Three Photoshops of Dave Hokit and Jack Brummet

I found this photo of me and Dave Hokit last night, and as often happens with photos, I got busy busy with Photoshop:



click to enlarge


click to enlarge


click to enlarge -- I love the long arm!
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An update on Michael Toubbeh (the Toxic Doctor)

An update on Michael Toubbeh (the Toxic Doctor)

by Pablo Fanque, All This Is That national affairs editor

Normally, Jack would handle writing about this topic. But he has been a little "freaked" by some of the reactions to his posts. Originally, Jack Brummet wrote three articles about Michael Toubbeh. One here, one here. and one here. And then Jack received a visit--at his work!--from someone close to the Doctor who begged Jack to remove the posts, since she loved him, and didn't want her children to see the articles. Jack had a heart and removed most of the material. It was all available elsewhere, and he didn't really want anymore in-person visits from the Doctor's emissaries.

Jack told me "None of this makes a lick of sense, Friendo, not even Bizarro sense. I mean, all of a sudden people are fighting little comments wars on ATIT. . .and yet, the guy apologized in public! On someone's blog, where it would be cached forever (forever being relative of course)."

He wrote when he pulled the material:

The editors of All This Is That have deleted all 13 comments from this thread, as well as the stories that engendered all the comments. The whole thing has become a tilt-a-whirl ride of people pretending to be other people; people attacking other people who were pretending to be other people; people posting with aliases stating only who they were not; and a raft of accusations and cross-accusations; moves and countermoves; posing, posturing, lies, and delusion.

You probably know I don't place a high premium on The Truth, or more accurately, what often passes for The Truth, because The Truth is usually not all it's cracked up to be.If you know me "in real life," you know that truth may now and then take backstage to a knee-slapper or a twisted, 98% fictional, and often libelous, side-trip. There are some things better than the truth. No. 1?: The music of human laughter.

This whole Michael Toubbeh trip suddenly became a karmic burden, and the vibes were beginning to stink the place up. Once I start editing comments and removing stories, well. . .then, it's no longer All This Is That, but a blog for everyone who agrees with me, where those victims of parody, or targets of stories, can't respond. Democracy is for everyone, and I'm just not ready to change the name of the blog to Some Of This Is Sort Of That Sometimes. I don't mind if someone lobs charges at someone as long as that someone has the chance to respond. Which they do. I don't mind debate. This is still America, isn't it? Free speech, while wounded, still lives.

But recently there has been a flurry of activity in the comments section of these articles..both from the apparently small pro-Toubbeh camp, and also from the seemingly vast anti-Toubbeh camp. And "what really fried my ass," Jack told me, "was that now the pro-Toubbeh has been commenting, dropping these morality bombs, and even (the f*****ng pieces of s***) threatening me with libel and mentioning my liability." You can read Jack's response to that in the comments sections for the above articles.

Interestingly, virtually everything Jack originally wrote and posted is available elsewhere on the internet, usually in several places. A blogspot blog, Michael Toubbeh, the Toxic Doctor seems to include nearly everything that was deleted from this blog. In addition, the same material is included in several of the internet and blog archiving sites--including the wayback machine and others.

As I researched this piece, I also found online, an original posting from another blog (or website) "From He's Dead Jim,} that included a photo, and the text of a letter of apology that Toubbeh wrote.

"Above is the letter sent to me by Dr. Toubbeh. It applies to all of those he has been involved with. I am allowed to post this for one week. Thanks to all of those who have assisted with this. Below is the text of the letter":

'Dear Claudette, I write to apologize to you and the other women with whom I have had relationships. The postings on your site and its aftermath have caused me to reflect on the past years of my life, and I did not like what I saw.

I now understand that my conduct has hurt a great many people and I understand clearly that both my actions and their consequences were wrong. I am deeply sorry for the things I have done during this period in my life and for the hurt and pain I have caused. I know you may not believe this, and I have given you good reason not to, but I did not set out with the intent to cause harm. Obviously, however, I have done so and have no one to blame but myself.

Seeing the pain I have caused has made me understand that this was of my own doing and that I must take responsibility and ensure that I do not repeat my actions of the past. I know that you and others may not put much faith in these words or my intention to change. I hope that it will provide at least some help for you to know that I am taking steps with the assistance of others towards a change not only in behavior but in belief and attitude.

I sincerely wish you the best,
(signed)

Michael Toubbeh.'

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10Eastern - Found photos

...click the airborne baby to enlarge....

