Movie time!

Kick-Ass. I am interested!

Kick-Ass - Red Band Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Kick-Ass - Theatrical Trailer #2 | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Clever or stupid?

As David St. Hubbins would say, it's such a fine line between the two. You decide:

Q: What did the apple say to the orange?
A: I despise you for being different from me.

New radio in Dallas, finally

Better late than never - earlier this week, new public radio station KXT (91.7 on your FM dial) signed on with Santana's "She's Not There". Interesting choice for a first song, but that's not what this post is about.

KXT is public music radio, affiliated with NPR and venerable KERA. It's billed as local, alternative, something completely different from the formula radio rampant on the FM dial in town.

If you have not checked it out yet, you ought to. Lots of local bands (a scene I am just beginning to immerse myself in), which means lots of alt-country, roots rock, Americana, whatever you want to call it. You'll hear some more recognizable stuff as well, but you'll likely get a snoot-full of King Bucks and Old 97s. Which is a good thing, by the way.

In the day of the iPod and Pandora Radio, when XM and Sirius have to join forces to barely survive, you have to ask why we need another terrestrial station at all, much less one aimed at a niche audience (at best) in a town of herd-followers.

I don't know if KXT is going to make it or not. I will tell you I have turned into a P-2 (still a Ticket P-1), and like what I hear. It doesn't sound like anything else on the dial, not even close.

I haven't been this excited about a radio station since the halcyon days of WBCN in Boston!

We're back, we're bad. I'm not black, and I'm not mad.

OK, so I butchered a line from the immortal Lethal Weapon II in the headline. Sue me.

God, what a long strange trip it has been. I have been trudging the road of compulsion, desperation, and redemption for months now. I have reached, if not the end of the road, at least a decent place to stop and smell the flowers.

Thanks to my Dreamy brother, we have picked up some new readers here at little CIT. I guess Bonedome is a bigger draw than we thought. Nice surprise. AH, if it's paying off, you owe CIT a couple of beers. Since the guy who actually earned them is two time zones away, you can pay me next time I venture into the underbelly.

We've picked up at least one other new reader to whom I am very grateful for their patronage. Stand up and take a bow, RJD. Perhaps some of the group will get to know you soon.

So, it's been weird around here for some time. Let the weirdness begone! We've got all kinds of stuff to rail about in these virtual pages now:

- The Cowboys - dead one minute, heroes the next. Not buying it quite yet.
- That little git Ahmadinejad - still crazy after all these years.
- Israel is almost, sort of, nearly willing to slow down settlement building.
- Afghan women set themselves on fire rather than stay in shite marriages? No kidding? Where have you been for like the past 30 years? This isn't news. It's horrible, but it ain't new.
- The War of Terror continues wherever it can. Peshawar, Kabul, Ellis County.

So many hot topics, so little time.

I hope I'm back. I want to be back. I have new motivation to be back. As long as I can avoid an aneurysm and/or a malice-wielding perjurer, I intend to be back.

The State of Jewish Boxing Today

From The Ring Magazine

http://www.ringtv.com/blog/1261/jewish_fighters_foreman_and_salita_revive_an_old_tradition/

Bonedone releases a bitch slap of an album with Thinktankubator

Don’t Tell Allan Hayslip That You Love Him

“You should be glad that words were the worst things
I ever put in your mouth”
-Better by Bonedome on Thinktankubator

Steeped in the dark reality of dysfunctional and co-dependent relationships – celebrating and reveling in the more painful aspects of love, the giving of oneself to another and the violence therein – Allan Hayslip, long time Dallas, Texas sideman in bands such as Vibrolux, Sixty-Six, Prince Jellyfish, and currently performing in Rock Star Karaoke, pushes himself to the fore with his band Bonedome and their newly released album, Thinktankubator, which Hayslip describes as a “collection of relationship songs clothed in quirky, sad, introspective, and self-deprecating timbers.”

The album opens with the song Sandman, a muddied rocker thick with overdubbed harmonies, Julian Cope overtures, and a sneer, in which Hayslip openly declares his inability to keep any sort of resolve in his decisions in the face of another’s desire. This abdication of power, according to many a paisley sweater wearing prescription writing psychiatrist today, leads to feelings of inferiority and, more to the point in this case, anger, resentment, and mistrust of others. It is in this pot that most of Thinktankubator stews.

