subdudes in Santa Rosa

The subdudes, with the Pulsators opening, played The Last Day Saloon in Santa Rosa Friday night. It was the fifth or sixth time I’ve seen the band and easily the best of their shows I’ve seen. A quartet until they broke up about 8 years ago (although their shows and recordings often featured Willie Williams on guitar and vocals), the reunited subdudes feature, in addition to original members Tommy Malone, John Magnie, and Steve Amedee, Tim Cook on bass (Replacing Johnny Ray Allen) and percussion and Jimmy Messa on guitar and bass. Combined with Malone’s guitar, Magnie’s accordion and keyboard, and Amedee’s percussion playing (the band lacks a drummer; Amedee keeps the beat largely by whacking an amplified tambourine (among other things) with a stick. It’s more effective than it sounds and you don’t notice the lack of a full drum kit while listening), the newer members fill out the band’s full rock and blues sound.

Tommy Malone’s bluesy tenor voice has always been one of the hallmarks of the subdudes’ sound; more and more as the years pass his guitar playing stands out as well. Friday night, alternating between an acoustic guitar, an ’88 repro of a ’58 Homer Haynes Strat that he has worn the paint off of, and a beautiful hollow body ’67 Gretsch, there were times when he just tore the place up. His scorching extended solo on the Gretsch on “Straight Shot” was as good as any I’ve heard.

The band has an easy stage presence, the band members occasionally speaking to those in the front row (with the exception of Amedee, who, though he sits right at the edge of the stage seems pretty well caught up in the playing. He looks as though he’s happy to be there and having a good time, but isn’t engaged with the audience. He was very friendly and voluble after the show, however). There was a brief interruption early in the show when one of the amp monitors caught fire, but it didn’t appear to have a distracting affect on anybody and the band resumed playing once the smoldering amp was removed. Starting around 10:30 the band played for more than two hours, playing material from their earlier albums as well as a number of songs from last year’s release, Miracle Mule, including “Morning Glory” and “If Wishing Made it So,” and about four songs from an album they are preparing to go into the studio to work on with Keb Mo producing. Highlights, in addition to “Straight Shot,” include the songs you would expect, such as “All the Time in the World,” “Need Somebody,” “Late at Night,” and “Sarita.” At the end of the night, everybody went home tired and happy.

You can catch the band tonight and tomorrow night at Moe’s Alley in Santa Cruz.

Opening for the subdudes were The Pulsators, a six-piece Sonoma County band, playing a tasty combination of island rhythms and a Memphis-style horn section. The band played a relaxed yet strong set. Particularly notable were trumpeter Steve Long’s fiery solos. Interestingly enough, the Pulsators lack a true drummer, too, as Johnny Campbell, who is also the main singer, primarily plays a bongo.

The Last Day Saloon has been open for a couple of years in Railroad Square but until Friday I’d never been there, as their calendar seemed to reflect a heavy mix of DJs, dance bands and comics. There seems to be new commitment to bringing high level musical talent to the club, though. The night before the subdudes performed the Reverent Horton Heat was on stage and future performers scheduled to appear include Maria Muldaur with Shana Morrison opening for her, Elvin Bishop, and Dr. John.
As much as I love The Mystic Theatre in Petaluma and appreciate the too rare show The Raven in Healdsburg puts on, I am thrilled to have another club poised to bring this kind of talent to the North Bay on a regular basis. It’s a nicely set up club, with a separate bar and a restaurant with a window onto the showroom. That it’s just a five minute drive from my house makes it all the sweeter.

Finally, I have to thank Bill Bowker and radio station KRSH for their efforts to bring the subdudes to the north bay and their broader efforts to promote live music in this area.

Supporting the Troops

Banking Industry-style

Pharmacists Choosing Who They Will Serve Based on "Morality"

When I read this in the paper this morning, I was all fired up to write an entry about it, but Atrios beat me to it. What he said.

