Ocelopotamus

News, culture, and politics. Not necessarily in that order.

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Music: The Best Kind of Madness

March 22nd, 2007 · Culture, iTunes, Music, New Wave, News

Madness SorryMadness has a new single out! Released on their own label, Lucky Seven Records. The new song is called “Sorry,” and the even better news is that there’s a full album on the way this summer.

Amazon has the CD single with four versions of the song available now.

Or you can download it from iTunes.

I’m pretty sure their most recent album before this was Wonderful, from 1999. Which I thought was — you know where I’m going with this — wonderful.

Here’s the video for “Sorry.” God, I love these guys. Talk about aging gracefully and in style. It makes me so happy that they’re still making music.

A few more nutty-boy links:

• Here’s an alternate version of “Sorry” featuring two UK hip hop stars, Sway and Baby Blue.

• And a backstage message from Suggs!

• There’s more video and info on the official Madness MySpace page.

• The official Madness site: still the most fun and best-designed Web site for a band I’ve ever seen. You could spend hours just playing with it. Each album gets its own mod little room — and when they say don’t touch the cat, they mean it.

• And let’s have a little classic Madness, too. Here’s one of their all-time best, “My Girl.”

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News: The Pleasure of the Preznit

March 21st, 2007 · Blogroll, Blogs, Books, Business, Chicago, Culture, Film, Food, Health, HIV/AIDS, LGBT, Music, News, Politics, Science

Peachy• Preznit Bush is stonewalling and hurling threats of a constitutional showdown over subpoenas. Ocelopotamus say: Call. His. Bluff. If he refuses to obey the rule of law, commence the impeachication.

Meanwhile, over at Crooks and Liars, we read this:

President Bush kept making the point over and over that allowing his staff members (i.e. Karl Rove) to testify under oath would hamper his ablility to “get quality advice,” but as ThinkProgress noted earlier today, 31 of Clinton’s top aides testified before Congress on 47 different occasions.

I’m trying to imagine how Bush could possibly get lower-quality advice than what he’s been getting from the neocon rocket scientists who gave him the green light to invade Iraq, and are apparently telling him every single day that the president isn’t subject to any pesky laws or anything. In fact, if that’s his concern, he could put together an expert panel consisting of Ted Baxter, Ralph Wiggum, Vinnie Barbarino, Britney Spears, and that guy from the Archie comics who said “D-uh” all the time, and dramatically improve the quality of advice he gets on a day-to-day basis.

• Iggy Pop gets frustrated, “barks at” camera operators during “secret show” with reunited Stooges. (Well, what did you think he meant when he said that thing about being your dog?)

• Oakland Park, Florida elects openly gay, HIV-positive Larry Gierer as mayor. Via Towleroad.

• A creative struggle is apparently raging behind the scenes at the studio producing Across the Universe, described as “a $45-million psychedelic love story set to the music of the Beatles.”

I hope the studio doesn’t wreck this movie, because it sounds like it could be a good time if it doesn’t get dumbed down:

The movie, set to 35 Beatles songs, seems to spring from Ms. Taymor’s experimental sandbox, combining live action with painted and three-dimensional animation and puppets, and featuring cameos by Eddie Izzard, dressed as a freakish Mr. Kite; Bono, singing “I Am the Walrus”; and Joe Cocker, singing “Come Together.”

• Borders may be looking to close four of its stores in Chicago, including the Clark & Diversey location, thanks to a “steep decline” in music sales among other factors.

• Previous two items are courtesy of my friend Norm Sloan, probably the best blogger I know who doesn’t actually have a blog.

• Study shows that a high-fat diet increases risk of breast cancer.

• The FDA is now examining the possibility that wheat gluten used in the recalled pet food was contaminated by mold.

• Thanks to EarthGoat, Rubber Nun, and Underverse for blogrolling Ocelopotamus. Also, fellow Bradley U alumnus Jim A. has some sage words of wisdom for us.

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Ian McKellen Tackles King Lear

March 21st, 2007 · Culture, Doctor Who, LGBT, News, Performance, Theater

Ian McKellenIan McKellen, profiled in The Observer, is finally ready to take on the role of a lifetime: King Lear.

McKellen and Trevor Nunn, who have known each other since they were at Cambridge together in the 1960s, have been planning this production for a long time. ‘McKellen has said that for him, Trevor Nunn is the great director of Shakespeare, so it feels like the fulfilment of a long-held dream for them both,’ Billington says. Is he surprised how long it has taken? ‘It’s a balancing act. You can’t play it until you’re old enough. But if you leave it too late, you won’t have the power to get through it. I should think now is about right.’

