Michael Moore’s Sicko, which takes on the U.S. healthcare crisis, premieres May 19 at Cannes and arrives at U.S. theaters June 29. Meanwhile, he’s being “probed” by the U.S. Treasury for taking ailing Ground Zero rescue workers to Cuba to try to get them medical care they’ve been denied in the U.S. “The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba.” Via this DKos diary.
CBS fires “die-hard Republican” general for speaking out against Bush. Gen. John Batiste had been a consultant to CBS news till he made a VoteVets ad criticizing the Iraq War. Click through to see Keith Olbermann interviewing Batiste. Atrios sums it up well, as he so often does: “[L]ots of former generals and similar are on the cable networks cheering on the war, so anyone who criticizes former generals speaking up is essentially saying they can only express their opinions in one direction.”
In the Olbermann interview, Batiste says: “The president’s strategy relies almost wholly on the military and ignores the important components of diplomatic, political, and economic hard work. If we don’t get this right, we’re going to break our army and marine corps, and at this point in our history, that’s the last thing we can do.”
A pox on Eurovision! The annual contest is pre-empting Doctor Who this Saturday night. Well, I’ll try to be brave and not let it ruin my birthday.
Wayland Flowers may be gone, but it turns out Madame is still kicking. Nice to know the old broad still has it in her. Who knows, maybe one day she’ll be as old as that other puppet who can’t die. (Here’s Madame’s official site. Warning: random bitchy audio snippets.)
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The Jeff Buckley compilation is called So Real: Songs of Jeff Buckley and will include a cover of “I Know It’s Over” by The Smiths, as well as a mix of studio cuts, live tracks, and rarities. Compiled by his mother, Mary Guibert. Release date is May 22.
The Nick Drake release is a collection of early recordings called Family Tree, scheduled for release June 19. Also, the terrific Nick Drake documentary A Skin Too Few, which I was fortunate enough to see at the Chicago Underground Film Festival a few years ago, will finally be released on DVD later this year, apparently as part of a reissue of the Fruit Tree box set. The film’s release has been delayed for years because of copyright issues; it’ll be nice to finally have it available. (Official site for the film is here.)
The Elliott Smith is out this week — a 2-CD set called New Moon, consisting of “primarily unreleased” material recorded between 1994 and 1997.
Bonus trivia question: What character in a Wes Anderson film is named after one of the above musicians?
Stephen Colbert explains why we all need to be more sensitive to the feelings of bigots. (After all, if you prick a homophobic prick, does he not bleed?)
Aaron administers a much-deserved rhetorical thrashing to Mr. Burns’ real-life analog at a certain local power company, who thinks lethally scalding the local fish (and other aquatic life) by expelling 100-degree water into the Chicago and Lower Des Plaines rivers is the most efficient way to cool the companies’ coal-fired power plants.
This process, called “once-through cooling” was banned over 30 years ago at new power plants when it was determined that it killed fish and other wildlife, but the old power plants were “grandfathered” and not made to upgrade. (Doubtless, the legislators didn’t count on these plants lasting as long as they have.)
But it’s not all bad news, according to Bill Constantelos, Midwest Generation’s director of environmental policy. Killing all the fish in the Chicago and lower DesPlaines Rivers might be a good thing. Because it keeps Asian carp and other invasive species out.
Sure, Bill. And let’s amputate your entire leg so you won’t get plantar warts.
What Aaron said.
Read the full article to see exactly how ridiculous Bill and his friends at Midwest Generation are being. (I had never heard of Midwest Generation before, but apparently they bought these plants from ComEd a while back.)
Also: Whenever a big company is given a license to do something evil forever, it’s usually called a “grandfather clause.” Now, what does that say about the grandfathers of the world, and why don’t they take umbrage at this calumny?
Kansas governor says it’s been harder to deal with the recent tornado disaster because the war in Iraq has put such a drain on the state’s National Guard. Both personnel and equipment that should have been available to the state are currently tied up in Iraq. “Here in Kansas, about 50 percent of our trucks are gone. We need trucks. We’re missing Humvees, we’re missing all kinds of equipment that can help us respond to this kind of emergency … So we’re borrowing equipment from around, but National Guard are our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in. And it will just make it that much slower.”
