4.30.2006

STEPHEN COLBERT IS MY HERO

It's a HUUUUUUUUGE file, but it's worth wacthing Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The lack of laughs shows you that he wasn't there to entertain them but rather, to put them in their place.

Check out this article at Editor & Publisher...

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Not Amused?
By E&P Staff

WASHINGTON A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—“and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

**UPDATE**
...here are some youtube links if you don't want to wait ten minutes for the other file to download...



4.27.2006

FINAL FANTASY VII : ADVENT CHILDREN


I have no idea what this movie was about...

But it sure makes you wonder what PIXAR could do if they wanted to make a kick-ass CG movie for adults...

The visuals alone are worth renting it from Blockbuster...

At least check out the trailer...

Seriously. Who needs a "plot" when you got giant fucking fight scenes?!

4.25.2006

NEW MUSIC 4.25.06


ARCTIC MONKEYS * WHO THE FUCK ARE ARCTIC MONKEYS? (EP)

5 song EP, buy it from iTunes and save some major $$$
1. View From The Afternoon
2. Cigarette Smoker Fiona
3. Despair In The Departure Lounge
4. No Buses
5. Who The F**K Are Arctic Monkeys


BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN * WE SHALL OVERCOME

Not your typical Bruce Springsteen disc. This is all Pete Seeger covers and most (if not all) are bluegrass and early americana toe-tapin' tunes. See, the fact you rolled your eyes means it's not for you...


THE STREETS * HARDEST WAY TO MAKE AN EASY LIVING

I've actually had a bootleg copy of this for some time now, so I've listened to it more than a few times. It grows on you. If you've never listened to The Streets, I'd pick up their first album, but if you didn't enjoy their second effort, know that this one is much better.


LEWIS BLACK'S LATEST COMEDY CD, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Sorry for the small image, Amazon didn't have it listed yet and I was actually surprised to even see it waiting for me at my favorite lil' record shop. It's fucking great though. 2 discs of Lewis at his best...

4.24.2006

RAWK!!!!


Have you heard the new TOOL song, VICARIOUS?!

Me likey.

Eye on the T.V. 'cause tragedy thrills me.
Whatever flavor it happens to be like..
"Killed by the husband",
"Drowned by the ocean",
"Shot by his own son",
"She used the poison in his tea
and kissed him goodbye".
That's my kinda story.
It's no fun until someone dies.

Don't look at me like I am a monster.
Frown out your one face,
But with the other.
Stare like a junkie into the T.V..
Stare like a zombie,
While the mother holds her child.
Watches him die.
Pleads to the sky crying:
"Why, oh why?"

Cause I need to watch things die... from a distance.
Vicariously I live while the whole world dies.
You all need it too - don't lie.

Why can't we just admit it?
Why can't we just admit?

We won't give pause until the blood is flowing.
Neither the brave nor bold, or writers of stories told.
We won't give pause until the blood is flowing.

I need to watch things die.. from a good safe distance.
Vicariously I live while the whole world dies.
You all feel the same so..

Why can't we just admit it?

Blood like rain come down.
Drown on grave and ground.

Part vampire.
Part warrior.
Carnivore and voyeur.
Stare at the transmitter.
Sing to the death rattle.

Lie (4x)

(Background news headline)

Credulous, divest your desire to believe in
Angels in the hearts of men.
Pull your head on out.
Your head believes it give a listen.
Shouldn't have to say it all again.
The universe is hostile,
So impersonal.
Devour to survive, so it is,
So it's always been.

We all feed on tragedy.
It's like blood to a vampire.

Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies.
Much better you than I.

4.21.2006

LIVING WITH WAR



I'm sure many of you by now have read the reports that Neil Young recorded an anti-war, anti-Bush Administration album in about a week's span. Well, it's started to turn into a "Don't you worry about being unpatriotic?" shitstorm or the greatest, "Are you just doing this to cash in?!" The mother fucker has made music for over 40 years! Yes, this album is all about jumping on the latest trend and hoping to get his video played on TRL next week. What a silly notion. I know Bob Dylan is currently laying down tracks for an upcoming album, I imagine it'll have a few anti-war songs on it as well. "Bob Dylan, why do you hate America?!" I love the current state we're in.



