West Germany

Devin Hester is a monster. Are you kidding? Two returns for touchdowns in one game? Six in one season?

I read the Eric Alterman book on Bruce Springsteen (see entry below). It lived up to my meager expectations. But I have to wonder: why was this book written? Was it necessary? Contractually obligated? Dave Marsh's books are better written, more detailed, with a more in-depth analysis both musically and politically. Am I a total nerd? Is it obvious? I'm full of questions today.

December 11th, 1941 was the day that Germany declared war on the United States. Didn't work out that well for them, did it.

Minutemen - West Germany
Buju Banton - Circumstances

The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts

Today's thrift store books:

Alice McDermott - Child of my Heart, Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead, Frantz Fanon - Black Skin White Masks, John Berendt - The City of Falling Angels, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc - Random Family, Eric Alterman - It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen, John Irving - Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

That is a pretty good haul, I think. God bless Goodwill. I hope Eric Alterman writing about Bruce Springsteen doesn't end up being as annoying as Eric Alterman writing about politics. And I hope I can actually get through an entire Frantz Fanon book, next step will be understanding it.

-----------------

Minutemen - The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts
and two of today's thrift store CDs:
Sade - By Your Side
Sinead O'Connor - No Man's Woman

You Need The Glory; also, I take requests.

I can't believe the New Jersey Nets just scored 133 points in regulation, 157 points total, and still lost. That's, like, some ABA shit. Also for some reason it reminds me of Loyola Marymount in the 1990 NCAA Tournament, steamrolling Michigan with a team completely made up of freakish 5'4" elves with wicked three-point shooting ability who could run twice as fast as a normal person. Or at least that's how I remember it, but I was ten years old at the time, and sometimes memory fails us. At the very least, Michigan got their asses beat, by a bunch of Catholic midgets from California, and the entire state is still reeling to this day. Or not.

Pistons won, I won't care about the Nets until they actually move to Brooklyn, if they actually ever do move to Brooklyn, which I won't believe until it happens. Speaking of the Atlantic Yards project, I finally spent some time inside the Williamsburg Bank building. Well I guess that doesn't have much to do with Atlantic Yards, or the Nets, but it is three blocks from the site, and has a very nice view. I always imagined One Hanson Place to be empty and abandoned, even though I've walked by it a million times, and that's where I get off of the Q train at Atlantic Ave., but still, it has that feel about it. And maybe it is, and my oral surgeon is just squatting an office on the 23rd floor. Who knows? But the point of the story is, there's a friendly oral surgeon on the 23rd floor of the Williamsburg Bank Building, for the time being at least - I don't know that people who buy million-dollar condos want to live right next door to a place where the only business is ripping out people's teeth with pliers and hammers. Also, the view is great.

Minutemen - You Need The Glory
Wire - Feeling Called Love

Micah made a request via email, for some Saturday Looks Good to Me songs. I am, of course, happy to oblige.

Saturday Looks Good to Me -
Alcohol,
Last Hour,
and Meet Me By The Water from "All Your Summer Songs"
Mistletoe from Tour EP 2002
Spring from "Heart"
Can't Ever Sleep from "All Your Summer Songs" Vinyl only

Any other requests?

History Lesson - Part II

On the morning of December 3rd, 1984, over 40 tons of toxic gas rolled through the streets of Bhopal, India, from the Union Carbide pesticide plant located there. It's been estimated that at least 600,000 people were injured by the gas, with over 15,000 dying. Warren Anderson, CEO at that time of Union Carbide, has been considered a fugitive from justice since 1992 in India, after skipping hearings in his "culpable homicide" case.

---

The squirrels (or raccoons, or whatever) in the walls and attic are really getting unbearable. There have been some epic fights, with what kind of animals involved I have no idea. Drives the cats nuts, too, but that's not really my problem.

Minutemen - History Lesson - Part II
Elizabeth Cotten - Shake Sugaree

My Heart And The Real World

I finally got my old guitar back from Dave over Thanksgiving weekend, and already I've sold most of it. Hadn't played it in maybe eight years, I thought I might get some sort of nostalgic feeling when I opened up the case, but no, nothing, and it's better that way. If you or anyone you know is on the market for the strap buttons or neck plate from a 1974 Fender Telecaster Custom, and if you're willing to pay an embarrassing price, call me.

Minutemen - My Heart And The Real World
The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
Nouvelle Vague - Teenage Kicks

Break.

