by Chris Goodman

“You’re never alone with the Dirty 3,” reads the etching in the run out groove on side B of their 1996 release Horse Stories. They couldn’t be more right. Falling in love, falling out of love, whatever it was… If you’re a fan of the Dirty Three you can pinpoint the exact moment you heard their records. They spoke with brilliance and clarity beyond you and let you know that wherever you were, whatever was happening, you weren’t alone everything was going to be alright.

Their February release, Toward the Low Sun from Drag City, digs in the second you drop the needle. This doesn’t start like your usual Dirty Three album building on a slowly picked out guitar chord or dancing around Warren Ellis’s pizzicato melody. This album blasts off with “Furnace Skies’ ” overdriven violin and manic drumming, only to take it back down and ground you on the second track of the album “Sometimes I forget you’ve gone,” which features Jim White’s intoxicating drum rolls, Ellis’s sparse piano parts and Mick Turner’s unwinding guitar. When performed live Ellis has related, in his quips between songs, that this is about checking the outbox of your email only to find that all the letters you’ve sent someone telling them how you feel were never received…As the recipient has died. This is their first album in 7 years. And it’s fucking amazing.

In addition to the Dirty Three, Warren Ellis stays busy with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, their side project Grinderman and a slew of soundtracks to movies you’ve seen but you might not know he worked on. The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, The Road and recently the John Hillcoat film Lawless, which was adapted from the novel The Wettest Country in the World from Matt Bondurant. Ellis even contributed to the the soundtrack for West of Memphis chronicling the trial, imprisonment, DNA testing and eventually release in 2011 of three boys from West Memphis, Arkansas wrongly accused of murder and imprisoned for 18 years.

I caught up with Ellis in Montreal on the first night of their second 2012 tour to get his take on creativity, how music and touring has changed in the last 20 years and how working on soundtracks taught him to challenge himself…

Chris Goodman: This is the first night of the tour? Did you guys meet up to rehearse the material beforehand?

Warren Ellis: Well we’ve been playing concerts off and on all year. But we met up in New York before the tour. We just played two weeks ago in England as well. This is all apart of a world tour to celebrate the release of our new record.

CG: You’ve been a band for 20 years. Is touring easier or harder these days?

WE: In a practical sense some things have gotten a lot easier. You have GPS, which we didn’t have in the ‘90s. You used to get a bunch of show dates and then try to find a map or something. It was a much different world then. There was no internet. And there were pagers. You tried to find a hotel with a fax, ya know. Things have really changed.

For me the big difference now is that I’m 15 years older than I was then. But touring is a big part of my life still and technology has made certain aspects of it a lot easier.

CG: I remember when I bought Horse Stories. Headphones on, sitting the floor checking the art out I realized there was an etching in the runout. “You’re never alone with the Dirty 3.” That spoke to me so much. Do you think with so much music being primarily online or on mobile devices that it takes away from the experience? That is a lot less tangible now?

WE: To be honest, everyone has an opinion about that and everybody’s kind of right. It depends when you grew up. I come from a generation where vinyl was a very important thing. We saw them try to get rid of that but it’s hung around and vinyl’s on it’s way back up.

There’s more things people spend their money on now. Back then there were only a handful. It’s just a different world. To me it seems the live shows are where things are really great these days because everything is much more connected. Some people have iPods and they listen to music on that, I mean I use one, but it’s seems like an incredible amount of information rendered into something that makes it feel kind of invalid or something. There is something very different about having 30,000 songs on an iPod and plugging it in as opposed to having a record in your hands and putting it on. The record is kind of contained. But basically you’re just listening to the stuff so I really don’t know if I have an answer about that.

I still love the format of records. I love making and listening to records. I like that vinyl is still around and available because it’s what I relate to. I really engage it in a different way. But for kids growing up with all this new stuff they relate to it differently. Sonically I still love the sound of vinyl but if I want to hear something I’ll listen to it on whatever.

CG: It’s too convenient to not have an iPod I guess?

WE: It is. It really is if you wanna hear “LA Woman” when you’re walking through an airport.

CG: How about technology and the recording industry?

WE: Everybody was down on ProTools a few years ago. And now everyone thinks it’s great. What you lose with the tape you gain with the time that you can save recording digitally. All things have their good and their bad.

CG: So Toward the Low Sun was recorded on ProTools?

WE: Yeah. Cinder we recorded on tape but this time it was digital.

CG: Did you guys have the material ready before you went in? Or do you just book the studio time and figure it out? I’ve read you don’t rehearse much…

WE: We’ve always been like that. We have ideas but we arrange them in the moment. If we flesh things out too much we lose the dynamic that happens when we’re working it out as we go along. That’s been one of the interesting things with the Dirty Three, to try to document that aspect. I mean we’ve tried to make this record a few times and it never worked because we were trying to flesh it out too much. Then we decided we had to go in with really skeletal ideas and just take some risks like we used to do.

CG: Toward the Low Sun really has a lot of breathing room. A lot of space to it. “Furnace Skies” really hits hard in, but it’s followed by “Sometimes I Forget You’ve Gone” which is very sparse and light.