… For his part, McKellen has said that he has been in Lear often enough, most memorably as Kent to Brian Cox’s Lear in the 1990 Deborah Warner production, to know how tricky it is. ‘Unless each of the central characters is well cast and played, the play loses its special majesty, regardless of the performance by Lear himself,’ he has said. ‘It is not a solo part.’ Presumably, with Frances Barber as Goneril, William Gaunt as Gloucester and Sylvester McCoy as the fool, he feels the right cast is in place.

Sylvester McCoy? Wow, there’s even a Doctor Who tie-in!

Of course, no matter how serious a role he may be taking on, Sir Ian always finds a way to make me giggle:

… [on his Web site, mckellen.com] he responds to rumours, both silly and true (“I have never been known to snore! Ask whoever you can find.”)

McKellen will be bringing his Lear to the midwest, in a double bill with “The Seagull” at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, October 5-14 according to McKellen.com. That might just be enough to get me thinking about a visit to the twin cities.

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300: A Reader’s Horrifying First-Hand Account

March 21st, 2007 · Culture, Film, LGBT, Politics

An update to my earlier post about 300: I noted that I haven’t seen the movie myself — and in fact would rather chew tinfoil than be subjected to it — but it turns out my friend Jason S. in San Francisco has actually undergone this harrowing ordeal and is a first-hand witness to its stupidity. He posted the following mini-review in the comments and I got his permission to front-page it:

Christ. I went and saw this movie with a lesbian and that was the gayest part of it.

Never mind the fact that the king dude makes a “boy-lovers” comment about Athens, and that the movie glossed over the fact that Spartan soldiers were encouraged to find another Spartan soldier to buddy up with in the fun way, but taking a New Criticism school of critique look at this, you’ve also got the fact that the good guys are all white, the bad guys are the Persians (you know, while we’re at war with Iraq and poised to go to war with Iran). There’s also the bit about the good guys are all beefcake and the bad guys having some unbeefy folks and transsexuals. And the queen letting herself get screwed over (literally and figuratively) because she thinks it’ll help her city-state.

I mean, there’s this point where two of the Spartans are becoming really buddy-buddy, right? Trading snarks in battle and grinning at one another and it gets to the point where I am dead sure that they’re going to kiss. And instead one of them, despite the fact that he’s been rocking the battle reflexes this whole time, stands there all stupid-like while this guy on a horse–you know, a horse, with the audible hooves and shit–comes up from a long ways off and decapitates him.

What the fuck.

This movie left a really bitter taste in my mouth, as you can tell. :p

Meanwhile, from a slightly different angle, Digby has a great post over on Hullabaloo about the movie’s not-too-subtle pro-war prop-agenda.

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Cats: Kiwi, Mr. Blue, & Menu Foods

March 20th, 2007 · Advertising, Cats, Food, Health, Journal, Kiwi, Mr. Blue, News, Pet Food, Pets

The Peaceable KingdomI hear the cool kids like to post pictures of their cats on their blogs sometimes. Except I think you’re supposed to do it on Fridays. In 2005. Well, never let it be said that Ocelopotamus colors inside the lines!

Anyway, here’s Barabajagal (aka Mr. Blue) and Kiwi, even though they don’t really deserve the good publicity after what they did to my shower curtain. That’s Kiwi with the tiger stripes and the attitude on the left, and Mr. Blue is the big one on the right. This is the only time I’ve caught them sharing the crow’s nest of the cat tree like this — usually it’s an ongoing squabble for dominance. So I call this shot “The Peaceable Kingdom,” which is my name for those very rare moments when I catch them curled up in the same spot instead of gnawing on each other mercilessly or windmilling their paws at each other.

Speaking of cats, and dogs, it’s looking like wheat gluten may be the problem ingredient behind the big pet food recall. Kiwi and Mr. Blue get Science Diet, which hasn’t been implicated in any deaths, but Science Diet voluntarily added themselves to the recall because apparently some of their food is made by Menu Foods. Specifically, their “Savory Cuts” varieties, and I did have some cans of that stuff sitting on top of the fridge.

I checked the lot numbers on the bottoms of the cans against the ones listed on Science Diet’s recall page, and fortunately none of the cans I had matched the dates and numbers listed. But I’m still not entirely sure I’m comfortable serving it up to the boys after all this.

