Archive for April 2007

Monday 30 April 2007

wild rice

By spaceneedl | Uncategorized

excerpt:

it’s hard to imagine condi rice working ever again at a respectable institution of higher learning.
girl has intellectual integrity issues.
which to say, she’s a big, fat liar.
“The idea that the president had made up his mind when he came to office that he was going to go to war against Iraq is just flat wrong.” [...]

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good night, tommy

By spaceneedl | Uncategorized

excerpt:

there were lots of reasons why johnny carson’s ‘tonight show’ was so good for so long.
tommy newsom was one of them.
“As a child, one time Tommy got lost and his parents couldn’t describe him to the police,” Carson once said.
On another occasion, Carson said Mr. Newsom “wants to come back as a plant, so somebody [...]

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Sunday 29 April 2007

giving millers everywhere a bad name

By spaceneedl | Uncategorized

excerpt:

let’s say, just for fun, that you were a college senior getting ready to graduate.
and since we’re having fun, let’s say that your school decided, at the last second, not to award you the degree you earned, but to hand you another degree entirely. not because you didn’t finish your senior thesis or bombed all [...]

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testy

By spaceneedl | Uncategorized

excerpt:

some people just don’t do well on tests.
“If the Congress wants to test my will as to whether or not I’ll accept the timetable for withdrawal, I won’t accept one.” — the testee-in-chief
george has never been much of a student. he’s the poster-boy for average. if by “average” you mean “pitiably below average, but trying [...]

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Saturday 28 April 2007

a saturday supporting-the-troops primer

By spaceneedl | Uncategorized

excerpt:

if george bush follows through on his threat to veto the iraq funding bill, it will be just the second veto of his presidency. the other? stem cell research.
which would mean that he’s for disease and against peace.
bush and his spokespeople are feigning indignation that the bill contains additional money for non-war related programs. this [...]

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FlossQuotes

And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words — yes, we can.
– Barack Obama

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Naturally
If anyone's been paying attention, I listen to a wide variety of music, only a fraction of which I've reviewed here at Transcendental Floss. I tend to go through phases when I'll be stuck on a particular artist or genre, really immersing in it for a few weeks at a time, and what I find so interesting and exciting is that during each phase I have this experience where I feel like there's no better music than what I'm listening to right then and there. Well, I've just discovered Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and I can say with complete confidence that this is the best music I have ever heard. Seriously, this is magical stuff. Brooklyn, New York's Daptones Records have managed to produce record after record of fine R&B/soul/funk music using vintage musical equipment and analog recording techniques in the ultimate homage to the legendary Motown and Stax catalogs. The Dap-Kings, serving as the Daptone house band, are the modern day equivalent of Stax's Booker T & The MGs, laying down the tastiest grooves, sweetest guitar riffs, and of course the horns that make this music so electrifying. Sharon Jones is the quintessential soul singer, able to capture moments of tenderness just as easily as moments of gritty passion. Enjoy!
— Gonzo

Van Morrison - His Band & The Street Choir
As much as I love the 1991 movie The Commitments, Van Morrison, some 40 years earlier, had already proven that the Irish have plenty of soul. Perhaps my favorite album of his, His Band & The Street Choir could easily be said to share some DNA with the music of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (soulful crooning, grooves, horns, etc.), yet with a decidedly unique twist that is all Van The Man. This music simply makes me feel good on a deep, deep level. What's so great about Van Morrison is that he's covered such a variety of genres, from soul to blues to country to jazz to celtic to a kind of meditative, almost new age sound that is all his own, and so as I move from phase to phase of musical immersion he's very often right there with me.
— Gonzo

Be Kind Rewind
I was not prepared to love this movie nearly as much as I did. While I've liked a lot of Jack Black's work, he's a guy with limited range who I can easily see wearing out his schtick. However, teamed with a very sweet and funny turn by Mos Def, an equally sweet Danny Glover, and under the direction of the mad genius of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep), Black's occasionally formulaic performance does nothing to keep this film from achieving success as a comedy and a bittersweet slice of life in Passaic, New Jersey. I was surprised over and over again how Gondry unapologetically went sentimental, eschewing so much of the cynicism that passes as gritty realism these days, which is music to my unapoligetically sentimental ears. I laughed. I cried. I learned that Mos Def is by far the best artist to crossover from music to acting that I've seen in a long, long time.
— Gonzo

Franny & Zooey - J.D. Salinger
I work at a university where I supervise a team of student employees. One employee, in painfully embarrassing hindsight, reminds me an awful lot of me, but before this hindsight came into focus he was a big, fat pain in my ass. Relentlessly sarcastic and arrogant, yet brilliant, this guy pushed my patience to the limit. Then, one day, I saw him sitting under a tree on campus reading Franny & Zooey and it hit me like a lightning bolt. I know this kid. I WAS this kid. So, I stopped to talk to him about the book and about Salinger in general. He'd read The Catcher in the Rye first, then moved on to Nine Stories, which, with the story A Perfect Day For Bananafish, introduces the reader to the inimitable Glass family. Franny & Zooey, then, becomes the natural next choice, with Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenter & Seymour: An Introduction to follow, and this was exactly the same sequence that I followed 20+ years earlier. Ever since, while we're not buddy-buddy, there's been a new-found understanding between us, a sense that I'd been his shoes, that we shared some interests. Oh, and I went back and re-read Catcher, Nine Stories, and am currently falling in love all over again with Franny & Zooey.
— Gonzo

Lick your chops and chip through the nuggets of past Floss Aid recommendations.
— floss aid