I feel the need to periodically bring up 10Eastern, one of my very favorite web sites. 10Eastern posts found photos. They only publish new ones maybe once a month, but it's always worth the wait. If you are a newb to 10Eastern, you can go back through their 130-something sets of photos they've published to date.

One thing I have noticed over the years is the large number of band photos that make their way into the galleries. People take a lot of band photos! And a fair number of them are hilarious. This is not all that surprising. I know at my work, there are at leas five bands. And if you include the other locations outside Seattle, the number rises to about 15. In any case, 10Eastern is well worth the trouble to put in your links that you check once in a while. And every once in a while, they produce a new set...and at least a couple will be worth the wait.
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Video: John Auer and Ken Stringfellow/The Posies play Solar Sister at the 1994 Phoenix Festival - and they f***ing rock!!!!l

This is a great video of The Posies at one of their peaks, in their big hair phase, playing the s*** out of Solar Sister. Jon and Ken sound great, look great and the drumming is that characteristic thundering up front.


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Chelsea Clinton: She'll be a better President than Bill Clinton

Speaking at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pennsylvania yesterday, Chelsea Clinton was asked by a man in the audience whether her mother would be a better president than her father.

Chelsea Clinton said "yes."




"His question is, ‘Do I think my mother will be a better president than my father?"

“Well, again, I don’t take anything for granted, but hopefully with Pennsylvania’s help, she will be our next president, and yes, I do think she’ll be a better president.”

Unbelievable. Now they're even willing to throw Bill Clinton under the bus.
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Poem: The riptide beneath my feet

1
Standing by the sea
The riptide sucks the sand
From beneath my heels

2
Every time it happens
I feel just a hemidemisemiquaver
Of panic that the holes will open up

And a succubus will grab my ankles
Or the holes will open up and I'll fall
Straight down to China

3
I've felt that same panicked moment
In Greece in Malibu and the O.C.
On San Francisco Bay

In North Africa and in Kalaloch
At Tatoosh and La Push and Big Sur
In Spain on Crete and at Montauk

4
It's all part of the seven seas
Which aren't seven seas at all
But one big ocean circling the earth

And if you are 75% of anything
You get to do pretty much
What you want where and when you want

We can pollute it bridge it and tunnel under it
But the ocean has always had and always will
Have a mind of its own.

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Throw in the towel, Senator

It isn't her fanciful imagination about sniper fire, or any of the other piddling mistakes and misstatements she and her henchmen have made. It isn't her gender; in fact I'd prefer a female President. But it is her supporters, it is the large number of backhanded racial slurs that have emanated from her camp (although usually not directly), and whipping her potential supporters, but most of all the right wing, into an Anti-Obama frenzy. I think Obama is indeed pretty special. Do I think he walks on water like most of the Obamanites? Not so much. But he is the real deal.

In recent polls, John McCain taking on either Obama or Clinton gives them a serious ass-whuppin'. I am even sick of seeing Bill Clinton, a person I have *mostly* always admired. And even Chelsea was disgusting last night.

Give it up Hillary. The people may not have spoken with the deafening roar we'd hoped, but they have spoken. Do you want to be VP? Great. Otherwise, as they say, lead, follow, or get out of the way (preferably the latter). Sure you could hope for a great procedural dogfight at the convention, and maybe you could win the nomination. In the end, that will only leave us with a McCan presidency.

It's me and Barack from here on in. It's time. "Hurry up please, it's time."


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All This Is That Reheated: Woody Guthrie's transit and eclipse--"I been in the red all my life"

click Woody to enlarge

I have been listening to Woody Guthrie a lot lately, and thinking a lot about his monolithic influence on folk music, but especially on rock and roll. Along the same lines, I have been re-listening to the masterful Billy Bragg/Wilco collaborations on his music. Who would have ever thought a quirky Brit folkie and an alt country (and also quirky) American band would produce a fine tribute to Guthrie that also challenges the folk community? In any case, I wrote a long piece a couple of years ago about Woody, and I am reprinting it today...

I been in the red all my life

Woody Guthrie was a great man, and a great writer. Yeah, I didn't say great singer, but I like his singing. Any fool can get all Frenchified and rococo. It takes a genius to get simple. This genius fled Dust Bowl Oklahoma in the 30’s and became famous a few years later for his songs Dust Bowl Ballads. For most of the rest of his life he would be a roamer and a troubadour. He is one of the great American songwriters, right up there in the pantheon with Stephen Foster, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin and others. He may be at the top of the rockpile. . .in my booklet, at least.