Elections wear me out.

Two songs from me.

Comments, suggestions, etc. welcomed.

Independence Day
untitled

I think all of the links to songs below are broken. The internet sucks. Maybe after I get my teeth out, I'll fix that while in my codeine haze.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Take 5, D.

It's cold in Minnesota. I tried walking around last night with just a thin jacket on, no dice. Even after a couple of bourbons, it's still cold! Tigers - Cardinals Game 3 tonight, and I'm feeling stressed. They really shouldn't make the World Series fall at the same time as elections, it totally messes with my head for at least a solid month, and I don't recover until March or so. That said-

Minutemen - Take 5, D
Possum Dixon - Reds

Corona, or, The Glory of Man

It's bittersweet, being in the wrong city at the right time. Like last year's World Series, the last game of which I watched in a microbrewery in Seattle, surrounded by the type of people who wear scarves indoors, looking at us funny because we were drunk and cheering. Or when Emily was in Davenport, Iowa, while her Red Sox were ruining the Yankees' year over on the Eastern Seaboard.

It's hard to say anything about this recent baseball development. I guess I'll just say, if the Lions beat the Vikings today, it might be the best weekend for Detroit sports in a long time.


Minutemen - Corona. also, The Glory of Man
The Slackers - You Must Be Good
The Undertones - Hypnotised

God Bows to Math

Two days late today on the 26th anniversary of Solidarity, the first independent labor union in Poland in the Soviet era.

These pesky Twins just will not go away. I really don't appreciate that.

Minutemen - God Bows to Math
New York Dolls - Subway Train
Radon - Audio Illusions

The Big Foist

Yesterday Emily and I had some people over, for really the first time ever in this apartment. I've never been big on having parties, or get-togethers, or really anything like that, so it all makes me a little nervous. The last time I had a party (was it five years ago? damn.) it was marked by, among other things, a lot of weird tension, many arguments, things that came close to fistfights, a horrifying game of spin-the-bottle that somehow only involved people with really bad tattoos, and some guy with his shirt off walking up and down the block with an eight-foot-long metal bar in his hand, yelling at passers-by. I was depressed, and I drank a lot of port wine, and I moved out immediately afterwards, ending up sleeping in between guitar amps in the basement kitchen at Dave and Zack's house.

But this wasn't a party, it was just some people coming over brunch. And that's something we can handle. Also, I don't drink as much as I used to, and when I do now I'm much more witty and urbane than I was five years ago. All that said, I did kind of freak out while I was cooking, and I burned my fingers on the stove, but luckily Emily saved me. So thanks.

My recipe for hash-

a handful or two of beets
some potatoes, all kinds, sweet, red, gold, etc.
2/5 of a large onion, chopped irregularly
two cloves of the garlic that's been sitting in the fridge for two months, not the garlic you just bought, because you can't find it
a forearm-sized chunk of yucca
a bit of soy-based fake meat product
and a couple more beets

Boil, steam, bake and/or fry all of the starchy things. Together or separate, it's really your call. Fry the fake meat. Forget about the frying fake meat while you're burning yourself on the stove because the beets you were steaming overflowed the pot and covered everything in blood-red water and you panicked and grabbed the stove grate with your bare hand even though you know, intellectually, that it's been basically in a fire for an hour. Yell out, then stare accusatorily at your very patient and sweet girlfriend. Follow her directions re: your burned dumb hand. Remember the fake meat, dump it on a plate before it's totally burnt. Cook onions until they're brown, dump in starchy stuff, and start sprinkling on random seasonings and herbs. Wait until someone who actually knows how to cook comes over, then ask him to taste it and re-season it. Drink two bloody marys, some champagne, and a cup of coffee. Serve lukewarm, with some other stuff. Serves a lot.

Nobody will believe me when I say this, but I like washing dishes. It's satisfying, and soothing, and also has the added benefit of preventing an outbreak of fruit flies that force you to avoid your kitchen for months at a time, until the point where the fruit flies have taken over your kitchen and dining room and are threatening your living room, which is when you get a bottle of bleach and a hose and, hey, I guess cleaning out the sink really does get rid of those things. Who would've thought?

Music to wash dishes by:

Minutemen - The Big Foist
Bettye Lavette - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
The Pogues - Thousands are Sailing
Aretha Franklin - Never Grow Old

PS- On September 18th, 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, compelling "all good citizens" to assist federal marshals in the pursuit of escaped slaves, and assessing heavy fines and penalties for the crime of assisting an escaped slave.

