Tom Watson

Time Marches On...

My New Year's ritual is spent sitting in the barber's chair under the ministrations of my semi-retired barber, an inveterate stock market player and die-hard Republican who argues persuasively (especially with a straight razor in his hand) that government hand-outs are the tool of the weak. He's worked all his life so someone else can sit on their ass? No sir. Head cocked back, blade scraping my neck, who am I to disagree? (I came within a hair of arguing during my early November haircut, but decided John Kerry wasn't worth it).

The annual tonsorial pleasure was extended - as is usual - by the crowd of other fellas enjoying their New Year's rituals. The place was packed. Manly Italian arias sounded their muted strains in the background. A pair of black-suited undertakers got their thick locks trimmed (the usual "they're dying to get in" asides got their usual guffaws all around) and one 94-year-old man celebrated his December 31st birthday with a cut and a shave. The wait worked in my favor; the atmosphere was soothing, washing away another year's worth of disappointments and putting off (for the present) the coming year's worth of fears.

I flipped through the guilty pleasure barbershop magazines - FHM, Stuff, Playboy, and Maxim - before giving into Time. And its Person of the Year issue. And its obscenity upon the face of American journalism. I speak of course about the faux granite visage of George W. Bush. Nancy Gibbs and John Dickerson are annointers-in-chief, phony and cheap propagandists who would make Pravda controllers proud, a pair of liars and disseminators whose pitiful and pathetic presence brings low everything about the Time brand. There, that's been said. And perhaps better by Matt Taibbi, courtesy of the hawk-like bird man Wolcott:

The "Person of the Year" issue has always been a symphonic tribute to the heroic possibilities of pompous sycophancy, but the pomposity of this year's issue bests by a factor of at least two or three the pomposity of any previous issue. From the Rushmorean cover portrait of Bush (which over the headline "An American Revolutionary" was such a brazen and transparent effort to recall George Washington that it was embarrassing) to the "Why We Fight" black-and-white portraiture of the aggrieved president sitting somberly at the bedside of the war-wounded, this issue is positively hysterical in its iconolatry. One even senses that this avalanche of overwrought power worship is inspired by the very fact of George Bush's being such an obviously unworthy receptacle for such attentions. From beginning to end, the magazine behaves like a man who knocks himself out making an extravagant six-course candlelit dinner for a blow-up doll, in an effort to convince himself he's really in love.

Brilliant. The hagiography of the mediocre, of the fearful, of the failed. My barber might even agree (as so many of my Republican friends do). Person of the year, perhaps. After all, previous "winners" include Charles Lindbergh, Wallis Simpson, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, William Westmoreland, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. As the NRA might say, nice grouping.

Failure of the year, definately. His. Theirs. Ours. Mine.

Our Post-Tsunami World

With more than 115,000 dead, many thousands still missing, millions facing disease and starvation, entire regions in ruins, and several large and important economies teetering - can there be any doubt we've witnessed the catastrophic event of a generation? The inner rumblings of our unstable planet created havoc many times the scale of the man-created 9/11 attacks and the bloody Iraq stand-off. And while we all wasted millions of words on Kerry v. Bush, bloggers are pitifully limited in their post-tsunami roles - linking to online contribution sites, distributing ugly video, wringing our hands, discussing (while bodies still rot unburied) the "blogging response" ... and attacking the Europeans for daring to hint that Americans are cheap.

Ah yes, that American view on the world. This one's not about us, but because we're the world's only superpower, of course it is, in some degree. U.S. bloggers from Jeff Jarvis to Glenn Reynolds reacted with knee-jerk anger at the suggestion by Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, that western nation's are generally "stingy" with their wealth. Damn those Europeans, again - those Frenchies. They're the cheap ones. Well, no. As the New York Times pointed out today, in terms of official overseas aid, the United States fits that description:

We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

And yet I must note that President Bush was entirely correct when - reacting to worldwide criticism over the tiny and tardy response to the tsunami disaster - he maintained that "we're a very generous and kind-hearted nation." As someone who works in the area of organized philanthropy, I can indeed corroborate that remark. The United States is the most philanthropic nation in the history of the world; Americans contribute more of their wealth to causes (nonprofits and religious organizations) than any other nation. American philanthropy was a whopping $241 billion in 2003 (the latest year for available figures), a whopping 2.2 percent of GDP. American giving has gone up every year for the last quarter century, save two - 1987 and 2002, two years in which philanthropy remained generally flat despite horrific economic circumstances.

