Song: Henry K. Lee

Hot off the presses: the Ballad of Henry K. Lee, The San Francisco Chronicle's staff crime reporter. This song is sort of in the style of early Dylan-esque straight-from-the-news folk ballads, inspired by the Bay Area section of the newspaper. Every time I open it, I notice there's like five articles about depressing crime (usually in the East Bay), "2 Teens Shot in Hayward," "2 More Beheaded in Piedmont," et cetera. And those articles are always written by one man: Henry K. Lee. (Look, the top article today written by him is called "Putting baby in oven an inexplicable horror." You can't make this up.) So he began to achieve almost mythological status in my imagination: I picture him chain-smoking cigars in a grey office somewhere downtown Oakland, reporting the grisliest crime is a day job for him. This song was written for the Manna Tease to sing (please "like" us on Facebooks!) However, we deemed some of the verses too heavy for our shows, so I recorded this more intense version now for the youtubes, and when we redo it with Minnie Molly Mary, we'll replace the "raped her at school" verse with the lighter additional verses below.

Henry K. Lee

amin G F emin
Henry Harrison, (unrelated to the president),
amin G F emin
Arrested in Oakland, driving while intoxicated.
amin G F emin
In prison he acted up, flooded his toilet,
amin G F emin
And Harrison was restrained by an over-zealous deputy.
dmim amin
They tased him to death!
dmin amin
They tased him to death!
dmin emin
And the article in the Chronicle
F G C

Was written by Henry K Lee.

amin G F emin

Henry K. Lee, Henry K. Lee,

dmin amin dmin amin
The newspaper’s gritty as this naughty city.
dmin emin
If it’s crime & it’s grimy,
F G C
It’s covered by Henry K. Lee.

April in Alameda, at the animal prison,
A canine jailbreak, Max the Pit Bull’s gone missin’!
They hunted the hound to a motel in Reno,
And his owner Melissa Perry, booked for stolen property.
And they put him to sleep!
They put Max to sleep!
And the article in the Chronicle was written by Henry K. Lee.
Henry K. Lee, &c...

A grade school in Vallejo has secrets in its classrooms.
56-year-old Jerry Johnson taught Special Educations,
His young teenage aide had a developmental disability,
Incapable of consenting, with a child’s mental capacity.

He raped her at school!

He raped her at school!

And the article in the Chronicle was written by Henry K. Lee.

Henry K. Lee, &c...

Over-caffeinated at a coffee shop, I pick up the news,
The Bay Area section has its own special blues,
If I had a dime for each sad crime told daily
By Henry K. Lee, I’d buy me a ukulele.
How do you sleep, Henry?
What are your dreams, Henry?
I worry for you, Henry, & pray you’ll never write about me.

Additional verses:

Kathleen Millikin visited a holistic clinic:
There Edward Feng sold her, quote, “Six God Tablets.”
She suffered an earache and blisters and lesions:
These “Spirit Pills” had arsenic derived from toad poisons.
The doc was a quack,
The doc was a quack.
And the article in the Chronicle was written by Henry K. Lee.

©2011 The Manna Tease

UPDATE: Here's an mp3 of it, available for a dollar if you desire:

Three Years Ago: Chronicles: Legendary Costume Designer Asks: Are You a Poet?

Today, on Three Years Ago, our legendary series where we repost a post from exactly three years ago, I've dug up a rare "biographical" blog entrée. Thank heavens this is an unusual occurrence:

_____________________________________________________________

Last week, I was rejected from a graduate school program I had applied to, so I vowed to go on a 48-hour Steve Zissou-style bender, wake up next week, draft a new plan for the next few years of my life, then set out to find the shark that ate my friend & destroy it. Friday Night began with several pitchers of Piña Coladas with my friend Heather from Interlochen. The basic recipe for our concoction is as follows:

Mix in blender:
-Half of a delicious fresh organic pneapple
-Half a handle of clear rum
-The meat of a fine mango
-Pineapple-coconut juice (I used the R.W. Knudsen brand, which conveniently sells this mix)
-About five strawberries
-Ice

