 ...this piece was written earlier in the morning...take your time, follow all the linkage and see where the rabbit hole goes...and don't be afraid to comment...CONTINUED...  ...the big stink that was made about Iran's President speaking at Columbia made by GOP stalwarts like Newt "family values, married three times" Gingrich and his lot made me want to puke on my shoes...I find it interesting that those assholes like to change their rules mid-stream when the tables are turned on them...having a legally elected puppet offical speak (not a dictator, as some of the right wingers would have it) speak at an American University, rather than, say, a corporate thug who stole his way into office speaking at a "town hall meeting" while standing in front of a group of cherry-picked yes-men and admirers made our foreign policy (or the POTUS') look all the more shammified in the eyes of the world...what balls they have to come out on the "freedom/ human rights" tip when we got shite like the SNAFU that is the aftermath of Katrina; the price tag, that's rapidly reaching the trillions, that has been lost on a war that's going nowhere fast while our very infrastructure is falling apart and, more recently, the outrageousness surrounding the case of the Jena 6...who gives a fuck if OJ Simpson stole some baseball cards or Britney might lose custody of her kids...there's bigger fish to fry out there, gentle reader; Ahmadinejad's a figurehead, if anything, the clerics make all of the big decisions when it comes to Persian governance...just like the corporations call all the shots over here, so don't be fooled by all the obfuscation an misleading talking points being bandied about at the moment...by all those Red State hypocrites....I'm just waiting for Ollie North to show up and start waving the flag around (he sold the weapons to Iran that are now in question while working on the low during Ronnie Ray-Gun's tenure...what a tangled web they wove...how soon we forget) ...all of this made me think of a piece I wrote a while back comparing the comedian Dave Chapelle to writer/ book; magazine editor/ political lightning rod Gore Vidal. It begins like this...
"It seems that what we need now, more than anything, are straight shooters manning the crows nests of the public's news channels but the way earthly things are going, even if there were an army of these truth-to-power types running around they'd be neutralized (read: gagged) by the now corporate overrun media sources -- the proverbial trough of information from which the American braintrust consumes its geo-political'n current events nourishment. All of this caused me to reflect on two disparate voices pointing in the same direction that I've been listening to over the years: Dave Chapelle and Gore Vidal." ...CONTINUED...
 ...Ye Gods!!! I'm getting tired of being right about guys like this and the country/ culture that he was born into...I wrote this piece a while back and I think it still holds true about all of the above...especially since dude's in the news AGAIN..this time for B&E in Las Vegas, of all places...CONTINUED...  ...pardon the Obi Wan-Darth Maul, Jedi look but the A/C in this building is boomin' and it's colder 'n a witch's titty where I'm sittin'...never knew there was an Arctic Circle setting on that thing, so I've been rockin' a hoodie while at my desk...too, I've been on the phone waiting for the last half hour while the IT guy sorts out my email clearances and such shite...CONTINUED... ...I'm sittin' in the caf, wrapping up some writing scheiße and the jingle to this TV show I used to watch just popped up in my dome...here's a couple more oldies but goldies from back in the day ...if you're in the same age bracket or just remember 'em....(I put it in the first comment)  ...As stated in an earlier post, I got to participate in roundtables with some of the cast of Jim Mangold's forthcoming western remake of 3:10 to Yuma over at the Regent Beverly Wilshire last week...I posted "*the session with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale*": already...and now I will throw on what went down with Peter Fonda and Ben Foster...Peter came in first and we all got rolling and Foster came in a bit later...I don't know if you remember Ben from Six Feet Under or X-Men...but when you see him in Yuma, you'll know who was in command every time the cameras were on Charlie Prince, the hard-ass he plays in the film...Fonda threw down the gauntlet and rocked that joint as well...CONTINUED  ...whenever I feel like its taking too long for me to get my creative grind on, I have to remind myself of dudes like Greg Sage, Sam Henry and Dave Koupal who formed Wipers back in 1978...look in their eyes in that grainy-ass picture...young and hungry...I'm hip, son... even though they cut a couple of influential records that ...CONTINUED  ...being a Southerner, with a father who loved TV shows like Johnny Cash's show on ABC, Hee Haw and listened to C&W when it wasn't hip to be black and reveal as much, my daddy would bump that shite anyway... still a country boy, West Indian roots or no...(grown men are allowed to call their fathers "daddy", where I'm from) so, there's a special place in my heart for bluegrass music...Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, cats like that...I've seen 'em play... (at an early age I learned to cut to the bullshite of the times and find my funk wherever it was)...years later, when I was cutting some tracks (in the same spot they cut "Purple People Eater) in Nashville, I stumbled out the back door of the studio looking for the parking lot at about four in the morning to smoke a butt and I looked across the street to find that we were right across the plaza from...CONTINUED on Chronicles of Ridicule...  ...I started writing this piece last week, after a screener while waiting for a bus in front of the Larry Flynt building over on Wilshire and La Cienega, I continued writing on the subway and finished it up when I got to the pad...it was about 12:30 but the adrenaline from realizing that I was almost smoked an hour or so prior was still swirling through my veins...the message in the tune below goes with the tale which is continued on the Chronicles of Ridicule...  ...I was chatting with a friend online in Spain last night and we came across the subject of Flamenco dancing; music and it jogged my memory about a post that I did months ago on my music blog and forgot to link back to on here or the CoR for whatever reason...I think it's tale that should be told, so I'll post the original in it's entirety ...CONTINUED...  ...But only for a few minutes, my brothers and sisters...I've been working on getting my proper blog moving along, so I can monetize it (get sponsors) before I head over to Europe at the end of this/ beginning of next year...I want to know if there's too much going on in the sidebar (am starting to add press day photos, going forward)...I've been fucking around with the template all day and want some feedback (Connie's been a real help lately too)...whatever's clever...take a look...and subscribe to the CoR feed, if you like...so what're your thoughts on THIS PRESENTATION???...does the player get as annoying as I think it does...would three colums work better than two...hook me up with some comments......ok, I feel much better....now... 