One interesting aspect of this incident is that it’s exposed to the public something corporations don’t want you to know, or at least not think too much about: the relative meaninglessness of brand names and labels. Look at this list of 42 different brands of cat food, all made by the same manufacturing company, Menu Foods. And there’s another list just like it for 51 brands of dog food. These companies spend millions to convince us we’re buying something special and different from the other cans on the shelf, but the truth is it all came out of the same factory. And this tragic episode has given consumers a rare glimpse behind the branding smokescreen.

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News: A Hive of Spam and Villainy

March 20th, 2007 · Activism, Food, Health, Heroes, Internet, LGBT, News, Peace, Politics, Science, Science Fiction, Tech, TV

Hive of spam and villainy• A pair of hackers are promising to expose a month’s worth of MySpace bugs to draw attention to security problems with the site.

… two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.’s popular social networking site, every day next month.

“The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites,” wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.

“We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues,” he said.

• A St. Patrick’s Day parade in Colorado Springs turned ugly when organizers decided that peace was too controversial an idea for their parade, and sicced police on some of the parade’s participants for the crime of carrying peace banners and wearing T-shirts with peace symbols. A 76-year-old woman who walks with a cane was taken to the hospital with a leg injury, and a retired priest wound up in a chokehold. The fact that the peace lovers had purchased a $15 permit to march in the parade didn’t matter to the police.

Parade organizer John O’Donnell told the Colorado Springs Gazette that political candidates could participate in the parade, but people with opinions on “social issues” could not. Colorado Springs police said that they plan to review the chain of events, but said they were forced to act when the protesters refused to follow orders to leave the parade route.

“Peace was too controversial for the parade,” said Jim White, the interim director of the PPJPC and the retired pastor at Colorado Springs’ First Congregational Church. “I didn’t get to see what happened, but I talked to people at church this morning and they said it was horrible. People were crying, children were crying.

“It was clearly police brutality. The people I talked to just couldn’t believe what happened.”

• Scientists are working to develop portable bird flu testing kits.

• A good reason to avoid buying Chiquita bananas: Chiquita knowingly gave $1.7 million to right-wing terrorists in Colombia.

• What a long and winding road it’s been: Jury selection begins in the Phil Spector trial.

• An update on the Heroes character who was going to be gay, but isn’t anymore, and why.

• Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant decide to cruelly deny us a third season of Extras. The poncey gits.

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Music: Roddy Frame, Western Skies

March 20th, 2007 · Music

Western SkiesRoddy Frame’s Western Skies is a strong contender for my favorite album of 2006. It’s everything you expect from the man behind the quintessential cardy pop band Aztec Camera: nimble, haunting, surprising and eloquent. The sad thing is a lot of people who loved Aztec Camera may not even know it exists, because none of Roddy’s three superb solo albums (The North Star, Surf, and the aforementioned Western Skies) have been released in the US.

As one of the very best songwriters of my generation, Roddy Frame belongs in a class with Elvis Costello, Neil and Tim Finn, Suzanne Vega, Billy Bragg, Tracy Chapman, and the teams of Morrissey/Marr and Difford/Tilbrook.

So it seems particularly unjust that Roddy’s most recent albums aren’t getting the attention they deserve in the US. Fortunately, it’s the age of the tube-o-net, so at least you can get them online.

Here’s a video of Roddy performing the album’s title track live in a small club. It looks like a video someone shot on their phone, so the sound quality is dodgy and sometimes you can hear the audience talking over the music.

But it’s good to enough for you to catch the flavor of the album, and confirm that Roddy’s stunning melodic gifts are as sharp as ever — and even pushing forward into new territory.

There’s a charming moment near the end where the song pauses, and the audience bursts into applause thinking it’s over. Roddy just laughs good-naturedly and keeps going.

And because there’s no such thing as too much Roddy, here he is doing my favorite song from The North Star, “Hymn to Grace.”

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Where No Trek Has Gone Before

March 20th, 2007 · Culture, Film, HIV/AIDS, LGBT, Science Fiction, TV

Blood and FireGood news for gay Trekkers: David Gerrold’s infamous gay episode of Star Trek, “Blood and Fire,” is finally getting made, as part of the online fan series New Voyages.

You might recall Gerrold as the man who wrote the episode often cited as the most popular Star Trek story of all time, “The Trouble with Tribbles.” (He’s also a brilliant SF novelist who wrote one of the best time-travel stories I’ve ever read, The Man Who Folded Himself.)

“Blood and Fire” — which would have featured the first openly gay couple in Star Trek history — was supposed to be produced in the late 80s as part of The Next Generation. Gene Roddenberry supported the script, agreeing with fans that it was time for gay characters to appear on Star Trek. Unfortunately, Roddenberry’s influence over the show was waning at the time, due to his declining health. Ultimately the show’s producers backed away from the episode, and it never got made.