Saturday, Heather, who was singing in the pit orchestra for the San Francisco Ballet's piece Eden/Eden, with music from Steve Reich's Three Tales (the one about Dolly the Sheep, robots, & cloning), was able to get three free tickets to the ballet. As a tangent, did you know that Dolly the Sheep was named after Dolly Parton because the gene from which they cloned her was from the host's mammary? As Parton said, "I hope people realize that there is a brain underneath the hair & a heart underneath the boobs." There's interesting moments in Reich's score, but the ballet orchestra lacked the intense drive to keep the motion forward-propulsing for a full half hour. However, the original video opera was pretty mediocre, & rescuing the music & replacing the imagery with some amazing dancing & choreography is a great service.

Coincidentally, our friend Mr Golden was working next door at the Veteran's building repairing a model buffalo for an exhibition of ballet costumes designed by Willa Kim. After the ballet & some St Patrick's day beer, we crashed the art opening (as "volunteers", which we indeed ended up being.) One of my friends was free-wine-inspired to get herself a sugar-daddy in the guise of an rich older SF ballet alum. We missed the lecture, but when nonagenarian Willa Kim was being escorted out, the volunteers stopped her to tell her they had enjoyed working on her costumes. After some flattery, she turned to me & said:

Willa Kim: You look like you must be a poet!
Your hero: Well, uh, yes, I am.
Sycophantic escort: My, Ms. Kim, how prescient you are!
Willa Kim: He looks like a poet!
Your hero: It's all nonsense, tho. I mean, my poetry is nonsense.
Mr Golden: We're working on an epic with illuminations.
Willa Kim: Well, best of luck to you, &c.....

According to the imdb, Willa Kim is known by the nickname "Willa Killa". We then hit some schwanky downtown bars, & escorted my sloshy friend to the BART. The night ended by Mr Golden cleaning my clock at put-put golf at his Ingleside apartment.

Sunday Morning, I had arranged (despite a dead mobile phone) to meet a blind date at a famous Mimosa Bar in the Castro, The Lime. As a co-founder of the dogmatic evangelical religious cult, The Mimosa's Witnesses, I was morally bound to investigate this mecca of Mimosa transubstantiation, which has bottomless flutes for $7 at Sunday Brunch. The place is ridiculous & perfectly over-the-top, with a bright-green nightclub decor, thumping music, packed with revelers at 11 A.M. Many of our fellow witnesses looked far more L.A. than S.F., with plastic breasts, &c. We should tithe them.

Waiter: Hello, I haven't seen you here for awhile!
Your hero: I've never been here before. This is my first time.
Waiter: Really!? You look just like one of our regulars.
Your hero: No, perhaps I have a Doppelgänger? Or perhaps you're mistaking me for Ralf from Kraftwerk.

As for my blind date, she had enormous false eyelashes & drove an orange Mustang sports car! Anyway, we must plan an official service with the regular Mimosa's Witnesses at this bizarre Castro day-club. As I explained to my date, just like there are hippie Christians & conservative Christians, these fake-boobed coked-up proselytes were worshipping under the same, broad tent as the Tahoe Mimosa's Witnesses & the Berkeley Mimosa's Witnesses.

My day proceeded by sobering up at Philz Coffee in the Mission & having my clock cleaned at chess with Mr Golden. The San Francisco semi-regular Sacred Harp singing was at an episcopal church on Fair Oaks (one of the cutest streets in that neighborhood), & was well attended, including two members of the awesome group Anonymous 4 (who, with their background in St Hildegaard, now have two excellent albums of American harmony, & are working on continuing that project. Listen to them!) Singing exultantly, mission accomplished, & I'm now accepting suggestions for what to do next with my life.

Department of Brian Wilson: New York Times Profiles Brian Wilson

Back to Brian Wilson. He was brought in last night (game one of the World Series in San Francisco) at the very end of the ninth, let a few more runs in, and then ended the game with the bizarre score 11-7. The New York Times today includes a profile of Brian Wilson, here's a lengthy excerpt:

Relief pitchers have tended to be odd, with closers typically occupying the far end of that spectrum. Brian Wilson, the San Francisco Giants’ closer, is one of the oddest.

