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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open thread

Open thread

by DougJ|  February 18, 201412:15 pm| 49 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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They don’t write ’em like this anymore.

From the highly recommended 2013 Oxford American Music Sampler.

Talk about whatever.

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Previous Post: « Speak in the Past Tense and Talk About the Weather
Next Post: Wise men say »

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    NotMax

    February 18, 2014 at 12:27 pm

    They don’t write ‘em like this anymore.

    On the front page, that’s a Shakira video posted not quite 3 weeks ago.

    On the comments page, it is another video entirely.

    At least, that’s what’s there on my view.

    Common occurrence at BJ with YouTube vids (for me, anyway), but thought I’d mention it again.

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    February 18, 2014 at 12:27 pm

    Thank you for reminding me about the music samplers. Public service, and all.

  3. 3.

    DougJ

    February 18, 2014 at 12:28 pm

    @NotMax:

    I have the same problem too, not sure what’s going on.

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    February 18, 2014 at 12:31 pm

    That issue of OA has some amazing articles about the history of music in the US. It will probably even convince you that Tennessee is (or was) a great place.

    Highly recommended reading and listening.

    http://www.oxfordamerican.org/

  5. 5.

    Violet

    February 18, 2014 at 12:32 pm

    @NotMax: That used to happen to me over at Andrew Sullivan’s place when he was at the Atlantic. Would drive me crazy. I’d have to reload the page a bunch of times to get the video I wanted to watch. I don’t have that problem here. Windows machine, Firefox.

  6. 6.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    February 18, 2014 at 12:36 pm

    Coming to you from the Pacific Surfliner — brother in law and I are headed up to Ventura for the day. Amtrak wi-fi is insanely slow, but at least it’s free!

  7. 7.

    Dee Loralei

    February 18, 2014 at 12:37 pm

    I highly recommend The Oxford American as an absolutely well written magazine. Yes, it’s mostly about the South, but my god some of their long pieces are amazing. And every year they do a music issue and if you’re a subscriber you get a CD of well over 30 songs, most of them great, most of them by lesser known local artists, or by well known artists lesser known songs. And they sample music from pretty much every era.

    I can’t recommend the magazine or their music section enough. Been a subscriber since their second or third year of publication.

  8. 8.

    EconWatcher

    February 18, 2014 at 12:41 pm

    My wife generally doesn’t like classic films (except for Casablanca and, more oddly, It’s a Wonderful Life). So I’m left sneaking them as if they’re blue movies when she’s asleep and I’m up.

    I watched Gilda last night. All I gotta say is, holy smokes. There has never, ever been a hotter actress than Rita Hayworth. And if you say differently, you’re wrong.

  9. 9.

    ranchandsyrup

    February 18, 2014 at 12:41 pm

    NC Governor McCrory hears it from a worker while grocery shopping. Gets that worker fired.

  10. 10.

    burnspbesq

    February 18, 2014 at 12:46 pm

    Uh uh ah ah ah ah ah ah.

    Thread needs more Greg Kihn.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8ePSJ44Fiw

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    February 18, 2014 at 12:46 pm

    @EconWatcher:

    Hayworth’s career was made with that movie, but she was always a little rueful about how iconic the role was, because, “Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me.”

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    February 18, 2014 at 12:53 pm

    @EconWatcher

    If “Put the Blame On Mame” doesn’t quicken one’s pulse rate, nothing will.

  13. 13.

    Glocksman

    February 18, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    @ranchandsyrup:

    I didn’t write this, but it sums up my feelings perfectly.

    From the TPM comments:

    From a strictly academic standpoint, sounds like the grocer has cause to fire the guy, for disrespecting a customer.

    But that customer wasn’t a garden-variety customer. He was the embattled Governor of the state, seeking to use the interaction for political theatre. When it didn’t go the way the Governor wanted it to, the Governor proved himself a WATB for getting his widdle fee-fees hurt and complaining to the manager, transforming a personal political disagreement into a workplace-performance issue.

