Wednesday, February 22, 2006
FINALLY! THE GREAT WHITE BEAR SITE IS UP AND RUNNING!
Monday, February 20, 2006
BRONX IN BLUE, REGIME CHANGE DEJA VU
Remember this guy? Hint: "Teenager In Love", "The Wanderer", "Abraham, Martin, and John". Yep, it's Dion. And he has a new album out, featuring acoustic blues. He was featured on WORLD CAFE today, and if the album, BRONX IN BLUE, is half as good as the live performance, it is a winner!Dion tells a great story as to how the album came to be produced. As a kid in the Bronx, he would stay up late at night listening to those powerful southern radio stations that featured blues artists like John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, and Howlin Wolf. Blues was his first musical love. He started out as a street singer performing blues songs. But he never considered recording any of them. He only played them for his own pleasure, often in impromptu sessions with friend Paul Simon in Dion's living room.
One day, while promoting the album Deja Nu, he was being interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. He would punctuate the stories of his youth with snippets from these songs. When the interview was over, Gross and a her engineering staff all came up to him and told him he had to record these songs! They were very insistent. But he kinda let it pass, until a guy he used to write songs with in the teen idol days called him. The guy had heard the Fresh Air interview and told him he absolutely had to record those songs. So he went into the studio, and recorded the entire album in two days.
The songs he performed on WORLD CAFE were Statesburo Blues, I Let My Baby Do That, Built For Comfort, Crossroads, and an incredible, impromptu blues version of The Wanderer.
You can here the songs and interview on WORLD CAFE here! BRONX IN BLUE is available at Amazon.com.
REGIME CHANGE DEJA VU
Daniel Shorr reported on Weekend Edition Sunday that the US is preparing to attempt to foment regime change in Iran. Now, we have been down this road before. Many times. And I can't recall of a time when this strategy actually worked. But apparently that student of history, George Bush, missed the class where this was discussed! Shorr points out:
Regime change often begins with a process of fomenting disaffection, encouraging people to turn against their government. The United States tried it a couple of times in Iraq. The Pentagon poured millions of dollars into backing exile groups with connections in Iraq. A lot of it went to the Iraqi National Congress, based in London, headed by Ahmed Chalabi. It didn't work. In the end, the Pentagon had to change the Iraqi regime the old fashioned way: by invasion. And now it is the insurgency that is fighting for regime change.
But the Bush administration, apparently deciding that if Iran develops the bomb, it would be a good idea to have an Iranian government more well inclined toward us, seemingly can't resist making the same old mistakes again. According to Shorr:
The project surfaced when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice applied to Congress for $75 million on top of an initial $10 million. She told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the idea was to confront the extremist policies of the Iranian regime and support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom, its plan to provide money to Iranian labor unions and to provide around-the-clock broadcast service in Farsi... The Bush Administration believes, based on what I do not know, that there is a substantial underground opposition to the radical new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in spite of his landslide election victory.
Of course, there are other regimes we would really like to change too! I'm sure the Bushistas are desperately trying to figure out a way to get rid of Hugo Chavez, albeit in a little less clumsy manner than supporting an attempted coupe de tat, as per their last attempt. And according to Shorr:
Unhappiness on the part of the Bush Administration with the results of democratic elections has not been restricted to Iran. Last week, Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported from Jerusalem that the United States and Israel have been quietly discussing ways to undermine the new Hamas-led Palestinian government and hopefully cause new elections, potentially with the result more to Washington's liking. Looks like more regime change.
To quote that old sage Yogi Berra;"It's like deja vu all over again!"
The Temptations were right: The world IS just a Ball Of Confusion!
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Ah, come on... THE SWISS????
Switzerland's Martin GerberSo what do the Canadian and Czech hockey teams have in common, besides being my top picks for Olympic gold? They have now both lost to lowly Switzerland. The Swiss have only three NHL players on their team, two of them goaltenders. But goalies David Aebischer and Martin Gerber have been brilliant. Aebischer made forty saves in a 3-2 victory over the Czechs on Thursday. Not to be out done, Gerber was brilliant in a 2-0 victory today over mighty Canada, making 49 saves.
This leaves the Swiss, ranked 8th in the world coming into the Olympics, in solid medal contention tied for third overall with Canada, Russia, and Sweden, and ahead of perennial powers USA and the Czech Republic.
Meanwhile, off to blazing start is Slovakia. They are three 3-0, having beaten Russia, the United States, and Latvia. The Finns are also 3-0, having beaten Switzerland, Italy and the Czech Republic.
Meanwhile, the world champion Czechs are struggling. Goaltender Dominic Hasek is injured, and their defense has played poorly. Star scorer Robert Lang has no goals or assists in three games.
The Russians are getting balanced scoring, but their defense has been a bit suspect, mostly due to injuries to defensemen Dmitri Bykov and Alexi Zhitnik, and goaltender Nicholai Khabibulin. Star forward Ilya Kovalchuk has only one assist in three games. But Pavel Datsyuk has two goals and an assist and Alexander Ovechkin has 2 goals.
The Swedes are scoring a ton of goals, but what on paper should be the best defense in the games has given up 8 goals in three games. They clearly miss Niclas Kronwall and Kim Johnsson, and their failure to add Nick Lidstrom's Detroit linemate Andreas Lilja is clearly a huge mistake.
So what does this all mean? Clearly, this is the most wide open Olympics in history. The top eight teams are in the medal hunt, with at least 5 teams having a legitimate shot at the gold. Which means we should see some very exciting hockey coming up this week!
DIRTY ^%!@#@#$#@**&^*%&$!! BLOGGER
Because I am unable to publish on my old site, I have been forced to create a new, hopefully temporary blog. Here is what you missed this week because of %$!@##&^%$&^*#$@^!!!!! Blogger:WHY THE VEEP'S SHOOTING INCIDENT IS INDEED FUNNY
There was quite a debate over at Sadico Junction over the jokes being made at Dick Cheney's expense. Sadie Lou has taken great offense to these jokes. As I explained in comments there, this is why it is funny, and why he is fair game:
What makes it funny is Cheney's history. During the election, Cheney went in front of an NRA convention and made fun of John Kerry for wearing a new hunting vest on a duck hunt in Ohio (hinting that Kerry wasn't really a hunter). Well Kerry went on a duck hunt in the real outdoors, and managed to shoot, well, ducks.
Cheney went on a hunt on a ranch that raises semi tame birds, and managed to shoot his partner rather than a bird. If humor has it's basis in irony, there is little more ironic than that! Therefore, little funnier. And Cheney"s hubris left him fair game (pardon the pun)!
DARWINIAN THEORY IN ACTION
Study shows how the Cane Toad is rapidly evolving in Australia. Very Fascinating!
GOD DAMNED CBS!!!!!
I AM SO FUCKING PISSED!
INCREDIBLE NEW MUSIC WEB SITE!
This may be the coolest site I have ever been to! It is called WOLFGANG'S VAULT. It features music from thousands of hours of live concert recordings from the vaults of legendary concert promoter Bill Graham. For those of you too young to remember, Graham is probably the most important promoter in the history of modern music. He operated the legendary Filmore and Winterland Auditoriums in San Francisco, and the Filmore East in New York. He promoted over 35,000 concerts, and launched the careers of myriad of stars, including Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, The Band, Buffalo Springfield, and many, many more.
Vault Radio regularly adds and removes songs from it's playlist, so the music is always new and exciting. Right now, I am listening to Bruce Springsteen doing a live cover of Manfred Mann's BLINDED BY THE LIGHT. All the songs on vault Radio are live recordings, and they are FM quality.
If you are fan of live music, you HAVE to check out this site!