WE: Space has always been important. You can easily choke things. The first two tracks were actually recorded in that order and signaled our way into the record, which had been elusive for about 7 years.

CG: Any recording after the tour?

WE: We’ll do the tour and hopefully we’ll get another one underway quicker than this one took. It’s the way it goes though. For the last 15 years we’ve all been involved in other projects. We’ve got families now. We take it when we can and try to keep it moving.

CG: Would you say music is something you create or something that exists out there and is just channeled through you?

WE: If I started to think about that too much it would get pretentious. I know when I play live that there is something else going on. I still don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know what it is because the day that I understand it will be the day that it will stop. Whatever that is I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s some communication with something else out there but it is very addictive and making music is like that too. Anything creative is like that. It opens up something in you, give you access to something you can’t get anywhere else in your life. I know that it doesn’t just fall from the sky. I know that from soundtrack work because not much of that falls into your lap. You have to go out and look for stuff. Music is about going and searching and then making the right changes…It’s not just all given from God or something.

CG: When you do the soundtrack work do you hear “We need happy music now,” or “We need pensive music”?

WE: Nick and I kind of make what we want but at a certain point you have producers or directors saying, “I don’t really get that.” Then you try to work out a way in there to keep yourself happy but sometimes their suggestions are really correct. When we were doing West of Memphis there were a couple of cues there that Nick and I really liked but Peter Jackson really wanted something else. We found something else and when I watched the film he was right. You hope the people working on a film make suggestions for the right reasons but sometimes you can’t see them until it’s done.

I initially found the thought of making music for something else very daunting sort of. Like it would cut my freedom off. But then I realized it could be liberating to be told something wasn’t what they wanted and do try something else. I realized it was about creation.

I can really draw a clear line as to when I started feeling and listening that and how things changed for me and made me look deeper. What first appeared as daunting and counter-creative was actually all in the name of creation. Sometimes it’s good to have a framework. Sometimes it’s good to have constraints put on you to bring out creativity.

CG: Creatively, do you think being satisfied is counterproductive, maybe? That you shouldn’t feel like things have ended and that it was “good enough?”

WE: There’s a point you reach where you feel that something has really happened with the music. You feel enlightened by it… You have to feel that to truly let it go. When you don’t feel it, that’s when you stop engaging and then you become kind of dissatisfied and you start looking toward the next thing and you think, “How can I do something really good” again. With me, there is always a moment when I have to feel, listening back, that I really got it or I won’t settle. It has to be really great. And it is a small window when that happens, when I decide to let it go and I don’t feel that sense of dissatisfaction. I’m always thinking that the next thing I do will be the one that’s really great though… But you have to take risks.

I don’t believe in the starving artist stuff. The struggling artist. Or that when you have kids that’s the end of the deal and the creativity is gone. It’s crap. A lot of that stuff is just romantic and in my experience it has no bearing.

CG: I guess if you talk about what you do too much it can get pretentious.

WE: It can get precious. You can get self-indulgent. And I think that might be something that’s good when you’re young. I’ve been doing this for 20 years now. When I was young I wouldn’t listen to anybody, fuck ‘em. But about 10 years ago when I did the Proposition soundtrack I realized to move in a different world I had to learn a different tolerance and to open myself to different things. I couldn’t have done that when I was younger. It’s not something that you can see as it happens though. You have to look back at your life to understand.

CG: So your outlook on creativity really changed when you started working on the Proposition soundtrack?

WE: Things changed when I had to work for something else entirely but still find my place in it and at the same time feel like what I had done was something of worth.

I still had the esteem for it like I did with my other records, but I was aware that it was being pushed from other directions and not just internally from the group. The great thing about a band is you just satisfy yourselves and that’s it. But sometimes it’s hard to move beyond that and you need things thrown at you to grow.

Doing the soundtrack for The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was one of the greatest learning experiences of my creative life. No question about it.

CG: With movies it’s bigger than you. Bigger than a group. Other people are depending on you for it. Your work reflects their big picture, their outcome.

WE: Exactly. You’re working for a film. You’re serving the film. And it takes on its own life once it’s out there. Like a record, things change when you put it out there and it’s out of your hands. But that comes back to letting things go.

CG: You worked with John Hillcoat on The Road and now Lawless…

WE: Well Nick had written the script and the idea always was that we’d do the music for it.

CG: What are your influences these days? What turns you on?

WE: I still find the stuff I liked as a younger man relevant. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Neil Young, AC/DC, Beethoven, Stravinsky. It feels great to put on a John Lee Hooker record and think, “Man, I was right 20 years ago with this stuff.” It still moves me. Van Morrison, Nina Simone. Or it’s inspiring when I go to a gallery but you can’t really say when things inspire you. I just like seeing and listening to stuff that’s being created.

CG: Van Morrison…Astral Weeks might be the best album of all time.

WE: I think Veedon Fleece is my favorite one of his.

CG: How do your kids deal with you and your wife[Delphine Ciampi] both being musicians? Do they think you’re cool?

