1. I’m Your Man (Wham cover)
2. I’m Still Standing (Elton John cover)
3. Keep Shredding, Pam
4. Can I Redact Entire File Entries?
5. To All The Girls I Don’t Want You To Know About
6. When I Said Piggy, I Was Referring To Myself
7. Drones Over Venezuela
8. They Prefer Zohran To Me
9. Islands In The Stream (trio with Steve Bannon and Michael Wolff)
From the Murdoch London Times Facebook page, here’s a description of a carefully staged contrivance
Russell Brand, who faces charges of rape and sexual assault, claimed to have found God after he was baptised by Bear Grylls in the River Thames.
Now, Brand claims to have baptised people in the waters of a penguin pool at a Christian zoo in Florida.
I was accepted as a local poet for awhile—got into a few anthologies, sold a few self-published chapbooks and was a loyal follower of certain prominent poetry hosts, whether or not they reciprocated my desire to be a good member of what was and is known as “the poetry community.” Then someone wrote a screed titled STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT POETRY; he strongly advocated for a literary community scouring away the idiosyncrasies of musicians, comedians and what he considered amateur writers not meeting his high standards. Then, a great fear took residence inside of me; even though Mr. Straight Talk wasn’t validated by local poetry, people took his words seriously. And, in a passionate panic, I spent time on Yahoo poetry groups saying that the community needed to be a big tent and not an exclusive club. Sometimes I would publicly with poets who embraced exclusivity; other times, I’d communicate back channel with people who were partially empathetic but believed in literary finery and conscious craftsmanship; they strived for acceptance by their betters, received it and weren’t about to jeopardize their standing.
Here’s the overlap with A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS: Charlie Brown spent part of the running time of the holiday classic bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas while his friends rock out to a Vince Guaraldi tune in the elementary school auditorium, with Schroeder playing distinct non-Beethoven riffs and Snoopy strumming the dog-sized equivalent of a Stratocaster.
Now, imagine me complaining about a higher bar for features (less time to develop people showing promise at open readings), rudeness and dubious behavior/judgment from Highly Regarded People (hosts included)—and the poets turn their eyes and ears to people Published by certain regional and national presses and, perhaps spent time and money achieving MFA degrees (and the people who cannot afford these seeking solace in prestigious workshops learning to write to conceptual prompts or shape true-life anecdotes into something that may at least get a polite rejection letter from THE NEW YORKER).
They’re not rocking out like beloved Peanuts characters happy to ignore Charlie Btown.
Instead, valued time is consumed by listening to meticulously arranged chamber music.
Wherever Mr. Straight Talk is now, he’s probably thrilled to have played a decisive role in creating an environment making clear who/what acceptable, plus showing a door to those less talented souls so they can quickly and quietly exit august venues uninterested in whatever they choose to offer.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor
Eternal Royal Child
No Tower of London for him
No Wormwood Scrubs for him
No Renouncing Jeffrey Epstein for him
No Leaving Great Britain for him
Just Luxury Exile in Sandringham
>
At Least Buckingham Palace Mentioned the Survivors
No, it’s not the one for Taylor Swift’s THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL (which I streamed most of), written by Taylor superfan Maya Georgi. Not linking to it here, but the tone is essentially Taylor Swift is the greatest and I love everything of hers forever and always.
Here’s schmitt, from his list of 500 worst ROLLING STONE album reviews, discussing Parke Puterbaugh’s enthusiastic overvaluation of The Who’s underwhelming (Roger Daltrey famously disliked it) 1982 album IT’S HARD, which, apparently, Jann Wenner must have determined unpannable since The Who were in the midst of what was envisioned as their this-is-it farewell tour:
Rating: 5 Stars
"It figures. Just when the Who had ceased to matter much – the band members having channeled a lot of their power and volatility and commitment into solo careers, employing the Who chiefly as a vehicle to take a greatest-hits revue on the road – it figures that they'd make their most vital and coherent album since Who's Next. It's fitting that It's Hard is a great record because, given the inverted world of Pete Townshend's mind, it's what you were least expecting." (Parke Puterbaugh, 9/30/82 Review)
The Who formed in London in 1964. The band featured Pete Townshend on guitar, Roger Daltrey on vocals, John Entwistle on bass, and Keith Moon on drums. For the next fourteen years, this lineup didn't change.
