Taking Hipster to a Whole New Level

The Amazing Dr. John Died Today.

Dr. John died today. He had only one hit, Such a Night, and wasn't famous much outside of New Orleans. But around New Orleans, he was a god. From his Night Tripper Hoodoo man persona in the 60's, through his blues sideman and producer role in the 70's to his personification of all that is New Orleans music in the 90's and 00's, he cut a path of originality that could never be matched. He began his career as a guitar player, and was more gangsta than gangsta. He was a drug dealer, a pimp, a heroin addict, and the model for Dr Teeth, the Muppet bandleader.The guitar career was cut short when he was shot in the hand during a bar fight. He switched to piano and I've never heard anyone who can play New Orleans piano better, not even Professor Longhair. For a long time, he was legendary for his solo piano skills, but he would never record as a soloist. He had a pathological fear of ending his life as a lounge act. But some time in the 1980's, someone talke...

GOP Delenda Est

Why do I think the Republican Party is beyond redemption? I view their policy positions as mostly appalling, but that’s not the reason. I’m going to disagree with pretty much any conservative party, after all. It’s more about the underlying nature of the party leadership and what it believes it has to do in order to win. Over just the past decade or so, the Republican Party: - Chose Donald Trump as its presidential nominee. -Has openly strategized about suppressing the Black vote because Black voters heavily favor Democrats. -Played footsie with insane conspiracy theories like QAnon. -Spent the entire Obama and Clinton presidencies ginning up fake scandals. -Lied relentlessly about its dedication to reducing the deficit. -Lied equally relentlessly about its dedication to passing a health care bill. -Lied (and lied and lied) about the impact of its tax bills on the rich. -Has killed untold thousands of people by making mask-wearing into a partisan football during a pandemic. ...

Bend and Stretch. Reach for the Stars. There Goes Jupiter, There Goes Mars...

On this day in 1976, during an interview on BBC Radio 2, British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a very rare planetary event was about to take place—that Jupiter and Pluto would soon align in relation to Earth, and their combined gravitational pull would momentarily override Earth's own gravity and make people weigh less. He called it the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect, and said that if people jumped into the air at exactly 9:47 a.m., they would experience a floating sensation. Moore signaled, "Jump now!" over the airwaves, and within minutes the BBC switchboard was flooded with calls from people who claimed it had worked. In 1957, the BBC TV show "Panorama" ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a "bumper year" thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in. In 1998, Mark Boslough fabricated a press release claiming that the Alabama legislature had legally...

The Consequence of Matters

Search This Blog