College Hoops

I watched parts of three NCAA tournament games this weekend, catching the second halfs and overtimes of Saturday's Louisville-West Virginia and Illinois-Arizona games and yesterday's Stanford-UConn women's game. Saturday's two games were among the most entertaining I've seen in the tournament in a long time and by rights should have been far more compelling television entertainment than Stanford's methodical suspense-free reduction of UConn. It's not that the commentators for the women's game were superior (although both men's games featured commentators saying the "players were really leaving it on the floor," this was easily countered by remarks by the commentator in the women's game such as referring to a player dribbling the ball off her foot as a "stupid play." It was no doubt a poorly executed play, but referring to it as a stupid play implies that the plan, well-executed, was to dribble it off the foot. Though not impossible, that seems unlikely). The difference, as near as I can tell, is that at every break in the action (and lord almighty there were a lot of them) during the men's games CBS immediately broke for a commercial. During the women's game on ESPN2 they stayed at the game during most timeouts, ensuring that while their was a pause in the action, their was continuity in the programming, allowing the viewer to stay focused.

There's absolutely no chance, of course, that CBS and the NCAA will sacrifice revenue to improve the entertainment product, but I just had to get that off my chest.

Of course, it doesn't hurt the women's game that Candice Wiggens is one of the most appealing college players in either the men's or women's game to come along in many years.

Republican Economics

In a column that reveals a lot about Republican values, James P. Pinkerton (aren't you glad he throws that "P." in there, to distinguish him from all the other James Pinkerton writing columns?) writes of the decline of General Motors and points to the experience of Harley Davidson's rejuvenation, assisted by a 1983 Reagan Administration tariff on imported motorcycles.

Acknowledging that GM is too big and its product line too varied to directly mirror the success of Harley, which has always been kind of a boutique motorcycle, he suggests that with some taxpayer assistance some of GM's divisions could be spun off and survive. Which does he have in mind? Is it Saturn, with its line of relatively inexpensive and fuel efficient vehicles, a line within financial reach of most Americans? Is it Chevrolet, with a varied line of vehicles, including the fuel efficient Aveo with a starting price of around $10,000? No, what Pinkerton has in mind are the famously wasteful Hummer and the equally conspicuously consumptive Cadillac, both notable for the government subsidies they already receive through tax breaks provided to those who purchase them.

Pinkerton's column reveals once again the Republican mindset that seeks to reward wealth and selfish waste, at the expense of the common good.

subdudes in the Bay Area

Now that I have my tickets for this Friday safely in hand, I have to tell you that the band to see this weekend is the subdudes, playing Friday night at the Last Day Saloon in Santa Rosa and Monday and Tuesday at Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz (you can also catch them Saturday night at the Crystal Bay Club in Crystal Bay, NV). The band has been compared favorably to Little Feat, which I guess is as close as they sound to any band, but any comparison to another band would be unfair to both bands. Formed in New Orleans a decade and a half ago, the band mines its hometown musical roots and the guitar playing and soulful singing of Tommy Malone, the keyboard and accordion (yes!) playing of John Magnie, the inventive percussion of Steve Amedee, and the bass of Tim Cook and bass/guitar of Jimmy Messa for scorching rhythm and blues. Bring your dancing shoes because your feet will insist on moving.

Scraping up Fresh Fodder

So sorry to distract you from truly important things like Jacko and the Florida sideshow (find your own damn links!), but in entertainment news we have word that it's time to dip deeper into the Army's Individual Ready Reserve. The Army plans to send mobilization orders to about 6100 soldiers who have completed their active-duty service commitment yet are still eligible to be recalled into active service (no, that makes no sense to me either). Again, sorry to have distracted you; back to our regularly scheduled "news."

Vegetative Congress

If I must steal (and I must), then I must steal from the best. From Fafblog:

Senators, from this day forth none of you will be allowed into Congress without dragging along AT LEAST one (1) vegetative American with a partially liquified brain. Remember, the more you bring with you, the more compassionate you are! You can use them however you want - wave them around, pose them in interesting shapes, demonstrate their need for private Social Security accounts - but you must use them AT ALL TIMES THROUGHOUT THE DAY. If you go without referencing them for thirty seconds, you must either stop to bounce them or pass them to another player on your team.

Schiavo Case Judge

The Yahoo headline reads Judge In Schiavo Case a Clinton Appointee. Now what the hell does that have to do with anything, especially since the body of the story states, "Whittemore, appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1999, is not known to display any political leanings?" This may be an AP story, but Yahoo writes its own headlines. Are these people dupes or willing tools of the right?

