Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

I was promised a recession.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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Reader Interactions

332Comments

  1. 1.

    cathyx

    I’ve been having a lot of those lately. And to add, I can’t type my comment without that stupid add next to me block my comment box. I know I mad some mistakes that I can’t see to fix.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    I’m halfway through Jean Edward Smith’s “FDR.” Interesting stuff. If you’ve read it, don’t tell my how it ends. :)

  4. 4.

    cathyx

    @cathyx: And I know if I sign that stupid petition to get it off my screen, I’ll get some stupid virus on my already broken computer.

    ETA: I’ve been having a bad week.

  8. 8.

    PurpleGirl

    Everybody — any of you using FireFox… Use Adblocker. And that Ad will vanish. Also Flash blocker.

    I know that I should let ads show so the blog host gets credits, whatever for the ad. But so many of the ads have Flash content which creates problems for me visually. Really. Blocking ads and flash content has saved me many times over.

  10. 10.

    cathyx

    John, I hope you’re ok. My computer won’t let me have sound so I can’t hear what you posted, but I bet it would have calmed me down. Instead, I have wine to drink.

  11. 11.

    khead

    You’d think someone would at least make the original video available on youtube. The clown gave me nightmares.

    My wife found an 8 week old cat at a storage facility.

    Guess who just got a new kitteh….

  12. 12.

    Chris Wolf

    Born in 60…I was 20-30 in the 80’s. No way I’m trashing the 80s. Skiing on mushrooms was my winter tradition.
    We didn’t watch a lot of television in those days.

  13. 13.

    cathyx

    @Baud: All I know is some guy doesn’t want to work at midnight the day after Thanksgiving(I don’t blame him) so he’s petitioning to not have to.

  16. 16.

    gogol's wife

    @cathyx:

    The ad is driving a lot of us crazy. We’re just hoping it will be gotten rid of more quickly than Pam Anderson’s monstrous arm or whatever that was.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chris Wolf: I have a friend, really, it’s not me – hallucinogens have never been my thing, who when ‘shrooming at a ski chalet had to leave and go outside because he was getting larger and didn’t want to damage the building. I have always thought that was very considerate of him.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Baud:

    I’m halfway through Jean Edward Smith’s “FDR.” Interesting stuff. If you’ve read it, don’t tell me how it ends. :)

    Uncle Joe, in the Kremlin, with an A-Bomb.

  31. 31.

    khead

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Gonna send an update to Anne to post, I think, since we brought in another stray last November and just celebrated its one year anniversary. 2 pounds of fluff, no fleas, and a clean bill of health. Woohoo!

    We just brought her home from the vet this evening. She’s the third kitteh in the House of Khead. Not sure how the other 2 girls are gonna take it…

    My wife is Snow White. Animals just love her.

  32. 32.

    burnspbesq

    @lamh35:

    It’s “lack of institutional control.” Which is what the NCAA typically uses to nail schools they don’t like. One minute it’s like SOX 404, e.g., we’re punishing you for not auditing the assistant coaches’ cell phone bills. The next minute it’s your AD is senile and asleep at the switch. Which may accurately describe Penn State.

  40. 40.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mike E: I never owned a TRS-80 but somehow I acquired the manual for one. I still have it somewhere in my stuff. My first computer was a Commodore 64, which I was given by a friend who worked for IBM.

  43. 43.

    lamh35

    @Omnes Omnibus: saw that thx :)

    My dad has that concert on VHS of all things…lol. The album from the concert was one of the things he was most happiest about still having after Katrina. I believe Frankie Beverly signed it or something.

    I’m telling ya, Frankie B & Maze are an institution…lol

  44. 44.

    gbear

    @Chris Wolf:

    In the 80’s, NOBODY worked on the day after Thanksgiving.

    In the 80’s nobody plopped down at the computer on Thanksgiving evening to shop online. It’s internet competition that has all these stores opening at midnight on friday.

  53. 53.

    piratedan

    TY JC, that was one of the two songs that were played for my spouse and I at our wedding…. I guess it was an interesting combo to have Level 42 and Roberta Flack’s “the first time, ever I saw your face” and yet it still brings tears to my eyes to this day imagining how beautiful my wife looked while we danced together to those songs. ty for the unintentional flashback, these days I need it.