Bill Clinton works out a deal with Indian pharmaceutical companies to reduce prices of AIDS meds for 66 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Greg Sargent takes apart the AP’s latest flailing attempt to make Nancy Pelosi look bad. These phony attacks are really getting old. First we had the silliness about the great big airplane that it turned out she didn’t request herself but was in fact requested for her because of security concerns. Then there was the trip to Syria that was supposedly a bad idea, except oops, all sorts of Republicans were also making trips to Syria at the exact same time. There was the mini-flap about Pelosi wearing a head scarf in a mosque, which was a scandal until photos surfaced of Laura Bush and Condi Rice doing the exact same thing. And of course, now this.
I supposed it shouldn’t be any surprise that the Republicans are now clambering all over themselves to talk about Ronald Reagan given that GWB’s approval ratings are now 28% in the latest Newsweek poll. 28%? There are terminal diseases that get higher approval ratings than that. About 30% of the country thinks that Joseph McCarthy was a warm-hearted lug of a guy, and that mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. GWB’s ability to chip away at that bedrock is truly impressive.
Mitt Romney is getting weirder almost by the second. It’s like his weirdness is mutating and branching off into little fractal clouds of subweirdness. He’s now claiming that French people get married for only 7 years at a time. This is not based in fact of course; it’s apparently based on something he read in an Orson Scott Card novel. Don’t tell him about the bug people.
Here I thought RubberNun would be all over this before I had a chance to post it, but: Is Wal-Mart afraid of anything? Yes. It turns out Wal-Mart is afraid of nuns. Especially the kind who are focused on human rights.
High school students in New Jersey stage a walkout in support of a popular teacher denied tenure after she refused to tolerate anti-gay slurs in class. Via Towleroad.
When urban legends come true: Cracker Barrel pulls hamburgers from 313 restaurants after a customer cuts her mouth on a piece of razor blade that was hidden inside a patty.
John over at Lost in the 80s is featuring INXS’s classic remix EP Dekadance, which has been out of print for 24 years. It includes the very lovely extended version of “To Look at You.”
Also, John Barrowman on the very funny comedy game show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I like a game show where the game seems to be almost beside the point. Also featuring Phill Jupitus, whom I know of from my time spent in the dark underworld of Billy Bragg fandom. Watch for the “Ah, the Contessa has arrived!” moment.
Green Day’s cover version of “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon was released May 1 as the third single from Instant Karma: the Campaign to Save Darfur, Amnesty International’s album of Lennon covers by various artists to raise awareness about the human rights catastrophe in the Sudan. All proceeds from the album will go to support Amnesty’s human rights work.
The album was made possible by Yoko Ono’s offer to donate all music publishing royalties from the Lennon songbook towards the project.
Green Day’s tempestuous take on “Working Class Hero” uses a sample of Lennon’s own vocals toward the end of the track, and their sound really suits the song, taking it in a completely different direction from Marianne Faithfull’s famous minimalistic cover.
“We wanted to do “Working Class Hero” because its themes of alienation, class, and social status really resonated with us. It’s such a raw, aggressive song, just that line: “you’re still ****ing peasants as far as I can see”, we felt we could really sink our teeth into it. I hope we’ve done him justice. ”
The first single from the album, R.E.M.’s cover of “#9 Dream,” was previously released in March. That recording was notable for being the first time all four original members of R.E.M. had been in the studio together since drummer Bill Berry’s 1997 retirement from the band. The second single was Los Lonely Boys’ roots-rock version of “Whatever Gets You Through the Night.”
The full album will be released on June 12. Besides Green Day and R.E.M., artists will include The Postal Service, Jack Johnson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Regina Spektor, Christina Aguilera, Snow Patrol, and more.
There’s also a selection of artists and tracks you can preview and buy in the “Store” section of Amnesty’s “Make Some Noise” site, including The Postal Service’s cover of “Grow Old Along with Me” and The Cure’s version of “Love.” (I’m not sure if all of those will be part of the album or not.)
The three already-released singles are available for easy purchase and download from the iTunes music store:
Apparently the Republican candidates spent their recent debate going on and on about how great Ronald Reagan was and blah blah “Morning in America” blah blah Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! blah.
