Google’s Les Paul tribute doodle looks good and sounds little.
A nice idea for a global birthday anniversary that doesn’t capture any of a real guitar’s magic, much less anything made by Les Paul.
I tried it late last night and the problem, as with lots of virtual instruments played with the pointer, is the virtually total lack of expression. You can’t do anything with it that’s remotely like a real guitar. The tonal richness isn’t present. And, of course, there’s no physical contact between the player and the instrument which is what defines the nuance, color and unlimited style of the electric guitar.
That’s all obvious. But still you can’t make it boogie even a little.
You can hear a really lousy stab at — uck — Stairway to Heaven on this thing, here.
You can hear a real Les Paul here in the vid of Cursing the Oilmen (the tone is early Cream although Clapton was more closely associated with the Gibson SG at that point) and here in Hey Cutie.
The other point worth making over Google’s delivery of Les Paul tribute was that electric guitars and, subsequently, rock and roll were an export to the world. Things that made life better; something that made others think highly of us.
It’s a complete reversal, the triumph of evil over good in the national identity.
For more on the phenomenon of antique guitar acquisition as the hobby of poxy wealth speculators, see here.
Teaser lines:
Weekly, features writers find the most annoying examples of Grotesquus Americanus. Then [the newspaper] proceeds to portray whatever herd of manipulators it has found as something swell. The point of it is to make you feel stupid …
Update: Rachel Maddow thinks the Google guitar app is really cool. Empirical proof it has no connection with rock ‘n’ roll or actual guitar music played by human beings.
The “Good Boys” are all the white guy journalists and pundits one sees trotted out for the news and opinion shows on TV. They all have great agents, great book deals, the best paying gigs at the best real estate. And they all look and sound the same, of generally liberal persuasion but always smiling and giggling their way through segments on MSNBC or CNN. Yes, the f—— country may be coming apart at the seams but it’s never so bad they can’t say something clever and meant to sound gnomic for the cameras.
Republicans can’t be “Good Boys.” Ugly pricks from the far right are immune to “Good Boy-ism.”
It’s only the fellows on MSNBC, everyone who’s a guest on Chris Matthews or the Rachel Maddow Show, everyone who writes for the Atlantic or the Nation — the cream of the crop.
If another war is declared or the US defaults on its debts and plunges the world into the economic abyss, they’ll still be on hand to provide wisdom and entertainment. Never showing upset or dyspepsia, they’re always the perfect fiddlers for the burning and sacking of Rome.
Don’t leave the girls out. Megan McCardle, Joan Walsh, Melissa Harris Perry Jonathan Capehart, Dana Milbank (oh wait, the last two aren’t women) etc. I know you can think of so many more.
The song lends itself to a pastiche of glued together video segments.
Update: I started gathering news clips for this and realized I’d have to look at them all over again, hundreds of times, to get the editing for any video right. That was a great recipe for a blinding headache and I couldn’t face it. Someone else want to jump on the grenade?
Assorted includes: Gene Robinson, the guy from the Nation who is always on Maddow, Marc Ambinder, Howard Fineman, Jonathan Alter, Bill Maher (who pretends to be a malcontent but hosts a “good boy” show masquerading as comedy and criticism), Arianna Huffington …
“Happy days, the party never ends, here’s to all us alcholics, another round for my friends.” — Jesus H. Christ
Alcoholics In My Town, the new video from old acquaintances from music journalism-ing, Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse. It’s a fine song made better through a video directed by some well-known guy, Dan Minehan of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
I’m usually inclined to say more but the press release says it best:
“Let’s party like we’ll never get old,??? the message seems to be, “And then let’s run our van into a guardrail on the way home and become paralyzed from the waist down and not have health insurance.???
The band wanted to write a song that celebrated small town life, in the vein of John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen: songs about the people they grew up with: the good times and the good buddies.
But, growing up in small towns, they knew, from personal experience, that most of these Good-Time-Charlies-and-Charlenes were usually alcoholics. The band doesn’t condemn, our exclude themselves, from this state of affairs- they just wanted to be medically accurate.