Vengeance and Justice

During a 1988 Presidential debate, Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was asked whether he would favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. He gave a dispassionate answer reflecting his faith in and hope that the American law enforcement and justice systems would find, prosecute, and incarcerate the guilty parties. And there went the election.

Dukakis’s answer wasn’t wrong. It was, in fact, just what you would want a Presidential candidate to have faith in and hope for. The problem with the answer, as with his statement that he was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, was that it was incomplete. Presented an opportunity to explain why he had this faith in American justice and what our justice system represents, he not only whiffed, he never even saw the pitch.

At the time of that debate, I was married but childless, a situation long since reversed. I have thought back many times on the question and reflected on how I would answer it. When I hear of a child kidnapped and molested, often ending with the child’s murder, it’s not hard to conjure the emotions of the child’s parents, the dread turning to horror and grief as every parent’s worst fears are realized. When my thoughts turn to what I would want to do to the person who could terrorize and torture my daughter, who could so cruelly end a life still so fresh, who could take from me and her mother the source of all of our most profound joy, pride, and hope, I find myself facing a part of me that resides within all of us, a dark raging demon of vengeance that would find no act too cruel, no pain inflicted too severe to make somebody pay for my daughter’s and my loss and suffering. In my deepest rage and despair I would become a creature reduced and driven by a primal lust for revenge. Were I allowed by society to loose that rage, that bloodlust, I would forever be shaped by my actions, by the surrender of my better angels to my demons.

There’s no danger of that happening, of course. We have a system of justice that spares society and crime victims from having to face and have to control those demons, from having to live with the consequences of opening those floodgates of vengeance. Though imperfectly, our justice system attempts to impose a sense of proportionality in the dispensation of justice. At least as importantly, it recognizes and acts on the notion that a crime against my daughter is not uniquely a crime against her and her family. It is a crime against society. Though not equally, we all suffer from crime and the imposition of punishment is our collective responsibility and we collectively share in the benefits of just punishment of the guilty.

I write of this now, of course, because of Eugene Volokh’s recent entry extolling the public participation torture and execution in Iran of a serial child killer. The good professor was rhapsodic in his description of the event, gushing about the purgative benefits of allowing victims’ families to mete out punishment and extract their vengeance. Volokh feels that such a frenzied outburst of bloodletting is good for the body politic. He reluctantly conceded a day or so after his initial post that such a system of administering “justice” in this country would be impracticable, what with the necessary amending of the constitution and the inevitable protests from bleeding hearts that would ensue. Sadly, we will have to continue to dispense justice on a different plane than Iran.

Our justice system, unwieldly and imbalanced though it is, does reflect the steady aspiration of man to rise above our basest and most bitter instincts. When we or those we hold dear are harmed, we want to inflict pain on those who have harmed us, to extract from them a pound of flesh. Vengeance though, as history has shown, does not equal justice and it does not propel us farther along the road to civilization. We struggle within ourselves to tame our appetite for revenge. Our institutions need to help us in this struggle.

I'm Just Wondering...

How many of those Congressman who believe allowing gays to marry weakens traditional marriage are trying to strengthen Terry's Shiavo's parents' rights to determine her future, at the expense of her husband's rights?

Outlawing Extraordinary Rendition

Via Fafblog (of all places), I learned of HR 952, introduced by Edward Markey of Massachussetts, which would ban Extraordinary Renditions, our country's loathsome practice of kidnapping and shipping to foreign countries those people we suspect of engaging in or supporting terrorist activities. The countries we ship these people to are known to engage in torture, but we extract a promise from them before turning the suspects over that they will not torture them. Any torturing that's done after that is not our fault. No sirree. Overzealous patriots for hire may inflict a little pain, permanent injury, or death, but that is not our intention. You can read more about this practice at Nat Hentoff's Liberty Beat (you can read about this in a lot of places, but I think I first heard of the practice in Hentoff's column a couple years ago).

Find and contact your Representatives and urge them to support this bill. If your Representative is Markey or one of his co-sponsors write them anyway to thank them for their support.