Woody Guthrie loved America as deeply as anyone ever has. He thrived on the people and the idiom. We remember him mainly for his songs, but he was also a wonderful writer. You may have heard his songs like So Long It’s Been Good To Know You, I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore, Dust Can’t Kill Me, Union Maid, Reuben James, Planewreck At Los Gatos, and over a thousand more songs.

click to enlarge

He hit 46 of these United States, usually with just his guitar and a toothbrush. One of the songs inspired by a trip, This Land Is Your Land, should probably be the national anthem. Woody’s influence has been monolithic, although most of us have only experienced Woody absorbed and filtered through Bob Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, or Wilco, among hundreds of others. His work has been passed down through cultural osmosis.

When the notorious House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) began collecting names and driving the blacklisting, Woody was not afraid. He had nothing to hide, and the committee, like the dust, couldn’t kill him.

Some people considered The B.P.A. and the Grand Coulee Dam tributes to an "experiment in American socialism." These huge public works projects were "a revolutionary slap at the private enterprise system." Guthrie’s Columbia River songs reflect his optimism the dam would bring an increased standard of living to the people. One of Guthrie’s most famous songs, Pastures of Plenty, presents an idealist's vision of public irrigation and electrification:

I think of the dust and the days that are gone,
And the day that’s to come on a farm of our own;
One turn of the wheel and the waters will flow
‘Cross the green growing field, down the hot thirsty row.

Look down in the canyon and there you will see
The Grand Coulee shower her blessings on me;
The lights for the city for factory, and mill,
Green Pastures of Plenty from dry barren hills.

Woody was profoundly shocked by what happened to the poor Okies who left the Dust Bowl for California, by how they were killed, beaten and starved out by the State Police and farm owners. Something had gone very wrong with this great country. His song about Pretty Boy Floyd summed up his feelings:

Now as through this world I ramble
I’ve seen lots of funny men.
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen.
But as through this life you travel
And as through this life you roam,

You’ll never see an outlaw
Drive a family from its home.

Woody believed the Great Depression and dust bowl were caused by the Big Boss Man and King Coal. He wasn’t singing anymore about lost love; he was pointing fingers.

One night, on a radio show, he hit it on the head: "A policeman will just stand there and let a banker rob a farmer or a financier rob a working man. But if a farmer robs a banker, you would have a whole army of cops out shooting at him. Robbery is a chapter of etiquette.”

Woody Guthrie was a patriot, but he was no Democrat. As he said in that same radio broadcast: “I ain’t a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life.”

By 1947, Woody was working on his second marriage, to Marjorie. Between his travel and performances, he lived with her and his daughter Cathy Ann in Brooklyn. Woody nicknamed her Stackabones, and wrote his famous children’s songs for (and with) her:

Why can’t a dish break a hammer?
Why, or why, oh why?
Because a hammer’s
got a pretty hard head.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Why can’t a bird
break an elephant?
Why, oh why, oh why?
Because an elephant’s got a
pretty hard skin.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

He published stories about Stackabones. Cathy Ann was very much like Woody, singing, rhyming, and always playing with words. One day her dress caught on fire and she was badly burned. She was singing when Woody got to the hospital, but she died that night.

Woody sat down and wrote: “And the things you fear most shall surely come upon you.” It seemed like everyone he ever loved was doomed to go up in flames. There were fires in his childhood. The brand new family house had burned down. His sister Nora died when her dress caught fire. Just she and her mother were at home. She was singing when Woody saw her in the hospital too. There were many rumors about her death. There were other fires. And there was his mother’s problem. After her daughter died, she became more and more nervous and remote until finally she spent all her days wandering through town like she was lost. No one knew what to do.

There was another fire. Woody’s mother was holding a kerosene lamp and when his father woke up, he was on fire.

When Woody came home the next day after a visit with relatives, a neighbor told him his father was in the hospital and his mother had been put in an insane asylum. In his wonderful book Bound For Glory, he compared his own restlessness and nervousness to his mother’s condition.

After the death of Stackabones, Woody lost his spark. He and Marjorie soon had other children (including Arlo), but he never took the same interest. He had become unpredictable. He still wrote hundreds of pages each week, and always had new songs in the works. But they weren’t like the old ones. He just couldn’t concentrate anymore.

