Bachmann, Thunder, Overdose <<
What Hurricane Irene really meant

Michele Bachmann was wrong. Hurricane
Irene wasn’t sent by God as a warning to
Washington politicians. With the news
that the storm destroyed Sebastian Bach’s
house, along with Skid Row mastertapes, it’s
obvious it was just another step in His
25 year campaign against US hair metal.

Just look at the facts:

Motley Crue left behind their heavy rocking
ways in favour of MTV, hair dye and make-up
after Shout At The Devil in 1983. God was
obviously angered so He fired a warning
shot across the bows to the LA rock scene
by getting Vince Neil to kill Razzle from
Hanoi Rocks in a car crash. It wasn’t heeded
so over the next two decades He subjects
‘Crue to all sorts of indignities – Nikki
Sixx dates Kat Von D, Vince Neil gets fat,
they all overdose.

Ratt’s Robin Crosby announced he had AIDS,
then died from a heroin OD. The band then
entered a lawsuit over rights to use the
name, during which Ratt neither recorded
nor toured for five years.

Poison’s Bret Michaels gets a burst
appendix, brain haemorrhage and hole in
the heart. He does so much reality TV
no-one remembers he was in a band.

Warrant’s Janie Lane, dies in an LA hotel
room in August, aged only 47. And not in
the Chateau Marmont or Sunset Marquis, but
a Comfort Inn.

———————————————–
Janie Lane was born just after JFK was shot
His real name? John Kennedy Oswald.
———————————————–

I can’t wait to Attack the Block (Yahoo)

Why your boss is wrong about you (NYT)

Buried in Wisconsin governor’s budget proposal: It authorizes no-bid sale of public works such as power plants to privateers such as the Koch brothers  (Forbes) See also Politico

The Wisconsin lie (Forbes)

I came across this as I was checking out (mostly unfavorable) commentary on the new “Doctor Who” as portrayed by Matt Smith and written/directed by Steven Moffat.

A little late for holiday cheer but no less … of a curiosity.

Google e-newsstand aims to muscle in on Apple (Wall Street Journal)

The dawn of a new era of computing? (San Jose Mercury-News)

Computers that observe and report: Encouraging or unsettling? (New York Times)

Here for your edification are Martin Scorsese’s 11 scariest movies from the Daily Beast.

For a little variety, here are the picks from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times via MCT News Service.

Dwight was probably the brightest of any of our age group growing up, and deserved a bigger life than he got even if he never expressed any real regrets to me. I wish I could see him again.

A strikingly imaginative thinker, he was an amazing fellow who loved theater and movies, and I feel confident he would have made a big splash on Broadway or Off Broadway and maybe even in movies. He also loved to draw. You can read about him here, in Lypsinka’s blog item about Dwight, which serves as a kind of eulogy. He was a classmate and friend of the young man who would become Lypsinka while they attended Millsaps College. Scroll down to Two Girls on Broadway. It’s a fitting memory of Dwight with more clearly described recollections than I could muster.

Two nights ago, however, I had a wonderful dream about Dwight, courtesy of the wonders of Sustiva, one of the side effects of which is vivid, fantastic dreams. At the time I began taking that very effective life-saving drug I had either stopped dreaming or always forgot them altogether, which amounts to the same thing. A person needs dreams, and now I have them every night and remember having them even if I can’t summon more specific details.

In that brightly lit dream Dwight was healthy, trim, happy and his creativity had blossomed. I can’t remember visualizing his face but I knew that it was Dwight. His tiny house in Kosciusko, Mississippi, had been replaced by an amazing sort of Zen garden affair with geometric shapes and concentric circles formed of rocks and some sort of rocky blocks. (The dreams I have are wild, surrealistic visions but if I remember them at all it is usually only barely.) I do not know what Dwight “did” in this dream, only that he was happy and successful doing it. Generous of spirit, open-hearted and at peace with himself and the world, and embracing life with uninhibited freedom — and characteristically wry. Our surroundings in this dreamscape seemed to be grayish, like the stones but not colorless. He seemed to be wearing a suit, which is odd because Dwight was nothing if not colorful and unconventional. I never saw him wear a suit in life, he wasn’t the type. My last visual memory of him is in overalls. If he had worn a suit-coat, it would have been personally stylized and as brilliant as Joseph’s.

Always a large person who may or may not have struggled with his weight but in any case eventually either accepted or embraced it, Dwight most likely died alone in a hospital room in Mississippi, from one of the numerous infections that increasingly plagued him by that time in his life.

Whatever the circumstances of his final days, from his communications with me he never lost his sense of humor, his unparalleled wit or his creative thirst. As unlikely as it may or may not be, I like to think this dream was Dwight’s way of letting me know he is happy in whatever form his new realm has taken, assuming of course that there was, or rather is, a life to come after this one.

It’s called “Conspiracy for Good.” You can either lose yourself in that by clicking on the title and then the Learn More and other buttons — and spend part of your morning exploring (I dawdled a precious chunk of minutes toward deadline and realized it was probably way more interesting than anything else I will come across today but I digress) — or you can read all of Sperling’s interview with Kring.

I liked his show, which admittedly kinda ran out of steam but it was a great ride for a while. Watching almost all of it on a 24-inch iMac, I either DVR’d it using EyeTV or watched it fullscreen on NBC’s web site. Yes, my name is Kinsey and I’m a geek.

They really need to vary the commercials. Actually all the networks do this with commercials for episodes posted on the web, the same ad repeated over and over. And you can’t skip. Come on, guys.

Next? Or maybe you’d rather browse io9? William Gibson’s on Twitter. Scroll down to the photo of skydivers during the shuttle launch.

I’m not paying close attention but then there are these two chubby, actually rather unattractively beefy, guys with cameras trained on the skinny guy. I still don’t pay that much attention, figuring it’s friends photographing each other for a class or personal project of some kind. Also not at all out of the ordinary for the location.

Then the shutter-buggers start yelling, “Russell! Russell! Over your shoulder! Russell!” Meanwhile I’m still clueless.

One of the guys I was meeting at the coffee place, which shall remain unnamed here, bumps into Russell who mumbles a question but then dashes into a large truck/SUV that has just pulled up and he is driven away.

By this time (OK sometimes I’m a little slow but I’m not a celeb hound) I have figured out that the skinny guy is in fact Russell Brand who happens to be in a movie that opened over the weekend. And didn’t do too well either, but that’s sort of beside the point.

Brand, scruffy bearded and all in black, certainly was not out of place at our friendly neighborhood haunt — which was popular for its coffee, sandwiches and sweets years before Starbucks existed — but now he likely will be reluctant to drop by and partake of the fierce cafe con leche or baked goods now that the deep purple dive has been stalked by paparazzi.

Poor Mr. Brand. His privacy on this day would have been otherwise secure. I wouldn’t have noticed, at least right away and even if I had recognized him sooner I wouldn’t have bothered him. I even had to bring up his page on IMDb and show it to the curious kids behind the counter for them to figure out what the hubbub was about.

Asphalt obstacle

The lip that trips

Age cracks

Closer to home

First impression

These represent what I hope will be a continuing effort to call attention to ground-level work that needs to be done in our city.

If you have examples you’d like to share, please email me.

Thanks for your attention.