Retreat

August 3rd was the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the PATCO strike.

Ronald Reagan fired the 11,359 striking air traffic controllers on August 5th, 1981, and banned each of them from the federal service.

Twelve years later, on August 12th, 1993, Bill Clinton lifted the ban. Hey, he did the right thing once in a while.

Don't know the date in 1980 that PATCO endorsed Reagan, but my guess is sometime in August.

PATCO website

Minutemen - Retreat

Toadies

Sitting in JFK, about to go on vacation, feeling good about that.

Minutemen - Toadies
Common - Love Is
Ida - Shotgun

Thirty-two years ago today, Richard Milhouse Nixon was getting charged with his first three articles of impeachment by the House of Representatives. I'm just saying.

Mercury Rev - Everlasting Arm
De La Soul f. Mos Def - Big Brother Beat

Maybe Partying Will Help

Today marks the anniversary of what many consider the first day of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 (or "riot," depending on which side you're on). It was on the morning of July 23rd that Detroit police raided a party for two newly-returned GIs, where family, friends and neighbors were celebrating their safe return from Vietnam. The party just happened to be in the headquarters of the United Community League for Civic Action, which also just coincidentally was situated at Twelfth Street and Clairmount Avenue, the site chosen just three days earlier for the "riot simulation" of Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh's Summer Task Force. Interesting.

The UCLCA office was raided by the vice squad at 3:30am, and it took over an hour for enough paddy wagons to come out to Twelfth Street to haul away all eighty five partiers. By that time, a crowd estimated at over 200 people gathered, and as bottles started crashing into cop cars, the police fled. Within hours over a thousand people were on the streets, and by mid-day the state police, unable to contain the outburst, had asked Governor George Romney to call in the National Guard. Over one thousand arrests were made that day, but it took the combined force of the National Guard along with the 82nd Airborne to restored "order."

The trouble burst on Detroit like a firestorm and turned the nation's fifth biggest city into a theater of war. Whole streets lay ravaged by looters, whole blocks immolated by flames. Federal troops--the first sent into racial battle outside the South in a quarter of a century--occupied American streets at bayonet point. Patton tanks--machine guns ablaze--and Huey helicopters patrolled a cityscape of blackened brick chimneys poking out of gutted basements. And suddenly Harlem 1964 and Watts 1965 and Newark only three weeks ago fell into the shadows of memory. Detroit was the new benchmark, its rubble a monument to the most devastating race riot in U.S. history--and a symbol of domestic crisis grown graver than any since the Civil War.

Events ended with 43 dead, 1189 injured. Almost 80% of the dead were black, and almost all were shot by police or Guardsmen, not hurt by civilians. Detroit, my hometown, was never the same.

--

Music today. Minutemen, about Detroit, then two from Detroit.

Minutemen - Maybe Partying Will Help
Gil Scott-Heron - We Almost Lost Detroit
Bettye Lavette - Down To Zero
His Name Is Alive - Write My Name In The Groove

Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing

We all have problems, some of us bigger problems than others. Once I was having a bronchitis episode, but I was trying to impress a girl, and so I dragged my ass to the bar after driving around hacking all day. I had a few whiskeys, and then a few cigarettes, and I was feeling good. Much better, anyway. And I turned to talk to, you know, the girl, very suave-like. You may not be able to imagine it, but please, play along. Then what? My throat closed up, I couldn't breathe, and I fell off the barstool. Laid on the ground, finally got a breath, walked to my car, and drove home.

I tell you this story why? I'm not sure. And I'm not sure what my problem was, but I know there are several problems laid out, right there.

And it's hard for me to think straight, and the Middle East is exploding, and Iraq is still on fire, and that's about that. Happy weekend.

Minutemen - Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
Pharoahe Monche - Agent Orange
Amos Milburn - Let Me Go Home, Whiskey

One Reporter's Opinion

I am, have always been, and will always be a sucker for the "back story" in sports. Curt Schilling's bloody sock, with the staples holding his ankle together? He may be an asshole, but I ate that up. Jerome Bettis, coming back home again to win the Super Bowl, in Detroit, in his last pro game? The whole damn league may be fixed, but I kept watching. That's why I can't watch the Olympics, because I have other things to do, and I don't need to be emotionally devastated by some skier who's lost three fingers, her mom and two uncles to hand cancer or something ridiculous, then falls just short of the medal stand and ends up breaking her spine in two. You know? I like it, but there's tasteful, there's untasteful, and then there's just plain stupid. The only back story I can think of that I can't stand is Lance "What, me worry about blood doping" Armstrong and his stupid testicles, or prostate, or whatever.

