When I posted that fantabulous B-52’s video yesterday I was intending to mention an actual tidbit of 2’s news, and then I got distracted by the wigs and the dancing and .. Keith … and I plum forgot.
So here it is — good news. The B-52’s have a new album on the way! From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (paid access required for full article, unfortunately):
For the group’s first full-length studio recording in 15 years, the B-52’s are returning to their Southern roots. Over a late dinner Thursday upstairs at Repast in Midtown, B’s frontman Fred Schneider told Buzz that he and original members Cindy Wilson, Kate Pierson and Keith Strickland have been recording locally at Nickel and Dime Studios and are “halfway finished” with the album, tentatively scheduled for a fall release.
“It’s us, updated, essentially,” Schneider said of the sounds originating from the sessions. “It’s a little more electronic with guitars. But if we sample anyone, we’ll be sampling ourselves!”
Here’s another great YouTube find: the video for “The Unguarded Moment” by The Church! I know lots of people didn’t discover them until they hit it big with “Under the Milky Way” in 1988 — but the first time I heard them was circa 1983 or 84, when I saw this video on MTV. I was an instant fan and this song still gives me chills.
So deep, deep without a meaning
I knew you’d find me leaving
Tell those friends with cameras for eyes
That their hands don’t make me hang
They only make me feel like breathing
In an unguarded moment
Music: The B-52’s (Again) and The Church
March 16th, 2007 · Music, New Wave, News
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Swine and Punishment
March 16th, 2007 · Factory Farming, Food, News, Politics
A cattle rancher named Nicolette Hahn Niman had an eloquent piece in Wednesday’s New York Times on the inhumane conditions on America’s hog farms:
Of the 60 million pigs in the United States, over 95 percent are continuously confined in metal buildings, including the almost five million sows in crates. In such setups, feed is automatically delivered to animals who are forced to urinate and defecate where they eat and sleep. Their waste festers in large pits a few feet below their hooves. Intense ammonia and hydrogen sulfide fumes from these pits fill pigs’ lungs and sensitive nostrils. No straw is provided to the animals because that would gum up the works (as it would if you tossed straw into your toilet).
In my work as an environmental lawyer, I’ve toured a dozen hog confinement operations and seen hundreds from the outside. My task was to evaluate their polluting potential, which was considerable. But what haunted me was the miserable creatures inside.
And of course, that misery breeds disease on a massive scale.
The stress, crowding and contamination inside confinement buildings foster disease, especially respiratory illnesses. In addition to toxic fumes, bacteria, yeast and molds have been recorded in swine buildings at a level more than 1,000 times higher than in normal air. To prevent disease outbreaks (and to stimulate faster growth), the hog industry adds more than 10 million pounds of antibiotics to its feed, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates. This mountain of drugs — a staggering three times more than all antibiotics used to treat human illnesses — is a grim yardstick of the wretchedness of these facilities.
She notes that “veterinarians consider pigs as smart as dogs,” and says,
Imagine keeping a dog in a tight cage or crowded pen day after day with absolutely nothing to chew on, play with or otherwise occupy its mind. Americans would universally denounce that as inhumane.
But out of sight shouldn’t be out of mind:
Because confinement buildings are far from cities and lack windows, all of this is shielded from public view. But such treatment of pigs contrasts sharply with what people say they want for farm animals. Surveys consistently find that Americans believe all animals, including those raised for food, deserve humane treatment. A 2004 survey by Ohio State University found that 81 percent of respondents felt that the well-being of livestock is as important as that of pets.
She ends the piece with a call for Congress to ban gestation crates outright, and extend anti-cruelty laws to cover farm animals. Both of these are common-sense steps that are long overdue, in my opinion.
Hat tip to my pal Jim S.
For additional reading, there’s this riveting piece from last May’s issue of Harper’s:
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300 Director Pushes Gay Panic Button
March 16th, 2007 · Film, LGBT
I wasn’t really planning to see 300 anyway, because it just looks kind of — to use a French expression — stupid. But now I’m going to really enjoy not seeing it, thanks to the Best Gay Day Ever blog on AfterElton.com, which reports that the director of this brain-dead toga party, one Zack Snyder, deliberately and consciously used homophobia to manipulate his teenage male audience:
The director says that the film’s (homo)sexual undertones were intended to make young straight males in the audience uncomfortable, because “What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?â€
That’s from a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, but apparently there was an earlier one where dear little Zack said this:
Some people have said to me, ‘Your movie is homoerotic,’ and some have said, ‘Your movie’s homophobic.’ In my mind, the movie is neither. But I don’t have a problem with people interpreting it the way they’d like to.’’
That’s right, Zack has zero problem with his movie being seen as homophobic. And who knows? With a little more application, maybe he’ll even manage to dethrone Mel Gibson as the biggest homophobic twit in Hollywood.
And as for the macho pretensions undergirding the whole business, I’m reminded of something Gore Vidal wrote in Palimpsest about the period when he was working on Ben-Hur. The film’s producers were hoping to get Gore’s good friend Paul Newman for the title role, and Gore had to burst their bubble:
I explained that after Paul’s first movie, a disastrous Roman affair called The Silver Chalice, he had sworn never to act in a cocktail dress again.
OK, yeah — technically speaking, the guys in 300 seem to be running around in capes more than togas. You tell me how that makes it better.
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Alan Simpson on Peter Pace and Alan Turing
March 15th, 2007 · LGBT, News, Politics
Surprisingly, in the furor over Gen. Peter Pace’s comment that homosexuality is “immoral,” the most effective rejoinder I’ve heard so far comes from a former Republican senator, Alan Simpson:
As a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it is critical that we review — and overturn — the ban on gay service in the military. I voted for “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But much has changed since 1993.
