The Crasstalk Buzz Maintenance Program

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Thursday was interesting wasn’t it? I think we all realize how much this place means to us and that we want to keep the Crasstalk buzz going. Frankly, maintaining this place is going to take money. The question is this: how should Crasstalk generate this money?

The site that shall not be named, who also helped create Thursday’s pickle (with some help from Arken), apparently thinks that orange finger-staining Frito-lay snacks is the ideal way to feed Nibbles. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a Cheeto War here — and I don’t think Honey Badger will stand for it either.

Booze seems to be a unifying force here and that is why I created The Crasstalk Buzz Maintenance Program. Purchase fabulous wine through www.winedreamer.com using coupon code: FEEDTHEBADGER and Crasstalkers will get 10% off their wine purchases and 10% will go to our Crasstalk Overlords to offset the costs of upgrading and maintaining this site.  Turn your vice into something nice, for a change.

But wait there is more!

During the evening of Thursday, March 24th, I will host live-blog winetasting and walk Crasstalker’s through six wines from www.winedreamer.com. So invite some friends over, unless you plan to plow through six bottles of wine yourself!

The wines that we will be tasting are as follows — pricing includes 10% discount:

Whites:

  • Secret 2007 White Wine ($12.59)
  • Piro Piro Piccolo 2009 Pinot Grigio ($15.29)
  • Martellotto Chardonnay 2009 Santa Barbara ($17.99)

Reds:

  • Martellotto 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Paso Robles ($17.99)
  • M by Martellotto 2008 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley ($21.59)
  • Either Conservative Red or Progressive Red — same Meritage wine, different labels to reflect your political persuasion ($22.49)

You do not have to purchase all of these wines to participate, obviously. If you end up purchasing some of the other wines from www.winedreamer.com, let us know how they taste during our live-blog. I will probably bring out Pura Vida as that is a favorite.  Any wine you purchase at www.winedreamer.com that uses code FEEDTHEBADGER will get the 10% discount and will get the 10% to support the site.

FYI….1. Shipping is not included in these prices and the cost to ship 1 bottle or 6 is about the same; 2. Discount will not show up until the FEEDTHEBADGER code is entered and until the final screen at checkout.

Remember no code = no money for Crasstalk and no discount for you. Any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Cheers!

Are You Smarter Than a Football Player?

I have spent much of the past two days in front of the television watching sturdy and well-formed young men run around an empty stadium in Indianapolis dressed in nothing but skin-tight biker shorts and muscle shirts. I haven”t seen so many bulges since that morning at the Provincetown Pride Parade. But that’s a story for another day. No, I’m not watching Spring Break on the Logo Channel, it’s the NFL Network. That can only mean one thing, America. It’s Combine Week in the NFL.

The NFL Combine is basically an audition for hundreds of prospective NFL football players. These are incoming players, eligible for the draft for the first time. They run, throw, block, hop, skip, jump and do everything but sing show tunes in front of scouts and coaches from all 32 NFL teams and a national television audience. Off the field, players are examined by doctors, interviewed by general managers and taken apart mentally by staff psychologists. Last year in a notorious Combine moment, wide receiver Dez Bryant of Oklahoma State was asked by Miami Dolphins General Manager Jeff Ireland if it was, in fact, true that his mother was a prostitute. Ireland, who later apologized, was either looking for a quick lay after the session ended or just wanted to see how Bryant reacted to sudden stress.

For the average football fan who is not actually going to make any selections in the upcoming draft , the Combine is at once as dull as watching articial turf grow and as fascinating as brain surgery. Hour after hour, day after day, 300-lb linemen defy several laws of physics and run 40 in 5 seconds, 200-lb running backs lift twice their weight 18 consecutive times and quarterbacks throw perfect spirals all the way to Chicago.

But the most intriguing part of the Combine is, sadly, not on television. The good stuff takes place behind the scenes in closely guarded classrooms, where players are given a raw intelligence test called the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test, written, scored and evaluated by the Wonderlic Corporation of Vernon Hills, IL.