But back again. Last week's Sports Illustrated featured Cleveland native son Joe Jurevicius, in his triumphant return home to be the elder statesman of the Browns' receiving corps. Or something like that. If you remember back to Tampa Bay's Super Bowl win a couple of years back, you may remember hearing a whole lot about Joe, and his family, or more specifically his prematurely born son, who was struggling for life in an ICU in Florida while Joe was helping his team dismantle the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship game. Joe went on to catch four passes for 78 yards in a Super Bowl victory over the Oakland Raiders, and his son kept fighting for another month and a half before succumbing to a rare neurodegenerative disease on March 24th.

And now here's Joe, three years and two teams later, signing with the Browns and moving back home. I'm definitely a sucker for the "pro athlete going back home to momma" line (see Jerome Bettis, above), and I doubly appreciate it in the good old heartland of America. I also have to say that I appreciate Joe wearing a Teamsters Local 507 sweatshirt (Jackie Presser's old local!) in one of the magazine pictures, because, if I'm not mistaken, in addition to representing workers at the Cleveland Zoo, that's the local that represents workers at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Nice touch, Joe. And good luck.

--

By the by, July 22nd, 1796 was the day that the city of Cleveland was founded. In case you were wondering. Also, Albert, Frederick and Charles Fisher founded the (in)famous Fisher Body company on this day in 1908, which in 1926 became the Fisher Body Division of the workers' friend, General Motors. December 28th, 1936 was the day that workers at Cleveland Fisher Body launched their strike, followed the next day by Flint's Fisher Body workers, and forty-three days later the modern UAW was born. Cleveland Fisher Body closed its doors in 1983, taking with it 1,700 jobs, down from a peak of 14,000 during WWII.

Minutemen - One Reporter's Opinion
Billy Bragg - It Says Here (Live, 1984)
Public Enemy - Don't Believe the Hype

Nature Without Man

July 21st, 1877 was the day that Pittsburgh railroad workers launched a sympathy strike, in solidarity with unionists on the Baltimore and Ohio line who were stuck in a bloody battle with the Maryland militia. Pennsylvania's militia was just as quick to attack as their compatriots to the south, but the strikers of Pittsburgh were prepared.

The workers on the Pennsylvania Line, armed with rocks and even the support of their local police and Pittsburgh's militia men, met the troops from Philadelphia, who had been shipped in to restore order, at the train station. A volley of rocks from the strikers was met with waves of gunfire, resulting in the deaths of at least twenty men, women and children, along with thirty serious injuries. On hearing of the massacre,

Miners and steel workers came pouring in from the outskirts of the city and as night fell the immense crowd proved so menacing to the soldiers that they retreated into the roundhouse.

The strike soon spread as far west as the Michigan Central in Chicago, and the Missouri and Pacific in St. Louis, but by August, the rail companies in collusion with the government had gained the upper hand, with a show of force resulting in over one hundred deaths and one thousand injuries. 100,000 striking railroad men were effectively "shot back to work."

From the Great Strike came some of the first large-scale, national organizing of labor in the Industrial Age. The Knights of Labor, founded in Philadelphia in 1869, rose to prominence and at its peak represented over 700,000 workers around the country. Its decline was hastened in 1886 by the founding of the American Federation of Labor, and the rest is history.

--

It was also July 21st of 2005 that Flip Saunders was named head coach of the Detroit Pistons. Not as important as the Great Strike, you might say. I say, that remains to be seen.


Minutemen - Nature Without Man
Dock Boggs - Oh Death

Shit From An Old Notebook

On May 11th, 1894, workers walked off the job at the Pullman Palace Car Company, of Chicago, Illinois. Having faced pay cuts on top of pay cuts for the past five years, with no end in sight, along with the rising cost of housing and feeding families in company scrip in a company town, these newly minted members of the American Railway Union struck, and asked their brothers in the ARU around the country to join them.

