a brief fashion moment

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the only enduring memory i have of the 2008 democratic convention is of michelle obama striding confidently onstage in that blue-green dress, looking sensational.





and saying to my flat-screen, "fuck whatever her dumbass husband says or does--we may have another jackie on our hands."


and then, as subsequent wardrobe atrocities unfolded, being as sorely disappointed in her as the rest of the country was in barack.

most recent case in point:



[sigh]

michelle, honey, i may not know anything about fashion, but lemme give you a little lesson in basic public relations:

we humans are a visually-oriented species--you really wanna get a serious point about your husband's healthcare plan across to america, try not dressing in such a way as to leave your audience with nothing more memorable to talk about once you're done than, "christ, did you get a look at that godawful shit she had on?"

just sayin.

mary travers, 1936-2009

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popular music in early-sixties america found itself in a weird interim phase--the rockabilly wildfire of carl perkins and jerry lee lewis had died down, elvis had sold out, black artists still were denied mainstream acceptance and the beatles hadn't yet come along and changed everything.

in the eye of this hurricane, the folk singers briefly flourished--and while people like the kingston trio, the limeliters, phil ochs and bob dylan were considered by the beat intelligentsia more "authentic" of the genre, i'll take peter, paul and mary any day.

to my mind, the song that best showcases mary travers' honeyed voice is their cover of tom paxton's the last thing on my mind, but since i can't find it on youtube [and since i'm too lazy to make my own and wait for it to upload], i'll offer up instead another cut i was surprised to find from that same album--the surpassingly fine hangman--in which, while she's not featured, mary gets the last word.

three voices, two guitars, little else but pure talent--a formula that appealed to my minimalist nature then, and does to this day.

shame they don't make 'em like that (or like her) anymore.

no more cat videos after this one, i promise

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yeah it's a little repetitive, but that's what makes it so damn funny.

besides, it's what made me laugh today.

_________________
h/t electro^plankton

you don't know what it's like

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while so many memories of my youth are a distant blur, i remember like it was yesterday lying alone in the dark in that most dark of years, radio on, hearing for the first time the opening lines of this song

there's a light,
a certain kind of light,
that's never shone on me

and knowing, even at the tender age of twelve, exactly what those goddam bee gees meant.


twenty years later, jimmy somerville would come outta left field with a reggae version of this same song that shouldn't work at all but is one of my favorite covers of all time.

if you know, you already know. if you don't, get shitfaced by whichever means you prefer, click on the link i've conveniently provided below, turn up the volume and listen twenty or thirty times until you've achieved the necessary level of enlightenment.

or maybe that's just the way i listen to music.

Jimmy Somerville - To Love Somebody

this is why i don't write an advice column

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[this one just goes to show you never know what you'll find whilst digging around in your past for something else--or maybe that's just me.]

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i came across the following on craigslist one night awhile back [sorry, you'll have to click-and-embiggen to read]:


in the wake of this rather extraordinary post i found a flood of responses, most expressing sympathy for the victim and asking for the rapist's email address so as to avoid said rapist in the future.

seeing nothing in any of the responses which came even close to addressing the real issue at hand (and being well into my second mkf cocktail of the evening), i set myself to the task of saying what needed to be said; which post--for the brief, shining moment of its existence before it was flagged to death--ended up looking like this:


i distinctly remember not only posting this to craigslist at large, but then taking the additional step of sending it directly to the victim [unsurprisingly, i never received an answer, but i sure as hell hope he at least took my advice about the emergency-room hiv-prevention-protocol part].

next day i came back all sobered-up, read what i had posted [only because i was smart enough to take the above screenshot before it was deleted], cringed in morning-after remorse, thought about how i might've more diplomatically phrased my response to this poor, sad fuck (phrases such as "violated, cum-filled asshole", " shame on you" and " grow a spine" might not have played so prominent a part had i done this sober, you know?), and then wrote it off as yet another lost opportunity.

[of course, the next time i looked at the whole thing shitfaced [i.e, just now], i totally and unapologetically saw my point in the first goddam place--i mean, don't you?]

whatever--at the moment i'm more concerned that i did more harm to the guy than good. because while my jaded, drunken ass might appreciate a cold slap-in-the-face reality check, experience has taught me that most people prefer getting their truth in small, sugar-coated, doable doses.

unfortunately, that's not the way we roll here.