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, thousands of employees in a variety of professions have at some point taken a Wonderlic-type test as a condition of employment. It makes sense if the applicant is a CPA or a HVAC repair-person. A business wants to know it’s not hiring Paris Hilton. But what does an IQ-style test have to do with the physical ability and the commensurate willingness to remove a quarterback’s head from his shoulders in the hopes of gaining a Wild Card berth or gain one extra yard only to have James Harrison drive his rocket-fuel-propelled body into your chest, sending you hurtling into the club seats. The heart and motivation to sacrifice self for team cannot be measured on a 50 item multiple-choice test.

Indeed, a major academic study completed at the University of North Carolina in 2007 concluded there was no correlation between high Wonderlic scores and success in the NFL. So why take this test at all? Who knows–why take the SAT? Perhaps the problem is that football is just asking the wrong types of intelligence questions. The Wonderlic’s questions are fairly straightforward, by-the-book IQ type questions, such as:

  • A train travels 20 feet in 1/5 second. At this same speed, how many feet will it travel in three seconds?
  • When rope is selling at $.10 a foot, how many feet can you buy for sixty cents?
  • The ninth month of the year is…

You can take an entire sample test here.

Despite its reputation as a Neanderthal ThugFest, football at its highest levels is by far our brainiest and most intellectual game. It’s true that baseball players are frequently required to both scratch their balls and spit tobacco at the same time. And then guess curveball. But that’s pure hand-eye coordination–as is having the innate ability to consistently miss your shoe with your spit.

Basketball and hockey are mostly athleticism, grit and instinct. And yes, the very best players see the game as it will be three seconds from now not as it is in our reality. That is more than raw intelligence for a sport–it is a gift of timing, intuition and physical creativity. Kinisthetic and athletic geniuses like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Kobe Bryant literally play a different game than we do.

But football is on a whole other level when it comes to complexity.  A typical play call on offfense might be:

  • “Scatter-Two Bunch Right-Zip-Fire Right-273-Pivot-F Flat.”
  • “Duece Right 19 Slot on 1 and Dice Right Ice Cream Alert 654 Jose”
  • “Trips Right 255 X Block Slant H Disco Alert 12 Trap”

If you are a quarterback, a position which only a kind of football savant can play, not only do you have to know your play and know where all your backs, linemen and wideouts will be and when they will be there, but you also must determine what the defense is doing. And this despite the defense doing everything it can to disguise its intentions.

And the incoming and data must be processed and communicated to ten co-workers in less than 30 seconds, again and again, under extreme physical and mental pressure in a setting where the decibel level is often as high as at a Clash concert. All this and it suddenly seems a 50 question IQ test is not enough. If you’re going to be my quarterback, I’m going to want transcripts, letters of recommendation from your sophomore English professor and that research paper you did on the Civil War. Oh, and I’ll need your Calc final.

Most of all, I’m gonna want to see how you react when I ask if it’s true you’re sister’s a whore while we’re both standing on train tracks at high noon with the Acela bearing down from the east, Ray Lewis coming from the west, and Larry Fitzgerald open down the road for six easy points. And right now you’re down to four seconds to figure out how long ago the Acela left Detroit. Do all that correctly and a hundred million dollar, seven-year deal is yours. And I’ll tell you I was just kidding about your sister.

Photo here.

Rainy Days and Monday Open Thread

It’s raining, and Monday. The Grand Inquisitor is tired and cranky. She apologizes. Let’s see if we can’t find some nice things to make the world seem sunnier.

Caution: contains one instance of the F word

There, that helped. Have a great afternoon.

In Praise Of Older Men

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While human and cinematic history is filled with May-December romances, in contemporary society they are relatively rare. In movies, there is rarely any mention of a large age gap between romantic leads, but I can say from experience that it can, in fact, be a significant issue on many levels. In a relationship involving an older man and a much younger woman, there is often an assumed implication: that she is bartering her youth and fertility for his wealth and security. That may be the case in some unions involving a difference in age of several decades, but in my case, it was love at first sight from the start.