  61. 61.

    Litlebritdifrnt2

    @Baud: I don’t know about anyone else but I never am. Damn if I was posting here sober I would never make any sense.

  63. 63.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @Mike E: TRS-80. Beat me to it.

    You whippersnappers, I remember my first encounter with a Visicalc spreadsheet, and the sense of joy that arose when I realized I wouldn’t have to add up columns of numbers on a calculator ever again.

    Of course, that’s when we HAD calculators. I didn’t get my first one till I was out of college. Also, too.

  64. 64.

    gbear

    @brettvk: I agree that there’s probably not much crossover, but the Walmarts and Targets looked at how much money was being spent on-line on Thanksgiving evening and decided to try to grab some of that for their stores.

  67. 67.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m sober as a judge at the moment (heh). And I am unreasonably delighted that Bootsy is now part of my network on LinkedIn. Yes perhaps I need more of a life, but still.

  68. 68.

    RossInDetroit

    @PurpleGirl:

    I know that I should let ads show so the blog host gets credits, whatever for the ad. But so many of the ads have Flash content which creates problems for me visually. Really. Blocking ads and flash content has saved me many times over.

    I thought I was the only one! Vertigo problems with motion in the peripheral field. Damn those hopping, juddering, wiggling and jitterbugging ads. I block when I have to and keep it paused otherwise.

  70. 70.

    cathyx

    Since this is an open thread, I’m gonna post this:

    A Q and A from the guy who did the bat signal in NYC:

    XJ: How did you go about finding someone nearby who would allow you stage this from inside their home?

    MR: Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There’s a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn’t say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully “there.” But then I got a call from a person who sounded pretty sane. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

    I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

    I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

    Her parting words were, “let’s do this.”

    She wouldn’t take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she’d been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

    “I can’t charge you money, this is for the people,” she said.

    She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

    She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

    “If they want to come up they’re gonna need a warrant!,” her family was saying. “If they ask us, well, we don’t know what they are talking about!” They were really brave and cool.

  77. 77.

    RossInDetroit

    @gbear:

    I agree that there’s probably not much crossover, but the Walmarts and Targets looked at how much money was being spent on-line on Thanksgiving evening and decided to try to grab some of that for their stores.

    That and also logistical problems. 500 amped up supershoppers camped on your doorstep waiting to stampede in when the door’s unlocked is a nightmare. And people have been hurt in the rush. It makes sense for some retailers to just open early and avoid the crush.

  82. 82.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: The very one. Granted, he has about 635 more connections than I do, but still. I thought it was cool that he accepted my invitation. I mentioned our connection in common, my old buddy the guitar player who had a band with Adrian in the late 80s.

  87. 87.

    MikeJ

    Back in the 80s, radio stations still had news at the top of the hour. I was at a CHR, and the new caster was a cute blonde named Angel. Guess what song got played very often at 3:57…

  90. 90.

    Poopyman

    Go ahead, trash the 80s all you want. Gettin’ born & shit in 1954 makes me a 70s kinda guy anyway. And tonight those of us caught up in the diaspora when Pittsburgh’s economy tanked in the late 70s can watch the 50-plus year old tradition of Light Up Night, which kicks off the holiday season, here – in sorta real time.

  93. 93.

    BGK

    Apropos of nothing, but…
    +6 here: a Martini, 3/4 of a bottle of Primitivo, and two Last Words. The only sad part about the last is that my Chartreuse is almost gone, and it’s ridiculously expensive.

    75 degrees and breezy, sitting on my lanai with a Scottish Fold purr-monster on my lap.

    What?

  101. 101.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not to pile on, but I saw the Police in a small local venue (~350-450 capacity) when they played those places. I thought I was pretty cool myself when I went backstage there at a Bears show years later and Adrian said “Hi Bella, how’s the law biz?” Then I realized I don’t actually like him as a person, though it could have been that he compared poorly to the rest of the band, who are all great guys.

    Enough about me, how’s your week been?

