Reader Brendan sends in news that he is playing tonight at the Carlyle Club in Alexandria, VA.
Reader DK sends in a video of himself performing 15 tv theme songs in 2 minutes.
What have all you principled centrists been up to this weekend?
by DougJ| 110 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture
Reader Brendan sends in news that he is playing tonight at the Carlyle Club in Alexandria, VA.
Reader DK sends in a video of himself performing 15 tv theme songs in 2 minutes.
What have all you principled centrists been up to this weekend?
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Readership Capture
BGinCHI – January 6, 2012 | 1:39 am
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It’s a boy!
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Mrs. BG and 8lb 3oz boy resting comfortably.
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Name TBA.
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Wow, what a day.
Welcome to the world, youngling.
Newest Member of the Balloon Juice CommunityPost + Comments (127)
by DougJ| 81 Comments
This post is in: Music, Readership Capture
I’ve been away from the computer for a few days, so I’m putting this up on Sunday rather than the usual Friday. As always, from JPK at Can’t Explain.
Brighter Side of Darkness, “Love Jones” (1973)
This is one case where the parody, “Basketball Jones” by Cheech & Chong, turned out to be more popular than the original though barely, with “Basketball Jones” peaking at #15 and “Love Jones” at #16, both in the early ’70s. The parody may also be better remembered because of its ingenious use in Hal Ashby’s weird dark political film, Being There, which was pretty much Peter Sellers’s final signoff and remains worth seeing for sure. As far as I’m concerned, though, “Love Jones” is way better than “Basketball Jones,” a terrific example of the black pop music all over the airwaves at the time. A commenter at the YouTube page about says it all better than I could, so I leave it to her (or him): “Red light house parties, dancing the slow grind with the boy you like. We didn’t need drugs. This kind of music was our drugs.”
This post is in: Readership Capture
How is he wrong? Obama has done a lot of those things that piss me off, Paul has opposed them, and I still think that Obama is a far better choice than Paul. Why is that so hard to understand?
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Readership Capture, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
I think Willard’s kids may be just a little resentful watching him throw their inheritance down this year’s GOP Sinkhole of Fail, but perhaps the Romney Uncanny Valley affect is genetic. Per CBS News:
… At an event in New Hampshire [Friday], Romney’s adult son Matt Romney responded to a question regarding the potential release of his father’s tax returns with a joke alluding to doubts about Mr. Obama’s place of birth: “I heard someone suggest the other day that as soon as Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things, then maybe he’d do it,” he said.
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Romney’s other son, Tagg Romney, jumped in to say, “That was not my dad saying that.”…
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The Romney campaign in all likelihood would like to avoid wading into conspiracy theories that could chip away at the perception that Romney is a serious candidate, but Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign is already exploiting the gaffe.
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In an email to supporters today about the joke, Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina wrote, “This is how the Romney campaign thinks it’s going to win the Republican primary: by pandering to the dead-ender fringe of extremists who still question where the president was born.”
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The Obama team also tweeted about the gaffe, sending its Twitter followers a link to mugs the re-election campaign is selling that poke fun at the birther issue.
Kudos to Team Obama for making a joke of these clowns. The general Media Village speculation seems to be that Romney’s shy about releasing his tax returns because he doesn’t want to give his many enemies further opportunities to point out what a low tax rate he pays on those high stacks of unearned dollars, with perhaps a soupcon of Thurston-Howell-does-not-speak-of-filthy-lucre-in-public snobbery. But I’ve seen idle rumors ranging from “He’s semi-legally offshoring millions to the Caymans” to “He’s not eager to let his fellow Mormon elders investigate whether he’s treated his religious tithing obligations as cavalierly as his obligations to the civil authorities.”…
What are the trending rumors here at the start of the year-end festivities?
Early Morning Open Thread: Made in the USAPost + Comments (118)
by DougJ| 86 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture
Dittes-moi pourquoi la vie est belle.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 7 Comments
This post is in: Readership Capture, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar has posted this year’s John Swift Memorial Roundup of “The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves”.
On the Balloon Juice front, it includes a frippery from yours truly, and characteristically fine posts from Kay and Tom Levenson and from a number of BJ favorites, such as TBogg’s “Bristol Palin’s Airing of Grievances” (which crams more spite into 400 words than I had thought possible) and Driftglass’ tragic fuckeulogy (TM – The Bugle) for David Broder.
More importantly, there are dozens of posts from bloggers great and small and new and old (and quite often sweary) which will have your bookmarking finger working overtime.
I particularly liked “Scenes from the first week of school” from A Blog about School, Stonekettle Station’s “Everybody’s So Different, I Haven’t Changed“, “On Inoculation” by nothstine at p3, and the quite lovely “This one is for my dad” from Mock, Paper, Scissors.
I’m also a little annoyed that no one ever told me about Zaius Nation or Chimpanzee Tea Party.
All linked over at Vagabond Scholar.