We also give at every level of society; indeed, although the rich give the most, they generally do not give the largest percentage of their wealth - that distinction belongs to the lower middle class, which - in growing American philanthropic tradition - gives when it hurts. So it's indeed newsworthy when we talk about the American response to the tsunami in the actions of the common folk, who are pouring in millions in online donations to the Red Cross and other relief agencies.

Still. Context is everything. The increased $35 million that Bush has now pledged wouldn't make Scott Boras even take the offer to centerfielder Carlos Beltran, much less consider it - but it is roughly what Randy Johnson can expect in his upcoming contract extension with the Yankees. So our government aid to tsunami victims is about the value of a 41-year-old starter - or half the price of a GOP inaugural. And the $2.5 million raised through Amazon so far? You're talking middle reliever - at best ... in Kansas City.

We are, of course, spending $35 million every few hours in the bloody and endless Iraq slog, which is accomplishing nothing. Hunkered down in vacay mode in Texas, Bush might've recognized the chance for a master counterstroke with the seething Muslim world - by pouring resources into Indonesia, where the region of Aceh and its hard-core militant Islamists were particularly hard hit. (Where's George Marshall when you need him; massive U.S. aid tamped down remnants Nazism and Japanese nationalism in the post-war 1940s). Instead, it's yet another bad story for the rest of the world - another American black eye, another embarassment. I think the Washington Post had it right in its shocking story of the lack of concern in the Bush Administration:

Some foreign policy specialists said Bush's actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. "When that many human beings die -- at the hands of terrorists or nature -- you've got to show that this matters to you, that you care," said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Why is a former President forced to take the lead? Why doesn't this one care - or at least see the opportunity? Steve Gilliard (as always) takes it over the top:

And interrupt his vacation over dead wogs? Are you kidding? The Pollyanna President doesn't ruin his vacation because some brown people drowned. Just because Indonesians will remember our indifference, and they are the largest Muslim nation on earth, hey, shit happens.

But Steve's not wrong. The tsunami disaster is horrific; it numbs the senses and challenges our ability to comprehend the scope of the loss. The President's failure - and ours, after all - is merely sad.

UPDATE: Sensing his political gaffe at last, the President tabs his brother to head up disaster response for the U.S. Says the independent Thai newspaper, The Nation:

Washington is willing to pour money into any undertaking if it benefits US interests directly. If not, then it is a slow boat coming. The situation also brought back to mind the US attitude towards other problems of the recent past. When the Asian economies were brought to their knees in 1997, the US was once again reluctant to help. This kind of consistency will continue to hamper the US in the conduct of its foreign policy.

UPDATE II: Unfortunately, the reaction of Andrew Quinn to international criticism seems to represent a large, knee-jerk, fearful America right-or-wrong attitude among too many of our citizens:

We're helping your citizens because you CANNOT. Be grateful for anything we give you. And don't you DARE say that the U.S. isn't paying its dues while turning around and no doubt criticising our policy of homeland security.

Sad. Insensitive. Closeted. And proof of a permanent victim mentality taking hold in our formerly brave United States. As Jack Grant notes:

Unfortunately, it seems that human nature is inclined more towards the "drama" of the victim rather than the drudgery of thinking in search of a way to achieve at least part of the ultimate goal.

Greetings, Friends!

(With apologies to Roger Angell and Buddy Stein)

Greetings friends! And yes, it’s time
To weave good tidings into rhyme
A wreath of names we drop with gladness
(Even Xanax doesn’t stop our madness!)
To post upon this year-long Weblog
Bake the cookies, spike the egg nog
A Christmas muse inspires this writing,
What TypePad powers, you’ll be indicting.