WE: They’re my kids and I’m their dad. They’re not meant to think I’m cool. What I do outside of being a dad is just what I do to them I guess. As they’ve gotten a bit older I think they find what I do a little more interesting. (a long pause)…I think they think I’m a dick. Like anyone thinks their dad is a dick.

CG: How did Eastwood guitars end up releasing the Warren Ellis signature tenor guitar? Which, ahem, I bought in the cherry finish…

WE: Yeah, it’s great! They came to me and asked and I gave them the specifications and away it went.

CG: Any new Grinderman material coming out soon?

WE: I can’t say.

CG: Any solo work from you?

WE: I find doing stuff on my own not particularly enjoyable. I like making music with people and I like what they bring out in me. I don’t find it nearly as thrilling as playing with others.

Toward the Low Sun is out now via Drag City. Visit their website for more info and tour dates.

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Title: What The Hell Are You Eating??
Corny Title: Q: Why Did The Chicken Nugget Have Ears? A: Because It Was Made Of Corn!

by Lee Camp

Okay, I know it’s not polite to comment on someone’s diet, but you and I need to talk. …You’re eating too much corn. Really, you have to chill out on the corn. Breakfast, lunch, AND dinner? What are you nuts?! And I know what you’re thinking – “I don’t eat that much corn.” But you’ve forgotten about one thing – the fact that you’re wrong. Watch the video.

**UPDATE**

Lee Camp will be performing one night only in Denver, CO! If you haven’t heard of him, Camp is best known for going live on Fox News and calling them “a parade of propaganda and a festival of ignorance.” George Carlin’s daughter Kelly called him “One of the few keeping my dad’s torch lit.” SuicideGirls called him “Better than boobs!” and two weeks ago Rolling Stone said he “gets the crowd roaring!” He’s a contributor for The Onion and has been featured on most major TV networks. And now you’re thinking, “But I don’t have $20 to spend on a comedian.” Well, that’s good to hear – because the cost is a $5 recommended donation at the door.

It’s TONIGHT at 10pm at Deer Pile, located at 206 East 13th Ave. in Denver.

[..]

by Steven Whitney

Nation-building is a perilous task, mostly because the people you are allegedly “saving” from oppressive regimes often don’t share the same world view or want the things we think they should want.

For decades, hard line American foreign policy experts found it expedient to install or keep in office leaders whose greatest (and sometimes only) asset was their pro-American stance, aided by billions of American foreign aid dollars. They didn’t care if we were propping up a royal personage (Hassan II / Morocco), an upwardly mobile warlord (Barre / Somalia), a cruel dictator (Pinochet / Chile), or even an outright mass murderer (Pol Pot / Cambodia). It was a classic devil’s deal: as long as these puppet dictators let the USA pull their strings, we supported them, usually disregarding the popular (and underground) leaders who might have been elected by a democratic process. It was and is an anachronistically paternalistic policy – America as Father Knows Best – and it is thankfully dipping below the horizon of our history.

In the meantime, the excesses of these tyrants eventually turned their countries against them, most recently in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. And we supported the rebellions. But if America is going to promote – or at least not get in the way of – democracy abroad, it must realize that it is often not going to like the results. These new democracies are not created to please us, but rather to free their own people and let them choose their own leaders – that’s what democracy is about.

Like life itself, politics is a messy business, especially when you do the right thing and it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted or expected. In this new century of global integration, we have to stop acting like spoiled children accustomed to always getting our way and learn that self-determination means just that.

There’s a price to be paid for freedom…and often it is spread around unpredictably.

Republicans and Fox News howled when they discovered that “God” was not mentioned in the 2012 Democratic Platform. A veritable hue and cry followed. Democrats hastily put together a Yay or Nay convention floor vote with no audible winner. While the word “potential” was eventually changed to “God-given,” the DNC might have seized the opportunity to point out that the Constitution of the United States, the document office-holders are sworn to uphold, also does not contain the word “God.”

Look up the Constitution on the web. Then click Find for the word “God.” It won’t come up…because it isn’t there.

Our founders were extremely clear about the separation of church and state. Anyone who thinks otherwise should spend the rest of their days searching for God in our Constitution.

In most cases, children first discover the world at large in their local library…and adults find almost anything they need to learn or want to enjoy. Except for actual schools, libraries contribute more than any other institution to our growth as human beings and to the society we live in. They are the social hub of information sharing and, unlike most elected officials, libraries serve their entire communities, so when even one is in danger of closing, it’s imperative that the community push back.

Faced with just such a threat the good citizens of Troy, Michigan pushed back against the Tea Party / Grover Norquist tax fanatics. Watch this short video to see how the smartest use of reverse psychology I’ve ever witnessed saved their library.

These voters are not only informed, but amazingly creative. Bravo!

Writers generally love words. Lately, one phrase keeps intruding on my thoughts – “to the manor born.” It holds visions of British aristocracy, Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. But now American has its own version.

Doesn’t Mitt Romney (and to a lesser extent, Paul Ryan) perfectly embody the concept of “to the manor born?”

