Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

We will not go back.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

The revolution will be supervised.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

He really is that stupid.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

T R E 4 5 O N

We still have time to mess this up!

Everybody saw this coming.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / Music / Music Open Thread – Things are looking up

Music Open Thread – Things are looking up

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Some weeks the bustle and bluster and stupid in the world and on the intertubes is just so great that it defies my attempts to joke about it. You can tell it’s one of those weeks when I break out into a rash of music, book or food threads. When in doubt, write about the things that keep you sane.

In that aim, I offer you a little song called “The Falcons”, by an Anglo-Irish gentleman (who, from this live performance, I have a sneaking suspicion may also be a nice gay gentleman – although who can tell these days?) called Patrick Wolf.

I’m grateful to Mr Wolf for giving me my go-to happy-place over the last couple of days.

Why has no one told me of his existence before? What else have you lot been keeping from me?

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    eemom

    I

    What else have you lot been keeping from me?

    I am your long-lost granddaughter.

    [[[[hugs]]]]]

    Now pony up that inheritance plz. kthxbai.

  2. 2.

    eemom

    That change.org Target ad is poking into my comment. Hmmm…….I’m beginning to understand that “don’t fuck with the commuters if you wanna change the world” attitude of a couple of threads back.

  4. 4.

    MikeJ

    @eemom: Change.org is only doing it for your own good. Sheeple like you should shut up with your petty complaints and let your betters fuck things up until they get better.

  6. 6.

    Comrade Mary

    Ahh! I encountered him, then forgot him (how could I?) so thanks for bringing him back to my attention. Wikipedia confirms that he’s gay, BTW.

    Speaking of fetching men singing live while in the presence of a violin, I see your Wolf and raise you a Bird, with what has been my theme song for quite a while now.

  10. 10.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .

    “There’s a pair of testicles somewhere between the Capitol Building and the White House that fell off the president after Election Day [2008],” said Col. Morris Davis, the Air Force colonel who spent two years as the chief prosecutor of Guantanamo military commissions, during an interview at his Washington, DC, office. “To me it seems like a third Bush term when it comes to national security.”

    Can you believe this traitor? How can he violate his Oath of Loyalty to our president so brazenly and so openly? I urge all balloonbaggers to put down their TV remotes and spring into action (“action” meaning cluck-clucking at 100% full-force ferocity on balloon-juice.com)! Code Red! Code Red! Code Red!
    .
    .

  11. 11.

    Calming Influence

    HELP: I need John’s Grandma’s or Great Aunt’s or Mamma’s rum ball recipe pronto. It used Makers Mark if I remember right.

    For a party honoring the guy that started the company I work for, who worked his ass off finding investors to keep us afloat during the financial meltdown; now taking time to be with his family while while his son recovers from injuries from a car accident.

  12. 12.

    Brian S

    I don’t know how I missed it, but thanks to the wonder of Facebook, I have discovered a song from 2008 named “Smell Yo Dick.” It’ on the youtubes. I’d link to it bu I’ve ben drinking Chardonnay straight from the bottle for a couple of hours now. Okay, I switched to Boddy’s about an hour ago, u so what.

  13. 13.

    Steeplejack

    @Sarah:

    Couple of things:

    After reading the story about the would-be White House assassin earlier today, I got to thinking about Dion’s song “Abraham, Martin and John,” in particular a stunning acoustic version he did on The Smothers Brothers Show. It keeps getting deleted from YouTube, but I was happy to see that it is up now.

    And for some reason that always leads me to the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ great spiritual “Oh, Happy Day.”

    Just connections in my mind from the old days.

  17. 17.

    burnspbesq

    @Uncle Clarence Thomas:

    Col. Davis’ assessment would be entirely correct, except for the small issue about Congress making it impossible to close Gitmo, move detainees anywhere, or conduct criminal trials in the United States District Courts.

  21. 21.

    Steeplejack

    @blackfrancis789:

    I think you’ve out-Clarenced Uncle Clarence Thomas for pithiness there. Kudos.

    ETA: Whoa, trippy. I replied to a message that suddenly disappeared. For the historical record, it was a single dot in the UCT style.

  25. 25.

    FlipYrWhig

    @burnspbesq: Well, the long and short of it is, Find A Way. You can use the LBJ Arm-Twist Power or the +2 Bully Pulpit. I hear those only fail when the president doesn’t _really_ want them to succeed.

  29. 29.

    slag

    @Uncle Clarence Thomas:

    I urge all balloonbaggers to put down their TV remotes and spring into action (“action” meaning cluck-clucking at 100% full-force ferocity on balloon-juice.com)! Code Red! Code Red! Code Red!

    Comments like these make me suspect that self-awareness has suffered irony’s sad fate.

  30. 30.