Anyway, feel free to watch the clip above (for as long as it lasts...youtube.com takes clips down ASAP) and watch the woman reporter ask tough and thought-provoking questions like:

"There's a song on the album called 'Let's Impeach The President?!' what exactly is that about?"

Also, feel free to keep up to date with all the latest news on the album here. Some of it is odd though, like Neil's interview with the New York Times saying that he was waiting for some younger singer-songwriter to come out with a record like this, but eventually gave up. True, no one (that I can name off-hand) dedicated an entire record to the Iraq War or Bush Administration, but BRIGHT EYES has certainly stepped up into the shoes of Dylan and Neil from back in the day. Hell, he even performed "When The President Talks To God" on Leno once!!!

4.20.2006

WHAT'S WITH THE QUESTION MARK?!



How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

Read the whole article here.

POOR SCOTTY BOY...

Press Secretary (and Liar In Chief) Scott McClellan has announced he's going to resign. Dammit. I, for one, am going to miss the poor bastard.

WASHINGTON - White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday he is resigning, continuing a shakeup in President Bush's administration that has already yielded a new chief of staff and could lead to a change in the Cabinet.

Appearing with Bush on the White House South Lawn just before the president boarded a helicopter at the start a trip to Alabama, McClellan, who has parried with reporters on Iraq and on intelligence issues, told Bush: "I have given it my all sir and I have given you my all sir, and I will continue to do so as we transition to a new press secretary."

Countdown collected a "Greatest Hits" for us to remember the good ol' days.

4.18.2006

NEW MUSIC 4.18.06


NOFX * WOLVES IN WOLVES CLOTHING

This one is less politics and more loud, fast punk rock...but it's still good. And of course they get in their two cents on songs like USAholes...

We see the iceberg from 15 miles away
The captain orders the ship to "stay the course"
"Full speed ahead" shouts the accurst
The next thing we heard was, "rich women and children first"
The ship is listing, the captain's placing blame on the iceberg
"That berg attacked us, I am declaring war on the Arctic"
Who could ever have predicted the greatest ship could so easily sink (duh)



THE DRESDEN DOLLS * YES, VIRGINA...

A very decent follow up. Nice and bouncy, yet poignant. "Sing" is easily the best song on here, but songs like "Necessary Evil" and "My Alcoholic Friends" are also damn fine.

There is thing keeping everyone's lungs and lips locked
It is called fear and it's seeing a great renaissance
After the show you can not sing wherever you want
But for now lets all pretend that we're gonna get bombed
So sing




MATTHEW SWEET & SUSANNA HOFFS * UNDER THE COVERS (VOL. ONE)
1. I See The Rain (The Marmalade)
2. And Your Bird Can Sing (The Beatles)
3. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
4. Who Knows Where The Time Goes? (Fairport Convention)
5. Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young And Crazy Horse)
6. Alone Again Or (Love)
7. Warmth Of The Sun (The Beach Boys)
8. Different Drum (The Stone Poneys, featuring Linda Ronstadt)
9. The Kids Are Alright (The Who)
10. Sunday Morning (The Velvet Underground)
11. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young And Crazy Horse)
12. Care Of Cell #44 (The Zombies)
13. Monday Monday (The Mamas And The Papas)
14. She May Call You Up Tonight (The Left Banke)
15. Run To Me (The Bee Gees)

I GET MORE WORK...

silent hill
It'll run this Thursday in the Preview section of The Kansas City Star...

4.17.2006

PEARL JAM ON SNL

First time since 94 or something like that...

WORLD WIDE SUICIDE


SEVERED HAND


**UPDATE**
Wow...the guys at YouTube.com take everything down now. What a bunch of babyheads. Oh well, I'll try and find better links later on...

4.14.2006

WHAT *DIDN'T* THEY MAKE UP?!