 

Since I was a child, I’ve always sought out older people of both genders to befriend and advise me. My first real crush – aside from my passion for Underdog when I was 5 – was on my sixth grade social studies/PE teacher, who was 47 at the time. We shared a phenomenal intellectual connection and an effortless affinity. He inspired me to achieve my personal best in my studies and in my athletic pursuits, and we developed a mutually appreciative, very close yet utterly innocent extra-curricular relationship that would be impossible to maintain in today’s Law & Order: SVU-influenced society.

 

At age 14, I met a 29-year-old Christopher Atkins lookalike at a family wedding, and I came thisclose to dating him in secret. When I was 17, my I was smitten by a hunky, hip, obscure rock musician my parents’ age, who lived in our apartment building. He confessed to me once that if not for my mother’s watchful eye, he would have invited me up to his apartment eagerly.

 

At a spiritual retreat near Woodstock, I met my first lover, a tantric adept, when I was 19 and he was 40. (We are still close friends, 24 years later.) Between the ages of 19 and 26, I had lovers ranging in age from 18  to 60.  I met my boyfriend and companion for the last 17 years when I was 26 and he was 57. Like other much older men I’ve been attracted to, one of the things which intrigued me most about him was that he was uncomfortable with our large age difference. It’s proven much easier for me to bridge the gap in life experiences with someone who is not seeking a token or trophy to reminisce his own lost youth.

 

My present relationship calls to mind the enduring marriage of (early 20th century film icon) Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill, pictured above. They met when she was 17 and he was 54, and their union lasted until his death, more than three decades later. Chaplin caught a lot of flak for the woman he chose to be his wife. But if he had ever listened to any of the prurient gossip and made a different choice based on it, he would have missed out on sharing the truest love of his life.

 

When love finds you, age, sexual orientation, racial/ethnic, or religious backgrounds really don’t matter. As the world becomes more diverse, there is more acceptance of individual choices which seem to be outside the norms of society. In being true to yourself, you are never alone.

Test.

The Straight Man’s Guide To The Oscars

Lots of people like the Oscars. They REALLY like the Oscars. If you’re the typical American woman and/or gay man, this is basically your Super Bowl, minus the cool commercials and John Madden. You go to the store the day before, stock up on drinks and food (chocolate) and turn on the TV at 3 p.m. to watch all the red carpet special. Because it really fucking matters what who everybody is wearing! Continue reading →

Oscar Fashion: The Good, The Bad and the WTF

Good morning to you! What a night! Dancing Queen and Missing Peace are passed out in the corner and confetti is floating in their champagne glasses. Let’s let them sleep it off – they deserve it! Although the ceremony was bad, you made it great by joining us for an epic live blog of the red carpet and the awards. We knew Francaway (the terrible monster cobbled together from the lifeless corpse of James Franco and the manic horse-muppet, Anne Hathaway) would be awful and there were few surprises for the winners this year – all the excitement was on the red carpet.

I’m peeling off the false lashes to take a closer look at last night’s fashion in the semi-sober light of day. Below are some of the most notable looks of the night. Who did you love? Who did you hate (we don’t say “hate” – how about “detest” or “want to stuff into the trunk of a car heading into Missouri meth country”)?  Click on the images, below, to get a closer look – all the better to snark with, my dears.

The WTF Award goes to…..Melissa Leo! The Best Supporting Actress winner is my pick for the absolute worst dressed. Everything was wrong with her look – the cut, the fabric, this slit up the center, the appropriateness for the event. You don’t want to go down in Oscars fashion history for wearing a giant homage to what’s left on the table after a country fair bake sale. She was heavily favored to win and should have ramped it up about ten notches. She also could have been less annoying while accepting her award (like she didn’t know she’d win – pssssshhaawww).

WTF, Leo. W.T.F.