Start with the easy stuff, like his physical appearance. There’s the hair, part mohawk and part mullet; the tattoos; and the perpetually unbuttoned jersey.

There are the bright orange spikes, for which he was fined $1,000 by Major League Baseball because they failed to conform to the standard of being at least 50 percent black. (He brought them up to code with a marker.)

And there is his preternaturally black beard — dyed several shades darker than the rest of his hair with what appears to be industrial-grade shoe polish — which has inspired five Facebook pages and a marketing campaign. The slogan “Fear the Beard” adorns any number of T-shirts in Giants souvenir stands.

It is what is behind the beard, however, that gives Wilson his edge.

He is an entertaining interview: on Jim Rome’s radio show this summer he claimed to be a certified ninja and a mental assassin. He has explored his roots in the off-season by backpacking through Ireland (staying at hostels) and India (where he showed cricket players how he throws a 95-mile-per-hour fastball).

More recently, he earned attention for interviews that could have doubled as performance art. In one, a nearly naked man strolled across the background as Wilson was interviewed live via satellite from his house. [...]

But what gives Wilson more depth and makes him more intriguing is his manner inside the Giants’ clubhouse. There he makes extraordinary efforts to fit in, and to draw in others. Notably, he is a regular at the Latino-dominated dominoes table in the locker room. On the outstanding and colorful Boston Red Sox teams of 2003 and 2004, Kevin Millar was the ringleader who went out of his way to make sure his Hispanic teammates were involved. A half-decade later, Wilson appears to have the same instincts.

“These are your teammates,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t matter what country they’re from. It doesn’t matter what language they speak. It doesn’t matter what they wear. It’s impossible for me not to say hello to everybody, not to have a conversation. It’s the way I am. It’s the way the whole team is. You have all the different personalities on all sides, and they’re all yelling at each other and meeting in the middle.”

If Wilson has his say, the Giants will win a championship sometime in the next 10 days, the first for the organization since 1954, four years before it moved to San Francisco.

That would leave one outstanding goal for their closer before next spring training.

“I’d like to be a crossword clue one day,” he said. “I want to be in The New York Times’s Sunday edition. Right now, the clue ‘Giants great’ is always Mel Ott. I want my clue to be down, not across. The down ones are usually harder. And when I’m the clue, I’ll fill it in — just that one — and frame it.

“How sweet would that be?”

Department of Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson sings the songs of Brian Wilson

During the next week, (i.e. the World Series is in SAN FRANCISCO!), this blog will be all Brian Wilson, all the time. Next up on our Brian Wilson station, Brian Wilson sings the songs of Brian Wilson:

Sadly, the amazing Brian Wilson singing "Good Vibrations" video I really wanted to post is un-embeddable, so go watch it here.

Yes, Go Giants

If only we could get Brian Wilson and Brian Wilson in a room together.

Giants win the Pennant

We Know You're Angry

Angry? Contribute to the Courage Campaign. They're trying to restore reason to the Left Coast in 2010. And their newest commercial has a catchy tune.

San Francisco by foot, my foot

Today I am very sore, my legs can barely bend, with weird sunburn lines. I'm trying to calculate just how far I walked on Saturday Night & all day Sunday. I'm going to try embedding Google Maps of our walking routes, as I calculate how many miles walked, for posterity & also as an advertisement for URBAN HIKING - Americans don't walk enough, & it is the best way to an explore cities.

We met Mr Mary & several others Saturday Night at the Elbo Room in the Mission, where there was soul funk dancing until 2am. So bear in mind that the evening started with many hours of dancing - & not simply the kind of hipsters sort of bobbing their heads - but the athletic, loose limbed, full body & booty gyrations inspired by music with real soul. We then walked to It's Tops Diner in Hayes. Here is an approximate map of the journey from the Mission to Mr Mary's family's house in the Sunset, getting there at about 5am:

View Larger Map

That clocks in at 4.2 miles, which it estimates would take ninety minutes to walk - I'm sure we took longer, strolling & singing thru the night.