Within days, wildcats had closed down most of the Chicago trainyards, creating a ripple effect that spread across the country. Eugene V. Debs, president of the ARU, counseled caution at a special convention called to discuss a general strike, but ARU local leader and Pullman worker Jennie Curtis sounded the alarm:

Pullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic. He owns the houses, the schoolhouse, and the churches of God in the town he gave his once humble name.

And, thus, the merry war — the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears — goes on; and it will go on, brothers, forever unless you, the American Railway Union, stop it; end it; crush it out.

Debs was overruled, and the strike was on.

On July 5th of that year, over Governor Peter Altgeld's strenuous objections, President Grover Cleveland called out the National Guard. On July 7th, Debs was one of eight ARU leaders arrested by Chicago police for conspiring to halt the free flow of mail. By July 20th, 13 strikers were dead, 57 seriously injured, and the National Guard finally left the city. Eugene Debs spent six months in Woodstock Jail once convicted of conspiracy charges, maybe you should read the rest.

Minutemen - Shit From An Old Notebook
Billy Bragg - There is Power in a Union (Live at Glastonbury, 1992)
Eugene V. Debs speech

Don't Look Now

Have we been here before? We've been here before. And it's always been hard for me, whether it's at work, or with anything else, to make sure that I know when I'm doing everything I can. Do you know what I mean? To know when you've pushed to the point where you're going to drop, or your brain is going to explode, or if you're just being dramatic, or whiny, or lazy. And I think I've gotten better at it, but who knows. Vague? Yes.

I did ride a bicycle once, and I really don't hate people who ride bicycles. I hate the feeling of moral superiority some of them give off, which I guess is probably not that much different from the unfounded reek of moral superiority that I give off for a million different meaningless non-reasons. But, my mom did get hit by a bicyclist, who was running a red light, and she hit her head on the sidewalk. That hurts! Good thing she's only five feet tall, and it wasn't, like Dikembe Mutombo or something. And she was OK, so we can laugh about it, but if I saw that guy on the street I would run him over with my car. Well, I probably wouldn't do that, but you know.... Back to the point, I loaned one of my bikes to someone and it got stolen, then the landlord capriciously and egregiously violated my inviolable property rights when he evicted us while my other two bikes were in the basement. And I was out of town, so goodbye bikes, goodbye books, goodbye extra pair of shoes. Where was I? I bought a bike from an old friend for $12, hadn't seen him in two years, he bought me dinner then sold me his bike (kind of weird, yeah) and then I locked it up on Fullerton Avenue and promptly forgot that it existed. I bought a bike from the junk guy on South Halsted (who, now that I think of it, has probably been replaced by a two bedroom condo, or at least an art studio) who quote me a price, then a lower price, then a higher price, then cut the lower one in half and told me it was the "colored folks discount." And I'll take it, but I left that bike in the basement because it's hard to move across the country with bikes, in a compact car. All that said:

Blackstone Bicycle Works Chicago
Recycle-A-Bicycle New York
Working Bikes Chicago

See, I'm not a hater.

First team to 60 wins? Guess who.

Minutemen - Don't Look Now
Mahalia Jackson - Lord, Don't Let Me Fail
Huggy Bear - Herjazz

Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?

Hey, they said they would do it. Not a lie.

Not much to say today. Ate some tabouleh, did some work. Feel very tired. Drank a lot of peach apple nectar, it's good stuff.

Minutemen - Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
Yvonne Hunter - Have You Ever Been Mistreated?
Otis Redding - Direct Me

Two Beads At The End

Instead of reading obscure baseball stats, or back issues of the Nation, or watching Geraldo, I decided to buy some DVDs. Yesterday, I got copies of the third season of the West Wing, and finally got a copy of Roger & Me. I'm not sure what's more embarassing, that I bought an entire season of the West Wing, or that I've actually watched the entire first two seasons. But it's good! Really, I swear. I was tempted to buy Will & Grace too, but we can only go so far down that road, all at one time. Also, it was fifty bucks.

You should go download the Chocolate Swim EP, from the Cartoon Network. I don't understand it, but it's free music, and who doesn't like free music? There's also Danger Doom's Occult Hymn EP, also free.

I think that, since poker apparently counts as a sport, and you can see it on more networks than an actual sport, like the WNBA (which is a real sport, that is good and sometimes fun to watch), next should be computer Solitaire. Spider Solitaire. And, um, spelling bees. Oh wait, they already did that. No, seriously, ten nerds at computers, racing to finish Spider Solitaire, and trash talking. And being fat and wearing sunglasses, so they'll be respected as athletes just like the poker players. Any venture capitalist takers? Call me.