I Get Around

Following the lead of virtually every other blogger, but most recently Heraldblog:

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

I suppose I could fill in the gaps with a couple pleasant vacations, with one exception. I can't for the life of me figure out why I would ever want to go to North Dakota.

Wolfowitz Reviewed

Michael Lind, writing in Salon, says of Paul Wolfowitz:

"Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years."

Not an evil genius, Lind argues; just consistently, catastrophically wrong. And in keeping with Bush's revision of the Peter Principal, whereby people are now promoted far beyond their level of incompetence (see Rice, Condolleeza and Gonzales, Alberto), having done just about as much damage as is humanly possible at the Defense Department, it's time to give him a broader area, the world's economy, to muck up.

The Great Republican Social Security Mind Fuck

See the Rude Pundit for a discussion of when a "plan" is not a plan.

Blogenlust in the WaPo

BARBARian John, of Blogenlust received a mention in Howard Kurtz's Washington Post Media Matters column this morning:

The creatively named Blogenlust scoffs at the recent Condi speculation:

"Despite the anticipatory exuberance of Matt Drudge, et. al., the talk about Rice's political career is not only premature, but also fantasy. Leaving aside for a moment the numerous examples of her incompetence , the cold, hard fact of the matter is that Rice is unmarried, and in today's political climate, that will not fly for a Republican candidate for President. I can already hear the whisper campaign coming out of her more conservative primary opponents: 'Psst . . . you know why Rice is unmarried, right?' Should it matter that Rice has never married? Of course not. Would it matter? You bet.

"However, this does bring up a more important point about the early reality of the 2008 campaign: The Republicans do not have an heir apparent to run. This could be a big vulnerability for the Democrats to exploit since the Republicans will have to spend a lot of money and energy beating each other up, particularly if the conservative wing goes to war with the moderate wing (which I suspect it will).

"For better or for worse, the Democrats have two or three 'heir apparents' in Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton."

Check it out, then check out John's site (with the fetching new banner graphic!). It's one of my daily stops and always worth the time.

Dogtown and Z-Boys

Dogtown and Z-Boys is a 2001 documentary about the revolutionary Zephyr skating team, hatched in a Venice, CA surf shop. It describes and, through archival footage, illustrates a segment of the seventies surf and skate culture. A large part of the film’s appeal to me is that it blows away the stereotype of the laid-back California surfer. The kids in this film are dedicated, driven, competitive, and territorial, to say nothing of outright gifted. Written and directed by Stacy Peralta, one of the Z-Boys (who also wrote and directed last year’s Riding Giants), the film, narrated by Sean Penn, in addition to exposing a little seen slice of the California experience, has a compelling natural dramatic arc. See it.

I had been meaning to write about this film for some time. I grew up in Northern California, where the beaches are often cloudy, windy, and chilly, and the water is 10 to 15 cooler than in Southern California. The sun-blessed music of the Beach Boys and the beach movies of Frankie and Annette were as relevant to my life as they were to some kid in Des Moines, yet that was the life my cousins in Michigan thought we lived (to be fair, I suspect those songs and movies really didn’t do much justice to real life in Southern Cal either). The surfers at Santa Cruz were (and may still be) notoriously territorial, given to fighting kids who came over the hill from the valley who dared surf “their” waves. This movie comes closer to depicting the life I knew growing up in California than any other film, book, or music I’ve come across.

The reason I write about this now is because a feature movie based on the documentary is scheduled for release this summer. Called Lords of Dogtown, it stars Heath Ledger, Sofia Vergara, and a host of people I’ve never heard of. It may be good, but I’m not optimistic. See the doc. I saw it on IFC and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t resurface around the time of the feature film’s release. It’s also available at Amazon and, I imagine, at your finer video rental outlets.

How's Your English?

Via Hal at Hellblazer we came across this test of our knowledge of proper English usage. (I don't where all this "we" and "our" talk came from...I'll try to shake it).

Not to boast, but I (there, that's better) scored 100 86 100 88.