    I can’t imagine Obama, the Clintons, or even some Republicans such as former Indiana Governor Bob Orr bitching about being ‘disrespected’ over politics.

    I can see Chris Christie storming into the manager’s office, though.

  14. 14.

    Elizabelle

    February 18, 2014 at 12:56 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):

    Pacific Surfliner to Ventura!

    You lucky puppies.

  15. 15.

    srv

    February 18, 2014 at 12:58 pm

    FoxNews World-Net-Daily EXCLUSIVE! Former campaign volunteer says Hitlery singlehandily instigated all of the investigations/smearing of the bimbo eruptions.

    “Hillary Clinton is the war on women, and that’s what needs to be exposed here,”

    What is it called when you think you’re trying to use triangulation from the Single-Dimension Wingularity?

  16. 16.

    ranchandsyrup

    February 18, 2014 at 12:59 pm

    @Glocksman: Yup. Spot on.

    Horrible optics to take away a man’s livelihood. Also, too and as well, if the guv had a (D) after his name, there would be some garment rending about ZOMG 1st amendment! The worker took it pretty well.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    February 18, 2014 at 1:01 pm

    @Glocksman: If the President reacted this way, Fox news would be all over it.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    February 18, 2014 at 1:02 pm

    @Mnemosyne

    Orson Welles waxes floridly complimentary on Rita Hayworth in his last TV appearance (topic begins about 3:15 in).

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    February 18, 2014 at 1:02 pm

    @ranchandsyrup:
    @Glocksman:

    Yes, McCrory is an asshat, but how can the store owner allow employees to treat customers like that? I think I would have suspended the employee for a week, and apologized to the governor/asshat customer.

    Message sent that this shop respects civility, even to corrupt one-term governors.

    And McCrory’s staff pointing out the employee wanted to burn the governor in effigy, making that into a “physical threat”?

    Isn’t that an own goal? I’d laugh my ass off if I was a North Carolinian. Don’t think of an elephant!

    Class. This governor don’t got it.

  20. 20.

    currants

    February 18, 2014 at 1:03 pm

    @DougJ: refresh browser? I mean, close it out entirely and start anew? I’m not having that problem, but when I have (and I have), it’s worked.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    February 18, 2014 at 1:03 pm

    @NotMax

    Whoops, forgot the link.

  22. 22.

    ranchandsyrup

    February 18, 2014 at 1:07 pm

    @Elizabelle: I completely see your point re: the store manager.
    As always, IOKIYAR to not take the high road but demand that others take it.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    February 18, 2014 at 1:10 pm

    @NotMax:

    Amtrak won’t let me stream videos. :-( But it does seem that, to the extent that any woman could be, Hayworth was the love of Welles’ life. But both of their insecurities ran too deep for the marriage to work out. (Plus there was Hayworth’s deep dark secret of having been sexually abused by her father, which wasn’t something that psychiatrists or psychologists of the time were equipped to treat.)

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    February 18, 2014 at 1:11 pm

    @ranchandsyrup:

    From the Charlotte Observer:

    The governor’s office initially declined to comment on the story. On Monday night, McCrory’s communications director Joshua Ellis told the Observer that Swope had also made an obscene gesture to the governor during the conversation.

    Swope denied that earlier Monday. “I wasn’t raised that way,” he said.

    Ellis also said McCrory didn’t yell at Swope or ask or suggest that he be fired.

    And Ellis said that Swope has said “things about physically harming the governor as well.”

    He said he was referring to a January Facebook page about a planned protest for a McCrory visit to Statesville in February. On the page, some commenters said that they should burn an effigy of the governor. One commenter wrote they could “kick (the effigy) around,” to which Swope replied, “square in the” (groin).

    Swope could not immediately be reached for reaction to the effigy comment.

    …Last year, at attorney Bill Diehl’s 69th birthday party at the Fillmore at the N.C. Music Factory, McCrory was booed. He also heard boos at a concert last summer at the Bechtler Museum when he was introduced.

    Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/17/3631042/after-comment-to-governor-mccrory.html#storylink=cpy

    And under McCrory’s picture: link to this story:

    Early – really early – poll finds NC governor’s race a toss-up

  25. 25.