Notes:

• California appeals court upholds farmworker arbitration law. The law allows either union or company to request binding arbitration after 6 months of negotiations, and affects only agricultural workers. When can the rest of us get some of that?
  
• PBS airing American Masters: Woody Guthrie starting 7/12.
  

Minutemen - Two Beads At The End
Astrid Oto - Goodbye Elston Avenue
O.V. Wright - I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled and Crazy

#1 Hit Song

Internet's been out at the place I'm staying. Well, I can't steal a wireless signal, anyway. Hopefully this doesn't last forever, but at least I'll get to do more reading.

Oh, who am I kidding. I just watch Geraldo at Large instead. Did you know there are hordes of killer gangs walking the streets who've just been released from New Orleans, or the army, and they're also satan-worshipping child molesters carrying swarms of deadly-with-one-sting Africanized killer bees and actually they're not in cities anymore but only in Bel Air and Grosse Pointe? So actually you don't have to worry about them if you live in a non-gated community. And by the way, did you know Geraldo was good friends with Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison, and it's just too bad that they're all too dead to come on his show to confirm it? It's like a televised re-enactment of the worst issue of Reader's Digest ever, with celebrity sightings. Wow. But it comes on right before Will & Grace, so I will deal.

Minutemen - #1 Hit Song
Paul Wall - Internet Goin' Nutz
Chisel - Your Star Is Killing Me

It's Expected I'm Gone

JFK Airport, in New York, is not actually as bad as I always think it is. It's the airport I hear people complain about most. Too many terminals, too confusing, no one is helpful, Airtrain costs five bucks, whatever. I complain about all of those things too, but really the only thing that sucks about it is when you have to drive there. Otherwise, I'm going to give it three out of five stars. I walked out of Andy's door in North Brooklyn this morning, and I was walking into terminal 3 exactly one hour later. Not bad, considering you have no choice but to take either a bus or cab to Laguardia, and we all know how good the traffic always is on the BQE through Jackson Heights, right?

I spent the better part of a bitter cold January hanging out at JFK a few years back, and got to know it pretty well. I saw (but didn't purchase anything from) the creepy paperback novel vending machines in Terminal 4, which I guess didn't do that well, because I never see them anywhere else. I found out that for vegetarian food, there's a little indian food stand hidden right next to Sylvia's Soul Food in Terminal 1, and you can eat lunch for less than five bucks. Which is important, when you're at the airport for 12 hours a day. Of course, if you're a cheating vegan, the mac and cheese at Sylvia's will work just as well, if not better. I walked around the airport loop a lot, because the pre-AirTrain shuttle buses were not exactly always timely. But I do kind of miss those buses, and not having to pay to get on them, jumping on in that dirty, dirty Howard Beach parking lot and riding by the still "temporarily closed" TWA Terminal 5, the only attractive building ever built at any airport ever in history.

Today I got into the Terminal, and I was through security and sitting down with the Times without waiting at all. Not at the counter, not at the screening station, not even at the newsstand. Try doing that in Denver, or one of your other fancy new airports, with robotic trams and moving walkways and all that crap. Also, on a side note, I've never seen another airport that had flocks of birds living inside the terminal, co-existing peacefully with passengers and gate agents alike. Beautiful.

This was the first Minutemen song I ever heard. I think I was 13 years old. It may have changed my life.

Minutemen - It's Expected I'm Gone

Also:

The Detroit Experiment f. Invincible and Athletic Mic League - The Way We Make Music
Gospel Group - Thank You Lord

Notes:

• Say it ain't so, Big Ben. Does anyone really think Nazr Mohammed can replace him? I will try to reserve judgement until next year; Joe Dumars deserves the benefit of the doubt.
  
• Korean unions vow general strike when Korea and the US start talks on a free trade agreement.
  

Oh yeah, happy 4th? Sure.

Cohesion

It's hot, and I almost dropped the A/C out the window. That would have been bad form. My cat insists on sitting on my feet, which would have been fine if she'd chosen to do that during the winter, but when the thermometer goes past 85 degrees it seems a little ridiculous. I know it's hot, little buddy, but some personal space is going to probably help more than hurt.