To spare the trees, lay off the loggers
All praise on high, prolific bloggers
Our soundtrack starts with Handel, man…
And we extol Joe Gandelman
His brain yields wild and hourly harvests
The FCC hates good Jeff Jarvis
Call him Scrooge, I know you will, son…
But investors still dig old Fred Wilson
For daily posts that rock, gosh dern it
We send this card to Susan Mernit
Toast Jason Kottke, he's no phony
Unlike the Grinch-like suits at Sony

November last, we made the choosing
Four more years (with fate's dread oozing)
On left, to find out just what was
We turn upon the Daily Kos
And for malarkey from the right
Glenn Reynolds’  knee jerks every night
Three wise sources - no one’s lapdog
Gilliard, Goddard, and the ProgBlog
Whilst challenging rulings of the civil law, spit
Not upon Jon Strande and the SawPit
And when civil rights becomes your locus
Turn to the obsessed Chervokas

On Lasica, Wolcott, food-loving Gotham Gal
On Dash, on Walsh (you know how to write, pal)
On Jerry, and Aliza, and Howard (no heckler)
And here from the future, we greet Alan Meckler
Yes, post on friends, throw down your marker
On Bowbrick, Umrani, and Pamela Parker
For pols who blog, my friends Tom and Freddy
Election returns strong, liberal and steady
Yule music by Bach, first name Johannes
For blogging competitors, Saint Nick and Calacanis
And to DC’s Wonkette, say what you will (oy!)
The New Year will find her ... posing in Playboy.

At last, we give thanks for all those who foment,
Who argue, who quarrel, who see fit to comment
To Fitz and Tom K., old friends on the right wing
A dose of George W. (ok, that’s a slight zing)
Elizabeth, Elliot, Jackson, and Bruce
Fair liberals, n’er accept a Republican truce
Attack me online and you’ll get the heave-ho
From brother in arms, the screen-writer Steve-o
Without your comments, there’d be a cessation
The whole reason for blogging is fair conversation!

So read on, and post, and say what you feel right…
Merry Christmas to all – trackback, comment, and goodnight!

Pedro, Si

As baseball fans will do - particularly those within the New York and Boston orbit - I was arguing with a friend of mine about who the bigger punk was: Roger Clemens or Pedro Martinez. As a lifelong Mets fan born on the February day in 1962 when pitchers and catchers first reported in orange and blue, I naturally went with Clemens. My friend, a true Yankee fan, gave the nod to Pedro. Easy choices, both - the pyschology of the team uniform triumphs again.

And now Pedro wears that blue and orange. And, it seems, I like the guy - seems I always have. (Well, I certainly enjoyed watching him plunk Yankees, even if he did crack Piazza's wrist four years ago). Today's Times gives me more reasons to admire Pedro, besides the movement on his pitches and his will to win on the mound. Juliet Macur portrays a Pedro Martinez who left his village in the Dominican Republic for major league millions - only to return and plow his money back into his hometown.

I'm a sucker for human interest stories, particularly those with any kind of depth of human emotion - explains my Dickens devotion - and this one smacked me in the gut as I rode Metro-North from Bronxville early this morning. If you love Pedro, read the piece; if you can't stand him, read it and you may change your mind. Writes Macur: "Though Martínez left Manoguayabo, he could have chosen to live anywhere, including one of the island's resort towns. But he stayed in his hometown and improved it." Martinez built a church, he arranged for the roads to be paved, he built dozens of small houses. He has plans for a high school, playing fields, a police station, a library and a health clinic.

What's most fascinating about the story, to me, is that contrary to what we've always read in the sports page - the self-obsession, the cry for respect from teams paying millions - Martinez actually seems to have a clear view of his place in life.

"The whole village was on my shoulders, and I knew that," Martínez said, lifting his arms to the sky. "So when I went on the mound, I felt like a lion fighting for my food because I wasn't fighting for myself. I was fighting for everyone in Manoguayabo."

This is not Roger Clemens of the gated communities and self-obsessed training regimen talking in stilted spoiled athletic cliches. This is a poet:

"Winning the World Series is low on the things that make me happy," Martínez said. "What I really enjoy is giving back to the people here and giving them hope. I want them to use me now while I have this fame."

He grows quiet and looks at the sky. "At my mom's house on the farm, it gets so dark, you look at the stars and you feel like you can just reach out and grab them," he said. "I love her so much and I love this place so much, it hurts. I stay here because I need to find myself again after playing in the States. Here, it's me talking. It's my soul talking."

So yeah, count me as a Pedro Martinez fan. I think this is a terrific move by the Mets, on the field and off the field. And I'll be looking for that No. 45 jersey under the tree.