A painting of Woody at the Columbia dam,
about which he wrote some of his greatest
songs

Marjorie forced him to move out when he attacked their son Arlo one day. Woody went into the hospital to cure himself of alcoholism, and a young doctor figured out his problem. He asked Woody questions about his parents and grandparents, and diagnosed him with Huntington’s Chorea, called chorea because of the violent dance-like movements of its victims (the root of the word choreography). Huntington’s Chorea is an inherited degenerative disease and a victim’s offspring stand a fifty-fifty chance of getting the disease. The course of the illness is long and savage.

The changes in Woody occurred so slowly that few of his friends really noticed. Almost everyone chalked it up to drink, or said “Well, that’s just Woody. That’s the way he walks and talks." Some people avoided him now. He slurred his words and staggered and was becoming less and less capable of working at all.


Bob Dylan's copy of Woody's Book
Bound For Glory

When Woody was trying to concentrate, he wrote his name everywhere. . .on walls, on people’s books, on pieces of paper. Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie. It was almost as if he was trying to convince himself he really DID exist.

One day he was lighting a fire and the gas can exploded. His arm could no longer hold a guitar very well.

Woody checked into the State Hospital in Queens, and with the exception of visits with friends on weekends, he lived there the rest of his life.

His son, the musician Arlo Guthrie talked about him to Rolling Stone magazine:

“I remember him coming home from the hospital and taking me out to the backyard, just him and me, and teaching me the last verses to This Land Is Your Land because he thinks if I don’t learn them no one will remember. He can barely strum a guitar now and—can you imagine?—his friends think he’s crazy or drunk and they stick him in a green room with all these crazy people…”

“All of a sudden everyone is singing his songs. Kids are singing This Land Is Your Land in school and people are talking about making it the national anthem. Bob Dylan and the others are copying him. And he can’t react to it. Here’s the guy who had all these words and now that he’s really big, he can’t say anything.”

Only Shakespeare could write something that terrible. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie died in 1967, in his fifties. Some experts believe the disease may have enhanced his rhyminess and wordplay, and acted as a creative spur like alcohol and drugs have worked on others.

As the cells died in his brain, it rewired itself, forcing new and wonderful pathways between the nerve synapses. This also led to the not-so-wonderful behavior his family and friends saw. Just like his mother. Starved from all that work, his nerves short-circuited.

Woody and the disease are so bound up together, it’s hard to know where it started and Woody began. No one really knows if the disease starts when you are 14, or in your later years. It cannot be cured. It cannot be predicted in advance. Research is ongoing now, mainly because of what happened to Woody.

Most importantly, of course, is not the disease, but his music and his books. When we sing his most famous song, we sing the first verses. The last verses he tried to teach Arlo are probably politically pink at best, and they were the ones Woody hoped would survive:

In the squares of the city by the shadow of the steeple,
Near the relief office I saw my people
And some were stumbling and some were wondering if
This land was made for you and me.

As I went rambling that dusty highway
I saw a sign that said Private Property
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

Some of the photographs and images of Woody are copyrighted and unlicensed. However, the individual who uploaded this work to Wikipedia, and first used it in an article, as well as subsequent persons who place it into articles, asserts that this use qualifies as fair use of the material under United States copyright law. All This Is That is using the photo under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright act as well, as those provisions apply to scholarly work.
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Originally posted in February, 2006

Saddam Hussein paid for my Congressman—Jim McDermott—to visit Iraq

Saddam Paid for Lawmakers' Iraq Trip -

That's my congressman on the right

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly footed the bill for a trip to Iraq for three congressmen during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California were not named in the indictment, but the trio did ineeed travel to Iraq in 2002.

An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators "have no information whatsoever" any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam. One investigator said McDermott was invited to go to Iraq by a Seattle church group and was unaware of any other funding for the trip. I mean even a pinko like McDermott would have turned down that funding!

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Alien Montage

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Hillary Clinton not only came under sniper fire, she returned it

An excellent video of the then First Lady...she not only encountered sniper fire in Bosnia, she returned it. Thanks to Jeff Clinton for finding this YouTube video...


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Four Thousand - 4,000 - MMMM dead and counting in Iraq "War"/Country Joe McDonald Performs Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag (with lyrics)

Country Joe McDonald performs "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag




I FEEL LIKE I'M FIXIN' TO DIE
by Country Joe McDonald

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get those reds —
The only good commie is the one who's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Huh!
Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don't hesitate,
Send 'em off before it's too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
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