The Saddest News Ever Reported

The place I get my Cuban sandwiches just upped the price on me by like 50 cents or a dollar. It was hard to tell through the tears.

I know their game. Tempt me with deliciousness, give me a free sample just to set the hook in deeper, then when I'm hooked raise the price on me.

Hell, what am I gonna do? I'm sure I'll be back there next week.

Media Blitz

Finished "The Turnaround," the new George Pelecanos book this week. It was similar to some of his more recent stuff, in that it focused more on the consequences of a violent act in the past rather than his more cinematic earlier stuff that usually ended up in "Wild Bunch" like shoot outs between one or two protaganists and a gang of evil-doers. Actually, "Turnaround" seems to be almost a reaction to those books, in that you can feel the tension mount, and you just know there's gonna be a big showdown at the end, but it ends up swerving. As usual, the focus is on blue collar DC, with questions of what it means to be a man and father. And yeah, you're gonna get dialogue where dudes debate basketball, music and muscle cars. Don't know if Pelecanos is intentionally getting away from his pulpier crime stuff, but as always, he's a good read.

I should also be getting "I Got the Feelin' James Brown in the '60s" soon, which is a 3 DVD set of awesomeness. It includes a documentary explaining how James Brown stopped a riot through a televised concert, which I think I saw on VH1 in between comedians making jokes about Strawberry Shortcake and Swatch Watches. The other discs include the concert as well as assorted odds and ends of awesomeness, including stuff from the TAMI show, which you really oughta go youtube right now, as it includes my favorite stage move ever, where he passes out and has a dude drape a cape over him and try to pull him off stage until he re-energizes, throws the cape off and starts dancing again.

Also watched a double DVD of a Stooges concert from 2005 or so for review. While the concert was as good as you'd expect, the bonus features are kick-ass, with interviews with the band (excluding Mike Watt and that saxophone guy, both of which would be interesting) and an hour long retrospective which has just about every Iggy Pop clip from the '70s on, including talk shows with David Bowie. Pretty awesome to see how charming and charismatic Iggy can be talking in contrast to his craziness on stage.

Let's see, also managed to watch half of the last season of "The Wire" before my wife hijacked the Netflix queue and ordered the collected works of her boyfriend Johnny Depp. There's one storyline that seems out of character and too risky even for a character known for taking risks, but otherwise the show is as strong as ever, especially in the way it portrays day-to-day work, something not really seen that much in most entertainment. This season focuses on the media, and the newsroom scenes remind me of my limited newsroom experience, especially how there'd be the one guy who was like a living AP manual who you'd always hope to impress. I also love how the highest compliment the police give each other is "he's good police."

Other than that, just waiting for the rain to stop so I can finally get outside and ride my bike. This is the longest I've been off since I started in May (four days and counting) and I can feel myself getting fatter.

Riding the Storm Out

You know what's awesome about our TV being broken? Not having to watch hours of local news clowns stand out in the rain saying stuff like,"Well, we don't know where or when the storm is going to hit, but it sure is windy and rainy out here at the beach." Then they go and harass some surfers who seem to be doing just fine.

Instead, I can just look on the internet and see what's going on.

You know what's not awesome about our TV being broken? Not watching sweet, sweet TV.

Music and Politics

If Obama is really in this to win this, he should consider changing his campaign song to Motorhead's "Bomber." Seriously, take a listen to the chorus, it totally sort of sounds like Lemmy's singing, 'it's Obama, it's Obama,' if you kind of stretch it a bit. With that bold move, Obama would capture the coveted record store nerd vote, easily bringing in dozens of votes, provided the nerds actually made it to the polls in November and didn't get distracted by some shiny new CD reissue or a chance to display their obscure record knowledge to a fellow nerd.


On a related note, while riding my bike last weekend, I was totally cracking myself up with a proposal to change the national anthem to Bad Brains' "Pay to Cum," if only for the fact that by the time you got a stadium full of people at a football game or whatever to stand, the song would be almost over. Sure, nobody can sing it, but nobody can sing "The Star Spangled Banner," either. Plus, how funny/awesome would it be to see crowds of people all shouting out the lyrics, which I always thought were something along the lines of "hubbadubbadooranmakamakaflooremanamanamamamaFIGHT!"


This also started me thinking of how many '80s hardcore bands were lauded as the fastest band in the world - off the top of my head, I can recall Husker Du, Bad Brains, DRI - I'm sure there's tons more. Sort of how about a half dozen bands were called "America's Wire" - Mission of Burma, Urinals, Minutemen, etc. I guess it's kind of like how there are about a million "Master of the American Short Story" authors out there - Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, etc.

