Tuesday, June 21, 2005

new tailor

you can find all future rumblings from the suit at the following link

grand opening - grand closing

Saturday, June 18, 2005

robert kennedy (guest blog by brendan mcfadden)



Robert Kennedy, Jr. is a fantastic human being the kind of who's spent his life fighting for environmental causes when he could've easily spent his time doing something far cushier and more lucrative. Bill Frist is a terrible shitty human being, and I hope that he dies of mercury poisoning as that would suitably ironic.
The following comes from Huffington Post.

ABC corporate executives at the network's highest levels ordered three interviews with Robert Kennedy Jr. pulled from ABC News programming.

The interviews all centered around Mr. Kennedy's investigation of thimerosal, a mercury based preservative, used in vaccines given to children and believed to be responsible for increasing cases of neurological diseases including autism.

Mr. Kennedy's interviews were slated for prime shows ABC World News Tonight, 20/20, and Good Morning America. Salon.com and Rolling Stone Magazine have exclusive rights to Mr. Kennedy's article and they embargoed his story on other networks because of his arrangement with ABC.

Mr. Kennedy's article was published today only in Rolling Stone and on Salon.com. The article links the CDC, FDA and Bill Frist to major drug companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth, and Aventis Pasteur that continued to include thimerosal in their vaccines despite studies showing the damage - and death - it caused in humans. In the 1990s the CDC and FDA recommended three additional children's vaccines laced with thimerosal, totaling twenty two federally recommended immunizations.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 from pharmaceutical companies, tacked on the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" as a rider to a 2002 homeland security bill. The protection act was later repealed by Congress after a public outcry. Senator Frist is making another attempt to harbor big pharmaceuticals from families with infected children. He is appropriating the war on terror again by attaching a provision to the "Protecting America in the War On Terror" bill introduced to Congress this past January.



A 2001 Emory University Study watched ABC, CBS, and NBC in the Atlanta area for one week and found 907 advertisements for over-the-counter drugs and 428 advertisements for prescription drug

If you're interested in reading Kennedy's most recent article go to salon, if you're interested in reading his book Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. Go to amazon or your library or bookstore.

Friday, June 17, 2005

baby doll



you ain't no picasso has posted a cover of the n.e.r.d. song "baby doll" by swedish rockers the (international) noise conspiracy. i haven't listened to it yet, but i'm a big fan of the original. might be worth checking out.

the (international) noise conspiracy - baby doll

hustle & flow



the other night i went to a special screening of "hustle & flow" with brendan. the bottom line here is it's okay. not quite sure how it walked away with the audience award and best cinematography at sundance, but what do i know?

terrence howard, anthony anderson and taraji p. henson give good performances and there are some good moments throughout. but if you don't see it, you won't miss much.

C+

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

doves/longwave

last week i was listening to jonesy's jukebox on indie 103.1 and jonesy was doing the thing where he plays guitar and whistles and if you can call and tell him what he's playing, you win something. for the first time ever, i knew what he was playing so i called and got through and won the prize. he was playing "behind blue eyes" by the who and the prize was two tickets to see the doves. which i did, last night.

the show was at the wiltern and the opening act was longwave. i had one song of theirs on my itunes that i liked but that was as familiar as i was with them. they played a 40 minute set that was pretty good. i didn't get into it 100% but i did like a fair number of the tracks. i don't know if it's all the time, but this night the singer didn't seem up to snuff. his voice felt strained and not very memorable. but, i'm being harsh. the band played well and are a lot better than tons of bands more popular than them.



after 30 minutes of down time the doves came out. i'm a huge doves fan, having purchased all three of their cd's, but i have felt that their albums are getting less and less interesting as they go. that's not to say less quality, but they seem to be experimenting much less and just doing straight rocking anthems now. their concert was another reflection of this. brendan is much less familiar with them as i am and he felt that all the songs blended together and sounded the same and i could see where he was coming from, but i still thought it was a fantastic show. the doves' sound is the epitome of the type of music that reaches new heights when heard live. anyway, all in all i'm really glad i went and have a new appreciation for the band. i just wish they'd try some more funky shit like "a house", "m62 song" and "friday's dust". and would it have killed them to play "catch the sun"?







the set list (based on memory so cut me some slack)

intro
n.y.
pounding
sea song
words
almost forgot myself
snowden
sky stars falling
caught by the river
one of these days
ambition
last broadcast
black and white town
the cedar room

encore

here it comes
satellites
there goes the fear



Monday, June 13, 2005

waking ashland video



my buddy todd (far right) just finished directing a new video for the band waking ashland. he did a pretty awesome job on it, so be sure to check it out below. and if you like the song, find out more about the band at their official site

i am for you video

Sunday, June 12, 2005

mr. & mrs. smith



brendan and i saw "mr & mrs. smith" tonight and here's the short and sweet review. it's a terrible waste of a promising concept and features not one shot, line or idea that i haven't seen done better elsewhere. boring boring boring.