So, where were we? I've been reading several books at once, which I tend to do, because I have a short attention span. Fire in the Hearth, edited by Mike Davis, which is kind of a late '80's overview of the state of "the left," The Many and the Few, by Henry Kraus, a former UAW organizer/editor's account of the GM sit-down, and Teamster Rebellion, by Farrell Dobbs, recounting the Minneapolis General Strike of 1934, led by Dobbs and Teamsters Local 574. I'm a nerd, sorry.

I have been paying no particular attention to the NBA Draft this year, because the Pistons had no first-round pick, and because, well, it's kind of a silly thing to get excited about. But I've always been curious why in the NBA and NHL, international players are draft-eligible, while MLB's draft covers only US, Canadian, and Puerto Rican players, leaving teams able to buy the services of 16 year old kids from Latin America for pennies on the dollar. The new rules in basketball's draft (you can't be drafted until a year after your high school class graduates), while stupid and unfair, don't bother me nearly as much as the fact that a top five pick in the MLB draft generally gets a signing bonus that is triple or quadruple what a kid from Venezuela can possibly hope to get. And while we're at it, why can a (usually white) college baseball player get drafted, hire an agent, negotiate, decide that instead of getting $1 million this year he could maybe get $3 million next year, yet keep his NCAA eligibility, but a (usually black) college basketball player surrenders his scholarship as soon as an agent buys him a cup of coffee?

Notes:

• Dave Zirin on the NBA Draft. Overblown, yes, but interesting.
  
• Labor leaders endorse marriage equality. And on a related note, LGBT groups support new initiative for fair treatment of hotel workers.
  

And, of course, the Detroit Tigers still have the best record in the league.

Minutemen - Cohesion
King Britt f. Bahamadia - Transcend
Mirah - Recommendation

Viet Nam

Notes:

• Bill Fletcher, Jr. has a good article on Curt Flood, who every overpaid baseball player should be paying commission to, on BlackCommentator.com


• NYT on ACORN. But they still refuse to capitalize the full name. Why?


• Jay Marriotti and Ozzie Guillen are both idiots.


• "Perpetuating the Yellow Peril," in In These Times.
  
  
  

Minutemen - Viet Nam

Theatre Is The Life Of You

1984 was a great year. We were young, and life was beautiful. I attended my first two Detroit Tigers games, both 14-1 complete and utter humiliations of the hated, and for good measure Canadian, Toronto Blue Jays, on their way to leading the AL East wire-to-wire and winning the only World Series of my life, so far. If you want to remember that beautiful summer of '84 along with me (and Sparky Anderson)(and really, who wouldn't want to?), you would read Bless You Boys, and you would buy it in a union-shop bookstore. Hey, we could start a book club! Where was I? Oh yeah. 1984.


Prince released Purple Rain. Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons founded a little business called Def Jam Records. Krush Groove was filmed, though it didn't see the light of day in theaters until the following year. And no, that Sbarro's off of 53rd that the Fat Boys hung out at isn't there anymore. I checked. Although if you're up there, you may as well swing by 53rd and 3rd and pretend to be Dee Dee Ramone (whose own band, I guess I should mention, released the underrated [but still not very good, except for Dee Dee on "Wart Hog"] Too Tough to Die). An eventful year, you know? I haven't checked, but I bet there were at least three breakdancing movies released featuring Ice-T. And last but not least, the Minutemen released their ground-breaking, almost untoppable, kind of headache-inducing (but in a good way) double album, Double Nickels on the Dime, which among other things, has a Creedence cover on it. Need I say more?

Minutemen - Theatre Is The Life Of You
Boogie Down Productions - South Bronx (from 1987, not 1984, but still good!)

And I'd be remiss to forget the oft-forgotten Dead Milkmen/Detroit Tigers connection. If anyone wants to buy Jim Walewander's 1987 Topps baseball card, give me a holler. I'll give you a good deal, promise. I jumped from 84 again to 87, didn't I. Whatever. If the Tigers won the AL East, it's all the same magical year to me.

D's Car Jam / Anxious Mo-Fo

I was riding in Dave's van this past weekend, and it really made me miss my old van. Vans, actually.