Songs like Eraser, a slower-tempoed harmonic showpiece in which Hayslip really lets slip his chorister training; Easy, a heavy, crescendo pointing arm waver; and Better, a real multi-layered stand out rocker, all play with the idea of betrayal and the hurt it begets. There is an undertone of violence in these songs, most obviously in Easy, whose chorus of “It’s easy to kill a man / It’s easy from where I stand” is almost a distraction from the strangulation fantasy in which Hayslip revels in the aftermath of his lover’s seeming affair. Hayslip himself is an imposing figure, large by any standards, which only adds to the ominous nature of these songs.

Yet Hayslip also seems to indicate that he is just as capable of betrayal as anyone else. Girl One, a song I was singing to myself while folding laundry hours after listening to it; The Other One, an obvious nod to the Pixies (actually Hayslip and Black Francis look like they could have been separated at birth) that veers off on its own to become comfortable in its authentic groove; and Red Flags R Trouble, another of the album’s songs that stuck with me long after I last listened to it, all seem to inform the listener that Hayslip can give just as good as he can get in this cage match of heartbreak and betrayal.

The nakedness of these songs is almost brutal at times. This may be a result of the fact that Hayslip has lived through some real heartache in his life and has, through true introspection, been able to channel this destruction into an act of creation – or it may be a by-product of the fact that most of the basic tracking for the album was done in an non air conditioned control room in the heat of the Dallas summer, allowing Hayslip to engineer naked, a fact he seems to take great glee in revealing.

The song I Can Lose You takes the idea of abandonment further and moves it into an interesting discussion about the nature of friendship and the sacrifices of that relationship, with Hayslip playing the convenient martyr in this complex song heavily indebted to David Bowie’s Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes.

While the album’s core rests in these themes of betrayal, abandonment, and violence, there are a couple of notable exceptions. The first is Steven, which has one of the most honest choruses (chori??) since Lou Reed openly declared that he wanted to be black. In Steven, Hayslip shouts “I write songs to give good interviews / I do drugs to give good interviews,” underlying his understanding that nothing sells today like a good back-story and an even heavier horse or monkey on your back.

The other exception is my favorite song on the album, Fade Away, a stumpy, thuddy collision between Buddy Holly and AC/DC. Here, Hayslip turns on its head the classic poet pick-up line: “Baby, if you let me lick on you awhile, I’ll write a poem about it and make you immortal.” Fade Away seems to celebrate the transience of existence and notoriety -- that he and his lover are “just two drops in the sea” who will eventually just fade from history. “And it’s okay,” according to Hayslip. While seemingly celebratory of this sort of carpe diem, the song’s ending refrain of “I’m gonna tell you” returns the listener to the ominous tone of the rest of the album, adding another layer of complexity to the message of the song.

While the album does misfire a couple of times, most notably on Slow Jesus Xing and the cringing choral drudgery of Custody Lullaby, the great majority of it is filled with tight, well-orchestrated songs that highlight Hayslip’s song writing ability and his Peter Murphy ispired vocals. The album bodes well for Hayslip’s continued emergence as a front man and it is certainly worth a listen, especially if you’re driving away from your lover’s home for the last time ever, gripping the steering wheel white-knuckled tight, all gacked up on anger and betrayal, and looking for something to say.

PG-13 giggle

Q. What do you get with a corduroy condom?

A. A groovy kind of love.

Stay sportsy, my friends

Oh so much to talk about here in Sportsville. I have been neglectful. But no more. Onward!


Rangers

Our formerly-red-shoed Rangers have done the near-impossible this season. They have kept us entertained past the start of the regular NFL season. This has never, to my thinking, happened before.

So much to be excited about regarding this team! Young pitchers who throw hard as hell, and who seem to know how to pitch as well. Young position players who can play their positions, hit reasonably well, run the bases (some blazingly fast). A nice mix of veterans to provide some wisdom.