The Bankruptcy Bill

Though it's extremely cynical, this post from Kos is the only rational explanation I've seen for why so many Democrats have ended up supporting the vile bankruptcy reform bill. In a nutshell, according to a Congressional staffer, supporting this kind of legislation can help Dems draw financial support come election time from the banking industry, while, they calculate, costing them few votes from an ignorant, uninformed, and forgetful voting populace. Whether this has been true on issues like this in the past, it's incumbent upon us to not let it be true from now on. Any Dem who supports this bill, to the benefit of those people whose pockets we accuse the Bush Administration of being in and to the detriment of the people the Dems claim to best represent, needs to have a vigorous primary challenger in 2006. If this has been the way politics has worked in the past, it has to stop now. This is not a benign pro-business bill; it is a bill with the potential to push into financial catastrophe m illions of people already squeezed by Bush's soak the poor and middle class to feed the rich policies. These are the people the Republicans quite clearly don't give a damn about. We need to make it clear that we really do care about them.

Fear of Our Children

One of the stories I missed while skiing last week and am just now catching up with is this one, from Kentucky, about a high school student who was arrested for a story found in his journal that he was preparing for a school assignment. His grandparents found the story and turned it over to police.

"My story is based on fiction," said the student, William Poole. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Nonetheless, local investigators claim the story outlines possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police. According to Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill, "anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky."

(Update 3/13/05 - For more information, including suggestions that the writings in the notebook were not for a school assignment and that Poole had solicited others to join him in some kind of army (this part of the story is pretty sketchy), look here. It's not clear to me from this story if his writings constitute a threat, as the authorities still claim, or if they are his imaginings put on paper).

If high school teachers continue in giving their students assignments that require them to use their imaginations, to write fiction (presumably and hopefully they will), some students are going to come up with stories that involve high school and mayhem. High school is the world they know. Mayhem and violence are prevalent in our society and in the entertainment students are exposed to. We may sometimes wish it were otherwise, but wishing won’t make it so. I think the students recognize the distinction between entertainment and reality, between what you can fantasize about and what you can actually do. The problem here is that adults seem to have a hard time with that distinction.

We’ve seen the same problem arising when students are given assignments in which they are asked to describe how they feel. Too often when students honestly describe their feelings they find themselves in a situation similar to that of Mr. Poole. To be fair, if there are areas students can get in trouble for writing about, teachers should steer clear of assignments that will lead students into those areas. If the answers frighten the teachers, the teachers should stop asking scary questions.

As a high school student, I could easily have been caught up in a situation like this. No, I’m sorry. That’s not true. Although I might have written something similar to what Poole wrote and got in trouble for, I was a high school student in California in a paradoxically more enlightened time (the seventies) than the present. My daughter is now in high school and I can envision her writing a story or an essay that might cross the lines that Poole’s did. Would she get in the same kind of trouble?

Memory’s a tricky thing, but I don’t recall hearing or reading about these things happening before Columbine. One of the initial responses to Columbine was to try to raise awareness of bullying in schools and make it less socially acceptable. I think that emphasis, coupled with the attempt to understand and integrate the misfits into high school society by accepting them as they are has fallen by the wayside, largely replaced by cracking down on teenage essays, short stories, and weblog entries that describe the misfits’ sense of alienation and fantasies of how they would deal with it, by trying to force the misfits to blend in by becoming more of the mainstream. Adolescence is a time for discovering who you are. You try on different personae, explore different philosophies, in an attempt to find out what works for you, what’s important to you. Some things you reject altogether, others you take parts of or adopt in whole. Who and what you think you are today could be radically different from who and what you will be next week, next month, or next year. In the end, whether after a period of months, years, or a lifetime, you are left with the personality and ideas that fit you. These essays and short stories getting kids in trouble are often reflections of this exploration. They might describe who a student is or what a student will do, but more likely they describe who a student thinks he or she might be or what they might do. It’s an important distinction.

I suspect that authorities, school and civil, have become even testier since 9/11 and the whole “Americans…need to watch what they say, watch what they do” response to that. To be alienated or to hold minority opinions is now viewed as suspect in and of itself. If you don’t think or act as the majority does, the majority feels threatened by you. This has been expressed quite loudly and often by the Republicans since the election, with their claims that the Democrats are out of touch with the mainstream and need to change. Some can not accept that people can disagree with them and still be sane, patriotic, and moral. Though our political institutions are based on the concept of pluralism, on an open exchange of and respect for differing opinions, this is too often now viewed as a dangerous state of affairs. If that’s true on the national political landscape, I suppose it’s naïve to believe the situation would be different on high school campuses. It’s a situation that all of us need to confront, that we all need to push back against. We cannot afford to live in a world dominated by those who lack the courage or the imagination to explore foreign ideas.