The Bad Award goes to…Scarlett Johannson. It was not the worst – see directly above. (Are you still drunk?) It was just bad. Bad color, bad back, bad hair and no boobs. ScarJo, your big tickets are the reason we tune in and we want to see them. You might think Helena Bonham Carter would win this award, but I actually give her a pass because she’s delightfully nutty and my expectations for her are very low. She rarely disappoints because she’s set the bar mere inches off the ground. Also notable horribleness goes to Kathryn Bigelow and her sweater dress.

Dolce and Gabbana done wrong.
My girl crush.

 

The Good Award goes to…like five people. Reese Witherspoon and Camila Alves are my favorites of the night, but then I like the classics, the looks that will stand up over the test of time. If Reese is a little tame for you, how about Mila Kunis? At first, I was torn over the purple and the lace and the little boob-cup detail, but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it. Now I love it. The shape of the dress looks fantastic on her, though it would be hard to go wrong on that girl.  My other favorite of the night is Jennifer Hudson.  Wow.  She looked fan-freaking-tastic. Plus, Mila and JHud were on point with the color trends of the night – red (Bullock, Anne Horseface, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lawrence) and purple (Portman and the aforementioned ScarJo). Abandoned was the “green with envy” look that we saw at the Golden Globes.

J Hud looking fab.

 

 

 

Simple dress, perfect cut, great hair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we noted last night, there was a serious lack of bling. Is it because of the economy? Are the stars not even allowed to borrow jewelry anymore?  LiLo ruins everything.

Finally, a word with all the hairstylists in Hollywood. With limited exception, the hair on the ladies looked like it had been through a hurricane. That is NOT CUTE. When wearing a formal gown before millions of people, looking like you just woke up after a rough night is not acceptable and yet, so many women were sporting that look. If they didn’t do the undone Bardot look, then the tight bun was the other option, a look which is very severe on most women.  Were they influenced by the ballerina chic in Black Swan? The boring hair and lack of baubles left us feeling more like the morning after than the main event.

 

"May I show you to your seat?"
Portman wearing port wine.
This hot bitch can do no wrong
This drew mixed reactions.
Speaking of hot bitches...
Love the dress, but Mandy Moore?
Camila Alves, best dressed and tressed.
Living well is the best revenge.
One word: Baywatch.
You cannot wear that bridesmaid's dress again.
Bellatrix is a character, not a lifestyle choice.
Patrick Bateman is less scary.
Okay, scarier than Patrick Bateman.
So over this look. Moving on...
When your stylist hates you (wedding dress #68).
Older Goop with Sleeves
Matching boob and hair parts? No.
No.
No.
Yes.

Stray Tracks of the Week (2/17-2/25/11)

*This post is also posted on The Pop Stalinist, my personal blog. There were a few reviews that didn’t make it over here this week.*

I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Thursday or Friday night, mods willin’.

This week was actually pretty light, with a lot of my listening time devoted to older Swans records and newer Angels of Light recordings, which I have dug up in light of an incredible show put on by the former that I attended in Denver this past week. These are musical supplements I’ve been taking. I put in entirely too much work last week resizing Youtube (and apparently it slows WordPress down) so I’m just linking to songs this time.

Antena – Camino del Sol (from Camino Del Sol on Le Disques du Crepsecule / Numero)

This is actually an old song, from a band I wasn’t even aware of until Numero re-released their 1982 Camino Del Solcompilation / mini-album on vinyl not too long ago. Antena was a French band originally signed to Le Disques du Crepsecule, a small Belgian indie that became notable for its close relationship with the Benelux subsidiary of Factory Records, who in large part birthed the “Madchester” scene from which Joy Division / New Order and many other notable post-punk bands emerged. Unfortunately for Antena, Manchester’s heat didn’t rub off on them (though Factory Benelux artists, such as A Certain Ratio, did meet with some success) and they and they became the sort of act that obscurity collectors raved about but few really remembered.