Money Changes Everything

I often wonder what sort of rich guy I'd make. Understand that when I say "rich," I don't mean well-off or comfortable, I'm talking diving in Scrooge McDuck money tanks rich.

Would I be an Elvis kind of rich guy, where I'd have a gang of hangers-on indulging my every whim while I shoot out TVs and pass the days in a self-medicated haze? Would I be a Howard Hughes rich guy where I hermited myself away from the germs of the common people while I grew my beard to ZZ Top lengths? These are the sorts of questions that keep me up at night.

Sure, there's the Bill Gates/Andrew Carnegie model, where I donate tons of my riches to charity, but where's the fun in that? I guess it does give you a pretty good bargaining chip at the pearly gates - "See, I could have been shooting out teevees but instead I established libraries and helped AIDS patients, so you really ought to cut me some slack on some of that other stuff."

Of course, this is all just a daydream, as I'm barely a hundredaire after paying the monthly bills.

Oldies

The other day at work I was trying to get across the concept of 'assist,' and I came up with the classic Magic Johnson assist to the Kareem skyhook. The person I was speaking to didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

Then I realized that all my sports metaphors, much like my musical tastes, seem to have frozen around 1988.

The Greatest Elvis Movie Never Made or The Healing of A Nation

Recently I've been rereading Peter Guralnick's double volume Elvis biography. Right now I'm close to the end, where Elvis doesn't want to record anything new and his concerts have become drugged out spectacles, where he'd give long, rambling speeches or forget the words to songs or just walk off stage after a couple minutes.

One of the things the King did seem to get excited about, however, was screening then-current blaxploitation flicks. He watched "Shaft," "Black Belt Jones," and "Across 110th Street" repeatedly, boring his hangers-on as he discussed these awesome movies over and over.

Elvis was so impressed with these movies that he wanted to star in his own action flick, which, as opposed to 80% of the movies he had starred in, he would have actually give a crap about.

"I want to be the baddest motherfucker there is," said the King, according to Guralnick.

The Colonel wanted him to do a semi-documentary on karate, then convinced him not to do any movie at all and Elvis died a few years later, brokenhearted.

Now here's the movie that should have been made.

Elvis and Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite himself, run competing karate studios on different sides of town. Elvis' school is mostly white, Rudy's is mostly black. There is some tension between the two schools, but the King and Dolemite respect each other's martial arts abilities and bad-ass fashion sense, so they have a wary understanding.

Meanwhile, The Man (played by a dead ringer for Richard Nixon) is scheming to take over the youth center where the two schools meet for tournaments and use it to get kids hooked on dope. Nixon uses his Southern Strategy to divide the two races into fighting against each other rather than working together to fix their city.

Then Elvis and Rudy have to team up together and unite the city to take down The Man with their kung fu.

The soundtrack would be '70s Elvis, with assists from Curtis Mayfield and James Brown. Oh, I should probably put in "Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye, even though that was the title song for another movie, just 'cause it's so bad-ass. We'll have it in the scene where Rudy and Elvis ride around looking for information. They're both sort of weary, especially since the comic relief has just been killed (I'm picturing Jerry Reed, Burt Reynolds and Isaac Hayes), and they're steeling themselves for the big showdown.

Final scene would be Elvis and Rudy standing on a pile of rubble as the sun rises after the big battle. Elvis' "American Trilogy" is playing. As the "Glory, glory, hallelujah" line rises, Elvis and Rudy shake hands. In the digitally remastered version, we can have the ghost of JFK embrace Barack Obama off on the side.

What would have happened if this movie were released? For one, with our country's racial problem fixed, America could put our energies elsewhere and I would be dictating this to my sexy robot secretary from my flying car.

For Elvis, it would have rejuvenated his sagging spirits, he would have fired his manager, kicked out all his sycophants and hangers-on, dumped the pills, and started making music again. His 1980 tour with the Clash would be seen as a high point in both his career and the history of awesomeness.

President James Brown would have led us into an unprecedented new age of peace, prosperity, and funkiness. George W. Bush, freed of the expectations of having a Presidental father, would have stayed in Kennebunkport, running businesses into the ground, terrorizing the help at the club, and living off his parents. He would gain fame as the model for Ted Knight's grandson in "Caddyshack."

Terrorism, hippies, conservatism and fundamentalism of any stripe would never gain a toehold in America, because nobody wanted to be the dick that wrecked the place that gave the world that awesome movie where Dolemite and Elvis fought crime.

Me? Well, for bringing this outline (well, I guess my parents would have had to do it, since I would have been in grade school) to Elvis' attention, I become one of the richest men in the world, regularly recieving loving tribute from all the nations in recognition of my gifts.

Man, I gotta get working on that time machine, quick.