 As mentioned earlier, Last Friday I covered press for the forthcoming action flick The Condemned which stars the WWE pro wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (the Longest Yard) and Vinnie Jones(Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch) here's the copy from my session with Vinnie Jones, who totally eschews the "hard as a coffin nail" persona that he'd perfected in Guy Richie films, my recorder ate the first five minutes of copy but I still had the last half hour of what went down...read on and find out Bullet Tooth Tony's thoughts on David Beckham, charity and grabbing nut sacks on the soccer pitch...continued here
 Last Friday I covered press for the forthcoming action flick The Condemned which stars the WWE pro wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (the Longest Yard) and Vinnie Jones(Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch) and both were cool as hell...the film's set for release on the April 27th and isn't half as bad...it wasn't Fassbinder but it did what it was meant to do: entertain. Here's some of what went down during Steve's interview...continued here
 Listen up all you Hip Hop heads, the people who brought the world the Rock the Bells Festival have announced their full talent lineup that includes Cypress Hill, The Roots, Mos Def, EPMD, MF Doom with headlners RATM and the Wu-Tang Clan with a special guests: a newly re-united Public Enemy...I was going to let this one pass but who could give up the chance to see PE rockin' wild one last time?..Finally, all the younger heads have the opportunity to go witness what I've been screaming about in magazines and online all these years: Chuck D and co. throw down the gauntlet in a live context -- it ain't like listening to a record, son...
As the notification I got sent maintains, "the festival has expanded it's itinerary and added 15 additional dates...further down it mentions that Nassir "Hip Hop is Dead" Jones (or Nas) will also headline some of the gigs...here's the rest of it
 ...some of you got the gas face a couple of months ago when Rodrigo y Gabriela had to nix their tour schedule...here's a little good news
 ...I never got into Paul Fieg and Jason Apatow's Freaks and Geeks when it first aired in '99 as I was busy making the change from playing tunes on the road to staying put in Atlanta and working a full time day gig as a cook-- I spent the majority of my spare time checking bands at the Point, while swilling pints at the Yacht Club or disco-ing over at the Star Bar on Tuesday nights-- so watching the tube wasn't high on the priorities list...
...I didn't get turned on to Freaks until years later when I'd started writing; late one night, while staying at my mom's house for a visit, I was punching up something on deadline the next day and one of those TVLand-ish marathons was on in the background-- I got sucked into Feig and Apatow's world and have been a fan ever since...
continued here
 ...I know a lot of people don't cotton to U2's frontman's offstage antics but I'm listening to this funny ass segment on LA-based news show Weekend America" about Pavel Sfera, this Romanian dude in Chicago who's a dead ringer for Mr. Hewson...the segment is quite a laugh...whether you're kickin' back, gettin' your green oat soda drink on or not, check it here
 ...John Srebalus, a collegue/ editor/ scribe over at Rhino Records is one of the dryest rock writers I know out there—he’s funny as shite to read and he always has something to say that involves giving the status quo the middle finger…he’s one of the guys I work with over on Rhino Insider (Rhino Records’ blog) and whom I’ve worked on a few PodCast productions with…he punched up an article on his own blog ( You Are Not Your Neighborhood) that I thought people here, and other disenfranchised readers of mags like Rolling Stone might want to take note of re: the demise of the magazine Arthur which starts like this…
“This past Sunday, February 25, Arthur magazine announced it’s on “indefinite hiatus.”
According to the Arthur Web site:
…We at Lime Publishing, the current publisher, had been working toward transitioning operations to a new publisher since the start of the year. A breakdown this past week in negotiations for the future of the magazine led to an unfortunate and perplexing announcement that “Arthur is Dead.”… This poorly-timed message was sent out, against explicit wishes of Lime Publishing, to the public before the staff, advertisers or contributors were notified… The current hiatus may still lead to future opportunities for Arthur, but for the time being we are paring down operations.
If the state of journalism wasn’t sad enough, this is devastating news. While the trend in recent years has been toward visual flash, snippet word counts, and P.R.-muscled content, Arthur maintained that yes, people still read (or should try it now and again), and…” continued here
 ...yeah, thats a snap of the storied Whisky where bands like Love, Led Zeppelin, the Doors and Janice Joplin niced it up back in the 60s...I've been there once in the ten years that I've lived here as the bands that are regularly on stage never really did anything for me...oddly, when I lived back in NYC I went to CBGBs on the regs but whatever's clever, yo
...although people all over the world know tons about the LZ's and Joplin's contributions to the 60s-era rock canon, not a lot of hipsters have swung with Love who were a huge draw at the Whisky when they were breaking on through to the other side on it's stage just before Jim, Ray, Robbie and John picked up the baton and ran with it, peep the album cover...continued here
 ...I was driving down Sunset yesterday on my way back from Malibu, in bumper-to-bumper traffic along the Strip, heading East when just as the traffic on my side of the street started to surge forward this beater from the oncoming lane on the other side of the double line shot over onto my side, I slammed on the brakes just in time and only the bumper of my car got nicked...turns out, this truck behind that car had pushed that lady's car from behind and the sheer force made her lose control of her vehicle and she careened wildly to the opposite side of the street, jumped the curb and crashed into a meter...continued here
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