It’s somewhat sad to contemplate, given a track like “Camino Del Sol”. This is certainly a sort of pop music, albeit the sort of pop that goes ignored all too often. Antena’s stock-in-trade is tropicalia (or as Neil Tennant called it, “electro-samba”), which, as you might expect, translates into typically sunny moods, but Antena’s song (and most of the album from which it is culled) contains a remarkable melancholy largely attributable to Isabelle Powaga’s whisper-sung vocals and the (synth harpsichord?) chords that make up the melody, giving it an extra depth. In terms of production, it near-perfect, so good as to feel contemporary, with the electronic elements blending seamlessly in with the percussion and the vox. It feels like a lost classic, perfect for a warm Summer, or a Roger Moore Bond film. One wonders what more Antena would have produced had they received the attention they deserved.

“Camino Del Sol” on Youtube.

(Camino Del Sol is currently being sold in vinyl format on Boomkat, but if digital music is your thing I’ve only been able to find it on iTunes, which is weird!)

Hype Williams – Business Line (from One Nation, forthcoming on Hippos In Tanks)

I admit that I reacted poorly when “Witch House” became a thing. Beyond being unimpressed with Salem‘s inexplicably acclaimed minstrel act and wary of blog-defined microgenres (as opposed to, say, regionally defined ones), beyond the universally irritating use of wingdings in band names and cheaply acquired occult signifiers, as an industrial music fan I had a chip on my shoulder over Witch House’s debt to that venerable scene. Every booster of Witch House (some bloggers briefly tried to rebrand it as “Drag Music” when it was clear the “House” designation was an albatross) seemed to go on about how a given act (usually Salem) was creating totally unprecedented music – dark electronic music with a debt to hip hop. I felt this was clearly bullshit, and I was ready to write the whole thing off.

But as the bloom came off Witch House in the mainline indie press and the paremeters of the sound, which were always nebulous, started to expand beyond acts that had hit my shitlist almost immediately (Salem, Tri Angle records, and Creep, who will always and forever be that band who called their music “rapegaze”), it started to sound better. All it really needed was a de-emphasis of the Screw Musicinfluences and the tacky triangles-and-hoods bullshit. Hype Williams was more than willing to offer those things. It’s not entirely clear what their story is – it’s possible that they’re an anonymous collective, but the public face of the group, such as it is, is a duo, Inga Copeland and Dean Blunt, hailing from Russia and London respectively. Perhaps their distance from the States (and the general lack of hype from the usual blogroll suspects) made them better candidates to push Witch House forward, but whatever the case, their sound palette has proved quite diverse in the project’s short history.

“Businessline” is from their forthcoming LP debut on Hippos In Tanks, and what’s striking about it is how out-of-time it seems – It could certainly have come from the same 80?s VHS haze as “chillwave” did, but the winding synthline brings it forward to the 90?s as well, when Richard D. James was intermittently putting out demo-quality tracks that  brought a certain rough-hewn pop sensibility to IDM. It’s a short track, but its unmannered lightness stands in sharp contrast to the sort of contrived gloom that defined Witch House when it was born. If I had to wager I’d put money on Hype Williams being one of the few bands that survives and moves on when that house of cards collapses, assuming they’re anywhere near the premises when it happens.

“Businessline” on Youtube

(“One Nation” will be available from various retailers in just about a week’s time. In the meantime, you can download “Businessline” from XLR8R, for free.)

Solar Bears – Cub (Keep Shelly in Athens Remix) (Unreleased)

Solar Bears’ She Was Coloured In was one of my favorite LPs from last year (I think it ended up on #2 or #3 on my list) but “Cub” was probably the weakest track on the album. At first listen it sort of fits into the Geogaddi-era Boards of Canada sound that Solar Bears appeared to be tapping into when their music first hit the blogs. But on She Was Coloured In they showed a range of influences and capabilities beyond mere imitation of BoC (and there are far worse acts to hound). As it stood, “Cub” was an anemic sketch, really little more than a tasteful hippy guitar jam that goes nowhere over 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Worse than pastiche, it was bad pastiche.