The band was notorious for their raucous behavior and in-fighting that was even rumored to have become physical at times. Yet each of the four members were insistent that if any of them were to leave the group, the Who would cease to exist. "I don't think it would carry on," Keith Moon told Melody Maker's Chris Charlesworth in the 4/22/72 issue. "It would naturally fall apart."
Pete Townshend, the Who's principal songwriter, agreed. "[W]e're lucky to be together today, to be the same four blokes we always were," he remarked to Dave Schulps in the April '78 issue of Trouser Press. "Because when you've known and worked with four people for 15 years, in the end you've got a power no one else can get unless they wait 15 years."
Yet to many observers, by 1978 Townshend's famous adage "hope I die before I get old" was really beginning to seem like an albatross for the group. Townshend himself announced upon the release of the band's eighth album, Who Are You, that he was done touring with the Who. "[T]he Who now seem to consider themselves tired and old," Ira Robbins observed in a 1978 issue of Crawdaddy!. "Who Are You is a tired and old album, one that scarcely does them justice."
On September 7, 1978, Keith Moon died from an overdose of Hemineverin, a drug prescribed to him to treat symptoms associated with alcohol withdrawal. He was thirty-two years old.
One might have thought that this event would have been the impetus for the Who to finally disband after years of decline, but oddly enough, it had precisely the opposite effect. Indeed, Townshend now professed a renewed interest in the Who. "Ironically, Keith's passing was a positive thing," he told Chris Welch in a 1/27/79 interview with Melody Maker. "I feel now there is a tremendous open door and I feel very excited about the fact the Who is a well-established band with a tremendous history, but suddenly we're in the middle of nowhere – a new band. I'm really excited about it."
Towshend later described his reaction to Moon's death as "immediate and completely irrational, bordering on insane" in his 2012 autobiography, Who I Am. Roger Daltrey concurred in a 1994 interview with Goldmine. "Keith was such an extraordinary drummer, to try and replace him was just ridiculous," he said.
If Moon's passing had briefly rejuvenated Townshend's flagging interest in the band, the effect seems to have largely dissipated by their next LP, 1981's Face Dances. By this time, Townshend seemed destined to follow Moon to an early grave, having descended into an abyss of alcoholism and drug addiction. Townshend was in rehab when the band started work on their tenth album, It's Hard. "In my absence, The Who had started recording at Glyn Johns's new studio in the country, with Andy Fairweather Low standing in on guitar," Townshend recalled in his autobiography. "I felt pressure to jump off the plane from rehab and join them directly, [but] it wasn't until 3 March that I drove down to meet everyone."
"Much had been said in the press about what I had or hadn't delivered to The Who as its major songwriter, but I wanted a brief from them, some guidance," he continued. "My head was empty."
The guidance Townshend sought was not forthcoming. Daltrey and Kenney Jones, Moon's replacement, advised they wanted to perform songs about "the important issues of the day", an idea Townshend dismissed as crazy. It is little surprise, then, that the results of these sessions were nothing short of disastrous. Roger Daltrey, in particular, was unsatisfied with the album. "When Roger heard the final mixes he wanted to hold it back, because to his ear it didn't really feel finished," Townshend said. "But with the tour closing in on us we were running out of time, and I persuaded him to let it stand."
Townshend made the rounds upon the record's release, assuring the press that the band had been completely revitalized in the process of making It's Hard. "Recording has rejuventated us," he told Chris Salewicz in the November '82 issue of Creem. "Not so much in musical terms, but in the sense of standing together and saying that we're prepared to actually change the way that we live, and the way that we operate, if it will make a difference. The new Who songs are violently aggressive, the most aggressive stuff we've ever come up with. The songs that I've written are totally preoccupied with the danger and tension of living in the 80's. And that is the common attitude and stance that the band has."