    DougJ

    February 18, 2014 at 1:12 pm

    @currants:

    Thanks.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    February 18, 2014 at 1:12 pm

    @ranchandsyrup:
    McCrory didn’t have to do that, even if he was within his rights to complain. It smacks of the arrogant big man smacking a little guy around.

  27. 27.

    Violet

    February 18, 2014 at 1:13 pm

    @Elizabelle: Yeah, I agree. The guy posts on some Facebook group and his contribution is saying they should kick the effigy of the Governor in the nuts:

    And Ellis said that Swope has said “things about physically harming the governor as well.”

    He said he was referring to a January Facebook page about a planned protest for a McCrory visit to Statesville in February. On the page, some commenters said that they should burn an effigy of the governor. One commenter wrote they could “kick (the effigy) around,” to which Swope replied, “square in the” (groin).

    Swope could not immediately be reached for reaction to the effigy comment.

    A Facebook comment. About kicking an effigy in the nuts. Yep, that’s threatening personal bodily harm to the Governor himself if I’ve ever seen it. Good lord, can you see this Governor’s veins and internal organs through his thin skin?

  28. 28.

    Elizabelle

    February 18, 2014 at 1:17 pm

    @Violet:

    I can see the Koch Brothers and Art Pope dollars in his pocket.

    Otherwise, not too interested in the contents of this governor’s trousers.

    Will leave that for tarheel state residents.

  29. 29.

    ruemara

    February 18, 2014 at 1:20 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): it was crazy unstable, for me. Have a great trip.

  30. 30.

    Paul in KY

    February 18, 2014 at 1:34 pm

    @EconWatcher: Merle Oberon was pretty damn hot.

  31. 31.

    schrodinger's cat

    February 18, 2014 at 1:35 pm

    More snow predicted this afternoon, Ceiling Cat, please make it stop.

  32. 32.

    Ben Cisco

    February 18, 2014 at 1:40 pm

    @Glocksman: It’s not enough for them to be assholes, they have to be WORSHIPPED for it.

    Contrast this episode with what President Obama has been subjected to.

    Now substitute PBO for McCrory and imagine the firestorm that would have erupted when the worker bee got FIRED for…

    (snerk)

    Sorry, I just can’t say that with a straight face.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    February 18, 2014 at 1:40 pm

    @ruemara:

    It seems to work best when we stop at the stations. Out on the track, not so well.

    Funniest conversation overheard so far, the conductor to a couple of limited-English young women traveling together: “Are you asking for the restaurant or the restroom? Restaurant or restroom? (Sigh.) Okay, to eat or to poop?”

    (They just came back with food, so I assume they found the right place.)

  34. 34.

    catclub

    February 18, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: But that kitty looks so happy and well equipped
    for snowy weather.

  35. 35.

    schrodinger's cat

    February 18, 2014 at 1:48 pm

    @catclub: Most kittehs no wants to get wet, or may be he is a Viking Cat

  36. 36.

    shelly

    February 18, 2014 at 1:51 pm

    Read Cole’s late night post on a diabetic diet ( and preventing it).
    I’m just curious though. Banning pasta, all breads. Aren’t they part of the so-called Mediteranian Diet? Italians have pasta with almost every meal, and no Frenchmen would be without his baguette. And the Chinese and Japanese have white rice with every meal, but we don’t hear abou† diabetic and obesity epidemics over there. So I always wonder about demonizing individual foods. Processed and fast food, yes.

  37. 37.

    shortstop

    February 18, 2014 at 1:57 pm

    I love the annual OA music sampler. Have missed a couple of years here and there, though.

  38. 38.

    Southern Beale

    February 18, 2014 at 1:57 pm

    This cracked me up. The Bill of Rights For Dumbasses.

  39. 39.

    schrodinger's cat

    February 18, 2014 at 1:58 pm

    @shelly: Gluten free is the magic incantation these days, although AFAIK rice has no gluten. Atkins+Gluten free then we live forever, or something.