Time magazine recently reported that more than one hundred bird species, including chickens, engage in some sort of homosexual behavior, much of it “casual sex.” And a study at Virginia Tech in 1964 discovered that cockerels placed in cages only with same sex chickens started getting it on pretty quickly. Of course, the bible on the topic is Bruce Bagemidhi’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, which confirmed Darwin’s finding that diverse sexual behavior – homosexuality, bisexuality, and more – naturally occurs in almost all animal species, including humans and chickens.

As a result, anonymous sources have revealed that in an all-out effort to prevent gay chickens from hitting their grills, CEO Dan Cathy has commissioned famed Minnesota sex orientation adjuster Marcus Bachmann to visit every one of Chick-fil-A’s facilities to “pray the gay away” from their otherwise magnificently heterosexual chickens.

Fowl behavior, indeed.

Our Worse Than a Do Nothing Congress recently set a new and shameless low in governing standards. On September 21st, members of Congress recessed for the all-important business of getting re-elected in November. It was the earliest exit from D.C. in over 50 years.

Congress reconvened from its summer vacation on September 10th – and worked nine full days before calling it quits – obviously spent by their oppressive workload. They might not have come back at all but, as always, Republicans had some important bills to block.

First up was the Veterans Jobs Bill, which would have created jobs for 20,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It actually passed 58 to 40, but Senate Republicans killed it by lodging an objection that then required a 60 vote passage.

House Republicans also stalled the Farm Bill because its $23 billion cut in farm subsidies over ten years was not nearly enough. And, too, the GOP wants to replace subsidies with a new privately run “crop insurance” program with projected costs of over $1 trillion that creates myriad irrational incentives for small farmers (while, of course, favoring huge agribusiness concerns).

Attached to the farm bill was a provision passed by the Senate cutting food stamps expenditures by one-half of one per cent. House Republicans want to quadruple the cut, so the bill was effectively tabled. Food stamps help feed 46 million Americans, many of them working families, part of the 47% of Americans Romney/Ryan accuse of feeling “entitled to food,” and if the GOP has its way, “those people” will be dining only at Midnight Missions throughout the country

Due to so much unfinished business, Congress will reconvene after the November election. Since some – and hopefully many – Republicans will be lame ducks by then, perhaps a few will veer from the hard party line and actually use their votes to help everyday Americans.

The biggest mistake President Obama made during what is hopefully his first of two terms was during his State of the Union address before Congress in January, 2009. Back then he should have declared that in the almost 3 months since the election he had been briefed on every aspect of our government and that everything was much worse than we – and he – had been told.

I’m sure he wanted to use that forum to regenerate his message of hope, but his lack of candor supplied the GOP with their rallying cry today: “He didn’t fix our mess fast enough!”

The Bush/Cheney administration left our country in disastrous ruin on almost every front and it would take more than even the full team of Avengers to repair the damage, especially when Congress does nothing but obstruct proposed bills that would help us regain our fiscal health.

Instead, Obama’s first SOTU address fostered what by then was unrealistic hope and, when truly miraculous change didn’t happen, the President was blamed by every screaming Republican.

The truth is that Bush/Cheney dug us into such a deep hole, it might take a full decade or more to recover, even longer if the GOP maintains its obstructionist posture or, heaven forbid, gains power and returns to the policies drove us off the cliff in the first place.

On Election Day, all you really have to do is remember who led us into the quicksand of failed policies from 2001 to 2008. And then vote.

Related Posts:
From Death And Despair. . . Dreams Can Soar
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Character. . . And The RNC
The Do-Damage Congress: Who’s Responsible?
Worse Than A Do Nothing Congress
Forget The Barbeque On Labor Day – It’s Time To Take Care Of Business
Chicken Shits: The Slippery Slopes of Chick-fil-A
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

by Cameron Frye

For those of you who haven’t heard the news, I’ve lost 270+lbs. Since losing the weight, I’ve entered the dating world and it’s been….nice? Who am I kidding, it sucks. But I can’t be anti-social Suzy for the rest of my life and I can’t get drunk and hope for the best anymore. So I have to put some effort into finding someone and conning some unlucky bastard into loving me.

It was so much easier when I drank and it was always a surprise. I use to equate it with getting a goodie bag after a birthday party. The majority of the stuff was horse shit, but occasionally you’d find one gem to keep you occupied for a while. You have to admit, there’s no better feeling than waking up in the morning and finding out from your friends or from the guy that’s sleeping next to you what you did the night before and following it up with an awkward doctor’s visit filled with judgment on Monday. How I didn’t get herpes is still beyond me. But that’s not why we’re here!

We are here to read about my entrance into the dating world and what I’m doing to make it more enjoyable.

So I am going on a lot of blind dates or first dates or torture sessions (whatever you want to call them) and they’re painful. It’s filled with awkward conversations and judgment. I just assume they’re thinking the worst of me (I admit I’m doing the same to them) and I can also assume that the friends who are setting me up, think very little of me or they’re getting back at me for something fucked up I did in the past. Listen, it’s not my fault he lingered a little too long after that kiss and, really, you’re the only one to blame. You gave us permission to hook you up.

Anyways, after accepting another date from a bad karma charmer, I’ve been scheduling a second “date” for later in the evening. Ok, it’s not really a date. It’s just my version of the nightcap and, since I can’t drink right now or indulge in my favorite desserts without getting sick and vomiting all over the place, I need something to take the edge off.