Sunday Morning I walked over to see some of the Bay to Breakers race, walking all over to trying to connect with my friend Mr Ficke. It was a hot day & my strange tan lines are from the purple cloak I was wearing (as a disguise, to blend in the with the eccentricity of San Francisco's famous crazy race.) It was harder to estimate how far I walked, because there was some wandering & Google won't let me draw in my exact path.

View Larger Map

According to that map, I walked 6.2 miles, which I should probably round up to 7 to include backtracking & meandering. The public transit was impossible trying to leave the Bay to Breakers madness (I wasn't going to take their $7 ripoff bus). Our next goal was to get to Mr Ficke's car, which was parked six miles away at Church St & Cesar Chavez. I refused to walk to Noe Valley, so my strategy was to take a bus due south, then find another headed back east towards south of Mission. A good strategy, but it took an hour to even get on that bus - (is this story becoming super boring, or is it suspenseful & epic?) - & when we got off way South, the west-bound bus of my BRILLIANT PLAN didn't stop there on Sundays. To shorten the details, after several buses & trolleys, we ended up getting off at Dolores Park. The final walk to the car included a sizable detour to eat a spicy veggie burrito mojado at Taqueria Cancun on Mission St.

View Larger Map

That adds another two miles, bringing the total, between 3am Saturday night to 5pm Sunday afternoon, to about thirteen miles. It was 90 degrees yesterday & I was wearing a purple cloak. And no complaining, as I said, walking is the best way to see the city, & believe we saw some wild things. You'd think I would spend this blog post describing some of what we witnessed, rather than mathematically calculating the distance of the route, but my legs are too sore for my brain to wax poetic about the quirks of the weekend.

Rahm's Empire

If you missed it in the profile on Rahm Emanuel in the March 2nd, 2009, New Yorker, his response to being asked what he thought about Fidel Castro's bizarre editorial on the name "Rahm Emanuel" (which I translated & re-translated down in this post) was:

"Well, you know, ever since I stopped sending him my holiday card he's been ticked off. I don't know what to think about it. Do you know what I'm thinking about? I'm going to finally get to see my kids after a month. So that's all I give a fuck about."

My mother forwarded me a paranoid e-mail called "Rahm's Empire" from the Nevadan Republican Party, which had this handsome photo of Mr Emanuel, handsomely scheming to politicize the census. (She's knows I have a crush on him because he was a dance major at Sarah Lawrence College, the itwaslost.org alma mater.)

I watered my plants & also my internet router, so I'll probably be quieter on the tubes for the next few days. I got a message this morning from someone I rarely correspond with, worried "James, you've gone unusually silent. Are you OK?" My computer's only been down twelve hours! I assure you I'm alive & the public library has internets also. I'll be seeing John Zorn tonight & tomorrow I'll be singing onstage with the famous Massachusetts folksinger Tim Eriksen & a half dozen Berkeley shape-note singers 9:30pm Wednesday night at the Cafe du Nord (Market & 14th) in San Francisco. Come if you can! Here's the facebook invite.

Department of Beards: Conspiracy of Beards, The Beard Club, Bears

Two acquaintances of mine - a coworker & an Russian accordion player - are in a choir that sings around the Bay Area, The Conspiracy of Beards. While the title I presume is a Leonard Cohen reference, they don't necessary have much to do with the Department of Beards, except that many of them have beards, dress smart, wear hats, & sing choral arrangements of Leonard Cohen songs. "They know how to be men," stressed the gallery owner where I saw them. They'll be singing in the New York City area in April, stop by & see them New Yorkers!


I saw them do their thing at the Million Fishes Gallery last wednesday, & I struck up a conversation with a woman who was there to meet my friend, who had promised to play the accordion on the soundtrack to her upcoming film: a documentary about beards and mustaches! I of course told her about The Department of Beards at itwaslost.org, & we will be promoting this film to our blogospherical utmost. Unfortunately, the trailer isn't embeddable, but go here to the Beard Club website & watch it. The trailer has some nice interviews with the Handlebar Club in London, & of course San Francisco's own Bears (as in, hairy gay men & the men who love hairy gay men. The flag from Bear Nation is at the top of this post.)