    Emma

    @Uncle Clarence Thomas: I hope he’s an ex-Colonel. Because criticizing the President while in uniform has been officially frowned upon for quite a while. And maybe the genius can ask Congress why they refused the President the money necessary to close Guantanamo and move the prisoners.

    But of course you knew that. Bad Emma, feeding the troll.

  33. 33.

    Hill Dweller

    The real issue is indefinite detention, not so much where the prisoners are housed. Moving a bunch of detainees, who will never get a trial, to a prison in the US doesn’t seem like a much better situation. It would probably save some money, but it doesn’t solve the problem.

    Remember, the Obama team wasn’t allowed to even look at the detainee files until after he was sworn in. Once they got a look at that clusterf***, and spent months combing the various agencies for evidence, they came to the conclusion the majority of detainees weren’t going to prosecuted, but were too dangerous to release.

    Gitmo was/is a legal quagmire, and the war criminals in the Bush administration walked away from it.

    Obama’s biggest hurdle was his own naivete. Signing that executive order immediately was stupid(they should have waited). Believing the Republicans would work with him was stupid. Believing anyone in his party had a backbone was foolish.

    Obama made mistakes that he could recover from in normal times, but the country was a disaster, and those mistakes might just end up being politically fatal.

    That said, he has learned some hard lessons, which would help him in a second term. Will he get that chance?

  38. 38.

    Xenos

    @Inglesh teecher: Selah Sue? I am trying to figure out why I have not heard of her before… listening to ‘ragamuffin’ on youtube, I think it got some play on RTL last summer. What do you call this genre, blue eyed reggae?

  40. 40.

    harlana

    exciting day/nite yesterday! no major violence i am aware of, i believe the police were well-prepared and determined to have no major incidents of violence. this will not continue, of course, but they were prepared for this day. enjoying the livestreams. and i cried this morning like a woman who was finally released from a psych ward after 6 years of imprisonment.

  42. 42.

    harlana

    sorry, again, random hippie shit

    i love this video (well, first off, i love the song) which, to me, is surprisingly modern in its “music video” feel for 1967. When I first watched it, I was convinced the girl was recently spliced into a video compilation that someone had recently made, partly because she has drawings on her back which could be tats today.

  46. 46.

    JPL

    @harlana: Did you see “Love Actually”? They ruined the song but it was a funny scene.
    Cain and Newt are running to insure a Romney victory.

  49. 49.

    Josie

    @Calming Influence: Here are two bourbon ball recipes I copied from the blog some time ago. I have no idea whose they are and haven’t tried either one yet.

    Bourbon Balls
    Mix 2 1/2 cups crushed vanilla wafers , 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 cup finely chopped walnuts, 2 Tbs cocoa, Mix in: 1/3 cup bourbon, 3 Tbs corn syrup. Roll mixture into 1 inch balls. Roll in sugar. Store tightly covered.

    Bourbon Balls # 2

    Here’s the recipe: 1 stick butter (room temp), 1 lb box powdered sugar, 1/2 cup Maker’s Mark bourbon, 1 C chopped pecans, 12 oz good dark chocolate, paraffin (about 1/2 of a cake), about 50-60 pecan halves.

    Soak 1C chopped pecans in 1/4 bourbon at least 4 hours (covered). Cream butter and sugar, add nuts and the other 1/4 bourbon. Cover and refrigerate until really cold (overnight is best). With gloves on, make 1” diameter balls on cookie sheets and freeze. Melt chocolate with paraffin. Using a straightened safety pin, stab pin in the top of a ball, dip, and then push off the pin using a fork, onto wax paper. Place pecan half on top.

  50. 50.

    Paul in KY

    @taylormattd: Someone needs to point out to Franco that the guy who coached you 45 years ago might not have been the same guy when the stuff was brought to his attention in late 90s.

  51. 51.

    Paul in KY

    @harlana: Wonderful song. Get a tear in my eye listening to it, because it captures the late 60s vibe so well.

    There was alot of innocence back then. You wouldn’t have thought the band that did ‘Wild Thing’ would also have done this song.

  54. 54.

    harlana

    @JPL: i didn’t know this was in a recent movie but i don’t really watch new movies very often / i’m so out of touch!

  55. 55.

    Paul in KY

    @harlana: The person who wrote that song should really feel good about that one. That’s the kind of song they put on your tombstone (that you wrote it).

  56. 56.

    Phylllis

    Came into work to find that three of our five furlough days have been restored to is via a lump sum check. New laptop already ordered, and will treat the hubby to dinner tomorrow night at our favorite restaurant. Woo hoo!

  57. 57.

    jayjaybear

    Hmmm…Patrick Wolf kind of puts me in mind of what a genetic mix between Jimmy Sommerville, Lady Gaga and the Pet Shop Boys might look and sound like. He’s damn cute, too.

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