digital art: The Grey

click to enlarge

---o0o---

The first step to good health: regularity!

click to enlarge
---o0o---

The billboard in Saskatoon going up this week

click to enlarge

---o0o---

All This Is That awards President Barack Obama The Halo

click POTUS to enlarge

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Correspondent

For only the 11th time in five years, All This Is That is awarding The Halo, this time to The President. This is his second halo. I am not going to analyze the speech here. Go watch it on YouTube.

I do think, however, that as great at The President's speech was, in tenor and substance, his response to Representative Joe "douchebag" Wilson was anemic. Instead of merely saying"that's not true!" BHO should instead have called the cracker out right there in the middle of the speech. Or asked the Secret Service to escort the hillbilly out of the room. Or better yet, marched down to Wilson and clocked him, or even asked the closest Secret Serviceman to borrow his 9 .mm, and gone down and popped him once in each kneecap. But alas, such was not to be, and we'll just have to settle for the personal and professional ignominy that is currently, and will keep hailing down, on yet another member of the South Carolina delegation (and their former teammate, Democrat John Edwards).
---o0o---

Three incredible moments with fledgling Senator Al Franken

So many people wrote Al Franken off as a lightweight and hand-wringing liberal pansy, that, despite writing some good books, a lot of great comedy, sounding pretty damned smart, passionate, and knowledgeable on his radio show, and being a lifetime Grateful Dead fan, even I started to wonder.

As it turns out, judging from these amazing video clips, Senator Franklin is a master of retail politics. His grasp of health care fundamentals and geography are just stunning in these glimpses of Al "among the people."

Al handles an angry teabagger ambush with aplomb and an incredible mastery of the subject and issues:



Al draws a map of the U.S. from memory in a couple of minutes. Wow! I wonder how many of the 534 other members of Congress could pull off this one? I will add a little bit of a disclaimer here. I first saw Al do this about 20 years ago on the David Letterman show, so in some sense this is a parlor trick he mastered long ago. But it is impressive nonetheless.



And finally Al aces Ann Coulter by saying he would choose to be Adolph Hitler:


---o0o---

Fame!

click to enlarge the billboard jack

---o0o---

Ex-First Lady Laura Bush on President Obama: Thurmbs Up!

click to enlarge

Let me tell you, this is a bit of a mindf***er. At a United Nations meeting in Paris, where Mrs. Bush was promoting literacy, she told CNN, among other things:

● Obama "is doing a good job."

● On the ridiculous brouhaha over BHO addressing the nation's schoolchildren: "I think there is a place for the president ... to talk to schoolchildren and encourage them."

● She does not think it is fair for Obama to be labeled a "socialist"

● On her husband George failing to work in a bipartisan manner: "He was disappointed that that was not the way it worked out in Washington."

● Paradoxically, she criticized the excessive partisanship of Washington, while she expressed gratitude for Cheney's decision to vocally "defend her husband's performance," even though he is one of the torch bearers for destructive partisanship.

● While she defended Cheney, she also said her husband still speaks with Cheney "occasionally." As you know, those last couple of years they were at odds, particularly over Bush's refusal to pardon Cheney's henchman Scooter Libby.
---o0o---

Labor Day, and a reluctant end to summer

click to enlarge the West Point Lighthouse

OK. It is technically the last day of summer, although it is supposed to get hot again later this week.

In Seattle, the last weekend means Bumbershoot, and usually, a good weekend--Saturday at Bumbershoot, we saw Mayer Hawthorne and The County, Sheryl Crowe (briefly), The Old 97's, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head (awesome!), and De La Soul.

Today we hiked down the hill in Discovery Park to the beach at West Point. A nice walk--with intermittent sprinkles and sun breaks, as we like to say--to the lighthouse and foghorn just below Magnolia Bluff. It must be scallop season--there were far more scallop shells on the beach than clams, crabs or mussels.
---o0o---

The anti-performance art manifesto

click to enlarge

An anti-performance art manifesto from an art exhibit at Bumbershoot yesterday...the transcription on the right is mine.

---o0o---

No performance art!

One of my favorite art exhibits at this year's Bumbershoot was a piece challenging the sanity of performance art. Nice. While I have enjoyed performance art over the years (especially some of my friend Ron Littke's insane performances in Manhattan in the early 1980's), there is always an overhanging cloud of *huh*?

---o0o---

Jack Brummet interviews Senator Jerry Melin, 1980, New York City

Of the literally hundreds of hours of recordings in The Archives, only one cassette tape has survived. That cassette, fortunately, contained numerous recordings of the late, greatly and dearly loved Jerry Melin. This is one of them. Thanks to Ian Rodia, who digitized the crumbling generic cassette tape. As you can hear, the cassette recorder itself generated a "bump" every few seconds, and the tape is filled with the ambient sounds of buses, semis, glasses tinkling, coughs, and mumbling. Nonetheless, it is good to hear Jerry's voice.