Luckily for us, Keep Shelly In Athens (who I had never heard of before this) took to remixing duties on “Cub” and pushed the BoC era a bit forward, to The Campfire Headphase day, doubling the song’s length and adding all the dramatic bombast and sonic texture that the original lacked. I’d be remiss to say there wasn’t something a little bit off about the track – probably the fact that all the song’s emotion is front and center, on its sleeve, so to speak, and the meticulous production is sort of wasted on that bluntness. But it’s still head and shoulders above the original in terms of efficacy and quality.

“Cub (Keep Shelly In Athens Remix)” on Youtube.

(This remix isn’t on any official releases. XLR8R has it for free download, however, along with a surprising number of other Solar Bears tracks.)

 

Life, Death and Violence: A Study of February 28

Each day on This American Life, Death and Violence we choose a different theme and come up with people and stories that fit that theme. Today: People who have good intentions. Stories of people trying to help, but end up causing a lot of trouble. For instance, we always try to have good intentions,  but it tends to backfire which has led to us getting called manipulative bastards by ex-boyfriends, which, well, isn’t fun, but, you know, we had good intentions! Anyways, let’s get to the fun!

Oh yeah. Before we begin, we’d like to make an announcement. In order to avoid overexposure, Joseph Gordon Levitt will no longer be mentioned in this blog. Every other Monday we will introduce a new crush object to alleviate weariness and this fortnight’s crush/mascot is Sufjan Stevens. We’re also debuting our fancy new logo! Get it on a mug!*

LIFE!

(When we put on our wings and soar towards success)


  • 1824: Blondin: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. This French tightrope walker didn’t die from a fall, but he did have a fall that ended with the death of two people. It’s such a shame when the good intentions of entertainment lead to death. In 1861, while performing 50 feet above the ground, the rope he was on broke, causing the scaffolding to fall. Blondin was not injured, but two workers who were on the scaffolding fell to their deaths. An investigation occurred in which no fault was put onto Blondin or his manager. However, the judge said the rope maker had a lot to answer for. The man who ran the venue where the incident occurred vowed never to have a spectacle of that sort ever again, yet, Blondin was back the next year doing a tightrope walk 100 feet above the ground even though there was a bench warrant against him and his manager for not appearing at a trial in regards to the earlier, deadly incident as they were touring in America at that particular time. Blondin enjoyed a successful career until his death some thirty years later.

  • 1903: Vincente Minnelli: The famed director had the good intentions of love on his mind when he started courting Judy Garland on the set of “Meet Me in St. Louis,” but then he gave us Liza. Just kidding! We love Liza!
  • Back to Vincente, who was born as Lester. If we were born with a name like Lester, we would definitely change it to something cooler. We were almost named Jared according to our mother and thank god that didn’t happen. Anyways, Vincente’s famous flicks include An American in Paris, Brigadoon, Gigi, Father of the Bride and Madame Bovary.
  • He married four times (four!) and ended up dying from emphysema and pneumonia. Smoking is bad kids, but smoking in the snow in a t-shirt and a pair of jorts? That’s fatal. Remember that.

  • 1912: Clara Petacci: It’s hard to say what Clara’s intentions were when she teamed up with Mussolini, if they were good, if they were bad, but her continued support of the regime lead to further turmoil of the Italian people and when Benito and the Jets were captured by the Russians, she was shot with them, even though rumour has it that she was given the option to break up with the Italian dictator and escape with her life. She stayed with the band and Benito and the Jets ended up hanging upside down at a gas station.
  • Clara died at the age of 33, the same age as Jesus. We’re not saying she’s the messiah and that the Russians killed her and did a World War 2 crucifixion (shot in the head and strung up upside down so people can pelt your dead body with rocks). We’re just saying she was 33 is all and was hanged for vandalism in The Garden of Gasthemene Petrol Station. Honest.

DEATH!

