Open Threads

Another bleg to our music nerd readers: please suggest the best, relaxing music that you can think of. Life and work is a little hectic at the moment. Left to my own devices I would listen to an infinite loop of Yo Yo Ma playing prelude to Cello Suite #1, but no doubt equally inspiring stuff exists that I haven’t heard yet.

Jazz, Funk, R&B, space and electronic are all welcome as long as it puts one in the right mood. I will hit up iTunes tonight for my favorite suggestions.

***Update***

And celtic, of course. 9 out of 10 Enyas agree that celtic might be the most inherently relaxing genre short of shakuhachi.

I just bought a shakuhachi album BTW, thanks very much to whoever recommended it.

Music ThreadPost + Comments (337)

George George Will has a crush:

The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.

If I were George WIll, I probably wouldn’t use the phrase “petite pistol” in a column like this.

Minnesota Star(bursts)Post + Comments (77)

I remember turning on CNN last year or the year before — more than once — and seeing Sully and Hitch discuss this or that (with no one else there except the CNNbot) about American politics. What the fuck? What would these limeys know about American politics? (In fairness, Sully’s take on how Obama operates is dead on, IMHO.)

I mention this because this weekend I met up with an English colleague of mine who a) thought Democrats should nominate Zell Miller or at least make him VP in 2000, b) thought Bush would be a better president than Gore during the 2000 election, and c) thought that Bush would lose by the widest margin in the history of American politics in 2004. Despite this (all of which he now admits was wrong), he continues to predict various silly things — that Republicans will find their “own Obama” in the next presidential election or two, for example. This is someone who is probably a bit to the left of me politically and is undeniably brilliant in many ways.

What’s a bit hard to describe is how eerily similar his analyses are to Hitch and/or Sully. There’s the inexplicable hatred of Hillary Clinton. There’s the fixation with whether or not various candidates are good people. There’s the complete inability to understand how the contemporary Republican party operates (i.e., that it’s run by lunatics who would fuck up any administration, regardless of what a “good man” John McCain is).

So, what gives with all of this? Why do we have so many English people over here commenting on our politics? Why do they understand it so poorly? And why do they think they understand it to begin with? My guess is that the common language creates the illusion of a similar system but that the reality is that there are almost no similarities between our system and theirs.

Why can’t the EnglishPost + Comments (174)

Watching Milk on HBO and packing for my trip next week. You?

Saturday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (213)

I got nothing. Krista passes along this picture:

Another Open ThreadPost + Comments (48)