BY WILLIAM C. HENRY So it will be if the President and the Senate capitulate to the right wing Republican terrorists holding the House of Representatives hostage in their crusade to destroy the current American Presidency. Never before in our history has a radical political faction shown itself to be more gutless, duplicitous or traitorous. Let me repeat that: Never before in our history has the nation and its Presidency been forced to endure a more cowardly, deceitful or subversive reactionary political coterie. Or a more racist one. Period. Exaggerated? Hardly. What we are witnessing is an attempt by […]
BEING THERE: Two Door Cinema Club @ The Tower
Photo by ALEXANDER BISIGNARO I’m never sure what to expect at a show when the band performing is still in its proverbial “early years.” Are they only going to play material from their successful debut album? Will the venue be crowded or awkwardly empty? How many songs am I going to actually recognize? These are the questions I was asking myself as I walked through the doors of Tower Theatre last night to see Two Door Cinema Club kick start their latest U.S. tour. After releasing Tourist History in 2010 and following it up with Beacon in 2012, Two Door […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Real Reason Why The Affordable Care Act Scares The Tea Party Shitless
WBUR: Of course, there are ways to eliminate a law you don’t like in this country. You can gather the votes to repeal it, for instance, or challenge it in court. Conservatives have failed at both approaches. So they are now in the “shut down the government” phase. If you’re like Ted Cruz, someone whose credibility depends on vilifying this law, the signs are not good. If you step back from the situation for a sec, it’s a pretty brazen precedent. What’s next on the conservative repeal-or-we’ll-shut-the-government-down list: the New Deal? Civil Rights? Freeing the slaves? But here’s the thing […]
Win Tix To See The Flaming Lips & Tame Impala!
We are off to see the wizard tomorrow night at the Festival Pier, the wonderful Wizard of Odd, or, if you prefer, the Wizard of OK, aka Wayne Coyne, frizzy-brained mainman of the Flaming Lips, The P.T. Barnum Of The Stoned, aka The Man Who Had A Headache And Accidentally Saved The World. Why? Because, because, because of the wonderful things he does, of course. The balloons. The confetti. The blood. The boobies. The strobes and the smoke and the bunny costumes and the dancing Santas. The blood. The crowd-surfing bubblewalking. The giant hands that shoot laser beams. The […]
SPOOKY: The Mysterious Solway Firth Spaceman
RATIONAL WIKI: On May 23, 1964, Cumbria resident Templeton took his wife and two daughters on an outing to scenic Burgh Marsh. While there, he snapped some family photos using his late 1950s model Zeiss Contax “Pentacon F” SLR camera. Templeton claimed that when the photos were developed, the local developer remarked that one contained a very mysterious background figure that appeared to be wearing a space suit. Templeton swore he didn’t see any such thing when the photograph was taken. He also swore he and his family were alone on the marsh that day. Gossip of the strange […]
ARTSY: Banksy Takes Manhattan
RELATED: Celebrated career criminal Banksy has apparently begun a monthlong residency in New York City as part of an exhibition his website is calling Better Out Than In, ”an entire show on the streets of New York.” Though the title makes reference to a work that surfaced last week in Los Angeles, the show’s first piece, pictured above, appeared today in Chinatown next to a stenciled toll-free line: 1-800-656-4271. When dialed, an automated service offers commentary on the piece in a soothingly parodic museum audioguide monotone. MORE
WORTH REPEATING: God Save The Queen
WASHINGTON POST: The United States’ self-imposed federal government shutdown has a way of making people around the world shake their heads in bewilderment. As Georgetown professor Erik Voeten wrote for The Washington Post’s new Monkey Cage political science blog, “I cannot think of a single foreign analogy to what is happening in the U.S. today.” But there actually is one foreign precedent: Australia did this once. In 1975, the Australian government shut down because the legislature had failed to fund it, deadlocked by a budgetary squabble. It looked a lot like the U.S. shutdown of today, or the 17 […]
Obamacare Vs. Affordable Care Act
And the winner is…American cluelessness.
SHUTDOWN: GOP Teatards Unring The Liberty Bell
NEWSWORKS: Tourists from around the world are being turned away today from the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and other historic sites in Philadelphia since Independence National Historical Park was closed as part of the federal government’s shutdown. Only federal services deemed “essential” were protected from the midnight shutdown. Retired engineer Darrell Jahn flew to the city from Minnesota to check out the Independence National Historical Park. Now he’s packing up his bags and taking his tourist dollars to Virginia. “It’s sad. That’s all you can say,” he said. “Nobody wants to give, and so they shut it down. I […]
TAME IMPALA: Feels Like We Always Go Backwards
TAME IMPALA & FLAMING LIPS PLAY THE FESTIVAL PIER ON THURSDAY RELATED: Kevin Parker, the one-man-band psych-rock wunderkind who records under the name Tame Impala, lives across the street from a professional magician (and sword swallower) in a quaint cul-de-sac of houses ringed with lemon trees in Freemantle, a charming seaside town of 25,000 in Western Australia. He shares a granny flat with Melody Prochet, his beautiful and cool French girlfriend, who is the singer/songwriter behind Melody’s Echo Chamber, which is also cool and beautiful and French. His possessions are few: a navy blue hooded peacoat with toggle buttons, a […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR Before Chris Matthews grilled politicians and their surrogates on his MSNBC show Hardball, he was a top aide to House Speaker Tip O’Neill, advising him on how to deal with the press. Now Matthews has written a new book drawing on those experiences, called Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. It’s a look at how Speaker O’Neill and President Reagan managed to work together and reach compromise in spite of the fact that they disagreed not only on policy, but also on the role of government. Matthews compares that to the current era — a moment defined […]
WORTH REPEATING: Sound Familiar?
“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language…In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then […]
BEING THERE: Jimmy Cliff @ The Keswick
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Last night, reggae legend and Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer Jimmy Cliff and his merry six piece band filled the Keswick Theatre in support of 2012’s aptly-titled Rebirth, his first proper album in more than a decade. Opening with “Bongo Man” and segueing into “Rivers Of Bablyon, Cliff and his band proceeded to deliver, a 23-song testament to his career sequenced in chronological order. With a newsboy cap pulled down over his eyes and his guitar slung upside down and left handed, Cliff appeared younger than his 65 years. He strutted and danced joyously like […]