So, I’ve been meeting up with one of my many hook ups from Christmas’ past and having sex. The way I see it, they’re performing a service and if anything, the lucky fella I really want to be with will thank them in the end or at least that’s what I’m telling myself this week.

Since losing the weight equivalent of a defensive lineman for the New England Patriots, I’m not 100% comfy with my appearance out of clothes. Granted, that’s normal and that’s why God created the dark – but I still think the more ‘practice’ I have being naked with a guy, the better. Right now my body looks like its melting and that’s not exactly a big selling point with guys out there. I know, I know, it’s more than looks. But that’s bullshit. If it was, I would have been beating them off with a stick when I weighed 448 and had the slight resemblance of Mama June on ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’ – just sans neck crust. *shudders*

I doubled up on the ‘dates’ this weekend. The first one was with ‘a really nice guy’ that worked with my friend’s husband. Attractive, good job, well dressed – just nothing there. He had the personality of stomach cancer and was more into talking to his reflection in the mirror than me. Translation? He was a less witty Patrick Bateman.

Now I fully admit to checking myself out in the mirror when no one is looking, but he was looking at himself the entire time. I saw him winking at himself in the mirror once or he had a thing for the 60 year old he saw sitting behind us. I won’t lie; she was a looker…in 1954.

For almost two hours I sat there listening to him ramble on about Mitt Romney, soccer and his new BMW. He was also one of those guys who needs to know everything about what he was going to eat. I care about animals, I really do. But I don’t need to know the life story of the chicken that’s being added to my salad. I’d rather assume, the chicken gave his life for a noble cause – like to earn money, so he could feed his starving children and the world is a better place for it. OMMMMM *ding* Namaste. After hearing the chicken life story, I contemplated stabbing myself with my salad fork.

Instead of ruining a perfectly good outfit or dealing with a trip to the hospital, I decided to text Round 2 and asked if he wanted company earlier than we had planned. When he responded with a “yes,” I couldn’t have been happier. Well, that’s not true. I was happier than a pig in shit when Round 1 asked for the check. When he wasn’t looking, I might have greased the waiter and said there’s more if he can get me out of there in less than 10 minutes. It worked.

Boring Bateman got a little grabby on the way out. Evidently, he thought he won me over or I wasn’t picky. While I was trying everything in my power to get away, he got blinded by his reflection in the mirror and I was able to hop in the first available cab.

I guess, in a way, I should be honored. I mean, he didn’t drink much and I did look good. I’m going to assume that’s what made him a little rapey. Two points for the kid.

I texted round 2 and said I was on my way. I’m going to be honest, I was nervous. It’s like I said before, it was much easier when I drank. Everything is. Ok, maybe not driving, raising a child or threading a needle, but hooking up was. When I was drunk, the real me came out. I wasn’t the insecure ass that I usually am. I just didn’t care. I was more concerned with having fun and not getting pregnant or worse.

But the bucket of fun was forced to be sober and now we’re forced to dazzle people with the personality we really have, which in itself is a horrible idea. Deep down inside, I’m a good person – but I’m kind of an asshole. I laugh at awful things and I make awful jokes. I’m not exactly the girl you bring home to mom. That is, unless your mom loves Louis C.K. (Talking of which, can someone put in good word with him for me? Listen, I used to be fat – I can suck a mean dick. Feel free to pass this info on to him).

I met Round 2 at his place. Round 2 lives near one of my favorite bakeries and a place I’d stop off at if I had an exceptionally bad day. There was a sad moment when I wondered if I could break in, grab a cupcake, not get caught and still make it up stairs for cock. I tamed the Super Sugar Force and headed on up to his apartment.

It’s weird, I was far more comfortable walking into his apartment and jumping into sex, than I was sitting down and having a peaceful dinner and getting to know someone. Being sexually confident and going for what I want in the bedroom is cakewalk or fart. (BTW can we please stop farting on cakes? You’re wasting a perfectly delicious treat.), It’s much easier than letting down the walls and letting someone in. I swear, I didn’t get that from any self-help nonsense. I came up with that embarrassing piece of verbal vomit myself.

I know why being sexually aggressive is easier for me, I had to do that most of my life. If I wanted something, I had to go get it myself. If I wanted someone, I had to do everything in my power to make them want me. But controlling that side is hard. I use to pick some awful men (i.e. married men or men already involved) to keep in my fat stable and I’d like to think I’m better than that. I just need to start believing it. I really need to stop talking to my mom when she’s watching her favorite TV shrink of the moment.

Until that happens, I’m going to keep on having fun the only way I know how. At least I know I’ll go to bed with a smile on my face and my vibrator batteries live for another day.

Since losing weight, Cameron Frye has gone from writing about sports to writing about sex. You can follow/stalk her on Twitter or read her ramblings on DigBoston.com/. If you know Louis C.K. – put in a good word for her. Also, she’s now accepting tattoo artist recommendations in the Boston area.

by Blogbot

Every week we ask the ladies and gentlemen of the web to show us their finest ink in celebration of #TattooTuesday.