The Self-Hating Blogger

This is the time of the year for lists - for newspaper and magazine thumb-sucking of high order and long tradition, recycling news into trends and reviews and lists and lists. Lo and behold, the hottest word of the year, according to the denizens of the dusty back offices and rotting cubicle warrens of Mirriam-Webster, is "blog."

Which means, of course, that blogs are yesterday's news. Dead. Unbreathing. Anachronistic folly of the followers. Mere digital entrails. We're talking lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Fury lay buried dead. The crooked crosses and headstones, the spears of the little gate, the barren thorns, the whole deal. The Dead. Another trendline I've followed to the downward side of the peak.

Oh the celebrations are rife, of course. The bloggers - the three million as they say - are smooching under the mistletoe of media misunderstanding. They changed the world in 2004. The bloggers were major forces in the election. They retired poor old Dan Rather. They're clever. They're changing Iraq for the better. The world is watching. Bloggers will 'break news.' The newsmagazines are breathless.

In the words of St. Nick - who is doing wonders for my Amex bill this time of year - ho, ho, freaking ho. Humbug, I say. Are there no prisons? No work-houses?

It's simple, fellas. The most-heavily trod bloggers write about blogs. If you comment on blogs, you're in. (Just like back in the day, when Websites covered Websites). Bloggers blogging blogs - ie, bloggers blogging off. Then there are the sex blogs (covered in this week's NYT magazine), clearly related. The political blogs. And everything else.

Look, we've got personal journals. We've got trade publications.  We've got news indexes. We have opinion and nuanced commentaries and professional writers. But blogs? Dead. Blogs are Websites, folks. The software has made it easier. Now let's fill out the death certificate and move on. And no more blogging about blogs.

And so I'm announcing my retirement as a blogger. This is my last blog post. Thanks for the memories. Blogging audiences are the greatest audiences in the world.

At least until tomorrow - or the next day.

Sponge Bob

It's always winter in Bob Dylan's New York. Cold and snowing and windy, steam rising through the manholes and ice sheeting the sidewalks from the folk clubs and coffeehouses of the Village up to the midtown record company offices; a blast of frost covers Dylan's metropolis at all times. At least it does is his brief, brilliantly written and richly-detailed memoir, Chronicles, Volume One, the first of three planned autobiographical parts by America's great musical poet.

Outside the wind was blowing, straggling cloud wisps, snow whirling in the red lanterned streets, city types scuffling around, bundled up - salesman in rabbit fur earmuffs hawking gimmicks, chestnut vendors, steam rising out of manholes.

Why should New York's chill fascinate a 20-year-old from Minnesota inured to cold weather by the eight-month deep freeze winters of the high midwest? The answer, to me, is that it didn't; rather, its memory fascinates a 64-year-old minstrel uncomfortable in the clothing of "the legendary voice of his generation," but genuinely thrilled to remember a time and place when everything he saw and heard became an indelible footprint in the snow. Dylan's book is an incredibly readable and lyrical portrait of several episodes in his long career, but most spectacularly the short period as arriviste New Yorker, a time when he literally soaked up each and every influence like a sponge - and then turned, twisted, and melded those influences into a rich body of work that changed the artistic landscape itself.

As it happens, I arrived in a suburban New York hospital during a snowstorm in the winter of 1962, when young Robert Zimmerman was getting set to release his first album, Bob Dylan, after his discovery by Columbia A&R man John Hammond, making my lifespan roughly the length of Dylan's recording career. I didn't truly discover Dylan myself until around 1973 when I used a gift certificate won in a raffle to buy Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits in a New Rochelle record shop that still had the old-fashioned listening booths where you could preview the vinyl before you paid.

My 11-year-old's musical tastes in those days pretty much began with the Beatles and ended with Elton John. Dylan changed everything. Yeah, it was a typical greatest hits package - but it had a great cover and came with a poster of Dylan's head and puffed-up locks done up in psychedelic rainbow colors. ('Free poster inside' may have been the point-of-sale gimmick that got me to buy it). By the summertime, I had a guitar - a Sears catalogue acoustic ordered by my grandmother, who saw something musical and encouraged it. Dylan and my guitar (well, guitars now - I've got a bunch) have been with me every since. I usually laugh when music mags tap the "best of" list-making mania, but I found myself in total agreement last week when Rolling Stone argued that Like a Rolling Stone was the greatest rock record of all time. No doubt.