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @kideni:

    I was a high school freshman, so I completely lost my voice that night. And the next day was my very first glimpse of Being Cool since some of the popular girls hadn’t been able to get tickets. (They apparently did not possess my supernatural powers of whining until their dads agreed to take them out in a snowstorm at 6 am when the Ticketmaster at Sears opened.)

    This was the very first Smiths song I ever heard, on that British music show they ran on WXRT. I remember it being called “London Calling,” but the Google is failing me.

  123. 123.

    burnspbesq

    @lamh35:

    I’m telling ya, Frankie B & Maze are an institution…lol

    That’s true if your definition of “institution” is “a band that has been reduced to playing at Native American casinos in SoCal.”

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne

    @Poopyman:

    Sadly, I am not the mnemosyne named. We are legion on the internet, it turns out.

    It was probably one of the cooler ones who use the same nym. :-(

  129. 129.

    Linnaeus

    @Southern Beale:

    Woopsies!
    …
    Mercedes-Benz manager from Germany arrested in Alabama under state’s tough new immigration law.
    …
    Somehow the governor found out about it and called the state police for details. Hmm ….

    They’ll apologize and say they meant only to catch brown people. So sorry.

  143. 143.

    RossInDetroit

    I had an interesting conversation with an elementary school lunchroom aide today about post-Clash bands & solo records.
    We both like Big Audio Dynamite and Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros.
    And we both have entirely white hair. Getting old is weird.

  149. 149.

    burnspbesq

    @RossInDetroit:

    If I had a billion dollars, I would spend whatever it would take to get those guys back together for one night to play at a barbecue in my back yard.

  156. 156.

    RossInDetroit

    @khead:

    I always liked that tune because I could belt it out in the car on road trips. Not very well, mind you, but you don’t need a whole lot of range to sing along.

    E & the Bs’ tunes are singable because Ian’s not a tenor. Same with The Doors and very few others. Most pop music is sung by mutants with tiny throats. We mortals just can’t cover most of the range. I studied voice for 12 years & still have a hard time with Van Morrison.

  160. 160.

    burnspbesq

    The 80s were an unreal decade for bluegrass and new acoustic music. From the Skaggs & Rice duet album in 1980, to the Bluegrass Album Band, to New Grass Revival, to Tony Rice’s great work, to Ricky Skaggs making Nashville pay attention to its roots again, great solo work from Grisman, Bela Fleck and Jerry Douglas, to the emergence of Alison Krauss, to one-offs like Here Today (featuring Grisman and Vince Gill) to Strength in Numbers. I could probably keep going.

  162. 162.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I like “The Stand” myself.

    And a little number from a Wisconsin band — perhaps you’ve heard of them?

    I distinctly remember that this was the first song on side two. That’s how many times I listened to the album.

    ETA: D’oh! AWS beat me to it. (shakes fist)

    ETA #2: Though I believe I win on obscurity. Ha!

  166. 166.

    burnspbesq

    @RossInDetroit:

    It’s not from the 80s, but Edgar’s solo on “From Ankara to Izmir” on the Douglas/Barenberg/Meyer album is, IMHO, the most amazing 60 seconds of bass I’ve ever heard.

    And he just gets better. Heard “The Goat Rodeo Sessions” yet?

  168. 168.

    Mnemosyne

    @RossInDetroit:

    I saw an interesting documentary about rock music recently that pointed out that higher voices carry better in stadiums, so your really big stadium rock bands have singers with tenor voices. I can’t think of any really huge band — like Beatles or Stones or Who or U2 big — who had a baritone lead singer.

  169. 169.

    RossInDetroit

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    X’s ‘live’ album Unclogged is a great, great record. The versions of White Girl and Burning House of Love on it are absolutely transcendent.

  173. 173.

    RossInDetroit

    @Mnemosyne:

    I can’t think of any really huge band—like Beatles or Stones or Who or U2 big—who had a baritone lead singer.

    Lately, neither can I. There was Morrison, but The Doors were atypical in a lot of ways.

  174. 174.

    burnspbesq

    @RossInDetroit:

    Most pop music is sung by mutants with tiny throats.

    Getting old sucks. There was a time when I could sing Vince Gill songs in the same key he recorded them in. Now I have to transpose everything down at least a minor third.