And, at the head of it all, the Old-Skool Brother, Ron Washington.

Can it be? It's late Sept and I really should be back in school. Er, no. Not what I meant. It's late Sept and and we are still waxing rhapsodic about the Texas Rangers? We are. This has been the most entertaining baseball season I have experienced since the Red Sox of 1986.

Thank you, Nolan Ryan, Jon Daniels, and the rest. If Big Dumb Tom can sell the team to someone with some dough, next year may be even better.


University of Texas football

I've got the same feeling I had at the start of the season in 2005. Remember, I didn't start to get totally on board until after the Ohio State game that year. This year's schedule holds no similar out-of-conference test, so it will be Oct 17th's annual showdown with Oklahoma before I start to mention the "C" word (not THAT "C" word, you pervert) around here. But the cards seem to be falling into the right places, don't they?

By the way, did you see McCoy complete that pass to Shipley aboard a boat going 45 mph on the telecast this past weekend? Whoever thought that little stunt up needs to be keelhauled. Have you ever tried to stand in a small boat at speed? It ain't easy, and I thought it would not have taken much to knock Shipley right over the side. Maybe he was strapped in or something, but, man, I cringed!

At any rate, this season is off to a good start. That's all I'm saying right now.


Cowboys

Um, oh dear. Uh-oh? Maybe? I dunno.

I missed the opener against Tampa Bay, but it seems like it was a good one. However, I think we're seeing Tampa Bay is one of the worst teams in the league.

The Giants are clearly one of the best, and the Cowboys did seem to have the upper hand throughout the game. But...

But what's up with this Wade Phillips defense? There has been minimal pressure, even when they bring six guys. What happened to the swarming, scary-ass defense we saw at times down the stretch last year? Were Greg Ellis and Kevin Burnett really that important? I will certainly go on record as saying Kevin Burnett is a MUCH more attractive option than Bobby Carpenter. How is that guy still on this team?

The Cowboy defense looked a lot like it did in the doldrums of the Pear-Shaped Football Genius' tenure - unable to make a stop, unable to make tackles, and unable to get off the field when it really matters.

But what's up with Romo? Did he just have a one-game brain fart? Or his inconsistency becoming a consistent? It's feast or famine with this guy - he doesn't have many so-so games. And history is beginning to suggest the bigger the stage, the more likely he's going to toss out a clunker. When do we call it a trend?

The running game looks to be, potentially, something serious. Barber is hurt already, which isn't good. But it seems mild, and I thought the Cowboys could have had 300 yards plus if they had just kept running it.

The new kickoff guy seems to have worked out. The last time a Cowboy reached the end zone off a tee, he was holding a 1-iron, so it was good to see a few kickoffs get into the neighborhood. Still, a punter and two kickers? Wouldn't you really rather have another left tackle on the roster?

And let's talk for just a moment about the colossal, shiny Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, shall we? I absolutely LOVE The Ticket's nickname for it: The Death Star. I hope it sticks. It's perfect. In a world turning more Idiocracy by the minute, the Death Star only speeds us on our way to a Costco world. Sure, its a showplace. Sure, its going to get TONS of positive press. But do we really need 100,000 people crammed into a stadium to watch a football game on the world's largest TV screen? Personally, I am embarrassed by the place. It's too much for me. And it's in Arlington.

That last bit did sound a bit good-old-days-ish, didn't it? Maybe a bit curmudgeonly? Well, too bad. Look at the title bar of this blog, you ninny.

And now that I have managed to disparage both Jerry Jones and my readership, I bid you a fond farewell.

Aloha, Spicolli.

Good times in Phoenix

The extended blog hiatus is nearing an end. I'm wrapping up the Project Conference in Phoenix today and tomorrow and will be headed home for the weekend, and the foreseeable future.

There's certainly a lot to get to upon my return. College and pro football, the Rangers' improbable season (which may or may not be winding down), Afghanistan, Israel, health care reform, hurricane season.

My gosh, I can hardly wait!

A little professional blogging

I'm doing some blogging regarding my professional life over at the Catapult Systems EPM Team blog.

Come check it out!