Recipe: Inauguration Luncheon at Ashby Ave, Berkeley, California

Did you hear Barbara Feinstein, as she was commencing the post-Inauguration fancy luncheon? She said the most-viewed webpage at the Inauguration site was the one with the recipes for the lunch. So, in full anticipation that this will be my most popular blog post ever, I'm publishing the recipe for my post-Inauguration-live-weblogging lunch-in.

Obama Nachos
-Preheat oven to 350°
-Pour a bag of tortilla chips onto a pizza tray. (I used Casa Sanchez Thick & Crispy Gruesos, a bay area favorite brand.)
-Sprinkle with shredded Tillamook cheddar cheese.
-Black beans
-Bake until the cheese is melted
-Add salsa (Casa Chicas RedGreen salsa, delicious from Zacatecas, Mexico), & guacamole, creme, whatever you want, to your taste.

I suggest pairing this with a dark beer, the earlier in the afternoon the better, I recommend San Francisco's rich Anchor Porter ("because porter is the new black president, bitch" as the Tracy Jordon slogan goes). Merry New Administration!

Antagonism Will Get You a Blog Post

This is one of the three most important days of the year for people in my chosen career path. The other two most important days were yesterday and the day before yesterday. Let it be known “the day before yesterday” is one word in German: vorgestern.

I would write posts about Formula One Mule Racing and Underwater Cricket in order to meet arbitrary blog goals, but the Modern Language Association convention is on. Coincidentally in San Francisco this year. I attend sessions. I avoid the passive voice.

At the convention I sit in on a wide range of topics, which I will list after this sentence, because one should not write a sentence longer than fifteen words, according to one speaker I heard, which of course is totally constraining, albeit courteous if I were reading this out loud in, say, a conference session filled with many for whom English is a foreign language (sixty-six words). Potentiality and Unfinished States. Challenges in Interdisciplinarity. Demonstration Interviews for Job Seekers. Crafting Academic Personas. The Impropriety of Goethe. René Gerard. Judith Butler. Postsecular Europe. Cash Bar.

I learned how to edit my CV for consideration at the Yemen Polytechnic Institute. There will never be a job for me in America.

Even though theoretical physicists waste nine billion Swiss francs on the Large Hadron Collider (that calls for a perverted anagram) which was promptly shutdown one week after construction and still doesn’t work; even though science funding has made computer programming so ubiquitous that those jobs no longer pay a salary; even though an MBA or a JD are the two worst possible degrees to have in this economy; even though foreign language proficiency at the government level might have prevented a lot of the problems we face today; even though grad students in foreign languages and linguistics earn less than students in any other discipline; despite all that, American universities are getting rid of their humanities programs.

I temper Nietzsche’s Zarathustra with Stifter’s The Tender Law and quietly gaze upon the answer for world peace. If only someone eventually lets me teach their kids.

Woo hoo! Pity party!

Kindly Get Off My Kindergartner

A real actual conversation:

Liam Joseph Mary: I have an idea, my attractive friends, for extreme mathematical reasons, we need to post 308 posts on www.itwaslost.org before the clock rolls over into 2009. Get right to work.

Miss Grainne: Okay, I will do my part by writing about the fashion, love, & lore of Christmas & Hanukkah! All nations are at peace.

S. "Esther Hoffman" Sandrigon: We shall get right to work, with at least a post a day each, to meet this lofty goal. There is no shortage of holiday videos, whimsical locations out in the blogosphere, & naughty photography to post about! We shall wend out the old year in a flurry of snowflakery.

Liam Joseph Mary: [cartoonish snoring sounds & Ennio Morricone music]

Brains Aha! Apparently, there is nothing interesting to write about soccer, the German language, or getting it down in San Francisco over the winter solstice break.

Liam Joseph Mary: Oh! forgive me! I was wanking off while watching QVC. What was happening about it? Well, I'm off to go fondle kindergartners in Holland & then yell racial epithets towards ugly minorities.

Correspondences: "Whoo-hoo!"

It's hard to describe the pandemonium in San Francisco last night, a copacetic time that will be a joy to tell my grandkids about.