Still puts a tear in my eye.
So click it up and pass it around so they don’t have to buy views and risk getting banned by the YouTube police.
“Jesus H Christ will play their Philadelphia debut on Friday, June 10 at 8:30 PM, at The Farmers’ Cabinet at 1113 Walnut Street, Philadelphia in celebration of Philadelphia Beer Week with a beer tasting by band members/ beer importers The Shelton Brothers,” adds the release.
And I would certainly go if I lived in Philly. So you should if you do.
What, you don’t like beer? That’s really un-American.
Creepy Bruce, the anthraxer and country music artist.
On Sunday, the LA Times published an excerpt from David Willman’s upcoming book, Mirage Man: Bruce Ivins, the Anthrax Attacks and America’s Rush to War.
There’s nothing new here but it does personalize Ivins’ psychotic behavior with a special focus on his obsession with a national sorority, various revenge plots, and his ability to hide all this from his family and co-workers in the anthrax labs at Fort Detrick.
He roamed the University of Cincinnati campus with a loaded gun. When his rage overflowed, the brainy microbiology major would open fire inside empty buildings, visualizing a wall clock or other object as a person who had done him wrong … Several years earlier, a Cincinnati student had turned him down for a date. He had projected his anger onto the young woman’s sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. There was a Kappa house in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Ivins cased the building. One night when it was empty, he slipped in through a bathroom window and roamed the darkened floors with a penlight.
The story includes still another picture of Ivins singin’ and playin’ behind his beloved keyboards.
Ivins — [a psychiatric] panel concluded, should not have been hired by USAMRIID/Fort Detrick. He had a history of criminal and psychotic behavior dating back to his days as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina.
While there he continued an obsession with a women’s sorority and one member of it. The obsession arose when Ivins was rejected by a girl from Kappa Kappa Gamma while at the University of Cincinnati, a rejection that seemed to have curdled his entire life.
In the case of one sorority girl, which the report refers to as KKG#2, Ivins went so far as to steal her lab research notebook, an act of sabotage aimed at screwing up her work toward a Ph.D.
The panel concluded Ivins compartmentalized his life, showing himself only to be a benign eccentric, an antic clown juggler at parties and keyboard player at church, to professional associates at Fort Detrick.
That panel concluded Ivins was most probably the anthrax mailer.
In related news, McClatchy officially became one of the news organs of anthrax denial earlier in the month when it published a long piece on the alleged use of silicon in the preparation of the mailed anthrax.
The silicon story — long pushed by a couple of fringe anthrax gumshoes and scientists — will probably never die. The FBI and a national lab made reasonable efforts to elucidate the silicon found in the anthrax spores but, in the end, none of it has made any difference due to the handling of the case and mythology which has grown around it.
Readers unaware of the fine details only need to know that it is used as part of an argument to exonerate Ivins. Ivins, the reasoning goes, could not have been the anthrax mailer because he knew nothing of the use of silicon in the weaponization of anthrax spores.
The government and other scientists have long maintained the spores were not weaponized and that anthrax spores, when effectively dried, are plenty dangerous, silicon or not.
The NRC report did put another spike through the heart of the idea that silicon was added to the mailings to Leahy and Daschle for purposes of weaponization and dispersion.
It won’t kill the crazies who continue to pursue the argument. But that’s more due to the nature of the people who cleave to it.
“Silicon was present in the letter powders but there was no evidence
of addition of dispersants,??? Gast said.
And the report reads:
“The bulk silicon content in the Leahy letter could be completely explained by the amount of silicon incorporated in the spores during growth …
“The inability of laboratory experiments to duplicate silicon characteristics of the latter samples is not surprising given the uptake mechanism (in the anthrax microbe).”
Because of the horrific nature of the anthrax mailings, the fumblings in the case, its long duration and conspiracy-theory thinking entrenched within broad parts of the American polity, efforts to dismiss the official judgment that Ivins was the anthrax mailer will probably continue for years.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin rumbled through Washington on the back of a Harley as she and her family began an East Coast bus tour Sunday that renewed speculation that Mrs. Palin would join the still-unsettled Republican presidential contest.