Our favorite submission from Twitter wins a free 3 month membership to SuicideGirls.com.

This week’s #TattooTuesday winner is @AlPantaju.

Enter this week’s competition by replying to this tweet with a pic of your fav tattoo and the #tattootuesday hashtag.

Good luck!

A few things to remember:

• You have to be 18 to qualify.
• The tattoo has to be yours…that means permanently etched on your body.
• On Twitter we search for your entries by looking up the hashtag #TattooTuesday, so make sure you include it in your tweet!

Check out the Tattoo Tuesday winners of weeks past!

by ChrisSick

Or, a helpful guide for aspiring Werewolves and how that leads to the strangulation of senatorial aspirations by very expensive coattails.

“He [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] is the latest in a long line of political leaders to channel the ruthless wisdom of another former Senate majority leader, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, as the late Hunter S. Thompson told it, sealed a comeback win in his 1948 Senate primary campaign by calling a news conference to allege that his opponent, a prominent and well-regarded pig rancher, ‘was having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard animals.’

When Johnson’s press secretary balked, saying it wasn’t true, Johnson spat back: ‘Of course it’s not, but let’s make the bastard deny it.’”

—Gregory J. Krieg, Harry Reid’s Attack Boxes Mitt Romney In, ABC News, 7 Auguest,2012

Let us, for a moment, in a relatively slow week that’s already been much dissected and discussed, get a bit…elemental.

Politicians, at bottom, have only one job that comes in two parts. Traditionally they really only had to work at this job in the late summer and early fall, but these days they tend to be year round affairs. To be a politician:

1. Move in a straight line.
2. Move your opponent off their straight line.

That line, of course, being basically a straight shot to whatever office they’re running for.

This is politics at its most basic, and come debate night, as you soak in the warm stream of disinformation fed to you by professional talking heads — many of whom should probably be in prison — you’ll probably hear the phrase on-message quite a bit. You’ll hear, and surely have heard, much talk of candidates building narratives. You’ll hear dissection, autopsy, and painful amounts of over-analysis about who “scored” with good lines that most effectively needled in their side’s pre-established talking point.

Its all horseshit, of course.

“Narrative,” “on-message”, and “talking points” are really creative and educated (-sounding) ways of saying who moved down their path the straightest and who deviated the most. Because that’s all politics — in a two-party race/system, anyway, which is all I’m intimately familiar with as a citizen of this country — really is about. Whether you move your opponent off his path by accusing them of not paying taxes for ten years or of fucking their livestock, it doesn’t really make much of a difference at the end of the day.

Everything else is phoney artifice and bullshit jargon thrown at voters, candidates, and media alike to blind them with science and convince them that David Axelrod or Ed Gillespie is really worth somewhere between $175,000 to $1.3 million per year they earn advising their candidates. Their job is to come up with a good story somewhere between six months to a year before the election, and then spend the rest of the cycle as glorified babysitters and occasional mouthpieces. A job — it’s worth noting — that Ed Gillespie still manages to both fuck up and get paid a bonus for, somehow.

Those of us in my age group — the one that was politically aware but not yet politically active during Bill Clinton’s first and second terms — are familiar with one of the greatest narratives of modern politics, because it’s only four words long: The Man From Hope. But no matter how much attention you were paying in junior high, you couldn’t fully grasp Clinton’s incredible political ability until you heard him get the DNC to applaud George W., moments before turning it into an attack line against congressional Republicans.

Which brings us neatly back to my point, about the line and how one follows it or doesn’t. From the jump, Obama and his team have called this a choice election, while Romney and his team have called it a referendum election. And — please, allow me to parse the bullshit for you since I’m pretty sure it’s part of my job here — that should tell you all that you need to know.

Neither team feels strongly enough about its message or its candidate (read: product), to trust that voters will vote for them. This is why this is a base election (in more ways than one), because unless you’re already in the bag for one of the two candidates, its extremely unlike either is going to offer you a very compelling reason to vote for them. So the best they can hope for is to convince you to vote against their opponent.

To that end, Romney’s “straight line” was through convincing voters to — in the memorable words of a geriatric cowboy arguing with a chair while trolling his way to a nation’s heart — fire the President for poor performance. And Obama’s was to scare the living shit out of you by basically pointing to Republicans not named Romney (cough, Paul Ryan, cough) and reminding you all those white dudes share the same party.

It’s really that simple, and every day Romney spent talking about his taxes, defending his 47% comments, or trying to dispense with the notion that his campaign was in disarray — and holy fucking shit that was just this week — he was off his path and losing this election. Now both the head of the RNC and his own VP have taken up the language of “choice election,” which is pretty much his two biggest public supporters hammering the last nails in — what I’m sure is — his very expensive and luxurious coffin.

But seriously, fuck that guy. Never liked him.

In fact, he’s so bad at this, that he’s knocked every Republican Senator off their path this past week.

“The trend in the presidential race has been difficult to discern lately. President Obama has very probably gained ground since the conventions, but it’s hard to say exactly how much, and how quickly his bounce is eroding.