  176. 176.

    burnspbesq

    I. Don’t. Fucking. Believe. This.

    X, Social Distortion, and the Adolescents. Friday, 12/16, Santa Monica Civic.

    Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

  178. 178.

    Mnemosyne

    Here’s an 80s bill I once saw: Mojo Nixon, the Violent Femmes, and the Pogues (when Shane MacGowan was still the lead singer).

    Actually, we missed most of Mojo Nixon because my idiot friend made us late, so all we got to hear from him was “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child.” Bastard.

  182. 182.

    Southern Beale

    LOL … anonymous racist trolling Florida newspaper comments sections turns out to be an elected Republican official … who trashed not just the people he serves but his coworkers, too

    Fellow politicians blasted Pinellas County Commissioner Norm Roche on Thursday for using a secret alter ego to zing them, straining city-county relations and the commission’s own dynamics at a crucial time.
    __
    Roche’s derogatory comments about St. Petersburg baffled Mayor Bill Foster.
    __
    “He comes from a darker place than I can even imagine,” Foster said. “And that’s kind of a window into the psyche of a county commissioner.”

    And this, my friends, is why Al Gore invented the internet…

  185. 185.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: The fucking Violent fucking Femmes are not fucking obscure. Damn it!

    @burnspbesq: Don’t tempt me. The next couple of months are going to be insane at my agency with the Walker and other recalls.

  186. 186.

    RossInDetroit

    @burnspbesq:

    X, Social Distortion, and the Adolescents. Friday, 12/16, Santa Monica Civic.

    Mike Ness is somehow younger than me but looks a generation older. That’s not fair, but then neither is my unauthorized Skelly tat.

  187. 187.

    Southern Beale

    Ah fuckit there’s a word that has my last comment embargoed and I don’t know what the offending word is. SIGH.

    You know … these settings can be CHANGED ….

    Anonymous racist trolling Florida newspaper comments sections turns out to be an elected Republican official … who trashed not just the people he serves but his coworkers, too …

    And this, my friends, is why Al Gore invented the internet…

  188. 188.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I still have the Pogues t-shirt, thankyouverymuch. I wore it for Halloween last year with a black-and-white plaid skirt, shredded hot pink tights, and a studded belt.

  190. 190.

    burnspbesq

    The Crystal Cathedral was sold to the Catholic Diocese of Orange today. Guess that means no more Christmas shows with live camels. :-(

  194. 194.

    Mnemosyne

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Actually, it’s on iTunes. That’s where I got my MP3 and it looks like you can buy it for 99 cents.

    I buy most of my MP3s from Amazon.com, but for some reason iTunes will get stuff that’s hard to find otherwise.

  196. 196.

    RossInDetroit

    I once went to a Primus show just to see the Meat Puppets open. The Meat Puppets were pissed at the crowd and just played Texas swing for 25 minutes to annoy us. I still liked it though.

  198. 198.

    Southern Beale

    Sorry folks. That last comment is because I’ve tried FOUR times to post a link to a newspaper story and there’s some word in there that’s embargoed. I give up. You’ll just never know.

    I’m outta here. I hate stupid shit.

  199. 199.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @arguingwithsignposts: That is hard to beat. Although, my guess is that Shane has stolen lots of hats and also is it really stealing if he didn’t know he did it? The man is a feckin’ genius though.

  202. 202.

    Mnemosyne

    I feel I’m among friends here, so I can safely say that, though I never saw them in concert, I still love the Boomtown Rats. I even read Bob Geldof’s autobiography (it was pretty good).

  206. 206.

    RossInDetroit

    @Mnemosyne:

    I still love the Boomtown Rats.

    We played the hell out of The Fine Art of Surfacing and I think it still stands up well. Especially on Mondays.

  207. 207.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: I never did dress the part for concerts. This, of course, is how, after wandering the backs streets of Soho dressed like posh gits while looking for the club in which the Femmes were playing, a friend and I were almost beaten silly by a group of punks, who on discovering we were Yanks – not Sloane Rangers, were on our way to the same club they were, and had seen the Femmes several times before were adopted for the evening. It was epic. The punks kept having to explain us to new people. One of my best nights in London.