Wearing a black leather jacket and surrounded by a throng of cheering fans, Mrs. Palin and family members jumped on bikes …
Michigan’s GOP rep from Livonia, Thaddeus McCotter, may or may not run for President.
However, McCotter’s brief appearance in the news this week does present an opportunity to write about someone who is not the usual run-of-the-mill Republican mortal-enemy-of-the-middle-class.
For example, McCotter is not anti-union, which is a requirement if you want to be part of the Tea Party and its GOP appendix.
In fact, he supports Detroit and US manufacturing as this video makes clear.
McCotter is shown in 2009 playing in his brother’s band, Dr. Zaius & the Bright Eyes, the name entirely chosen, rather humorously, from Planet of the Apes. (Follow the links.)
And here, at OpenSecrets, is McCotter’s political expenditures list with three entries for paying Zaius & the Bright Eyes at three political affairs. (Three gigs, $600 per pop.)
Likes Detroit, plays guitar.
A sort of anti-matter version of Ted Nugent.
While Nugent obviously plays guitar he can now regularly be found hating on unions, Detroit and the auto industry. (Although Ted still calls himself the Motor City Madman, it’s been proven by science — namely through citation of his own words here — that he detests these three things.)
The Livonia Republican said he’s “seriously” mulling a decision to join the Republican presidential field since candidates have failed to understand the importance of manufacturing. He said he wants to develop a growth agenda that will lead to prosperity and jobs.
Born in Detroit and valuing a strong manufacturing base, McCotter said he would take the Michigan message to America.
His decision should come “very soon.” “It’s going to be a very quick yes or no,” and not an announcement to form an exploratory committee, he said.
McCotter said it’s too soon to determine whether seeking a higher office would mean he’d bow out of a reelection bid for the House of Representatives, a seat he’s held since 2003.
“Why would you make a decision on something you haven’t decided,” he asked.
Need further proof of amusing deviation from orthodoxy?
Here’s McCotter in a short, seemingly intentionally cracked but enjoyable segment for the right wing Human Events website, called Rock Solid with Thaddeus McCotter:
Good news, lads! Good news! He’s unbelievably frisky and voracious in appetites!
Once your manly power is exposed to the world it can only grow bigger. A monster escapes from the lab to roam the land. The locals build great legends around it. Are they actually true? Who can say and does it even matter?
GIGI GOYETTE was on “Extra” last night, telling former Philadelphia news anchor Jerry Penacoli about her no-longer-secret lust affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
According to the former child star, the pair met on a Malibu beach in the late 1970s, when Arnold was best known as an oiled-up muscleman in a thong
Gigi told “Extra” they met for many secret romps, sometimes in the very hotel where Maria Shriver was staying with their children.
“Arnold is a very physical and sexual man,” she said, “with a voracious appetite that likes a lot of physical attention.”
* The London Sun went a step further, claiming Gigi landed in the hospital because Arnold liked his romps rough. A Sun source said after one “Raw Deal,” Gigi said she was left “hurt and embarrassed.”
Too much Vienna Wiener?
“[Gigi] said Arnold was unbelievably frisky and that she had to go to hospital he was so rough. She was embarrassed turning up with an injury like that,” a “friend” said.
Too much Vienna Wiener? Boy, what you’d give to have been able to write that line for a daily newspaper?!
Even better now — Hey Cutie — the new song, still guaranteed fresh three days from the oven, with featured Arnold singing.
Arnold’s taste for relentless fun between the sheets begged for a musical treatment, something to update “Carla Sandwich.”
Only something boffing bopping, manly and with a decent hook would do service to his thirst for women at the expense of family, fidelity, grace and common sense.
The trick was finding something Arnold had uttered, a “great” line, something that would imprint the basic story at once.
So I fell out of my chair laughing when I heard the big man say “Hey cutie pie!” from one of his movies. (Know which one? It’s out of context.)
Then it wrote itself.