(Where we go when our good intentions take us too close to the sun)

 

  • 1525: Cuauhtemoc: Cuauhtemoc (say that ten times fast) became the ruler of Tenochtitlan at 18 while the Spanish were taking over and everyone was dying of smallpox. This was like if the Secretary of Agriculture became President because no one else was able to do it, so yeah. In 1521, all the good intentions of saving the Aztecs failed, as he was captured by Cortes while fleeing Tenochtitlan in disguise. He asked to be killed, but Cortes had the royal treasurer torture Cuauhtemoc by burning his feet until he gave up that darned Aztec gold  (which was essentially nonexistent) and, fearing an insurrection, Cortes had Cuauhtemoc (we just love typing that name! Cuauhtemoc Cuauhtemoc Cuauhtemoc!) hanged, but not before Cuauhtemoc placed a curse on Cortes and made him feel guilty about hanging him! Oh Cuauhtemoc! You so smart! WE LOVE YOU AND YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS!
  • 1891: George Hearst: Georgie Boy had good intentions. He wanted the American Dream™ and he lived the American Dream™. He became a successful miner and investor and became a United States senator: The American Dream™. He more than provided for his family including, and this is where his good intentions took a turn for the worse, his son William Randolph who became a newspaperman and championed yellow journalism and that’s why we have stuff like the NY Post. Ugh. Hate you George, but mainly because we blame you for bad puns in headlines. You yourself are pretty awesome and a good role model for all us prospectors headed towards California, which would be  us! Announcement: We’re moving to California to find gold!
  • George Hearst had the most amazing beard known to hipster. They’d be mad jealous of him on Kent. And by they, we mean both sides of the culture wars: The Hipsters and The Hasids. It truly is amazing and we’re typing in awe as we look at it. Typing. In. Awe.
  • 1965: Emile Buisson: The French! Always surrendering! Well, this one had terrible intentions and he didn’t so much surrender as he was caught, but, then again, he didn’t kill them all when they closed in. He surrendered himself. Just like the French are wont to do. Anyways, Emily was a French gangster who killed a lot of people, and by a lot of people, we mean a lot of people. Like, more than thirty people. That’s a lot of people! What bad things can happen from good, we mean, bad intentions.
  • He was first captured in 1941, but was considered criminally insane and sent to the looney bin where he escaped in 1947. He was finally caught and executed in 1965. At least the French police never surrendered!

 

VIOLENCE!

(What happens when we exert force upon others)


  • 1710: Denmark vs Sweden! MONDAY! MONDAY! MONDAY! Be there! Be there! Be there! Only at The Silverdooome! 14,000 Swedes beat up 14,000 Danes and all the Danes got as consolation was a vicious plague and complete ruin of a few cities until the mid 19th century. Sweden won with superior design.
  • 1958: Crash! Boom! A bus full of children hits a wrecker truck and falls into a river killing 26 kids and the bus driver. Wait a sec. Isn’t this Simon Birch? (leaves to look up) Nope, that was filmed in Canada. Here’s a pic of the bus driver:

Seriously though. Sad.

  • 1991: George Bush wins the first Gulf War! You go, girl!

 

OTHER NEAT THINGS THAT HAPPENED TODAY!

(How we thought it was a good idea to fly close to the sun with wings of wax is beyond us. Who do we think we are?)


  • 1883: The first vaudeville theater opens! Hello mah baby, hello mah honey, hello mah ragtime gaaaal! We’re gonna be a stah! A stah!
  • 1993: Invasion of David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas.
  • 2004: More than a million Taiwanese persons hold hands to commemorate the 228 Incident in which ten to thirty thousand protesters were killed by their government. The 228 Incident is now known within Taiwan as  Peace Memorial Day and the ring a bell to remember the victims.

 

Our intention today was to wow you, little birds, with another treasure trove of historical facts and whimsical words. We hope nothing bad comes of those good intentions and we leave you, until tomorrow, with another glorious photo of Life, Death and Violence Crush Object™ Sufjan Stevens:

*Life, Death and Violence logo not actually available on a mug.