BARBARIANS...to Action!!!

I find in interesting that on Ellen Tauscher’s Congressional webpage there is no mention of her support of the bankruptcy “reform” bill sailing through the Senate. Why wouldn’t she proudly proclaim her support of the 21st Century Plastic Barons? Perhaps some of you BARBARians living in the 10th District would like to contact Ms. Tauscher with your feelings about this matter.

Here is a map of the 10th District.

(Sorry, I can't get the link to her website to work. The URL is http://www.house.gov/tauscher/)

A Little Geek Interlude

In the West Wing episode "Gone Quiet," Hal Holbrook, playing Assistant Secretary of State Albie Duncan describes the "Pueblo Incident" to Martin Sheen, playing President Bartlett. He concludes by saying, "I was there." And so he was, in a Ronald Reagan sort of way. In the 1973 television movie, "Pueblo," Holbrook played the skipper of the Pueblo, Captain Lloyd Butcher.

No Missile Umbrella for Canada

I find it impossible to understand how any serious commenter can get upset about Canada declining to join us in developing and deploying our missile defense system. It doesn’t work, it never has passed a meaningful test, and it probably, based on its development track record, never will work. Why would another country want to sign on to that boondoggle?

With that in mind, outgoing US Ambassador to Canada Paul Celluci’s remarks to CTV are just comical. Canada’s non-participation will be it’s loss, according to Celluci, because “they will not have a seat at the table.”

"We have this odd situation where the Canadians will participate at NORAD, detecting when the missile is launched, determining where it's heading, and even if they determine it's heading towards Canada, it's at that point they will have to leave the room, because they're not participating.

"In the United States we'll decide what to do about the missile."

Now I may be naïve and ignorant, but I don’t suspect there’s too great a risk of a missile being launched at Canada and I doubt too many Canadians are losing sleep over the prospect. Even if that were a likely possibility, though, what the hell difference would this missile defense system make, anyway? The US will decide what to do about the missile? As in, do nothing or launch a missile against the incoming missile that won’t hit it anyway? Yeah, that’s a decision the Canadians are going to be busted up over missing out on.

Googling Your Phone Number

From an email I got:

"Google.com has a new feature where you can type someone's telephone number into the search bar and hit enter and then you will be given a map to their house. Note that you can have your phone number removed or blocked...

"To test whether your phone number is mapped, go to: http://www.google.com/. Type your phone number in the search bar (i.e.555-555-1212) and hit enter.

"If you want to BLOCK Google from divulging your private information, click on phonebook results link above your phone number and scroll down."

New Blog in Town

Courtesy of the gallant Scaramouche, we have a new Bay Area Blog, in fact, the mother of all Bay Area Blogs, the Barbarian Blog (Woo hoo!!!). The list of (potential) contributors is a veritable who's who of Bay Area Bloggers (well, at least among those of us who occasionally gather together to drink and play "pull my finger").

Speaking of which, the first entry on this new blog announces the next such soiree, this Thursday from roughly 6 to around 9 at the Pacific Coast Brewing Company(a rare digression - I happen to like brewing companies; my second wedding was in a now defunct Sebastopol brewery (my second marriage is also now defuct)). As usual, all bay area bloggers and readers (that would be you) are invited.

And I'm back...well, almost

After a week indulging my indolence, sloth, and gluttony, I have to return to work tomorrow. I suppose I might as well add something of value here, too. Thanks for keeping the light on here.

Crocodile Tears

The wankers at Powerline, addressing the Supreme Court's Roper v Simmons decision, write, their words dripping with angst, "Maybe the offending Justices don't really care about whether the Court is perceived as legitimate."

Like that's a new problem.

All Martha, All the Time

I haven't had much exposure to the news for the last several days, but as near as I can tell, judging by the breathless saturation coverage of it, the big story this week is Martha Stewart's release from jail. Although that could be a good commentary on the state of the world, I suspect it's more of a damning commentary on the state of our media.