Oh, Republican candidates. You silly creatures. You really should know better than that. Because now I’m going to have to open a can of Tony Kushner on you:
“I had a great degree of loathing for the Reagan administration,” he explains, “and I will hate Ronald Reagan’s guts until the day I die. You had this bizarre ideology predicated upon the idea that selfishness is generosity, that the best way to take care of society is to look after yourself as much as possible.”
What Tony said.
Don’t make me go get more.
Oh, OK, just a little more, because listening to Tony is like sweet spicy Tom Kha Tofu soup for the soul:
The specific cause is that in the first six years of his administration, as the AIDS epidemic was growing and growing and growing in terribleness, Reagan said not a thing, literally not a thing, about AIDS because he couldn’t afford to alienate homophobes in his conservative-reactionary political base. He behaved in a disgraceful manner. I lived through those times and saw friends die horribly and part of what was horrible about their death was that they were dying a kind of pariah death.
Is it possible that there were good things that came out of the Reagan years? Maybe, I don’t know. It doesn’t change my absolute conviction that he was a bad president and that he was the beginning of something very, very bad in American democratic life. I feel that way even more strongly now.
So knock it off, Republicans. Because there’s more Tony where that came from!
(h/t Norm for the first Tony interview. Post title inspired by …)
*** UPDATE: For some reason I decided to make this my first crosspost at Daily Kos, so here’s the link to my diary if you want to see what the comments over there were like. Interestingly, the dread Cthulhu himself showed up in the thread and was insulted at being compared to Ronald Reagan. Thoughtless of me — even baleful elder gods have feelings …
It’s springtime, so naturally Chicago’s fancy is turning toward divorce and debauchery. Oops, I meant to say, fabulous fringe performance, music, and poetry readings!
This week the Poetry Center of Chicago is presenting a reading by legendary beat poet Diane di Prima, author of 35 books of poetry and prose, including Pieces of a Song, Loba, Memoirs of a Beatnik and her autobiographical memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman. The reading is Wednesday May 9 at 6:30pm, in the ballroom at the School of the Art Institute. 312-899-1229, $10, $8 students.
The Neo-Futurists want you to surrender your banana to them. Seriously. You can get half price tickets to see Poker Night at the White House by bringing a banana to any performance of the show before May 18 — Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00 pm. They say, and I quote: “Banana must be surrendered for discount to apply … Bananas will be used to feed Neo-Futurists and the Poker Night Gorilla.”
Scott Free’s annual Alt Q festival of queer music happens this Saturday, May 12, at the Old Town School of Folk Music. This is the 7th annual edition of this showcase and I can’t believe what an institution it’s become — I was privileged to perform in it as a spoken word guest a few years back when it was still called the Queer Is Folk Festival (and that night Bitch & Animal and Ferron put on one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever seen). Anyway, this year’s festival features Zrazy (love them!), Chris Garneau, Natalia Zukerman, Tom Yore and Actor Slash Model. And the whole thing is a benefit for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. 7pm, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln. More details at the official site.
Poet Richard Fox will be performing with members of BoyGirlBoyGirl (Susan Karp, Stephanie Shaw, and Edward Thomas-Herrera), as well as the BGBG Ladies Auxiliary (Rachel Claff and Diana Slickman), at the Hyde Park Art Center, on Thursday, May 10, from 7:00 to 8:00pm. After the performance you can also check out Richard’s etchings, I mean video work, projected on the outside of the Hyde Park Art Center building. More details here.
Don’t forget that Neo-Futurist Bilal Dardai’s world premiere play Vox Pandora is running at New Leaf Theatre through May 26. I’m hoping to get there this weekend if I can.
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I was looking for some progressive European perspective on the victory of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential election yesterday, so I went over to the European Tribune (that’s the European sibling blog of The Booman Tribune, for those not familiar with it).
Jerome a Paris, whom I know mainly from his excellent environmental diaries on Daily Kos, has a post up called “How long before they sour on him?” — and he’s talking about the Wall Street Journal-ish corporate media, not the voters.
He says:
Nobody knows what Sarkozy will do as president, because he has basically promised everything and its opposite and because, when he was in power, he did nothing but posturing. It’s possible that he will try to go for radical ‘reform’, arguing that he has a strong mandate from the French; it’s possible that he’ll be like Chirac, doing essentially nothing because getting power was the only goal, not exercising it.
