Daily Archives: February 10, 2011

30 posts

Music Documentary: The Decline of Western Civilization:III

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Whoa dude! This is part III of the legendary documentary series on the L.A. music scene. It never got a commercial release and is really hard to find. Part I was on punk rock circa ’79, part II on hair bands circa ’88, part III deals with the gutterpunk scene circa ’97.

I remember going to Hollywood during high school and seeing these guys scare the tourists. One of the girls works (works!) at a clothing shop on Melrose (she’s the kinda-cute girl) but I’m guessing most of these guys are dead or in prison or something. Its shocking and kind of sad, but still a very good documentary.

The rumor was that Penelope Spheeris bowed to pressure from civic leaders and didn’t release this commercially. It would have come out during the whole Rampart scandal, and it would have painted a very negative image of the city. We used to give these guys money and offer them rides to Covenant House (homeless shelter for kids) and wonder why they never took us up on the offer.

When I was sixteen I guess it was kind of secretly appealing to think that someone could just drop out, quit it all, and live with nothing but their wits and some raggedy clothes, maybe have a 40 to look forward to at night.

After watching the doc and learning that most of these kids were horribly abused and drunk 99% of the time, I feel sorry for them. $5 isn’t a lot of money to you or me, but its a fortune to them. Maybe I’m just a sucker, but I think I’ll always give these kinds of people a couple bucks. Anyway, here’s the doc, its pretty good, just lower the volume when the bands are playing and watch it as high-brow social commentary.

The Decline Of The Western Civilization: Part 3 – Gutter Punk (1998) Musidocs.com from documentaries on Veehd.

Snark Off: Banned Substances

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Commissioner Bud Selig has just announced that Charlie Sheen is now an illegal substance under MLB regulations.  Players will be randomly be tested for exposure to Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen (middle) with (from left to right) MLB players, Coco Crisp, Eric Davis, Brandon Watson and Milton Bradley.

Join the Ministry of Propaganda

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Attention fellow patriots: Crasstalk needs you. It is time to spread the word to the masses about the glorious Crasstalk Revolution.

I think we want to start first by collecting the refugees from the Gawker media meltdown. We need to spread the word on all the sites and try to find those who have yet to migrate. Got an I09 or Dead Spin account? Pimp us out. Notice one of your fave commenters isn’t here? Try to hit them up to join us.

So far we have a twitter and a fancy new FaceBook (thanks BBK). We can also be Stumbled Upon thanks to Muppet Baby. However I am sure we can think of a few more ways to spread the word.

First, we need a nice logo. Anyone got a flair for design? I can also open us a YouTube if we want to make some videos, which could be fun.

Anyway, I am opening this post to see who can help, and what kinds of ideas other people have for getting the word out.

Together we can win the Internet.

UPDATE: So I think we got some good ideas. I will open a YouTube and a Drop Box over the weekend. Let’s keep getting the word out in the Gawkerverse so our friends can find us. I will post a new thread to check in over the weekend. I also just want to say thanks to all of you guys, this has been a lot of fun for me. Please email crasstalk at gmail dot com if you have questions and/or suggestions.

Night, nite.

We are all Untermeyer Fountain Sprites tonight.

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Does that look like a Gawker refugee camp to you?  I didn’t think so.  But if a brilliant German sculptor in 1910 sought to capture what Crasstalk is about to become, he would have produced this.

This is Untermeyer Fountain, in the North Garden at NYC’s Central Park.  With a slight pang about my beloved Bethesda Fountain’s tender feelings, I declare it to be my favorite fountain in the entire Park.

Like Crasstalk, it’s simple, elegant and uncluttered.  Like Crasstalk commenters, it’s joie de vivre incarnate.  And also like our beautiful commenting ladies and gents, they’re keeping it real. See? The ladies are dancing barefoot.  It’s almost as though that wonderful garden spun around a few times and generated this wonderful thing that makes you say “Wow!” every time you see it.  That’s what Crasstalk might become.

I am glad that so many of my fellow former Gawkers came over here. But this is no refugee camp.  It’s a big noisy party with a lot of truly intellectual, curious, decent-hearted people in it.  And in my head it looks like this fountain.

So glad you all came over.  So glad we can continue to do meetups, HumpDay posts, book reviews, wine commentary (Mom3, I’m looking at you.), mockery of the absurd, and most of all… the really joyous stuff that happens when a few smart people dance around an idea.

Now let’s turn up that water, crank up the music, and shake what our Mommas gave us.

The difference between Christianity and Judiasm

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My girlfriend has a couple who is her best friend.  They’s good people, with two great kids.  They’re going skiing with us next weekend up in the Sierra Nevadas.  The kids are coming as a matter of circumstance, not by choice.  Neither of their parents can watch them because the dad’s parents are taking care of his grandfather who just entered hospice.  The mother’s parents can’t take them because her mother’s sister just died.  She had some disorder where the body produces too much blood.  She bled out of all of her orifices because her stomach ruptured due to the excessive blood production.  That’s a horrible fucking way to die.

My girlfriend’s friend is getting her Master’s.  There’s some screwup with her enrollment, and last week, she wasn’t able to attend class.  The friend calls this a blessing, because she was able to go to her mother’s house for her birthday instead of class.  This is when her mother found out that her sister was being taken to the hospital.  We live in Bakersfield, CA.  The mother and the aunt live in Tehachapi, which is 45 minutes east.  The hospital they were taking her to is in Bakersfield.  It’s a blessing because this woman was able to drive 45 minutes east, just to turn around and drive back to go to the hospital.  It’s a blessing that she was able to run laps.

Here’s where the difference hits.  If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, it’s a rough book.  The Jewish outlook on life seem to be, “It’s all shit, but when you die it gets better.  But make no mistake about it, it’s all shit.  And God is a prick.”  The Christian outlook is, “It’s shit, but when you die, provided you adhere to these rules, it gets better.  But make no mistake about it, it’s all shit.  And God loves us, so any modicum of happiness you’re able to get out of this is thanks to Him.”  Anything good, He gets the credit.  Anything bad, well that’s how it goes.  Judiasm is “My parents got shot right in front of me, and now I’m alone.”  Christianity is “My parents got shot right in front of me, but I was given this candy bar, so I got that going for me.”

This is one of the main reasons I don’t believe in God.

A Little Shoe Porn

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The title of this post is rather self-explanatory, but in case anyone didn’t know, bitches love shoes. This bitch gets to play with them for work, and I’ve put together a little gallery of footwear for which I’d be willing to break one or both ankles. The designer information is in the file name, but I didn’t include the prices. You don’t want to know, believe me.

Flowcharts for sanity

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All this talk of garbled code and web design has me thinking of two things: work and how people in my former profession often hate the people they work for.

Okay, hate may be a little excessive, but there are a reason sites like Clients from Hell exist. The simple reason is this: for those of us in careers in which no one understand what we do, or in which we are expected to be magic, we will go crazy if we don’t laugh at our tormentor overlords.

I think that’s been what’s happening around here with Denton today. Blowing off steam.

In an attempt to redirect that, I have a question for you: how do people in your profession blow off steam/mock those who torment you/etc?

XKCD is one of my favorite destinations – usually a new comic every M-W-F and they make me actually laugh quite a bit. Coding well is hard, and this is the perfect visualization of it:

XKCD "Good Coe"

From Should I Work for Free, and I actually remind myself to look at it before I offer to do something for a friend (which results in me saying No a lot). If you are a code geek go look at her site because she actually made the visual chart using CSS and HTML. So much love for that.

Should I work for free?

Click to expand the flow chart.

So. What about you guys?