  40. 40.

    Yatsuno

    February 18, 2014 at 2:06 pm

    In Other News, Newton Leroy has been hitting the Oompa-Loompa’s whiskey again.

    @schrodinger’s cat: Floofy Norwegian Forest Cat iz Floofy!

  41. 41.

    Trollhattan

    February 18, 2014 at 2:14 pm

    Don’t know whether this has been mentioned already, but NY Mag’s Kevin Roose crashed a secret Wall Street fraternity party and verified they’re the very out-of-touch paranoid douchnozzles we always presumed. While this is the equivalent of “water discovered to be wet” it makes me suspect things are actually worse than I’d imagined.

    It was a secret fraternity, founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, that functioned as a sort of one-percenter’s Friars Club. Each year, the group’s dinner features comedy skits, musical acts in drag, and off-color jokes, and its group’s privacy mantra is “What happens at the St. Regis stays at the St. Regis.” For eight decades, it worked. No outsider in living memory had witnessed the entire proceedings firsthand.
    …
    The last thought I had, and the saddest, was that many of these self-righteous Kappa Beta Phi members had surely been first-year bankers once. And in the 20, 30, or 40 years since, something fundamental about them had changed. Their pursuit of money and power had removed them from the larger world to the sad extent that, now, in the primes of their careers, the only people with whom they could be truly themselves were a handful of other prominent financiers.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

  42. 42.

    schrodinger's cat

    February 18, 2014 at 2:14 pm

    @Yatsuno: Berry Floofy!

  43. 43.

    Trollhattan

    February 18, 2014 at 2:26 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Without rice gluten we would have no mochi, and then I would be sad.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mochi

  44. 44.

    Southern Beale

    February 18, 2014 at 2:38 pm

    @Trollhattan:

    It was a secret fraternity, founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, that functioned as a sort of one-percenter’s Friars Club.

    Isn’t it long past time we did away with these ridiculous secret fraternities that the 1%ers so enjoy? Skull & Bones and all of that nonsense? Surely we can get some secret video of a ridiculous initiation or something and shame them out of existence?

    It’s so fucking lame. “Chad and Skip go to college and get to bond with their fellow elites” and all that.

  45. 45.

    ranchandsyrup

    February 18, 2014 at 2:42 pm

    @Trollhattan: Roose shoulda used the “Jump You Fuckers!” picture.

  46. 46.

    Southern Beale

    February 18, 2014 at 3:03 pm

    @shelly:

    The mediterranean diet isn’t nearly as bread and pasta heavy as Americans think. It’s mostly simply cooked foods: lean meats and fish, vegetables, etc. And it’s not true that Italians have pasta at every meal. That’s some BS made up by Chef Boyardee or Barillo Pasta.

  47. 47.

    Plantsmantx

    February 18, 2014 at 3:46 pm

    It’s easy to hear that the song was produced by Willie Mitchell around the same time he was producing Al Green’s biggest hits. Wright’s Mitchell-produced records weren’t on the Hi label, but on Don Robey’s Back Beat label in Houston, which is a whole ‘nother story..

    My favorite O.V. Wright songs:

    Ace Of Spades

    A Nickel And A Nail

  48. 48.

    Baron Elmo

    February 18, 2014 at 4:48 pm

    @Plantsmantx:

    Amen, Plantsmantx. O.V. Wright was one of the greats, and those are two stunning examples of Down Home soul at its finest. (You forgot the chill-inducing “Eight Men, Four Women, though.) The CD pictured in this video clip is a must-own set that’ll run ya about five bucks used. Go buy it, folks.

    I also have to agree with you about Willie Mitchell’s production. You can detect his taut strings and hard-hitting kick drum sound from a mile away. Best known for producing Al Green’s classic Hi recordings, but Willie had quite a few other champs in his stable.

  49. 49.

    Steeplejack

    February 18, 2014 at 5:35 pm

    @Plantsmantx:

    Seconded on “A Nickel and a Nail.” You saved me the trouble of looking it up again.

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