  215. 215.

    burnspbesq

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    The definitive recording of “Pancho & Lefty” is on “Luxury Liner,” which was released in 1976. Still a great song, but I’m trying to play by Cole’s rules and stay in the 80s.

  216. 216.

    kideni

    @Omnes Omnibus: Definitely. I’ve never found a station with as broad a selection of tunes (a bit too much Rolling Stones for my taste, but that’s my only quibble [don’t hate me: the early Stones is fine, but XRT seems to think they can do no wrong]).

  221. 221.

    RossInDetroit

    @Mnemosyne:

    Bzzt. They’re Kiwis.

    Yeah, I spotted that too late to edit.

    I like that Hoodoo Gurus track.

    BTW, if someone posts Men at Work, I’m out. Just sayin’

  228. 228.

    Mnemosyne

    @kideni:

    XRT is a lot less eclectic than they used to be (they used to go from a Smiths song to Johnny Adams and back again) but they’re still better than 90 percent of what’s out there.

  232. 232.

    kideni

    Undead undead undead undead. Peter Murphy will bring the baritone for you.

    My best ’80s concert: The Smiths with Billy Bragg as the opening act.

  248. 248.

    Steeplejack

    Night shift checking in. Just got home from work. We had the first of our holiday season school “book fairs” at the store, which basically means inattentive parents clogging the aisles and yakking with one another while their children run amok and tear the store apart. Good times.

    Haven’t started reading the thread yet, but here’s my all-time favorite ’80s song to get me started: Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” (Awesomely great video, too.)

  262. 262.

    FlipYrWhig

    OK, I didn’t even try to follow all the links, but from what I’m gathering, y’all are being way too alternative. If the mission is ’80s TRASH, it begins and ends with…

    Van Stephenson, Modern Day Delilah.

  263. 263.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    What’s wrong with that song?! It wasn’t “Summer of ’69,” for God’s sake. And, no, I will not link to that. But I will do “Cuts Like a Knife.”

    Whoa, did you see the part where that totally hot chick dived into the empty swimming pool, but she came up wet, but like it still didn’t have any water in it? I was trippin’ balls, man.

    Maybe we need some John Mellen Cougarcamp to mellow us out.

  268. 268.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Omnes Omnibus: “Modern Day Delilah” was, in my memory at least, an MTV staple… during that era when every other video seemed to be by Rod Stewart. Must have been ’83. It’s like a dogpile of every cliche from the early days of music vids.

  275. 275.

    Mnemosyne

    Here’s another early MTV staple: “Temporary Beauty”

    I would post “Electric Avenue,” but MTV played that one so many times that I almost stuck red-hot knitting needles in my ears to stop the pain.

  282. 282.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: Graham Parker is is a fucking genius. Squeezing Out Sparks is an almost perfect album. He could have recorded only that and he would deserve to be called brilliant.

  283. 283.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Omnes Omnibus: Unprompted by any theme suggestion or notion of guilty pleasure, I was listening to Yaz’s “Don’t Go” in my office at full blast earlier today. Then it turned out to be too hard to concentrate on writing. Which I need to go back to doing now, alas…

  285. 285.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Mnemosyne: The thing I like about that song is that Andy Partridge says “All the world is football-shaped.” And, because it’s English, I guess that just means “round.”

  298. 298.

    Mister Papercut

    Oh Cole, please tell me you’re not saying you think one of my favorite songs ever is “trash 80’s.” For a 26 year-old one hit wonder, it still holds up IMO.

  305. 305.

    Steeplejack

    Did everybody go upstairs to Cole’s new thread? Crikey.

    Okay, this is totally ’70s–early ’70s, even–but I love this song, and I was always pissed that it never got any recognition: Dwight Twilley Band, “I’m on Fire.” 1:45:

    I remember the feeling that I could be free
    Now I know it could never, ever be me

  321. 321.

    RossInDetroit

    It’s morning and I woke up with That Song in my head. If it’s still there after I listen to Too High to Die I won’t be responsible for what happens next…
    @Omnes Omnibus:

  322. 322.

    Spike

    “Trash 80s”? As Col. Jessup asked regarding the phrase “grave danger”: “Is there another kind?”

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