on SNL

This past summer I went to see Barack Obama speak in Iowa. It was one of the better speeches that I have seen. He was quick and to the point. There wasn't much by way of intentional pandering or speech scripted applause moments. Afterwards he took questions from the crowd. Many of the questions were designed to engage him in debate or clarification of previous statements, he handled it all rapidly and succinctly, including a response for the woman who tried to shout him down by comparing his stance on certain issues to Hillary's and then telling him that she was a better candidate.

I haven't yet decided on who I would have voted for in the upcoming caucus in January (which is moot point since I won't in Iowa to particpate this year), but each time I see and hear Barack, I like him more and more.

c/o A. Moritz

Kanye West - "Can't Tell Me Nothing"

I first saw this video with my brother in Chicago. The addition of both Zack Galifinakis and Will Oldham is within itself pure genius. Galifinakis used to have a talk show which was good, but impossible to find because they kept changing the times. Some of it is available on You Tube. Will Oldham is a singer-songwriter who performs as Will Oldham, Palace and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.

The End of the World

Do Nihilists Cry? (Sure Al Can Mend the Hole in the Sky, but Can He Mend the Hollow in my Sigh?)

Postings have been few and far between lately. Sorry.

The Cubs lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Arizona Diamondbacks. I guess it doesn’t matter…we all knew they would.

It’s October in Spain and it is sunny and warm. Leaves don’t fall, pretty soon they won’t grow anymore either. Valencia is soon to be suffering from nearly 80% ground surface desertification. They are also building a Formula One track, I think people are more excited about that than they are concerned about the former.

I’ve been listening to Stephen Stills’s new/old album Just Roll Tape: April 26, 1968. I like it, it’s raw and stripped down. It’s just him and his acoustic guitar. The story as I understand it, he was working on a Judy Collins album and she had wrapped it up with a few hours left over on her studio rental. Stills used the rest of her time to record some of his own tracks. In 1978 the studio was being torn down and an engineer was given free reign to whatever tapes were left in the studio. He found a reels with Stills’s name on them. He salvaged them and turned them over to Gram Nash, who turned them over to Stephen Stills and convinced him to release them. Again as I understand it these are the earliest recordings of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, “Black Queen”, “Helplessly Hoping” and “Wooden Ships”.

I’ve also been listening to Iron and Wine’s new album The Shepherd’s Dog. It’s an allegory for something, I just haven’t put it together yet.

I’ve never read The Scarlet Letter. I’m reading that now. I just finished The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I don’t read enough female authors. My wife also complains that I don’t listen to enough female musicians…I think she’s right.

I just signed up for lastfm.com you can check out my page at http://www.last.fm/user/InnaSenseAbroad/

Emilio came and took away all of the furniture. I’m supposed to throw away the rest. Those seem like perfectly good chairs to me, but what the hell; they’re not mine. They’re kind of wobbly, but so is the new furniture I have spent the last week putting together. I got a hot dog from Ikea, they put it together for me.

They’re going to build an Ikea in Valencia next year. People are excited about that, but not as excited as they are about the Formula One track.

By the way if you are ever in Valencia, stop by Amsterdam Records in Nuevo Centro. Buy something, keep him in business. http://www.arrakis.es/~jvitoria/Amsterdam/

Hey Frankie, thanks for the beer. http://www.myspace.com/cafeinfinito

The Bluetones play Slight Return on Later with Jools Holland

*** note the camera pulling away from ZZ Top as it pans over to The Bluetones.

ZZ Top playing Cheap Sunglasses on The Old Grey Whistle Test (1980)

Yo La Tengo is taken to Rock School by Mr. Show (1997)

www.toothpastefordinner.com

Max Roach (1924-2007)

Revolutionary jazz drummer Max Roach passed away a few weeks ago. Incidentally he died on the same date did Elvis Presely, but I don't imagine that they will be rolling out honorary candy bars in his absence. (Over the summer Reese's saw the release of a Reese's Peanut Butter and Banana Cup in honor of Elvis being dead for 30 years. Apparently Elvis was a big peanut butter and banana sandwhich fan, as to the candy bar...it wasn't a pleasant experience.)
Max Roach is known for his work with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

There is an article eulogizing him in Slate by Fred Kaplan which refers to a 7 minute hi-hat solo he did on The Tonight Show when Bill Cosby was guest hosting. Here he is with bassist Tommy Potter.