There are no such ambiguities in the race for control of the Senate, however. Polls show key races shifting decisively toward the Democrats, with the Republican position deteriorating almost by the day.”

—Nate Silver, “Senate Forecast: What Has Gone Wrong for GOP Candidates?,” FiveThirtyEight Blog, 20 September, 2012

Silver offers two potential hypothesis to explain the sudden decrease in the chance of Harry Reid losing his gavel come January: One is that Romney is so terrible he’s hurting all of his party’s candidates in tough statewide elections.
The other is that their own extreme conservatism is hurting the entire GOP brand, as evidenced by moderate candidate Linda McMahon of CT (yes, that Linda McMahon, we live in a country where the best experience you can have prior to going into politics is, actually, pro-wrestling. Suck it up, buttercup!) and mostly-moderate Senator Scott Brown of MA are distancing themselves from the national party.

My modest suggestion is that both reasons factor in. Because, really, under the circumstance who can stay on the path, or if you prefer, build their narrative, stay on message, or stick to their talking points? Romney cannot stay on message, because his message changes from day to accommodate his audience while simultaneously accommodating his rapidly degenerating-into-insanity-base.

It isn’t that Romney’s a bad politician, he’s exactly the best the Republicans had to offer this election cycle. It’s just — in part — that Barack Obama is actually a very good politician. If there’s any lesson liberals and Democrats needed to take away from the Bush years, it was the danger of underestimating your opposition. Jokes about Karl Rove’s weight may play well with the peanut gallery, but really, underestimating that man as a political strategist is just shy of insanity.

And when you compile the long list of things that the Conservative Right is convinced that Obama is — a list that would have to include how he’s a stunning incompetent, bumbling idiot, and empty suit, who ALSO somehow managed to trick 53% of the country to vote for him, while concealing his secret Muslim origins and Marxist ideology — it isn’t hard to see how underestimating their opposition lead the GOP to the hole they’re in now.

Related Posts
Tactical Animal: Regarding The Pain Of Being Right…Or More Reasons Mitt Romney Will Never Be Your President
Tactical Animal: Have You Got Yourself The Belly For It?
Tactical Animal: Sorry Folks, Election’s Over, Donkey Out Front Shoulda Told Ya
Tactical Animal: Politics In The Post-Truth Era
Tactical Animal: Now We’ve Got Ourselves A Race

by Chris Goodman

When asked to describe Guided By Voices in one word they all said “family.” The original line up is back together, and they consider themselves and the fans one big family.

2012 was a busy year from the start with a January release of Lets Go Eat the Factory, their first album since 2004, which was quickly followed up by the July release of Class Clown Spots a UFO. In addition, November promises the release of yet another full-length entitled The Bears for Lunch, which is to be followed by English Little League, in February 2013. Now reformed, these guys are unstoppable.

“If you write 3,000 songs 30 of them will be good. Good enough to play a show in Pittsburgh,” says Robert Pollard as he struts around the stage cigarette and Miller High Life in hand passing around a bottle of tequila to the audience. Pollard’s banter between songs is pretty damn entertaining. At one point he misses the lyrics on “If We Wait” three times and explains, “Listen, if you get a bunch of 50 year old men on stage drinking and fucking around, they’re gonna fuck songs up. If you wanted KISS, you didn’t get it!”

Everyone knows the music. Everyone loves Pollard’s high kicks. Every song plays like a drinking anthem for an endless summer night that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. A GBV show is more like a party with friends. They kick it off with new material and the intensity never dips or waivers for a second. The entire audience is singing along with every song.

“It’s nice that people know more than ‘Game of Pricks,’” drummer Kevin Fennell says to me. “They know it all.” The band ends with three encores, over 40 songs in all, and we’re all left looking at each other surprised that we heard every song we wanted them to play.

I caught up with Fennell and Guitar player Mitch Mitchell after the Mr. Smalls Theatre show in Pittsburgh, PA, and though it was hard to hear them while all the bottles and broken glass were being cleaned up, I was “Smothered in Hugs” (ha ha) and given an attentive and warm interview.

Chris Goodman: You guys started in ‘83. It’s 2012. 30 years later…What keeps you going?

Kevin Fennell: A lot of it is the new material. I’ve always said this is more of a brotherhood than just a band. We’re so close, like a family. And I know that it sounds cliché but it’s so true. There’s a lot of love going on here.

CG: You reunited in 2010 for the Matador 21st anniversary party with the original line up. That has to add to the dynamic and intensity, being together again…More so than when members were floating in and out?

KF: Some fans might like the other lineups, but personally I think we’re all partial to this one.

CG: Do you have time for any other projects outside of GBV?

KF: I’ve got a day job. We all have day jobs. So between that and the music, making records I stay pretty busy.

[Kevin gives me a hug and gets back to packing his drums up. Mitch’s girlfriend brings him over then he gives me a hug and asks what he can do for me…]

CG: Mitch. It’s an honor. GBV has a new album coming out in November and another scheduled for release in February. Where does it come from at this point? What keeps you going?