Of course, now that George Takei has come out, we know that there were at least two gay men on board the Enterprise all those years ago (counting Merritt Butrick, who played Captain Kirk’s son David in The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock — not to mention Johnny Slash on Square Pegs — and who sadly died of AIDS in 1989).

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The Two Faces of the Tribune

March 20th, 2007 · Chicago, Media, News, Politics

Media Matters calls out the Chicago Tribune on its Clinton/Bush double standard:

We’ve previously detailed the bizarre Bush-era tendency of major newspaper editorial boards to disregard principles they held dear during the Clinton administration. The Chicago Tribune, for example, editorialized in 1998 that Clinton should resign because his statements about the Monica Lewinsky matter would make it difficult to trust him in the future: “Who will know when he’s telling the truth and when he’s not, whether he’s being sincere or play-acting, whether his word is his bond or just another artful dodge?” Now, despite the fact that the American people long ago lost the ability to know when Bush is telling the truth about matters of war (latest example: An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted last month found that fully 63 percent of Americans “cannot trust the Bush Administration to honestly and accurately report intelligence about possible threats from other countries?”), the Tribune stays silent.

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News: Three Rings, No Waiting

March 19th, 2007 · Books, Culture, Food, LGBT, Lit, Media, News, Politics

Sideshow Karl?• Karl Rove may be facing a subpoena this week if he doesn’t agree to appear before the Senate to testify in the fired prosecutors scandal. The chairman of the judiciary committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, wants White House officials on the record, under oath.

The final decision on putting on the agenda subpoenas is mine,” Leahy said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And it will be on Thursday this week, among the subpoenas that will be voted on, will be one for Karl Rove and one for (former White House counsel) Harriet Miers, another one for her deputy.”

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of Bush’s strongest Republican supporters in Congress, agreed on the same show that the committee needed to hear Justice Department officials.

But he said he feared Democrats “want to cut to the chase and let’s get Karl Rove there and have a political circus.”

Ummm … did he just call Karl Rove a clown? Does that mean we can start calling him Sideshow Karl?

• If you have cats and/or dogs, hopefully by now you’ve heard about the massive pet food recall, which affects 90 different brands of “cuts and gravy” style food in cans and pouches. At least nine cats and one dog have died already. Apparently the phone lines are jammed, so your best bet is to check the Web site for your pet food’s manufacturer.

• Via Gaper’s Block, McDonald’s Web site responds to a customer query about a troubling ingredient in their milkshakes.

• Giant with a black eye: new clues emerge in the mysterious literary feud between Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. (Hat tip to my friend Norm Sloan.)

• Polish leaders want to punish teachers for teaching tolerance. So nice to be living in the 21st century.

• Not that you have to go to Poland to find rampant homophobia. Last week, The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois asked its readers whether they should keep or drop Ann Coulter. Although 53% said to dump her like a load of remaindered bulk-purchase books, the paper decided to keep her on because 47% of its readers supported her.

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The McCain Candidacy in a Nutshell

March 19th, 2007 · HIV/AIDS, Media, News, Politics

This particular incident just so perfectly captures the essence of John McCain, 2007. A reporter asked him for his opinion on using government funds for “contraceptives” (i.e., condoms) as a means of HIV prevention. McCain needed to dispatch an assistant to find out what his position was, and help him remember what positions he might have taken in the past.

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Remember how Kerry was pilloried for saying “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” or whatever? It seems to me that McCain saying,

“You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was.”

… leaves what Kerry said in the dust. It ought to become the new tag line for the McCain campaign. Or maybe the epitaph.

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Chicago: Oobleck, Rogue 8, and Too Much Light

March 16th, 2007 · Chicago, Comics, Culture, Fringe, Journal, Neo-Futurists, Performance, Poetry, Theater

Sir Lion of the Cottony GauntletEarlier this week we had one of those days when the temperature suddenly rocketed into the 70s and it felt like spring was a-busting out all over. Of course it’s cooled back down a scooch since then, but it reminded me of this photo I took with my phone early last winter on a similarly warm day. It’s one of the venerable stone lions outside Reza’s Persian restaurant in Andersonville, wearing a mitten bestowed on its noble head by some restlessly warm-handed passerby.

I like to imagine the owner of the mitten actually kneeling before the lion and saying something like, “Good sir lion, an thou canst see that that the day be surpassingly bold and warm, notwithstanding the wintriness of the calendar, I doth pray thee to safekeep yon cottony gauntlet on thy mighty gentle head till such time as I return for it, and tender thee all my thanks.”