Dylan confesses to several lightning bolt musical moments in Chronicles: from Woody Guthrie, from Robert Johnson, and smaller bolts from established folk singers Dave van der Ronk and Joan Baez. As Jason Chervokas well notes, Dylan recognized in Johnson the organic synthesis of a long musical tradition, of many forms coming together in several, clear, mind-blowing performances of part original, part traditional compositions. This synthesis was also clear to Dylan in Woody Guthrie's music - his embrace of traditional stories based on history, and his melding of the form to tell more modern tales of union-busting, the legal system, poverty, venereal disease, and war.

The young Bob Dylan embraces this synthetic musical creation without really knowing that he was doing it. Dylan was the super cultural sponge of his day and because his work became so widely known, his collection of influences and traditions became the basis of so much of 1960s popular music, and what we've come to regard as rock, folk rock, alternative in the 43 years since he hit the scene in New York. He took everything he heard and saw and read and created literature. Rare is that gift, and indeed it was rare in Dylan's own lifetime. In his 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley last Sunday, Dylan admitted that his time of "perfect creation" was limited to his early 20s, and that since then, while he's done work he is proud  of, the purity and ease of that early artistic expression has been missing.

In Chronicles, Dylan illustrates that contrast with a long episode set in New Orleans - where it's always humid and raining, another intentional thematic weather consistency - a sometimes frustrating recording session for the album Oh Mercy with producer Daniel Lanois. Tired of the road, tired of being the voice of a graying generation touring with the Grateful Dead and doing his hits, tired of trying to live up to the legend, Dylan finds a new path, and some great songs. (It was a time that produced wonderful songs like Dignity and Jokerman, two of my Dylan favorites). It's a rich and evocative passage about an artist in his late 40s, finding a different voice - but with a struggle - and writing songs:

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter. You can write a song anywhere, in a railroad compartment, on a boat, on horseback - it helps to be moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving. I wasn't moving in any of these songs, not externally, anyway. Still I got them down as if I was.

On 60 Minutes, in an otherwise forgettable interview with obvious "icon of a generation" questions from Bradley, Dylan admits with stunning honesty that his early songwriting days are gone, never to be revisited. Does he ever look back at those songs?

I used to. I don't do that anymore. I don't know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written ... You can't do something forever. I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can't do that.

What he can do is write autobiographical prose, quite beautifully. (And yes, there's no doubt that this is a poet's prose - license is taken, time out of mind, to create a cohesive tale. This includes the weather). The crying shame of this book is that there is no index; but perhaps this was a requirement of the author. Chronicles is crammed with references to people, to influences - from wrestler Gorgeous George to guitarist Link Wray to poet Archibald McLeish. Dozens of people. Books, songs, TV shows, and poems. Get the book - it's a great tale. As Dylan says:

Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is not truth on it.

UPDATE: Chronicles makes the NYT's Top 10 books of the year holiday shopping list, courtesy of JD.

UPDATE II: Fred hates Chronicles. "I can’t recommend it really.  It seems like he sat down one day and starting writing and when he was done, he published it." I gotta disagree - and so do those posting comments on Fred's post - the book has a structure, an artist's structure, like one of Dylan's long stories.

Master of War

Make no mistake, if you voted for President Bush, you voted for Donald Rumsfeld, and you upheld the Administration's view on the wisest course in the war against terrorist organizations around the world. You also voted for an attitude about our military services, about our frontline troops, about those from our midst who go overseas to fight and bleed and die. It's a video game attitude, a masters of war attitude, a chess piece mentality. And that attitude had its most naked bearing in Rumsfeld's off-handed and regal response to this question from Army Specialist Thomas Wilson:

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?”

The Defense Secretary - who did not hold the "town hall" meeting in Iraq but in neighboring Kuwait because of the deteriorating security conditions in-country - hesitated and glared like he was looking at a pesky AP reporter at the Pentagon daily briefing. Then he brushed off the concern of Specialist Wilson thusly:

“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have.”