My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay. According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 300 language experts have been fired under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. This when even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently acknowledged the nation’s “foreign language deficit” and how much our government needs Farsi and Arabic speakers. Is there a “straight” way to translate Arabic? Is there a “gay” Farsi?
He goes on to say:
In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis’ communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay? This week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that homosexuality is “immoral” and that the ban on open service should therefore not be changed. Would Pace call Turing “immoral”?
Via Andy at Towleroad, who has more perspective on Alan Turing.
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Music: “True Colors,” Patti Smith, & The B-52’s
March 15th, 2007 · Activism, Comedy, LGBT, Music, New Wave, News
- It’s every gay boy of a certain age’s dream. The big buzz this week is the “True Colors” tour: Cyndi Lauper traveling to 15 cities this summer with Deborah Harry, Erasure, and Margaret Cho, all in support of the Human Rights Campaign. It’s like ice cream with ice cream on top.
- Patti Smith has a new album of covers coming out, called Twelve. It includes songs by Stevie Wonder, Nirvana, Neil Young, and, wait for it, Tears for Fears. Yep, Patti’s covering “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” I can’t wait to hear this:
- I could happily waste a whole day just wallowing in all the beehive-alicious B-52’s videos on YouTube. But my favorite has to be this clip of the 2’s performing “Private Idaho” back in the day. Just the set alone is so quintessentially New Wave I could it eat it with a day-glo plastic spoon. Throw in the dance moves, and Keith Strickland drumming (Keith Strickland doing anything), and I’m a total wreck. Take a gander.
“This tour is basically gonna be five hours of some of my favorite bands and me, and Margaret Cho making us laugh, and while we’re touring, we’re going to be raising awareness,” Lauper told The Associated Press on Friday. “I think people don’t know what’s going on, that’s all.”
Besides headliners like Lauper and Harry, the show will have guest artists such as Rufus Wainwright in the various cities it hits. “Every time I talk to a band, they’re like, `I want to go!'” says Lauper with a laugh.
The tour, sponsored by Logo, the MTV Networks channel targeting gay audiences, will provide information to fans who attend, as well as purple wristbands with the slogan “Erase Hate” from the Matthew Shepard organization, named for a gay youth killed in an apparent hate crime. A dollar from every ticket sold will be earmarked for the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.
Patti’s version of the TFF hit is beautiful, and the earnest ache in her voice commanded my ears to pay attention and listen to the lyrics for probably the first time since the ’80s narcotized my eardrums … So how did Patti Smith choose to cover an ’80s Britpop song? She was sitting in a café, she said, thinking about the war and the world when she heard this song come over the speakers. She said she’d never heard of Tears for Fears, but she thought, “That’s it, everybody does want to rule the world.”
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Police in My Back Yard
March 15th, 2007 · Chicago, Journal, Music, New Wave, News
There are very few circumstances in which I can imagine a lifelong sports-hating pansy like myself setting foot in Wrigley Field. But a Police concert is, well, in the ballpark. Via Gaper’s Block, it looks like The Police are coming to Wrigley Field:
Sting and the Police will headline a pair of nighttime concerts at Wrigley Field over July Fourth weekend, thanks to an ordinance advanced by a City Council committee Monday that requires the Cubs give up a night game in return. The Police won’t make it official until Wednesday, when the full Council signs off. But sources said the band has agreed to play Wrigley on July 5 and 6.
Bonus: It’s uncharitable of me I know, but I love how every time the Dave Matthews Band gets mentioned in the Chicago press, there’s always a matter-of-fact (but subtextually gleeful) reminder of the unfortunate Magic Brownies Incident.
The star of the show was originally scheduled to be the Dave Matthews Band, whose bus driver unloaded 800 pounds of human waste on a tour boat passing under the Kinzie Street bridge in 2004.
Abracadabra!
My second apartment in Chicago was just across a parking lot from Wrigley Field. (I was new in town and didn’t know any better when I signed the lease.) The lights from the night games were so bright you could read a book in my apartment without turning on any lights as long as the curtains were open. (Like I could afford curtains that year!) When I was talking to friends on the phone long distance, they’d be able to hear the Wrigley crowd cheering loudly in the background. “Is that the GAME?!” they’d ask. “Yeah, ” I’d sigh, in a voice like Eeyore staring past a graveyard. “That’s the game.”
Anyway, it might have eased the pain of that year a little if there’d been just one night when the sound of drunken baseball fans had been replaced by, say, “Can’t Stand Losing You” or “Bring on the Night.”
UPDATE: Oh, who am I kidding? I love The Police, but I hate arena shows. Wrigley Field, you’re still safe from me.
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Mistakes Were Made, 2007 Edition
March 15th, 2007 · Comedy, Media, News, Politics
It’s starting to look like we won’t have Abu Gonzales to kick around much longer — even the Republicans are beginning to pile on. Now we’re being told that even Bush is “not happy with” Gonzales, which is a little like my foot being angry at my big toe, but there it is.
This bit by Ruth Marcus in yesterday’s Washington Post really says it all:
This is a man whose memory is so foggy that George W. Bush — not exactly Mr. Detail — has a sharper recollection of their conversations than the attorney general does. The president, according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, told Gonzales that Republicans were complaining about prosecutors failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud. Gonzales doesn’t recall the conversation.
I’m sorry, is there somebody he’s paying more attention to than the president of the United States?
Ouch. The “I don’t recall” excuse has been wildly popular since Reagan used it with such great success during the Iran-Contral scandal. But it seems like the mediatrons are at long last starting to get tired of hearing it. Maybe thanks to the Libby trial it’s finally jumping the shark?
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