There’s dark, and then there’s this

What's black and white, black and brown, and black and black?

A nun roasting on a spit.

CIA "torture" - let's tap the brakes a bit

I am surprised, somewhat pleasantly so, to see a reasonable and thought-thru op/ed in the NYT this morning regarding the politically-motivated and wrong-headed recent moves by our esteemed Attorney General. As you no doubt know, AG Holder is mulling the idea of investigating, and perhaps bringing charges against, some in the CIA who conducted or sanctioned "aggressive interrogation tactics".

This is a travesty, and it frankly pisses me off.

We've reminded ourselves, in these virtual pages, of the national mindset back in late 2001 and early 2002. The US had just been attacked and was, rightly or wrongly, staggered and very angry. It sure seemed like more attacks were inevitable, and potentially much more devastating. Suicide bombers in Times Square, dirty bombs in Washington, or pneumonic plague loosed in the nation's transportation system were all seemingly viable, and each was written and talked about by very serious people as very serious threats.

Just imagine you're a CIA operative working in a musty walled compound in eastern Afghanistan in March of 2002. A couple of Delta Force guys drag in what appears to be a high-ranking member of AQ, and it's your job to get real facts, or "actionable intelligence", out of this character. Maybe the CIA's internal grapevine is starting to heat up with talk of plans for the next "spectacular", and everyone from your direct supervisor to the DCI to your Aunt Gertrude in Cleveland is counting on you to turn up the one tidbit that blows the operation open.

You've got this AQ honcho sitting in front of you, maybe with a few cuts and bruises courtesy of the Delta guys, but mostly intact. He's grinning his toothy grin at you, because he's been told that you represent a sick and decadent society which does not have the stomach to fight back. Between smug smiles, he hints about some really juicy info he's got stuck up in his melon, and boy, wouldn't you like to know what it is.

You think about your wife, your daughter, your mom and dad, your first grade teacher, the kids in that third grade class in Topeka who recently sent a pallet of Mach III razor blades and Pop-Tarts to your buddies in the 10th Mountain Division, everyone back home who may be at risk.

Do you use the non-lethal tools you have arranged beside you? The Taser, the jumper cables attached to the Delco Marine battery, the tilty wooden table (aka the "waterboard"), the noisy power drill, etc? Or do you let Toothy the Terrorist continue to smile and say nothing?

Answer that question honestly. Would you really have moral qualms? Really? If yes, perhaps you're a better human than I am. Inflicting some fear, pain, and confusion on my friend Toothy seems a lot more morally defensible than not getting the plans for "Operation Black Death" out of the guy who, for all I know, cooked up the plan from the start.

So, here we are, eight or so years down the road. Nothing of consequence has occurred here in the US. Sure, AQ and their franchisees have spun up the scoreboard a bit in places like the UK, Spain, Bali, Iraq, Saudi, etc, but those places are far, far away. It's been quiet here. Why? Maybe its because AQ isn't as tough as we thought they were. Maybe it's because the 101st and the 10th Mountain Division did their bit in Anaconda back in 2002. Maybe it's because our fictional CIA operative gave ol' Toothy the good news with the business end of the Taser, or read him his horoscope while he was strapped to the tilty table.

I don't know why things have been quiet domestically since Sept 2001, and neither do you.

My point is this: We were all scared, some more than others - sure, and we were all pretty sure we had reason to be scared, back in the early Aughts. Our elected government (please, please, please don't bring up Florida and the 2000 popular vote - that got settled by our system, like it or not) reacted to the most devastating attack ever successfully mounted against American civilians in an American city by taking the gloves all the way off. Our fictional CIA operative had official sanction from the highest levels to do whatever necessary to get his subject talking.

To go back now, from the safety and holier-than-thou high ground of 2009, and threaten to prosecute our fictional CIA operative and his real-life counterparts, is so mind-bogglingly cynical, so transparently political, and so unfair as to simply take my breath away.

Look, I am a fan of Obama. I voted for the guy and would do so again tomorrow. But that does not mean I give him and his team a free pass, especially when they try something as disingenuous as this little stunt.

Dang, I'm madder than I thought I was!