Naked Hoops

Yard Fitness commerical
(c/o D. Ryan)

Trunk Monkey

The Trunk Monkey Compilation

(c/o D. Ryan)

Something about Grocery Stores (Here vs. There)

Several years ago I lived in Cambridge, England as part of a college exchange program. More than the history and culture of my surroundings, I was drawn in by the contents of the local grocery stores. I was amazed at the options of flavors available to me that I had spent 20 years unaware of. Apparently there are fruits called currant and they come in red and black. To this day I have no idea what they are, but they make for a tasty candy flavor. There was also a grapefruit flavored soda called Lilt that I enjoyed. In retrospect it tasted horrible, but at the time it was a soda flavor I had yet to experience and that was good enough for me. I live in Spain now and I am just as intrigued by the supermarkets as I was then. Having had worked in a grocery for 4 years from the age of 14 on, there is a certain familiarity and comfort to the structure and organization of a grocery store. There is also something to be said for culturally reading a country by the products on the shelves.



I drink a lot of milk, but I am particular to what kind of milk I will drink. I prefer it to be fresh and in the neighborhood of 1%-2%. In Spain fresh milk can be a chore to come by. I have so far found only two supermarkets that carry it (Consum and Carrefour). The choices available to me are 2% and whole, yet neither of these is kept on the shelves in abundance leaving me with milk every other time I go to the store. When this happens my other option is milk in a box. This is “milk” that is capable of sitting on a shelf unopened for months, quite possibly for years. It has a distinctive buttery taste and it is thinner than milk should be (skim milk, take notice). When I had first moved to Spain, before I discovered that fresh milk was available, I had quit drinking it because I couldn’t bring myself around to drinking aged, warm boxed milk. I did give it a fair chance, it was necessary for my cereal. What I would do is try to eat my cereal without ever actually letting the spoon or the milk touch the tip of my tongue. I would do all the necessary chewing and salival break down processing on the back of my tongue where I could only catch a hint of the sabor. After a while this got to be difficult and ridiculous, so I gave up cereal for toast. It was to my delight when I discovered fresh milk and was able to bring cereal back into my morning routine. This of course brought me to my next dilemma, variety.



I could easily get a different type of cereal every time I go to the grocery store and not repeat myself for a year. To walk down the cereal aisle of Hy-Vee or Cub Foods is a testament to the creative genius of man. There are chocolate and strawberry flavored cereals. There are cereals with chunks of chocolate or strawberries in them. Peanut butter, honey, apple, blueberry, cinnamon, chocolate chip cookies and yogurt all have their own cereals. From Mr. J.H. Kellogg to Mr. C. Crunch cereal has been on the cutting edge of just how far Americans are willing to go in the quest for variety. We will eat cereal that tastes like cinnamon toast. We will eat cereal that comes from invented fruit (the crunchberry). Yet, we do have our limits. For instance we will not eat orange juice flavored cereal (OJ Crunch and Orange Blossom Cereal). Nor will we eat ice-cream flavored cereal (Ice Cream Jones). In Spain, I have found is not nearly so adventurous. Variety for me there means one month I eat Special K from the white box and the next month I eat Special K from the red box.




Variety, however, may have gotten out of hand in the United States. Once upon a time flavors were familiar. My favorite as a child was always cherry and cherry was always red. In my teen years cherry was overtaken by grape in the Great Taste Bud Wars and grape was purple. The surprise victor in the end was lime, much to the chagrin of my former self for whom anything green went straight to the garbage or the dog. Color/flavor identification however seems to be a thing of the past, firmly placed in the ground by the likes of Gatorade (purple = Riptide Rush???) and other assorted sports drinks. In Spain, as I have opined before (“Lamentation of the Peanut Butter Kit Kat”, September 9, 2006), the only choice of flavors are generally lemon or orange (this includes Gatorade).




Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser goes into detail about the process of creating artificial flavors and the fact that cherry flavored anything has nothing to do with anything cherry related. Tastes and smells are all manufactured in a factory in New Jersey reminiscent of the drop off point from Being John Malkovich’s brain (I don’t remember if that is referenced in Schlosser’s book or if that was just the image that came into my head when I read it). The fact that they have limited their artificial flavor chemical intake to only those chemicals used in lemon and orange might have something to do with the fact that the life expectancy of the average Spaniard is 2.2 years greater than the average American.
I have come to terms with the simplicity of grocery shopping in Spain. What was at one time a journey has since become run-through. I will admit to boredom with certain items, but this isn’t always a bad thing. I rarely drink soda anymore. It has been replaced by soda water with a lime. This wasn’t a health conscious decision; I had simply gotten bored with Coke or Fanta and wanted something different. By the same token the colorful double stuffed Oreo cookies are no longer available to me. They have been replaced by packets of four single stuffed. Where at one time I could unconsciously gorge myself on an unlimited number of cookies and a large glass of milk has now been restricted to four and Oreos lack in interior sugary white stuff, they make up for in price. They aren’t cheap in the States, but they are expensive here. It’s easier to just forgo the cookie in general.




Opportunities abound in the American supermarket. Surrounded by choices, varieties and flavors one is required to be an active participant in the shopping experience, if only to be sure that the correct items are being placed in the cart. I am generalizing here, but there is the occasional Spanish kid who believes that he will grow up to be a soccer star. But this is few and far between compared to the current generation of “Pimp My Ride”, film my 16th birthday party, reality TV whoring American youth. I see this in my day to day interaction with Spanish high school students as I saw this a few years ago in my day-to-day interaction with American high school students. I see this when I watch Spanish television which is content to talk about the stars and less concerned about being one of them. I see this in the grocery stores where the flavors and smells remain familiar; yellow means lemon and orange means orange. There is no room for red or purple, especially if it is masking as something that it is not.




http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-guide.html

The Five Stages of Death (as illustrated by Giraffe from Robot Chicken)

Brief Explanation Followed by a Brief Absence

I had hoped to finish my Grocery Store bit before this week, but due to extenuating circumstances, it wasn't to be. It will be finished, but it won't be for a few weeks. I'm off to Athens for a spell and then I will return Stateside for a few months.

Something About Grocery Stores (The Prequel)

My first job was detasseling. Anyone from Iowa will know what I’m talking about. I’m not really sure what detasseling is, or it’s purpose, I think that it is essentially corn castration.. The job entails walking up and down acres of cornrows, pulling the tassel off of the corn stalk. Some people would wear gloves to avoid the cuts on the hands that the corn fibres left behind. The seasoned detasslers knew that the gloves just slowed you down. Much of the time the corn is either too high or you are moving too fast to stop and look down for the tassel. Successful detasseling relies on the feel for the tassel and then moving on.



Detasselers live in two worlds. Organized detasseling is set up through various seed corn and corn hybrid companies like Pioneer or DeKalb. The beauty of working for an organized company is that you are guaranteed a paycheck and transportation to and from the field is provided. The downside is, it’s organized and I’m not much of a team player. I prefer to not have some crew boss barking at me to go faster or shattering my already fragile ego based on corn shucking sloppiness.
Freelance detasseling is a pretty sweet gig if you have the motivation to stick with it. Freelance essentially means that you rent out an acre or so (depending on how many are involved) and you are paid based on completion. When you work or how fast you work is entirely up to you.



