jealous admiration for a good time had.

so today i took a look at mez eclipse. for some reason i thought about the sf weekly review of the mind zap festival they linked a couple months back. performing at mind zap were such locally connected acts such as je suis france, still flyin, and lil flip scoldjah.

unlike kb, who knows those guys well, i'm at best passingly friendly with any of the people involved with the festivities. but the review still really made me wish i was there. i particularly enjoyed how the sf reviewer has props for all the athensy bands and basically shits on the rest. anyway, read it if you haven't already, it's entertaining.

Astra tour reaches Zeppelinesque heights of debauchery...

Conversation on Monday I had with Sauce at the library front desk:
Me: So do you have any wild stories from the Astra tour? Orgies? Motorcycle chases through the St. Louis Area Convelescent Center?
Sauce: Huh, huh...Uh...One day we were all in a photo booth, the four of us, and this girl jumped in with us.
Other librarian: And...?
Sauce: That's it.

socialize that shit.

more insights from 4KS's favorite nytimes editorial board member, paul krugman. you may have noticed that, more and more, southerns states are offering ridiculously large tax incentives in an effort to lure business into the area [particularly in the increasingly scarce area of skilled production]. so this op-ed makes the point that the health and education of the workforce is just as important to well-run companies as are the short-term gains offered by tax breaks. maybe we could score more skilled production jobs in the south if we took a cue from canada by bolstering public education and providing free basic medical care for all. socialized medicine in particular offers the dual benefits of healthier workers and lessening the company costs for providing benefits.

a raven haired beauty from our youth.

il gato grande called my attention to a little nytimes feature on one danica mckellar, aka- winnie cooper. mckellar, whose acting credits include the wonder years (as well as appearances in some of my earliest wet dreams), apparently just made a return to acting on west wing. a tad more impressively, mckellar, who in college did a little work in spacial mathematics, recently got a fucking theorem named after her (relating to magnetic fields, no less). this article instantly propelled her to near the top of my "celebrities i would try to date if i were a hot shot celebrity" list.

who makes your cut?




[as per the comments, i have taken the liberty of adding a photo from ms. mckellar's appearance in stuff magazine]

the supremes

tonight's the night we get to find out who will scuplt our judicial future. I for one am a little scared. President cukoo bananas is likely to appoint a conservative nutbag that will have power for years to come, long after he leaves office and becomes commish of baseball. He has said his ideal justices are scalia and thomas, the cheech and chong of taking your rights away and making big business richer. I imagine he will appoint someone kind of like david cross's "git of my land" character on Mr. Show. Anyway, since I don't contribute much I thought I might try to stir up a little discussion, as the blogfather tries to do here every once in a while. Since the global economy thread hasn't excited the masses, yet the television quality discussion did, I want to split the middle. If you could nominate any character, from books, tv, or movies, to the Supreme Court of the United States, who would it be? My answer in the comments. Ta dow OUT

ponder the world economy, bitches.

decent op-ed in the nytimes today about global trade type stuff, written by william greider of The Nation. if you're interested, give it a glance.

unlike many sharing my generally leftist political disposition, i consider myself something of a believer in "free trade." FYI, the basis for my beliefs on the matter are probably best incapsulated in this book.

that said, this op-ed notes some of the legitimate concerns about the implications of free trade for our own domestic economy. enjoy.

He just got Saucy's digits

news from the road

we have an update on the Burgeoning Mediocrity 2005 tour:

"Our little tour has been pretty great overall. We have been well recepted and people have bought cds."
-saucy

glad to hear you're doing well, sauce, but i believe the expression you're looking for is "well received." keep in mind that this man is a college graduate. i weep for the future.

award winning television?

obviously the emmys have always had a skewed eye for quality programming; no newsflash there. but i don't know about this action.

the shows with the most nominations: desperate housewives, will & grace, and everybody loves raymond. i mean, i don't think any of those shows suck really bad... but they all kind of suck.

could it be?

more on the possible demise of karl rove. he might be my least favorite person in the world. i will be very excited if he at least gets publicly humiliated by this thing.