"'mr. & mrs. smith' is as successful an action movie as 'thirteen' was a drama" says brendan.

overall grade- D+

for your consideration

in case you were wondering who to vote for?

first of all, click on the link above to see the new variety ad for "riding the bus with my sister". then notice the quote from the new york times. ". . .shouts 'first class production' and 'emmy bid'." now, am i crazy or does that sound like a bad review? sure enough, here are some other quotes they could have pulled from the same review.

"This underhanded movie makes Ms. O'Donnell into an appalling cartoon only to pretend innocence -- or, no, moral superiority -- when the viewer is appalled."

"The viewer, meanwhile, is sure to cringe -- and often. This is another inexplicable effort by an actor to overplay a slow, strange character and teach everybody lessons."

why in the world would they pull a quote from this review? a quote that so thinly disguises the real tone of the review that anyone more intelligent than rosie's character would get it right away. god only knows. anyway, best of luck with getting that nomination rosie.

roman candle



the idiots at hollywood records finally let roman candle out of their contract and they have now signed with v2 records. which now makes them labelmates with brendan benson, elbow, grandaddy, stereophonics and the white stripes among others. quite a step up from hilary duff and jesse mccartney. all this really means is we can finally get our grubby hands on their reworked debut lp "the wee hours revue" by the end of the summer. stay tuned. . .

something left to say

Monday, June 06, 2005

blahg

i have lost the will to keep the suit alive.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

ireland day 6

aaron and i woke up early again on our last day in ireland. my uncle liam was going to pick us up and take us out for lunch, but he had a little fender bender the day before, so he still came over but i had to drive us to lunch. aaron and i thought we were just going into town for some lunch but apparently my uncle had other plans. i started driving waiting for him to give directions and after about 20 minutes on the highway it became clear he was making a day out of this. we wound up driving all around the east coast of ireland, which was great because we had spent the past two days on the west coast.

we finally did stop and eat at a fish and chips shop in ennistymon, after seeing some really cool older villages that aaron and i had wanted to see but didn't on the road to dublin. after lunch we went on to doolin where the world famous cliffs of moher are located. this turned out to be the only touristy thing aaron and i did, so we took a bunch of pictures. the cliffs were really incredible and if you've seen "the princess bride", they were used for establishing shots of the "cliffs of insanity".











aaron was scared to get too close to the edge but i got to take this picture of him at his closest. we both observed that if this was a tourist attraction in america there would be no way that you could walk right up to the edge. there would be some sort of rope or something lame. it's apparently a big suicide spot anyhow.




we spent the whole day driving around with my uncle and made a quick visit to my aunt kathleen that was way too short. finally we picked up liam's wife from her job (she's a cook at the local prison) and went back to his house. aaron got it right when he said it was something out of a ken loach movie. we didn't stay long before heading back to my uncle anthony's. it was almost drinking time.

before that, my cousin shane's daughter emily taught aaron and i how to play rugby. don't be fooled by her size and demeanor, she is a rough, rugby-loving machine.



being our last night, we knew we had to go out with a bang so we went out early. as always we started at shane's and with guiness. we played poker with my cousins ryan and anthony, and rebekah and some other guy i forget his name. amazingly, aaron came away with 4 euros profit.



by the time the game was over it was almost midnight and i had again already had 4 pints of guinness. shane closed up the bar and we headed over to the club icon. basically, night 6 was exactly like night 1 only aaron was there this time. as soon as we got to the club, rebekah dragged me to the dancefloor for a few songs and anthony shoved drinks in my hand faster than i could down them. they insisted we do red bull and vodkas like they were shots, and i was happy to oblige.



notice the two hartigans in the picture seem the most eager to get the drinkin' on. who knows what's going on with aaron here.



i literally did four of those glasses of vodka and red bull in 10 minutes. not a nice mix with the half gallon of guinness. but hey last night in ireland.






this picture sort of summarizes the trip nicely.

after the club, we went back to shane's where i proceeded to pass out around 3am. i was woken up at 5 and brought back to the house where i fell right to sleep. we woke up 1 hour later to go to the airport. i was still drunk. the proof is i could have sworn our flight left at 740 so we got there at 7 and found out the flight didn't leave till 11. i fell asleep on an airport bench like a bum. i wouldn't have it any other way though and the whole trip was amazing.