"It’s Hard should never have been released," Daltrey retorted in 1994. "Pete had just come off detox and he was really looking for help. We did It’s Hard in the studio and the band was rehearsing before Pete got out of the clinic just to try and keep a vibe up, to try and support Pete. But when the album was finished and I heard it I said, 'Pete, this is just a complete piece of shit and it should never come out!'"
"I hated it," he continued. "I still hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it!"
Mick Farren panned this album in his October '82 review for The Village Voice. "Townshend's alternating need to know (remember 'The Seeker') and need to confess, Entwistle's seeming distaste for all the trappings of stardom, and the general erosion of age seems to have produced a standardized late-model Who song that's long, wordy, medium-paced, based on an over-extended guitar or synthesizer figure, and lacking in both hooks and genuine power," he wrote. "I fear that It's Hard – and it's a terrible thing to find yourself saying about the Who – sounds like an album that was made because it had to be, with little to offer bar sluggish, warmed-over riffs and midlife angst."
Meanwhile, Parke Puterbaugh gave the album a five-star "classic" rating in Rolling Stone, describing it as the band's best effort in more than a decade.
In later years, many critics were unsparing in their assessment of It's Hard, which was widely regarded as an unmitigated failure. "This record should never have been released," Steven Rosen wrote in 2007, echoing Daltrey. "It is ur-Who, a particularly nasty strain of music that bears only a marginal similarity to the original band. And if money had never been a part of the equation before this, it did pose its ugly snout here. The album represented one of three records contracted to the Warner Bros. label. Everything that plagued Face Dances infects this one: poor production, half-hearted performances, and sickly songs. Townshend had been hoarding all the notable tracks for his own interests, and thus, his own solo records of the time are far better representations of the recorded works."
Mark Kemp rated It's Hard two-and-a-half stars in the fourth edition of the album guide: "by the time of the aptly named It's Hard, the Who had lost all inspiration."
From The Old Testment:
Leviticus Chapter 19 Verse 4:
Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves. I am the LORD your God.
From THE GUARDIAN
Secretary of state Marco Rubio was the next speaker, following suit from previous speakers and comparing Charlie Kirk to historical figures including Jesus
Pete Hegseth:
You see, we always did need less government. But what, Charlie understood and infused into his movement, is we also needed a lot more God… On this Sunday morning, I’d like to think we’re all in Charlie’s church.
J.D. Vance:
“My friends, for Charlie, we must remember that he is a hero to the United States of America, and he is a martyr for the Christian faith. May our heavenly father give us the courage to live as Charlie lived. That is what we must do. For Charlie, you ran a good race, my friend. I love you. We’ve got it from here. Thank you.”
Marco Rubio:
“God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us, and he suffered like men, and he died like a man, but on the third day, he rose unlike any mortal man, and then, and to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds… And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love.”
Tulsi Gabbard:
“Charlie, he chose our schools as his arena because he knows that they are meant to teach, to train our young people to think critically, to debate ideas, to test their strength through a clash of reason. But too often, these schools silence debate, saying words are violence and dissenting voices are hush and those who speak of God, those who speak the truth, simple, objective truths like there are only two genders in these schools, they are told you have no voice.”
after 30 days in and out of hospital
getting to briefly know doctors, nurses and custodians
I come home and feel beatific
trying to love just about everyone
taking my medication regardless of aftertaste
gathering strength
becoming a day person instead of night owl
hoping to re-engage with the outside world
for as long as possible
Don’t want to have a gag in my mouth placed by the Donald Trump administration dur to dissenting speech. I believe in expressing opinions whether it's left or right, and nobody should die for dissenting speech. Nobody should die for thoughtless, hate-stoking or overheated speech. I believe that people should be able to debate thoughtfully and not be treated like pariahs. I believe in speech that doesn't have ball gags over the mouth and passports and visas taken away. I believe people should take very deep breaths and tell themselves: Well, it's that person being that person, and there's no reason to maim or kill that person over what that person says.
