I’ve been thinking about Completeness of the Soul: The Life and Opinions of Jay Breeze, Rock Star, the third novel from my friend and fellow scrogue Jim Booth. I finished reading it a few days ago, but for me it’s been a slightly disjointed experience because I’ve seen most of it in its pieces before: chapters like “Fins” and “The Balcony Scene”
Read moreThis is just remarkable. And it may be the 7th Sign. I try not to read David Brooks any more than I have to because every time I do I wind up wanting to throw things. Through the years he has established himself as one of the most reliably disingenuous, dishonest propagandists on the GOP payroll, a fork-tongued weasel who
Read moreYou know how every so often somebody will publish a list of the greatest rock bands in history? Those usually make for interesting reading. Beatles, check. Rolling Stones, check. Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix Experience, U2, The Who, Nirvana, Celine Dion, REM… Wait, what? Back up. Always happens. You have your obvious picks, you have some fresh blood that
Read moreTen years ago, at the turn of the millennium, Nostraslammy took a stab at predicting the 21st Century, with a promise to check back every ten years to see how the prognostications were turning out. Odds are good I won’t be able to do a review every ten years until 2100, but I figure I’m probably good through 2030, at
Read moreLet’s begin with a quick trivia question. What legislator’s Top 20 donor list includes the following? Blackstone Group (Financial Services) Bain Capital FPL Group (Energy) DLA Piper (Corporate law firm, representing Global 1,000 and Fortune 500 companies) Kindred Healthcare Beacon Capital Partners Comcast Corp Brownstein, Hyatt et al (Corporate law firm) Venable LLP (Corporate law firm) Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Read moreYou may not have heard of Adam Marsland. You may not have heard of his former band, Cockeyed Ghost. But as we’ve tried to demonstrate, time and time again, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Radio is a wasteland, the RIAA is waging a toxic war on the artist, and the explosion of media and Internet channels has so fractured and
Read moreI’m not a Republican, but I know many people who are. I have GOP friends, co-workers and family members, and for that matter I used to be a Republican myself. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, to be sure. But it’s true. It’s no secret that I don’t agree with the GOP on much of anything
Read morePart one of a two-part series. From Cronkite to Couric: the Kingdom of Signal is swallowed by the Empire of Noise The recent death of Walter Cronkite spurred the predictable outpouring of tributes, each reverencing in its own way a man who was the face and voice of journalism in America for a generation or more. The irony of all
Read moreNote: Relevant updates will posted to the bottom. By all means, read all the way to the end, where it gets interestinger and interestinger. ______________ Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his church this morning. According to the New York Times: Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the
Read morePart three of a series. In the days following the murders at Columbine High School I visited the school and the grounds of Clement Park. Those walks produced this piece, which was originally published ten years ago today. We have learned a great deal about the events that took place at Columbine since this essay was written (for instance, we
Read moreWhen we launched Michael Tracey’s series on the Ramsey case we frankly didn’t know what to expect. We hoped for intelligent engagement around the essay’s central thesis – a runaway media and what it tells us about the sad state of our democracy. We feared that the place would be overrun by nutters. In the end, though, neither our hopes
Read morePart two in a series. There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence – Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust
Read morePart one in a series. Listen to the victim, abused by the system The basis is racist, you know that we must face this In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one of the most damning comments on racism in society in the history of popular music. “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” was specifically aimed at anti-immigrant racism in Europe, but
Read moreNo, this isn’t a rhetorical question. And it’s not one I pose lightly, either. But since Bill seems to want us to ask it, let’s review the evidence. In case you missed it, O’Reilly stirred it up again recently by commenting on his dinner at a black-owned restaurant in NY called Sylvia’s. After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant
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lullaby pit 