It turns out that those MOBILE NUCLEAR LABS turned out to actually be used for...WEATHER BALLOONS?! And Bush knew this and STILL talked about them over a year later to help make the case for war?!

I'm convinced at this point that they could announce that Bush lied about eating a live baby three weeks ago and people would be like, "Yeah, but remember when Clinton was president and he lied about the oral sex thing?! And he was like impeached because THAT was serious."

MY SON HATES THE EASTER BUNNY...

So I get a call last night, right before I'm getting ready to get off work. It's Molly on her cell phone calling me on her way home from picking Lex up at the daycare. Since we take him to a church daycare, (it saves us money and his soul!) they went ahead and had the Easter Bunny there on Thursday because they were going to be closed for Good Friday. I asked how it went and Molly replied, "Not well."

"Really?! I figured he would like the Easter Bunny. I mean, who hates the Easter Bunny?!"
Molly answers, "Um, I think that the Wallace & Gromit movie you let him watch every night before bed might have something to do with it..."

Dammit, she was right. I adore Wallace & Gromit and we've been letting him watch their latest adventure "Curse of the Wererabbit" every night before going to bed.

I couldn't stop laughing when I imagined him being led outside to this killer oversized bunny rabbit just like in the movie. "C'mon Lex...it's the Easter Bunny!" I could picture exactly what he would say (and what he tells us way too often,) "No way, man!"

Poor lil' guy. Imagine being two and having awful parents that force you to watch movies about evil giant bunnies and then having your daycare try and place you in one's lap...

Here's Lex and his daycare teacher and the ACTUAL Easter Bunny...
Lex & Easter Bunny

Here's what Lex saw...

4.13.2006

I WENT TO APE AND ALL I GOT WAS...PRAISE?!

From Slave Labor Graphics, no less?! Between me and you, I think they're heavy drinkers...

TITANIC 2

I actually laughed out loud watching this trailer. I love the clip of Romeo & Juliet at the end. And seriously, if they did make a sequel, you know it'd be EXACTLY like this.

SOUTH PARK



This show is at the top of it's game. The entire 10th season has been amazing. If you've given up on this show (or never really watched it) you're truly missing out on some of the most hard-hitting satire since Mark Twain.

Take the last two episodes for example. Now what got my attention (and got me all giddy) was the title "Cartoon Wars" and the idea that Cartman was going to go out to LA to put an end to Family Guy once and for all. I knew Matt & Trey absolutely hated that show (as do most cartoonists) but had no idea where it would go from there. I mean, could they just bash Family Guy for 30 minutes and keep it fresh and funny? The answer was no. They needed an entire hour, 2-part cliffhanger extravaganza to get their point across...and in the end, it was less about hating Family Guy as it was the entire state of "what is funny and what can't we make fun of."

The premise was that Family Guy was to show Muhammed and Fox censored it by tossing a black bar over him. This angered the "writers" of Family Guy and they vowed to do another episode with Muhammed and run it without censorship...to see if Fox had the balls to actually show him this time. Cartman figured that he could go to LA and stop Fox from airing the show, (acting like it really offended him) when in reality he knew that if he could get this episode pulled, every single week they could get another episode pulled because it had something else that offended people. Thus the end of Family Guy forever!!!



But what happened was once he got to LA, he found out that the "writers" of Family Guy are actually manatees that just randomly collect these balls with different words written on them. Like "Gary Coleman," "Ice Cream Truck," "Easter." Then in any given episode of Family Guy they'd be talking about what to have for dinner and Peter would go, "Dinner?! Hey remember that one time I had to drive a ice cream truck over to Gary Coleman's house for Easter?!" Cut to Gary Coleman eating ice cream with bunny ears on going, "What'cho talkin' bout Willis?!" It was so fucking spot-on to the way that show is written...but now, sadly, I have to like it because I adore manatees. They stole my heart the first time I went to Sea World...

Anyway, it became this joke within a joke about networks pulling episodes for "offending" people (remember Comedy Central pulling the Scientology episode hours before it aired?!) and even poked fun at themselves by having Kyle say, "Hey I like that Family Guy is just all about random jokes...at least it doesn't take itself all serious and beat you over the head with messages."