… and wraps up the post thusly:
But even as I despair of this vote, I do not really expect Nicolas Sarkozy to deliver quite what these pundits and self-interested parties expect. I don’t believe he will align France’s diplomacy unquestionably on US positions; I don’t believe he will agree to Blair or Brown’s vision of Europe; I don’t even believe he will try for any kind of ‘reform’ as the WSJ is expecting; I don’t think he will stop defending French interests against those of the multinational companies and the financial centers.
Soon, it will appear that he is still French. Mutterings about the uselessness of expecting better from them will start to be heard. Talk about missed opportunities will crop up, as will eventually that of decline, again.
There’s much more of Jerome’s interesting perspective in this transcript from an Open Source Radio appearance he did. It’s worth reading the whole thing.
But there’s even more Finn news: Last week also saw the U.S. release of a new solo album from the other Finn brother, Tim Finn — the founder of Split Enz and the man responsible for beautiful, sparkling pop masterpieces like 1983’s Escapade and 1993’s Before & After, not to mention the two superb Finn Brothers albums he’s recorded with Neil.
Imaginary Kingdom is Tim’s first solo disc since 2001, and includes his song from the soundtrack to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, “Winter Light.”
Finn says that being on the road with his brother also helped to inspire him to write new material. “I was connecting back to the fans from the Split Enz days,” he explains, “people I hadn’t played to much in Europe and England and even in the States. I haven’t done a whole lot of touring on my own, so it was connecting me back to a lot of people. I think that feeds the writing as well.”
Finn recorded “Imaginary Kingdom” in Nashville with producer Bobby Huff, with whom he’d made “Winter Light,” his contribution to the soundtrack for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Another song on “Imaginary Kingdom,” “Salt to the Sea,” is a tribute to the late Crowded House drummer Paul Hester.
Finn won’t take part in the upcoming Crowded House reunion — “It’s something Neil wanted to do … and I’m supportive of that,” he says — but a short promo tour in support of the new album is slated to begin May 1 in Los Angeles. A more extensive outing will follow in the summer.
Imaginary Kingdom is a return to form for Tim, filled with tuneful, melodic, piano-based songs more in the vein of his first four solo albums than the two from the early 00s, which had more of a fuzz-and-distortion sound. Those records were an interesting experiment, but this one finds Tim coming back to his proven strengths, and the results are gorgeous.
Here’s the playful and very pretty video for the first single, “Couldn’t Be Done.” It has a certain Split Enz look about it, if you ask me (and since you’re on my blog, in a sense you have!)
Stop by Tim’s official site for news, tour info, photos, discography and more.
Still catching up on stuff I meant to post last week. As a follow-up to my previous post about the gay-character-on-Heroes controversy, Thomas Dekker, the actor who played Zach, has now told his side of the story in a posting to his MySpace site (warning: incoherent, monitor-shredding layout. In other words, it’s a MySpace page.) In the interest of equal time, here’s some of what he had to say:
I am truly sorry for what transpired on the series and who it has effected … I would like it to be known by everyone, that I have played a gay character three times before in my career … To me acting is about being prepared to play all kinds of roles and it is an honor and a challenge to portray ANYTHING that comes my way.
What transpired on heroes is something far more complicated than anyone being “afraid” to make Zach homosexual. The character that I created in the beginning of the show, a process I take very seriously, was based on Zach being an outcast who had a burning love for Claire, a crush that drew him to her and effected every ounce of his self esteem around her. I created the character that way because it was WRITTEN IN THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT that he was in love with Claire.
… What ensued later was a combination of miscommunication, confusion, surprise and last minute desicions, not a knee jerk reaction from me or my team. Lastly, I want to make it VERY clear that me leaving Heroes has NOTHING to do with this “gay controversy”. You will notice, I filmed five or so more episodes after the situation, and only at that point, months later, did I even begin to audition for Sarah Connor Chronicles. Only then, once I got the part of John, was I not permitted to do any more episodes of Heroes. That’s just how television networks work.
With Thomas/Zach having moved on from the show for good, let’s hope the producers will start focusing on creating a new gay character for the show. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t already have one in the pipeline. Let’s just hope that this time the actor and his or her management are down with the plan from the beginning.