Monday Morning Open Thread

Well good morning! Are you ready for another exciting week? Ok, me neither, but let’s try to get moving and maybe it won’t be so painful.

BTW, is Save Ferris the cutest band ever, or what?

 

Want to join in? Here’s how:

Have a great morning.

-= A Message from Bens =-

Hello friends. The numbers are in for yesterday’s liveblog of the Oscars. We had a lot of traffic yesterday, and the server held up just fine. However, we used quite a lot of bandwidth. Please please donate when you can. We’re not internetting on Nick Denton’s dime. I hate to ask you guys to donate, but please get in the habit of sending us some money every week or two so we’re still around. $10 isn’t a lot of money, if we got $10 a month from all of our users we’ll be around for as long as you want us to be here!

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(Shameless pathetic semi-rant over.)

Have a nice day!

Call me irresponsible…

Guyz!

I have completely checked out of my job emotionally, and that means that on Thursday and Friday, I just didn’t show up.  This is bad.  It’s not how I was raised and it’s not who I am or want to be.  I have deep personal issues that need to be addressed so that this doesn’t happen for the next place.  Here’s the problem.  When you’re gay, and you parents are Mr. & Mrs. SuburboWASP, they usually send you the following message: you don’t have to BE perfect.  You just have to look as though you are.  What they don’t realize is that sending this message is incredibly destructive and can do horrible lasting damage, because it installs a very powerful button that other people can push, long into adulthood.  It surely plays hell with your self-esteem.

It’s done damage to the perception of my professionalism, because the untenable and unchangeable fact is that the CFO is my de facto boss (even though that’s point blank illegal).  The conflict of interest in such an arrangement is so obvious a kid could see it.  If I’m responsible for enforcing the rules, and the guy in the best position to break them is capable of hiring or firing me and dictating my compensation, I’m in a bit of a bind.

I could almost deal with this if he wasn’t undermining me at every turn.  So, I dropped my standards to the level of his expectations.  And I blame my boss-on-paper, the CEO, for knowing about this situation and doing nothing about it.  But at the end of the day I’m responsible for me.  And when you quit, you should at least tell the guy who signs your paycheck.

It’s done a bit of damage to me and the Cap’n, as well, although he’s got the patience of a saint and is one of the kindest, most generous men who ever lived.  (He ain’t perfect either, but being late to a dinner party shouldn’t trigger an uncharacteristic screamy rage-y meltdown in the car.  And it was his fault, but still.)

Lessons For My Crasstalk Friends: It’s clearly time to make some changes, but recognizing that I require and deserve to be treated with respect is a real good start.  Add to that the concept that I should tell people who don’t / can’t / won’t respect me to f-off very clearly rather than being passive aggressive.

Never – ever – give an unethical person so much power over you that he causes you to lose self-esteem, self-respect, lower your standards, or compromise what you know to be true.  Certainly don’t let them drive you to do self-destructive things. It’s just wrong.  I do enjoy a cocktail, but my limit is two.  Friday night was a full-on Barfy Billyburg Barfly Booze Bacchanal.  Unacceptable for someone my age and it ruined my Saturday, too.  I even got the side-eye from Crocker Kitty Edmund – I’m told I picked him up and sang “Sweet Child O’ Mine” in his face and he hates loud noises. Then I puked in the guest room bathroom and he stepped in it.  No more ‘tinis for me for a while.

So, my fellow Crasstalkers, this little Internettythingamabob that we have here has definitely been – and will continue to be – a safe spot for me to vent, brag, observe and complain, and that’s the fault of all of you.   I’ve never been a part of such a diverse, fun, funny, brilliant club in all my life, and it’s making my wee crisis a lot more… wee.  Thanks for that.

Interview 2 with the I-bank is on Tuesday.  Wish me luck, because I think I need it.

Update – After taking the weekend to chew it over, and to rehydrate after a rollicking Saturday AM hangover, the Cap’n and I reached some conclusions.  We’re going to just take this as it comes – if they can me (which would be bad for their business), Cap’n will take overtime to keep us afloat.