The best (and you only see him in a small clip) was the way they worked Bart Simpson into the episode as another kid who hated Family Guy. Him and Cartman are just hanging out in the Fox offices and Cartman asks him, "Why don't I talk to the President of Fox, I'm kind of a mean kid." To which Bart says, "Hey, I'm kind of mean too..."

"Oh yeah," says Cartman, "What's the worst thing you've ever done?!"
"I stole a head off a statue once." Answers Bart.
Cartman replies, "Reeeeeally?! Well I once killed this kid's parents and then ground them up into chili and made him eat it."
"Uh...you win."

Then later in the episode you see Bart hit someone upside their head with his skateboard and yell out, "Cowabunga Motherfucker!"

Seriously...you missed out.

Here's their version of Family Guy...SPOT ON!!

Here's the ending. Notice how Comedy Central wouldn't let them show Muhammed, but they COULD show Jesus taking a crap on George W. Bush?! That makes a whole lot of sense...

4.04.2006

TOM DELAY RESIGNS

Well, he will "sometime mid-June" cause he's a fucking coward. Oh wait, that's supposed to read, "Because the Democrats were so mean to him and were making his political campaign personal." Whaaaaaaaaa. No fair! Just because a guy is under investigation for about every illegal tactic in the book doesn't give you the right to bring it up! It's personal! Poor Tom Delay, I really feel sorry for the prick.

If you can stand it, here's his "statement" where he lists why he's stepping down and how it TOTALLY HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL to do with them pesky investigations. Cause he never did anything wrong. Ever. So help him, Jesus. (keep an eye on his hands...I'm sure someone who was telling the truth would be constantly moving them like that?!)

**UPDATE**
God bless Jack Cafferty.

4.03.2006

TODAY'S BASEBALL COMIC...

(FRONT PAGE OF FYI SECTION OF THE KANSAS CITY STAR)

TAKE ME OUT

So here you are … opening day for the home team. You’re torn. The boss has called a meeting. But you have tickets.

As you well know, you are not alone.

This is the one day of the year Kauffman Stadium will be full. Meaning many a workplace today might be understaffed. Consider, as Kansas City cartoonist Travis Fox did just for us, a few possible scenarios going on around town today …

(...now with a picture you can actually READ?!)

GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO...

Yeah, I'm actually going to APE for the first time in about what, three, four years now?! I'm kind of excited. For starters, I'll be able to spend some nice snuggle time with my buddies NOIR (who I haven't seen in forever!) and FINN (who I spent one lonely evening with out at E3 last year.) But I just found out the weather is going to be cold and rainy (Who would have guessed?! Rain?! IN SAN FRANCISCO?!) and Molly has to work and therefore cannot be there to make NOIR keep his hands to himself. (Here's a hint...whenever he asks to "check your oil" make sure you're FACING him...)

Anyway, it should be a decent time. FINN even scheduled another live art thang for Saturday evening, which should be all sorts of exciting!

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

I cannot believe this is actually happening. Sure, it's ten years after the show peaked, but c'mon. Imagine if they were able to get all the amazing talent who helped make this show brilliant over the years and come up with a decent flick?! Conan O'Brien, Brad Bird, the list is endless!

Anyway, the only "plot point" the rumor mill is offering at this point is:

"All of the original cast, and writers, are involved. The main plot is that a goof by Homer at the power plant results in the government putting a dome over the city limits of Springfield."

But the teaser trailer is all over the internet. So enjoy!

4.01.2006

APRIL FOOLS, MOTHER FUCKERS!

Wikipedia is keeping track of all the pranks being pulled on the internets today. Here's one of my favorites...


Wizards of the Coast annouce a MY LITTLE PONY role playing game!

And yet, both of these turned out to be TRUE?!

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE has a teaser in front of Ice Age 2 stating that it'll be in theaters JULY 2007?!

BOB ROSS is getting a video game?!