Sunday was always potluck day where I grew up, so I hereby present to you this glorious covered casserole of links I didn’t get around to posting this week. With a few fresh ones stirred in, just to keep you guessing.
Retired general compares Bush to a deserter: “By vetoing this bill and failing to initiate an immediate and phased withdrawal, the President has effectively gone AWOL, deserting his duty post, leaving American forces with an impossible mission, suffering wholly unnecessary casualties,” argues retired Lt. Gen. William E. Odom.
The pet food recall has widened again now that evidence of cross-contamination has surfaced. In English, that means contaminated wheat gluten getting into food that’s not even supposed to contain wheat gluten, most likely because equipment wasn’t cleaned properly. Meanwhile, “The FDA has expanded its investigation to include livestock feed that contained tainted pet food and made its way to some 6,000 hogs and as many as 3.1 million chickens.” Me, I’m liking the countryside here in beautiful Vegetaria especially well at the moment.
Revenge of the laid-off Circuit City employees: Turns out not having competent, well-informed salespeople on hand can cause a major drop in sales.
This is brilliant: Erin Davies’ “fagbug” campaign. Her VW bug got vandalized with homophobic graffiti, so she’s going to drive it across country with the graffiti intact as an awareness campaign. Click through for photos.
Tea drinkers may have a lower risk of certain skin cancers, according to a new study. “In a study of nearly 2,200 adults, researchers found that tea drinkers had a lower risk of developing squamous cell or basal cell carcinoma, the two most common forms of skin cancer. Men and women who had ever been regular tea drinkers — having one or more cups a day — were 20 percent to 30 percent less likely to develop the cancers than those who didn’t drink tea.”
No idea if there’s any truth to these persistent rumors or not, but I agree that if there were they would certainly be newsworthy. And they sure are persistent.
The Mittster reveals his favorite novel: Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. For real. Don’t tell the dark lord Xenu. Wait, maybe Mitt Romney is the dark lord Xenu!
(h/t Norm Sloan.)
Used CD merchants worried about draconic new laws, including a Florida law that would require stores to thumb-print customers selling used CDs.
Patti Smith’s new covers album Twelve is out. Interview here, with a preview of her tour and an interesting anecdote about a little boy named “Mikey” Stipe.
New Zealand-based author, NZBC blogger, and friend of Ocelopotamus Chris Bell has relaunched his Web site — with more than 30 of his thoroughly unpredictable and unclassifiable short stories available for reading, as well as poems and other writing. He even provides a recommended soundtrack of music to read his work by. And his “radical, free content approach” to the site includes an offer to mail a free PDF copy of his stories and poems to anyone who wants to print them out for reading on the train or other unplugged locations. Stop by and partake of his generosity.
Justin had a lot to say about a couple of pending bills in the Illinois House of Representatives. I could spend a bunch of time trying to paraphrase what he said, but Justin’s an expert on these matters so I decided to cut out the middleman and just get his permission to quote the email here, which he kindly gave.
Passing the mike to Mr. Hayford (bold and italics emphasis his):
There are two very bad bills pending in the Illinois House of Representatives right now which would eliminate the need for doctors to get your consent before testing you for HIV. Under current Illinois law, a doctor must get your written, informed consent before ordering an HIV test. Last year the CDC put out recommendations that such consent should no longer be required. They argue that a general consent to medical care should be sufficient. We all want more people to be offered HIV testing, but to do so without getting their consent first is bad health care and bad public policy.
Imagine someone struggling with clinical depression who is suddenly told, “By the way, you’re HIV+.” Imagine a woman with an abusive husband who is told, “You were tested for HIV and you’re negative” — and the abusive husband beats her up, saying, “So you think I have AIDS? Is that why you got an HIV test?” Imagine a 15-year-old boy who tests positive, a result his father must be informed about, and that kid is kicked out of the house and ends up living on the streets. These are not hypothetical situations: these are scenarios I’ve seen played out again and again over 15 years working at the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago.
People say it’s always a good idea for people to know their HIV status. Is it better for a 15-year-old to know his status if it means he ends up on the streets, where he can’t access health care? Is it better for a woman to get her head put through a wall after learning she’s HIV negative? Is it better for a person with clinical depression to learn he has HIV when that information might cause his depression to spiral out of control? Will he even bother to get treatment?