---o0o---

Digital Art: Incoming Japanese Prime Minister and First Lady Miyuki Hatoyama and Yukio Hatoyama

click to enlarge

---o0o---

Alien Lore No. 156 (in a collector's series) - Japanese first lady abducted by aliens

click to enlarge the first gal

Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japan's Prime Minister-elect, Yukio Hatoyama, is into macrobiotics, was divorced, was once an actress, and often wears clothes she creates herself. She was also a dancer in Japan's fabled all-female Takarazuka theatrical group (an elite, hugely loved troupe that produces schmaltzy versions of U.S. theatrical and movie productions).

62-year-old Miyuki Hatoyama says she knew Tom Cruise in a former incarnation (he was Japanese), She says if they meet, "I believe he'd get it if I said to him, 'Long time no see'," she told an interviewer recently. Oh, and she was also once abducted by aliens. I love this woman!!!

In her book, "Very Strange Things I've Encountered" she writes that was abducted by aliens while she slept one night 20 years. Naturally, this has vaulted her onto front pages and gossip columns.


click to enlarge the first couple

"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," she explains in the tome she published last year. "It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green."

Her previous husband, told her it was just a dream. She says the soon to be Prime Minister, however, would say, 'Oh, that's great'," she wrote.

Mister and Mrs. Hatoyama met in the United States. She worked in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, and he was in grad. school at Stanford University. Miyuki was still married. "The average man chooses his mate from among unmarried women," Hatoyama boasted years later. "I chose mine from among all women."

They say Hatoyama adores his wacky wife. Why wouldn't he?? "I feel relieved when I get home," he says. "She is like an energy refuelling base."
---o0o---

Auto-tune the news, co-starring the ex Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin

I love these guys. It's not such a preposterous prospect to think that in the not so distant future, all news will be auto-tuned. It just might help TV prevent the decimation that has engulfed their print brethren. . .

Horsin' Around? Shades of the Enumclaw horse sex case--another Washington State man succumbs to the lure of a smokin' filly

click to enlarge the watercolor

Will this turn out to be a callback to the Enumclaw Horse Sex case? [ed's note: For whatever reason, some of the highest hits on All This Is That from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines are for the horse sex stories we published a few years ago. The other high hits are also usually related to something especially salacious, scandalous, or fictional (which are mostly salacious AND scandalous) that appear here...]

According to the Associated Press, a pantless, Finley, Washington man is accused of harassing a neighbor's horse. And "trespassing." The Tri-City Herald said the horse owner found the man with no pants chasing a horse at three-thirty a.m. Benton County sheriff's deputies identified a 26-year-old man, living next door, as the suspect. He was jailed for investigation of trespassing. Deputies also were called to the home Thursday evening when the owner "saw the same bald man scaring the horse enough to break through an electrical and barb-wire fence." He was wearing a black T-shirt and had pants on this time.

Previous All This Is That Washington State Horse Sex coverage:

Further ruminations on Enumclaw
Horsin' around: update on Enumclaw
Another shocking revelation
Beastiality in south King County
The final horse/beastiality update
Enumclaw Story To Become A Movie
---o0o---

Seattle Cougar Sightings

click to enlarge

It's been quite a year for animal sightings in Seattle (see: here and here). Now, it's the cougars (a/k/a bobcats and mountain lions) prowling the two neighborhoods adjoining ours: Discovery Park and near the Woodland Park Zoo.

According to The Seattle P.I. (the defunct 'paper that is now a web site), "Residents in two Seattle neighborhoods have reported seeing a cougar. . .In Magnolia, cougar sightings reportedly have been going on for several days."

Dean Ericksen (@dean_ericksen) wrote: "Break out the Aqua Velva."
---o0o---

Ex-VP Dick Cheney: does it take a myocardial infarction to shut this douchebag up?

click to enlarge

---o0o---

The Trees of Ballard

Tonight, I went for a walk in our neighborhood, meandering through the streets on the way to the promenade/lookout:



And I started keeping track of the trees. . .in 25 blocks or so, I saw:



Bamboo
Alder
Douglas Fir
Horse Chestnut
Oregon White Oak (I think!)
Monkey Tree (aka Araucaria - they have leaves that are brutally sharp)
Western Red Cedar
Crab Apple (Pacific?)
Ponderosa Pine (aka Western Yellow Pine)
Yew
Juniper
Apple
Willow
Red Maple
Cherry
Elm
A couple scruffy palm trees
Dogwood
Ash
Holly
Red Alder

And I saw at least ten trees which I do not know--mainly deciduous...I have the evergreens nailed. Who knows what I would have seen if they hadn't clear-cut Seattle 100 years ago? Probably a forest of fir and alder?
---o0o---

Big Star videos: In The Street and The Ballad of El Goodo

Big Star, the legendary band from the 70's, has been comprised, since about 1992, of 50% Big Star and 50% Posies: Jody Stephens, Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer, and the legendary Alex Chilton.