So, what’s to do in Chicago this weekend?

  • The Strangerer: Theater Oobleck is getting raves for Mickle Maher’s new Bush vs. Kerry vs. Camus opus, not that that’s any surprise. I’m hoping to catch it this weekend, if it’s not too sold out.
  • Rogue 8: It’s closing weekend for the third episode of Dan Telfer’s latenight superhero serial Rogue 8, so strap on your jet-pack if you’re planning to see it. I managed to catch it a couple weekends ago and was glad I did. Having missed the first two episodes (pardon me, “issues”) it took me a little while to warm up to the story, but by the middle of the show I was noticing quite a bit of laughter coming from my own general direction, and by the end I was sucked right in. I was actually pissed when the audience voted for the silly ending instead of the plot-based one. Oh, and if you’ve never seen a man attempting to make out with an invisible woman, you’ll be able to check that one off your list.
  • Mary Fons in Too Much Light: I’m so far out of the Neo-Futurist loop these days I didn’t even know she’d been cast till I read about it on the Too Much Light blog last week. But I’ve had the privilege of performing with Ms. Fons in LIP (both the Poetry Center Series she co-hosted with Joel Chmara, and Lisa Buscani’s earlier iteration of it at the Neo-Futurarium). I’m looking forward to seeing Mary’s work in TML when I can make it over there.

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News: Wear Sunscreen

March 16th, 2007 · Apple, Books, Climate Change, Culture, Internet, iTunes, Language, LGBT, Media, Music, News, Politics, Science, Tech, TV

Big Sun

  • Worldwide, the winter of 2006-2007 has been the warmest since record keeping began in 1880, according to a new government report.
  • A variety of desperate schemes to save the planet from global warming are being considered by NASA and other organizations — including a man-made volcano that spews sulfur into the atmosphere; a “sun shade” consisting of a “cloud of small frisbee-like spaceships”; seeding the ocean with iron to boost the growth of algae and plankton; and a forest of artificial trees to help filter CO2 out of the atmosphere. Meanwhile, sales of Hummers and virgin (unrecycled) toilet paper continue unhindered.
  • After a stern talking-to from the Human Rights Campaign, Hillary and Obama finally force their mouths to say the words: being gay isn’t immoral.
  • A man who contacted a woman he raped in 1984 to apologize as part of his Alcoholics Anonymous program has been given an 18-month prison sentence.
  • Rahm Emanuel tells Democrats to stay away from that Stephen Colbert character, no matter how many pints of Americone Dream he offers them to climb into his station wagon. As pointed out in this Kos Diary, it’s not the first time Rahm has given other Democrats questionable advice.
  • Former Congressman Harold Ford sells out to Fox News. I’m with BooMan: this makes me actually glad Ford lost his Tennessee Senate race last fall.
  • The word wiki makes it into the OED. Congratulations, Hawaii!
  • Is the Internet name system in danger?
  • A new service called TuneCore makes it easy for artists to make their music available via the iTunes store and other online music services.
  • Apple releases Mac OS X v10.4.9.
  • Rare Beatles footage to be available through a digital download service called Wippit. The fly in the soup: North America is excluded from the deal.

Photo Credit: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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New DVDs: Borat, Fast Food Nation, and Shortbus

March 16th, 2007 · Culture, Film, News

Fast Food Nation

  • Borat and Fast Food Nation both came out on video last week.

    I suspect the Borat DVD will be well worth having for the deleted scenes alone. There’s at least one of them I saw on YouTube before seeing the film, and I was truly disappointed when it didn’t make the cut because it’s better and more telling than a lot of what was kept in.

  • Unlike Borat, Fast Food Nation didn’t get anywhere near the audiences it deserved — possibly due to a lot of reviewers dismissing it as nothing all that shocking. But shock isn’t really the point. I’ve read the book, but the movie brings its issues alive in a way words on the page don’t.

    Yes, the process of adapting a factual nonfiction book into a fictional story is awkward, and sometimes the dialogue suffers from that awkwardness — but on the whole it’s a powerful and compelling film. And I’m not just saying that because of the vegetarian angle.

    In fact, it wasn’t the meat-related scenes that stuck with me so much as the way the movie takes you inside the lives and experiences of the illegal immigrants working at the meatpacking plant, and what you see through their eyes — aided by haunting and powerful performances from Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and others.

    In fact, while Greg and Bruce got top billing, it’s really Wilmer who steals the film. I say give it a look.

  • Meanwhile, Shortbus is out on DVD this week. I managed to miss that one in the theaters, but I’m looking forward to seeing it on video.

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