Who knows what’s best for a particular person at a particular time? Each individual person. People should always have the right to decide for themselves if it’s the right time for an HIV test. To take away that right is to put certain patients in harm’s way.
It is our understanding that there is a lot of pressure on legislators to vote in favor of these bad bills. So please please please take 30 seconds and call your state representative to voice your opposition to House Bills 980 and 193. Leave a message that you believe everyone has to the right to make their own healthcare decisions.
If you aren’t sure who your representative is, just go to www.vote-smart.org.
Representatives take phone calls from constituents very seriously. So 10 phone calls is a landslide. Please call.
So, yeah. What Justin said.
*** UPDATE May 7: Follow-up from Justin: “We were able to work out a compromise, which now states that a doctor can’t test you without ‘documented informed consent.’ Not perfect, but better than what we were facing.”
… still probably a good idea to make sure your reps know how you feel about this issue.
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Yeah, I’m still getting caught up with everything I put on the back burner in the lead-up to this week’s Partly Dave Show. So instead of our usual high-minded Ocelopotamus programming, here’s something fun for a Friday that I’ve been saving up for a while.
For literally decades now, I’ve been dying for the chance to revisit Buck Henry’s sci-fi spoof Quark, staring Richard Benjamin as the commander of an interstellar garbage scow, just to see if it’s anywhere near as funny as my sixth-grade self thought it was.
With everything else I’ve been finding there, I had a random impulse to search YouTube for it, and sure enough, there’s a complete episode, broken up into three chunks.
In addition to Benjamin as Adam Quark, the ship’s captain, the crew featured Ficus, the half-human, half-vegetable first mate (“As a Vegeton, I remain cool and crisp even when being crushed by walls”); Gene/Jean, the Transmute who arbitrarily switches genders; a pair of blow-dried clones who are both named Betty, played by the Doublemint Twins (seriously); and a cowardly robot named Andy.
Needless to say, as a kid who loved Star Trek, Star Wars, and spoof comedies like Young Frankenstein, Love at First Bite, and (who could forget?) the Richard Benjamin vehicle Saturday the 14th, this show rocked my world.
As a grownup, my verdict is a little more mixed. It’s not exactly Young Frankenstein, but it does have its clever and inventive moments, and unlike so many sitcoms from the 70s (and afterwards), there are actual jokes and gags written right into the script. The cast are just good enough to sell it, and 70s camp value makes up for the dry spots in the script.
Best of all, it’s the episode that has the brilliant little gag that has stuck in my head all these years.
Ficus, the ship’s Vegeton first officer, has been charged with gaining the cooperation of sexed-up space princess Libido, who fortunately has the hots for him. They attempt to seduce each other, but Libido is frustrated that he doesn’t seem to be responding.
Ficus: Libido, this is where we’re going to have a problem. You see, where I come from we don’t kiss, we pollinate.
Libido: Pollinate? [A pause while she thinks it over.] Can I do that?
Ficus: Watch what I do and repeat after me.
[He lies down on his back on the floor, and raises his arms and legs stiffly in the air.]
Now watch carefully, and listen. [In a high-pitched, rising voice] Beeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebee! … Can you do that?
Libido: Move over! [She joins him on the floor in the same posture and begins to imitate the sound he’s making.]
Together: Beeeeebeeeebeebeebeebeebee …
Ficus: Is it good for you?
Libido: Uh, I — I think so. Is this what you Vegetons find pleasurable?
Ficus: It would appear so.
Libido: What do we do now?
Ficus: [In his best Leonard Nimoy deadpan] We wait for the bee.
Here’s Part One of the episode:
And here are links to the other two parts (the hardcore pollination scene is in Part Two):
Green Day’s cover version of “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon was released May 1 as the third single from 
Apparently the Republican candidates 
It’s springtime, so naturally Chicago’s fancy is turning toward 
I was looking for some progressive European perspective on the victory of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential election yesterday, so I went over to the 
Still catching up on stuff I meant to post last week. As a follow-up to 
Sunday was always potluck day where I grew up, so I hereby present to you this glorious covered casserole of links I didn’t get around to posting this week. With a few fresh ones stirred in, just to keep you guessing. 
I got an email this week from my friend Justin Hayford, who works at the 
Yeah, I’m still getting caught up with everything I put on the back burner in the lead-up to this week’s