I was probably about 14 years old when A, M and myself freelanced an acre or so of corn. We had already calculated the amount of money we would earn from our labours and all of the band equipment that we were going to by (we had a pretty stellar band going for a while…nobody could murder a Megadeth song like we could.). I don’t know if I was aware of Ampeg Amps at this time, but if I was I was probably going to buy an Ampeg half stack or something equally tantalizing.
To top it all off the land we were to be working was outside of A´s sister´s farm about 2 and half hours from home. This of course meant that we would be staying with his sister in a big ol´ farmhouse for a few weeks. We had big plans of unsupervised rural debauchery.
What we hadn’t counted on of course was getting our asses kicked by the amount of work we had taken on, the blistering Iowa sun and the stifling Iowa humidity. What I hadn’t mentioned earlier in the organized vs. freelance debate is that if you get on a good organized crew, you would often do your detasseling from a combine-like machine where you would hang from a basket above the corn. This meant no walking. There were no machines in freelance (unless you brought your own). I think we gave it a fair go for about two days.




Day one was solid work and no talking. We got up and went to work at 4am. A’s sister had brought some lunch out for us, which we wolfed down and immediately got back to work going straight on through until the punishment of the midday sun forced us out. We walked back that first day promising to return and get a few more hours in after dinner (Iowa dinners are generally between 6 and 7 pm). It was a good idea, except for our inability to detassel while asleep. None of us was able to make it through dinner without shaking off unconsciousness. Needless to say by 7.30 we were done for.
The enthusiasm had died by the next morning. Four a.m. was a bit of a joke and we slept through until 8 or 9 when A’s sister had to physically force us out of bed. We dawdled all the way to the field secretly hoping that we had been visited by the legendary corncob fairy the night before. There was no such luck. In fact after we had gotten started, it appeared that several of the stalks had grown their tops back. We were again later greeted with a delivered homemade lunch, which we ate a little slower than the day before. Again by midday we were flushed from the fields by the thrushing of the sun. On the way home there was no talk of going back later that night. In fact there was no talking at all.
Having been disenchanted at the lack of progress from the day before, we got up at 4 am again on the third day. The lack of conversation had also carried over from the previous day. We ate our breakfast without speaking and trudged back to the field without speaking. We got to the field, and again without speaking, we got to work.
I don’t remember how it started or who exactly started it, but either M or A began running across the field against the rows taking out large numbers of cornstalks with him. He ran right by me laughing and yelling something. Shortly thereafter came the other one (M or A) depending on who the first passerby was, swearing and shouting. When I finally caught up to them A was pushing M’s face into the fertile black soil. I remember feeling nonchalant about the whole thing. As I looked around at the fallen corn stalks, it struck me as simply less corn that I would need to detassel later. Until somehow, in what can best be described as a rolling cartoonish dust cloud of fighting engulfed me and I was pulled into the kicking, swearing, poking and punching.



It was eventually broken up by the arrival of A’s mother, who was stopping be to check up on her “little farmers”. We abruptly came to our senses noticing for the first time the destruction we had caused. In our thrashing about we had managed to create our own set of crop circles amongst the backdrop of the rolling Iowa hills.
That fight, as it turned out, was going to cost us money. It was later explained to that we would have to continue detasseling the field, but we were going to be receiving far less money than we had initially been promised. This was a let down that lead to a half-assed job. The visions of a rocking home studio gave way to the reality of just simply coming out of this and not having to pay the farmer for letting us toil in his fields. In the end we did such a half-assed job that I had been told later that A’s mother, sister and sister’s husband had gone out to finish up what we couldn’t be bothered to worry about. I never saw any money.



The band had suffered as well. Because A was the band leader, (he was the drummer and we had to play at his house) he kicked M out for getting us in trouble. This ultimately was the demise of the band. It does end on a happy note as A and M reformed a new band a week or so later, but they forgot to call me and accidentally called another bass player instead. I understood, those things happened sometimes.


Stay tuned for Part 2: The Part Where I Actually Talk About Grocery Stores