in sort of related news, take a look at this entry in saucy's dumb blog. it has a link to an al franken show bit where bill o'reilly is exposed for outright misrepresentation through creative editing of an interview. it's only surprising because it's so wildly blatant.


alright, enough. i'll try to lay off a bit on this political stuff, since this blog is dedicated to astra and saucy mockery. as for astra, i hope the Burgeoning Mediocrity 2005 tour is going well.

karl rove: the worst american?

so it looks like maybe karl rove was the one to leak CIA operative valerie plame's identity to the press. and bush has promised in the past to fire whoever outted her. i know it's too much to hope for, but is it possible that karl rove could be forced to resign and retreat from public life? pretty please...

booyah!

despite the unhappy truth of the underlying point, it makes me smile that paul krugman is referencing the onion for its prescient commentary.

on a sidenote, i wanted to link the relevant onion article but could not do so. i guess they brought out "onion premium", whereby you pay a modest sum to get access to more stuff. used to be you could view their entire archive for free. it's fucking bullshit. the onion is going to shit, just like espn.com with their bogus "insider" access. i refuse on principle to pay money to look at a website. except for beastiality porn. i'll pay for that.

almost forgot about astra

so astra's world tour begins with that asheville recreation center show tomorrow night. next friday they play public library no. 11 in des moines, iowa. two weeks after that they play at the Golden Age Assisted Living Community outside cape may, new jersey. on the last leg of the tour astra will be playing the langstein bat mitsvah in randallstown, maryland. wish the boys luck.

mcmtl waxes about tv shows

good piece on "entourage" today in the nytimes. that show is the shit, and you should watch it if you don't already. one highlight of the article:


"Entourage" represents so vast an improvement over HBO's "Sex and the City" that it makes that show seem, in retrospect, like nothing more than a one-note celebration of pluckiness, devised for a tweener reading level. By contrast, "Entourage" does not patronize its characters or its audience: it is a multilayered, adult and thoroughly funny show about various male fantasies of teamwork and individualism.


in case you think that assessment is a gender thing, the article was written by virginia heffernan. i'm not one of those guys who hates on sex and the city; i always thought it was a decent show. but entourage is in a different stratosphere. it makes sex and the city look like will & grace.

on a sidenote, i think it's better than arrested development as well. arrested development is good, but i don't think it's worthy of the hubbub it gets (much like sideways). it seems to strive for cheekiness in a slightly contrived way. reno 911 is better.

London

it probably shows that i'm a bit jaded, but my first reaction to the tragic attack in london is to wonder what country we're going to use it as a rationalization to attack (iran...syria?). at the very least, it will provide much fodder for supporters of the tyrannical patriot act ("we must stay vigilant..."). sigh.


on a slightly related note, everyone should take a look at christat's posting about the new proposed bhutanese constitution. our constitution is due great reverence, but we could definitely learn a thing or two.

editor's note:

so i stumbled upon this blog because its author commented on another. i enjoy reading it, and have decided to add it as a 4KS link. i have surmised it is written by a certain athenian who i do not know personally, but who i know to be friendly with some of the loyal 4KS readership.

why am i writing this? because while i feel sheepish about linking a blog without knowing the author, acknowledging that awkwardness partiallly alleviates it for me. so here we are.

ink is not the answer: play like you got a pair.

word has it that certain astra member[s] are contemplated getting a few tats in order to toughen up the band's image. good luck with that.

in fact, the real reason said member[s] are contemplating the move is that they are pussy-whipped by their new tattified new girlfriend.

ambient alt-country + foosball?

the following was taken from the "upcoming shows" section of the new astra website:

07/9/2005 10:00 PM - Asheville Community Resource Center, Asheville NC

is astra playing a rec center? or is it more of a tourism office? 4KS was actually giving some thought to driving up for the show, but now i don't know.


actually, brief internet research reveals that the "ACRC" is "an anti-authoritarian collective running a consensus based community center in downtown Asheville." it also reveals that this unruly group may or may not have been evicted last year. i guess they're too radical for the aging hippy population of asheville.