Here are a few of the text messages sent around the country - - since text messaging is a temporal art form, we're living in the middle of the golden age, I'll post some here for posterity:

From Seattle to Berkeley 3:14pm (all times Western):
"Kentucky was just on npr because of long lines in democratic louisville. If that's a toss up state tonight, the pope is a rabbi."

From Berkeley to Brooklyn 6:27pm
"They called Ohio! We're close. You online? I'm liveblogging alone."

From Santa Fe to Berkeley 6:36pm
(A historic moment, the first text message I've received from this number.)
"I love you."

From Berkeley to Santa Fe 6:37pm
"New Mex was just called for Barack. BILL LOVES YOU TOO"

From Santa Fe to Berkeley 6:40pm
"I just heard you are the fastest texter"

From Berkeley to Seattle 7:53pm
"Election party in the mission. Repubs can't steal it now..."

From Brooklyn to Berkeley 7:59pm
"VA. FOR BARACK!"

From Brooklyn to Berkeley (Now physically in San Francisco) 8:02pm
"CNN DECLARES OBAMA PRESIDENT ELECT"

From Berkeley to Brooklyn 8:03pm
"Ho!"

From Berkeley to Brooklyn 8:40pm
"I'm at an Irish bar, people are quiet & contemplative."

From Berkeley to Incline Village, Nevada 8:47pm
"Exciting night to be in San Francisco. There's dancing in the streets."

From Seattle to Berkeley 9:10pm
"Wish we were watching this together, dude."

From Berkeley to Denver 9:24pm
"Sophie! Sophie! Sophie! Sophie!"

From Incline Village, Nevada, to Berkeley 9:39pm
"Enjoy. We all voted for Obamam"

From Seattle to Berkeley 9:44pm
"Nevada's blue!"

From Oakland to Berkeley 10:02pm
"Rock, rock on! Here's to the new american century! -nn."

From Berkeley to a variety of places 9:59pm
"Good night to be on the streets of SF, We were just offering champagne to people in cars. God bless Obama's god."

And, here was my brief chat today with Miss Sophie L___ (campaigning for the last month in Denver):

12:10 PM Sophie: JAMES!

WE WON

I wanted to callyou but my phone died

12:11 PM me: Oriane & I called you.

Sophie: omg

me: We were in San Francisco, first at a lame party, then at a raucus Irish pub to watch the speeches. Then there was blocks closed off with percussion & dancing in the streets.

12:12 PM Sophie: omfg

that sounds amazing

me: Then I think she wandered off to a club in the castro, I kept dancing then made the last BART home.

12:13 PM How was Denver?

Or where are you?

Sophie: denver was amazing

12:15 PM for the pastfew weeks ppl haven't wantedto talk about the election--obama or mccain supporters but then we were all at a bar and everyone was screaming and running around the streets and cars were beeping and suddenly everyone was an obama supporter

i lifted up a homeless guy on my shoulders

me: Yes, it was like that here, but without the cryptos.

Are you headed back to Mass. Change your flight & come here!

12:16 PM Sophie: i thought about it but i'm not sure if i can

12:17 PM me: Do it. Yes, you can.

Sophie: haha

me: That's what we were saying last night.

Sophie: si sepuede

12:18 PM me: There were these people dancing on top of cars in the crowd, & someone was like "Are those people on cars?" & we were like "No, people can fly now that Obama is elected."

Sophie: yes. yes they can.

how amazing was his speech?!

me: Dude the whole bar was crying

12:19 PM Sophie: srsly???

me: With him at every word

Well, not the whole bar

Apologies: First Weekend in September & Baseball Metaphors

And speaking of processed beverages & community gatherings in the American South (to which many local California singers travel for the many August & September singings), the Santa Cruz Organic (produced in Chico, California) makes the best sweet tea I've ever tasted, & it's saving me from surely wilting on this hot day in Berkeley. I had heard that it was against the law to sell tea in a restaurant in certain counties in the south without also selling Sweet Tea, but looking at Sweet Tea's wikipedia entry, apparently that was just an April Fool's joke. Well, who's laughing now, Georgia House of Representatives? God, I can't handle some of these hot days, tho - I become very inertial.