Thomas Wilson is a brave soldier - for going to war as a volunteer and for standing up to his disgraceful, incompetent betters in the Department of Defense. Wilson is a 31-year-old National Guard volunteer from Tennesee who also served a four-year stint in the Air Force. Our forces in Iraq are filled with Tom Wilsons, Americans who put others first, who are risking and losing their lives for the cause of the masters of war in Washington, officials and appointees who sit in their oak-panelled clubs sipping on single malt scotch and debating troop levels like it's a game of Risk. Meanwhile guys like Tom Wilson are arc-welding scraps of metal to their vehicles like they're extras in some junkyard reality show on the Goddamned Discovery Channel! This is a national disgrace.

We listened to months of GOP campaigning that attacked the Democrats for not being tough enough, not supporting the troops in a "time of war," voting against defense programs. We drive around with cheesy refrigerator magnet yellow ribbons on our SUVs. And yet when our President praises the work of a Defense Secretary who has failed, and signs him up for another tour, where is our outrage? Support the troops, my ass. Fire the bastard. Now.

Mix and Stir

So this is a short podcasting story. Yeah, I know. Podcasting has already been hot for about two weeks so you're sick of hearing about it. It broke in like October and was in Newsweek by Thanksgiving, and Time for Chanukah. Such is the blogosphere these days. But follow along, even if you're bored with the usual "this is so cool" stories. Because, well, this is so cool. Kinda. Ok, just a little bit. Ahem. So I'm screwing around with podcasting, getting some content to the iPod with iPodder, which is a (little bit country, little bit rock and roll) piece of open source code put out by Adam Curry, Dave Winer, and friends. I grab Curry's podcast, recorded at a Starbucks in the English village in which he now resides (residuals from those repackaged "I Love the 80s"  MTV DVDs must be moving pretty well).  Adam - old-school Angus Young-type blogger who is sticking with Userland like AC/DC to metal - is ranting about the lack of broadband in the village (I'll bet the manor house has it buddy boy), he's helping some guy whose poodles are stuck in Atlanta canine immigration, and he's - oops - spilling tea all over his makeshift recording studio. Bzzt. But then he plays a song and talks about this band, Smash-up Derby. Actually, it might not have been Curry - may have been a guest, or may have been another podcast he linked to or spliced in; these things tend to blur, and what's the diff? That's the whole point; Curry got me started. In any case, I dropped the band into Google, found their site, and grabbed a couple of free MP3s. Fun stuff, here's their premise: "While the band is cranking out rockin' renditions of songs by Nirvana, Franz Ferdinand, the Sex Pistols, or Black Sabbath, the singer is belting out Madonna, Michael Jackson, Christina Aguilera, or Pink - at the same time." Strangely, it works and is great to work by. I've got two on my iPod from the band's site now, Jet Lady Joe (yes, Jet vs. the Beatles vs. Joe Walsh) and Talking Franz (Franz Ferdinand vs. Talking Heads). So that's my podcasting tale. Get yer own.

Smackdown

I know this contradicts the viewpoints of my Ayn-Rand-reading Nietzsche-citing free-market-genuflecting Libertarian and quasi-Libertarian friends, but I also think this exposes the philosophical poverty of their thinking.

Every now and again someone gets off a vicious line in comments, and regular Bruce puts the wood to a reader in the feedback on the MLB steroids post on government intervention. It's a great debate, btw, so feel free to check in. And Bruce, you've been quiet of late - in post-election semi-retirement perhaps - but man, that is pure blog smackdown!

Whole Lotta Love

You, sir, are a moron. How was Bonham sluggish? Listen to any version of Moby Dick and see if you still compare him to anything relatively slow. You're one of those idiots who criticizes Zep on everything they do. You say the violin bow act was a bit hokey? If he didn't do it, you would say it is too boring because he doesn't do anything out of the ordinary. So why don't you get off your ass and go learn a thing or two about the history of rock and roll, because it appears as if you flunked Rock 101.

This is among the greatest comments ever posted to a blog piece. Is it a clever, Spinal Tappish, insider goof? Or is this nut serious? Who cares? Get thee, fair maidens and good faerie sirs all, to the Chervokas blog to read the reaming he's taking from Led Zeppelin fanatics here, and his response to the whole crazy thing here. Does anyone remember laughter?