So here we go — “Hey Cutie!” — with Arnold’s inimitable vocal contributions, easy pickings because of the omnipresence of his movies.
Gear wise, it’s mostly plain Adrenalinn III, used to set a Seventies glam-rock style.
Need a funny or sad rock ditty set to the headlines, on demand? Fast turnaround and timeliness, guaranteed.
Keywords: Schwarzenegger, maid, housekeeper, scandal, Arnold jokes
It needed doing. Assembled found YouTube situational video for “Cursing the Oil Men.”
From the trenches back in Pennsylvania, a reader e-mailed:
[The] motherfuckers deserve to have a gas nozzle down their throats …Thankfully we’re holding steady here at 3.79–still my gasoline bill is approaching or surpassing my rent and medical insurance monthly bills.
Convenient heavy lifting by CNN.
There are many furious dog videos on YouTube. I needed someone who looked the most furious, the gold medalist of canine rage. You shan’t want to miss the guest appearances — better than any home videos of angry men.
Good news, lads! Good news! We had this old song just waiting for news like this.
UPDATED
From the LA Times, on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s problem with other women and a child born out of wedlock:
“After leaving the governor’s office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago,” Schwarzenegger said Monday night in a statement to The Times.
Although most of the online ribbing delivered through Twitter and blogs have poked fun at Schwarzenegger through lines he spoke in blockbuster films …
DD had a song for that in 2005. Posted to the Highway Kings bio page in March of that year, it was in response to news — again from the LA Times — on Arnold’s escapades as a serial sexual harasser of women on the sets of his blockbuster movies.
For that he was nicknamed the Gropinator. The story, which was published before his election, didn’t have much effect although it went nationwide and spawned many many jokes. Schwarzenegger became the Governator.
I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich — by DD under the nom de plume, Arnold & the Gropinators, is here.
It comes from material originally published in the Los Angeles Times, concerning Schwarzenegger and a woman named “Carla:”
[The song] is taken from a description in the The Times of an alleged movie set incident in which Schwarzenegger and his stand-in trapped [a stand-in named Carla] next to a food service table. Schwarzenegger supposedly said: ‘I think we should make a Carla sandwich,’ and the men squeezed her between them. After they released [the woman] … Schwarzenegger stuck his tongue in her mouth.”
Wunderbar! Everything old is new again for a few minutes!
“I vould like to vork you out! Your ass feels to me very stout!”
Arnold’s vocal contributions originally taken from prank telephone call sites.
Arnold’s election as governor of California came about as a consequence of something now dreadfully familiar in American elections: The voting public’s rage winding up misdirected into electing someone who becomes observably much worse than the person replaced.
In California the voters were enraged with bland Gray Davis. The budget was a mess and Schwarzenegger showed up, promising the public he’d take the Terminator to Sacramento and beat the government into line with a broom.
He also ran on repealing and refuning the “car tax.” No joke. And this appealed to the reactionary California voter.
Yeah! We wanted our trivial car tax refund from the state! And we got it!
With one of his first act’s as the governor Schwarzenegger made the budget deficit far worse than it had been. And as the state’s public sector economy continued to crater in the coming years his fellow Republicans, always in the minority, blocked all attempts to fix it because of the state law that requires a supermajority to pass any tax/budget legislation.
The Gropinators [explained] the politics behind the big man’s success, using rock and roll. Our leader’s election came not through reasoned judgment, but a good old angry and mentally ill snapout, a desire of the polity to strike, to lash out, to schlag — someone in government. We weren’t going to take it! Take what? Who cares? But someone, like Gray Davis, had to be made to pay and Arnold was the benefactor. Lyric: You sent him to Sac-ra-men-to; No rotten car tax, no, no! We sent ‘im to Sac-ra-men-to; We’re not gonna take it, no, no! Arghhh! Danger! Get out of the way, we might have to hit you.
This defines the instability of US government. In bad times, and we got them in spades, the people turn ugly. Instead of relying on thought when they need it most, they just take the fist to those in office even if the alternative is worse. When the poisoned product of their rage arrives, everyone suffers belated buyer’s remorse.