Here are videos of In The Street and The Ballad of El Goodo. In The Street served for several years as the theme of The 70'show - I hope Alex still had a chunk of the action! I have seen Big Star three times, and The Posies about eight times over the last many years...






---o0o---

Sen. McCain tears into Ex-VP Dick Cheney: "helped to recruit thousands of young men [to al Qaeda]."

Tom Dougherty [http://www.autodaddy.blogspot.com/ http://tomdougherty.carbonmade.com/ http://tom-dougherty.blogspot.com/ pointed out this awesome video. There is something so satisfying about seeing the GOP cannabilize itself. . .and it's kind of nice to see Sen. McCain once again tilt against his own party. Yes, he says Dick Cheney helped al Qaeda...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/30/mccain-whacks-cheney-tort_n_272179.html


---o0o---

Seattle Artist Narboo

I love Narboo. I saw a show of his at the Crocodile a couple of years ago, and another recently in a group show, at The Vera Project. You can check out some of his work on his flicker stream here, or his blogspot blog here.
---o0o---

Jose Valdez's excellent slide show of images from the 1950s

This is a fascinating power point slide show by Jose Valdez of images from the '50s. This is an Admiral television manufactured the year I was born... Click here to see the show.

---o0o---

The Ballard Firehouse a/k/a Seattle Fire Station No. 18

Ballard’s Fire Station No. 18 was in use for 63 years before being retired by the city in 1976. The Germanic Revival brick building was built in 1911, and was designed by Seattle architects Bebb & Mendel. It's an incredible building. After it was decommissioned as a firehouse, it was known as the Ballard Firehouse, and "classic" rock bands and others would play there. I remember Foghat appearing there. There was also, in later years, a yoga studio on the top floor. This great space now houses one of my favorite restaurants in Ballard--The Hi-Life.
---o0o---

You can't dismiss Billy Joel (although I realize it is tempting) because he wrote and performed the magnificent "The Longest Time"

If you read All This Is That much, you probably know that while I love rock, jazz, bluegrass, blues, country, and classical music, what I love most is music that rocks, has hooks, harmony, melody, and preferably, great lyrics. I've never been much of a Billy Joel fan, but since the first day I heard "The Longest Time," it's been one of my favorites. Even decades ago, when it was released, it sounded like an incredible nod and homage to do-wop and harmony.



The Longest Time
by Billy Joel

Woa, oh, oh, oh
For the longest time
Woa, oh, oh
For the longest

If you said goodbye to me tonight
There would still be music left to write
What else could I do
I'm so inspired by you
That hasn't happened for the longest time

Once I thought my innocence was gone
Now I know that happiness goes on
That's where you found me
When you put your arms around me
I haven't been there for the longest time

Woa, oh, oh, oh
For the longest time
Woa, oh, oh
For the longest

I'm that voice you're hearing in the hall
And the greatest miracle of all
Is how I need you
And how you needed me too
That hasn't happened for the longest time

Maybe this won't last very long
But you feel so right
And I could be wrong
Maybe I've been hoping too hard
But I've gone this far
And it's more than I hoped for

Who knows how much further we'll go on
Maybe I'll be sorry when you're gone
I'll take my chances
I forgot how nice romance is
I haven't been there for the longest time

I had second thoughts at the start
I said to myself
Hold on to your heart
Now I know the woman that you are
You're wonderful so far
And it's more than I hoped for

I don't care what consequence it brings
I have been a fool for lesser things
I want you so bad
I think you ought to know that
I intend to hold you for the longest time

Woa, oh, oh, oh
For the longest time
Woa, oh,oh
For the longest time
Woa, oh, oh
For the longest time
Woa, oh, oh,
For the longest time
(Fade Out)
---o0o---

The Lake Of Fire

A man died and found himself in limbo, waiting in a long, long line for judgment. He noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the pearly gates. Others were led over to Satan, who threw them into a lake of fire. Every so often, instead of hurling a condemned soul into the lake of fire, Satan would toss him or her off to one side.

After watching Satan do this several times, the men's curiosity got the better of him. He strolled over The Great Deceiver:+

"Excuse me, there, Your Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, and I couldn't help wondering why you toss some people off to the side instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others?"

"Ah," Satan said with a grin. "Those people are from Seattle. I'm just letting them dry out so they'll burn."
---o0o---