Which brings us to what's missing. I apologize that politics & live-blogging have immoderately usurped itwaslost.org, but we're taking steps to remedy this. We plan on live-blogging one or two of the debates, & of course not completely ignoring the next two months of this "close" election--; but noticeably missing are the gaps in the narrative from Bulgaria, Morroco & Indonesia, the latest new tunes from my microphone, the completion of several unfinishable epic nonsense poems, every & any words from our traveling ice-climbing correspondent, & reports on this website's progress & ongoing projects. This post should do something about that last category, & I'll report about this post's report in coming days. In the meantime, a few quotes from the convention:

"George W. Bush came into office on third base, & then he stoled second."

-Gov. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), 26 August 2008,
Democratic National Convention

“I’m sure you remember a girl from Kansas who said there’s no place like home. Well, in John McCain’s version, there’s no place like home & a home & home & home."

-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kansas) 26 August 2008,
Democratic National Convention

And please note the following links:
-Brains' blog about World Soccer & German Literature.
-Pele's travel narration.
-The link to today's Doonesbury strip, in case any of you haven't been following America's national epic.
-Mortified: These are excellent staged readings of people's teenage writings, including teenage poetry, diary entries, plays, movies, & the one I went to in San Francisco was intensely funny.
-Elisa Lopez's arctic travels & beyond.
-Post Secret: anonymous post cards of people's secrets.
-Looks like Sam Amidon will be featured on a compilation cd of hip covers of Sacred Harp songs, you can hear it at this myspace.
-Unfortunately, the excerpt from John Adam's upcoming memoir in the Aug. 25th New Yorker isn't online, but this interview with him is here. I like his genial & nostalgic mockery of the Cage-esque pieces he wrote in his 20's.
-Miss Daisy Press sent me a link to someone who proposed that Michael Palin was as qualified as Sarah Palin to be a "heart-beat" away from the comfy chair & soft cushions: http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/09/that-other-pali.html

Good Night, Ringo.

Live-Blogging th'ethereal sky

Having been untimely ripped from a deep nap by this sonorous bottle of Gobiden Bourbon Whisky in my cabinet, I'm ready to watch some America-loving Americans brag about what a good job they do running the country that they love. Friends from this & neighboring galaxies are invited to watch along & comment, I think several of our far-flung correspondents will be turning around & getting a little bit closer as John McCain, that wacky maverick, puts aside his stage-freight & takes the podium.

Here's the CNN live-video feed:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#

Clean-shaven white men will invariably be interspersed with crazy bearded hermaphrodites (diversity) & hot blonde women (the party's base.) It's ten degrees hotter in San Francisco than it is in Berkeley (the reversal of the norm, San Francisco's cruel wintry Augusts.)

George H. W. Quiselgúr signing in as "Red Indian" Red.

7:30pm Central Time - Republican Fashion: cowboy hats are in for the fall season.

7:34pm - The GOP are super good about electing a ton of middle-aged white women to office. Good for them!

7:41pm - Holy Shit! New York City is under attack! There's smoke everywhere & people running around!

7:45pm - How on earth did they find a right-wing-leaning athlete? He's rambling about some Czechoslovakian gold-medalist who supports McCain.
Whoa, he actually just said, "whether you're a decathlete or a politician, we must stand together & support America"... Did they just exclude me?

7:55pm Dancing around to good old Rock and Roll music, there's no denying it, a lot of women are Republicans.

Harry Grayson - Mustard Yellow, ready and available for comment.

Senator Lindsey Graham on stage. The democrats need some better talking points about why it's sort of pitiful if the surge works. Like, it's like if an aspirin helps relieve a hangover head-ache, you can't undo the tequila reality.

Where's our other correspondents. Mongolia, you there?

8:09pm That's because Obama was against the war, doofus-butt. And the war is unwinnable, we've certainly already been "defeat"-ed, whatever that word means, I'm not familiar with the definition of that word. Here comes the Wasilla mayor's biopic.

8:15pm Apparently the GOP's budget can't afford a non-synthesized string section.
Christ, Sen. Ridge is McCain's friend too, how many friends does this guy have? Isn't he spreading himself a bit thin?

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