Mitch Mitchell: It’s the free beer. It keeps us going. The venues give it to us. They have all been great. The places and the people treat us so well and that truly means a lot. When you’ve played music for the majority of your adult life, you find some clubs really treat you like shit. I’ve never played here before but this was really a great place to play. And like I said…they give us all the beer we can drink. We’re all stoked. You can’t argue with beer.

CG: Is there going to be another tour after the next album?

MM: I hope so! We actually have a gig lined up for New Years Eve…It’s at Irving Plaza. I just found out today actually. We’ve always had a great response on the East Coast. New York, Philly, DC, Boston…These are some of the best rock cities there are. You go out to the West Coast and it’s a different kind of rock. The East Coast is the ballsy rock. But you know, rockers rock, man. Where rockers live, we will find them.

CG: Everyone was talking tonight about how stoked they were to see the original line up. Tobin Sprout is back. That’s huge for a lot of people. I heard “bigger than the Beatles” and “my fuckin’ heroes” thrown around all night.

MM: These guys are our heroes! You, the fans. They come to the shows. They support us. They have to work in the morning. I mean we play this music because we like it. We tour because we like it. The fact that other people can dig it is such a driving force though. To be on the road traveling it’s so nice to know you pull in somewhere and it’s like we’re all friends and they know your name and we all know what crazy shit we’re going to get into tonight. That is what means a lot.

CG: What’s the news with Mitch Mitchell’s Terrifying Experience?

MM: We do shows around our hometown. We don’t tour a lot. Just stick close to home and have fun.

CG: Is there an album coming out?

MM: Well there was, but things kind of snagged. I need to find out what’s up with that. I’ve got tons of new material. Two records recorded and ready to go and I’d like to get the shit out. The records are actually done, we just have to find out how to get them released. I’m kind of ignorant to that side of music. I don’t understand the nuts and bolts to putting a record out. If I have to put this shit out myself somehow then that’s what I’ll have to do I guess. We really put a lot into it and I’d like to get it to people GBV is my first and foremost priority, but the Terrifying Experience is like my baby. It’s a great time.

CG: How did you start playing music?

MM: When I first started I was 9 years old and I went to take some lessons at a music store. I listened to a lot of music growing up and I had always wanted to learn to play guitar. And I figured you had to learn from someone that already knew and that you couldn’t figure it out on your own. You had to be taught.

I found a guy at this music store called Dayton Band and I signed up for lessons. The first time I met with this guy he says, “The first thing you need to know about music is ALL drummers are crazy. The second lesson is that most drummers are assholes.” I mean this was my first guitar lesson. And he was right. To this day most of the drummers I’ve met are the nuttiest people in the band.

CG: So you had two lessons, and then figured you could just listen to Stones records and figure the riffs out?

MM: Ha. I took two fuckin’ lessons and decided I’d do it myself. That experience molded me. I learned to do things myself. I know a lot about drummers. Kevin and I have been playing since I was 10 years old. I love him with all my heart. I don’t ever have to look at him to know what’s happening or what he’s gonna do. It’s an unspoken connection.

CG: So there were ups and downs, but how the hell have you stayed a band for 30 years?

MM: The best advice I can give to guys in bands is to just drink and drink and drink! And to rock. If you can drink every night with the guys you’re in a band with, you will become unstoppable. It creates a special bond. Like brothers.

CG: So what have you been listening to lately?

MM: My girlfriend turned me on to Off! recently, Keith Morris’ band.

CG: I found those guys through my roommate and didn’t know who they were and I thought, this is so good but the singer is biting Keith Morris hard. Then I realized it was Keith Morris. I was blown away that they had that whole thing going on.

MM: They are as punk as a punk band gets….You know those early punk bands influenced me so much growing up. With music and skating. These bands just epitomized a lifestyle and a way of thinking. You related to these guys like you knew them, ya know. It was emotional on so many levels. The music and the attitude just spoke to me. And that’s how you connected to them. You hear them play and you might not even know what the hell they’re saying but you just ‘got it.’ And when you finally read the lyrics you realized these guys are going through what you’re going though. That’s how punk spoke to us…

CG: Who else really spoke to you growing up?

MM: Another band I always loved is the Descendants. Those guys just had it. All those old punk bands too…Septic Death, Christ on Parade, DRI, Subhumans, Black Flag and all those SST bands…All those old punk bands are the best. I wish I had the chance to meet them all and thank them… In my heart that shit is the core of what’s driving me. That balls-out attitude and just giving it everything you’ve got.

CG: I interviewed Mike Watt once and it changed my life…

MM: That dude is fucking amazing. I’ve been trying to hook up with Keith Morris for a while…

CG: You’re in Guided by fucking Voices and you can’t get a hold of Keith Morris?

MM: I’m computer illiterate man. I’ll have to have Gwen do that.

CG: Any last words?

MM: I’ll paraphrase Mike Watt on this…That this is all a mutual experience and it’s not just what we give to the fans…It’s what we get back that keeps us moving.

More information can be found at robertpollard.net/. You can try gbv.com but you will be directed to a site that was probably last updated in 1998. It’s actually kind of worth a look…Mitch Mitchell’s Terrifying Experience can be found on Facebook.