The first one, my first car ever, I got about a week and a half after I got my driver's license. It was a 1980 Ford 150 with a V-6, every body panel a different shade of brown or primer grey. Bought it with cash on the spot, and the couple I bought it from was obviously a little quicker than me, because once I got it home, it wouldn't start again. Bad alternator. It took a lot of hours of standing outside in a freezing Michigan winter with a blow torch and a cheap socket set to get that old, rusted alternator out, but once the electricity was flowing again that van was a thing of beauty. Jim, my sometimes friend who was sometimes a mechanic in his garage helped me duct tape the hoses in the engine together, then gave me a 50/50 shot of making it through a week long winter tour. It leaked gas, and took about ten minutes of revving the engine before you could get going, but we made it to Chicago, St Louis, Canton, wherever the hell else we were going and back home again in style. Of course, two days after we got home, the engine locked up. Oh well. I needed the scrap guy's 80 bucks more than the van anyway.

Moved up in the world when I got the second van, a 1986 Econoline. You know, the one with the two tone gray and red racing stripe down the middle. Seven hundred bucks, and worth every penny. We jacked a bench seat in the middle with four half-inch bolts, and for some ungodly reason spent too much time installing a flimsy wire cage on the back that didn't stop a guitar and two hundred bucks from getting stolen in the time it took us to eat a falafel sandwich in New York. Oh well. This one had a leaky gas tank, too, and for added excitement we kept the tail pipe from hitting the ground with a couple of wire hangers and some duct tape. Our tourmates were convinced that the van would explode, with the sparks from the exhaust pipe sparking the hole in the gas tank, and that we were seriously, strangely insane. We slept in that van for almost a month, and even played a show half inside it, on the loading dock of some community center in East Providence. Or was it West Providence? When we got back from tour, I worked another week at the flower shop, collected my paycheck, loaded up three bikes, all of my records and books, and drove the van to Chicago. Slept in it for a few days, rode around the city, completely forgot where I parked it for forty-eight hours, moved in someplace, moved down the street, then drove away a month later, to West Virginia and New York and San Francisco and back, this time in a different car, which is a whole other story altogether. By the time I got back, the van was gone, never to be seen again. Stolen by the city, but hopefully sold at auction to a good, loving home.


The Coup - Cars and Shoes
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Kanye West f. GLC and Paul Wall - Drive Slow
Minutemen - D's Car Jam / Anxious Mo-Fo

History Lesson, Part II

I haven't been keeping up to date on the news, on what's happening in the world, at least not like I used to. I don't listen to much music that was made after the year 2000, unless it's my friends, and let's be honest, I don't listen to much of that either (no offense). I've been in a hundred places in the last year or two, and it gets old, trying to find a decent bar or chinese food or a bookstore, you know? Once you find it, you're gone, and you're driving down SR-52 and you start making turns and you realize that you think you know where you're going, but what you really thought was that you were on a different SR-52, and you're not headed toward TJ Maxx to finally buy some clean socks, you're actually not anywhere near where you meant to go, and of course the cell phone service is terrible. In that way, I guess, it's like home.

I got bummed when I thought I lost my copy of that new Nina Simone CD, then I was happy that someone had it, then I got it back and left it in my car like a dumbass and it got broken in half. How did that happen? No one ever sits in the back seat anyway. Oh well. This song, however, has been popping up on my random play a little too often to be just random, if you know what I'm saying. Not that I don't love my job, because I do. Usually.

Nina Simone - Work Song

I was listening to something, I dunno, Lupe Fiasco probably. I think. And he's great and all, but damn, he raps too much. Take a breath, kid, you know? Seems to be a common problem these days. And now that Dilla's gone, who will be around who knows when to shut up?

J Dilla - Light My Fire

I didn't like fIREHOSE, I think Mike Watt solo is criminally, offensively bad, and I think San Pedro's kind of a hellhole. But, this is one of the best songs on one of the best records of all time. What went so horribly wrong? I wrote a paper in English class about this song once, in high school. That may have been the only paper I wrote in high school, come to think of it. And it brings up my argument that everyone who recorded at least three albums for SST Records before 1988 should have a federally funded pension, so they don't have to make horrible "concept" albums to pay the rent when they're pushing 50. They could just retire in peace, to the old punk rockers' home. Actually, I guess my argument is that everyone should have a pension, but that would include Mike Watt. And anyone who was in Black Flag, god rest their musically-compromised-at-some-point-in-the-late-80's souls. I wonder if D. Boon had any kids, I guess they would get his pension...

Minutemen - History Lesson, Part II

And hey, guess what? The Tigers still have the best record in baseball. And the Red Wings suffered a horribly embarrassing exit from the playoffs. It's been a good spring in my personal Detroit sports world. Just don't ask about the Pistons, OK?