Daily YouTube: Makes My Head Hurt II

Daily YouTube: Makes my head hurt

Draw your own conclusions:

The Hangover: Instant classic

Saw The Hangover the other day, and loved it so much that I am compelled to write the very rare, much-sought-after CIT Movie Review on it.

Hilarious. Best comedy since Superbad. Better than Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin. Easily earns "instant classic" status. We'll be laughing over this one for years.

Everyone in it is great. Bradley Cooper is as instantly likable as he was instantly unlikeable in Wedding Crashers. The seemingly omni-present Ken Jeong (the outrageously uptight OB/GYN in Knocked Up) shows up again and reveals a lot more than his comedic timing. Heather Graham does well with limited screen-time. Mike Tyson completely recaptures his pop-culture cool factor with a single word: "Niiice!"

As the events from a forgotten night of debauchery are revealed to a threesome of severely hung over groomsmen, the laugh-out-loud moments come one after another. I was actually disappointed when the gang is reunited with the lost groom, not because it was poorly done, but because I was hoping the chase would last another hour or so.

The Hangover is not for everyone. There is more male nudal frontity than female, and none of it is attractive in the least. The gross-out factor is very high, with at least 3 on-screen, very realistic chunk-blowing incidents bringing groans from the full house. The language is off the charts, with more f-bombs per dialog line than anything since Pulp Fiction.

If you can fight through all that, along with a boat-load of boys-will-be-boys-especially-in-Vegas cliche, you will love this movie. I laughed throughout and am still laughing two days later. That's all I need to know.

Tom Friedman, Smartest Man on Earth, says radical Islam is losing

Tom, you are my hero (well, you and Big Al). You make so much sense, suggest such brilliant solutions, and generally agree with me on almost everything. I would like to formally submit my application to join the "Tom Friedman Mentoring Society". I may also get a "Tom Freidman is My Hero" t-shirt to go along with the "Al Gore is My Hero" shirt already in my closet.

Not kidding about the t-shirt. The sentiment happens to be true; I am a supporter of We Can Solve It and Repower America, but the shirt itself is a good way to start an argument in good old suburban North Texas.

At any rate, My Other Hero Tom wrote in yesterday's NYT about the current state of the jihad. Did you notice the radical Islamists are losing the War of Terror? Well, they are.

As Tom so deftly points out, everywhere the the Beardy Boys have taken charge (Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, etc), they have brought with them total economic stagnation (if not outright retreat), lowered standards of living and education, unnecessary and unwanted violence, repression, etc etc etc. And now we're seeing militant Islamists lose elections (Lebanon, Iraq) or steal elections (Iran). The Paki middle class is tired of bombs in the streets of Peshwar and have withdrawn support for the Taliban and foreign rebels causing trouble in the Northwest.

The bad news is that the US' friends in the Arab world, those shining examples of secular, progressive, populist democracy like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are not really "winning", despite their medieval rivals' decline. This lack of a better idea is what keeps the jihadists in business, albeit in a much more limited capacity.

Go read the op-ed, along with everything Tom Friedman has ever written. The man's a genius.

More reasons to stay the course

By Golly, I found another justification to keep allowing my family to play World of Warcraft!

Even Shatner agrees..



Play on!

World of Warcraft does actually serve a valid purpose!

Finally, my son and I found the excuse we were looking for to account for our hours logged....




Play on!!!

Resurrection!

After a week of extreme strangeness, little CIT has been restored from death. Our prayers have been answered, and, like Christian Jesus, we are risen!

Hallelujah!

If you don't know what I'm talking about, drop me a line and I'll share the whole story.

In the meanwhile, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Daily YouTube: The Sex Pistols

If we're going to have Johnny Thunders, we ought to go back to the originals. Yeah, The Ramones were first, but there's no doubt the Sex Pistols were a heck of a lot scarier.

Thirty-plus years down the road, the scare factor has pretty much worn off. They sure do rock, though.

BTW, I think this is from the BBC "Today" show from 1976, which would mean the guy on bass is Glen Matlock. Sid Vicious didn't join the band until a few months later. His presence made the band way rougher, way more edgy, and way more dangerous.