pop and politics

...has been my life for the past week, or year, or two, or...four?

But it has never been as overwhelming or intense or amazing as it has been this past week (well, Vote For Change stands ALONE...so, yeah).

This summer has been so full, and I haven't taken the time to write and that's a goddamn shame, really. I wish I would've documented more of it.

The past two weeks have been especially intense. Of course it kicked off with the one thing I look forward to more than ANYTHING else...the State Fair. Damn, it was good. I think I went 4 times, total. We saw Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and Trampled by Turtles at the Leinie's Bandshell (for muthfunkin' FREE, baby). And, I have to tell you...Sharon Jones put on one the best fucking SHOWS I have ever seen in my 26 years of seeing shows.

She has it all and she does it all. Rock-em, sock-em music by the Dap-Kings fueling her powerful, soulful, bee-u-ti-full voice, she COMMANDS that stage like the former prison guard she is. And the groove is so good, and she's so in it, she shakes it and dances up a storm, getting white hipster kids (Hairspray came to mind more than once, as it did at First Ave, the last time I saw her). I was so lifted by her sass and her shakin' ass, I couldn't stop moving (despite the fact that we were stuck in the middle of some very stiff, unmoving, Midwestern-types. humph.)

My dad joined us for Trampled by Turtles' show, and he tripped out on the old-school homage of it all and was impressed by the energy they churned out. They pumped it out so hard that Dave Simonett actually said his wrist was getting a bit sore. I had never heard him utter such a thing! Despite the fact that they ALWAYS grind down hard on those stringed instruments with fierce intensity. Hey, man. This was the Fucking State Fair. They gave it their all.

Speaking of giving it yer all....I've been giving it my all to counter the Republican invasion into our fair, Blue state. Fitzy and I have been involved as much as possible (I even took a day of work off, fer chrissakes. hehe.)Check out Fitzy's fantastic pics from the march here.

Marching from the Capitol, joining peaceful protesters--including babies, grandmas, veterans, and....hockey moms was one of the most surreal and fascinating acts I've ever participated in. The menacing and intimidating police/National Guard presence was downright scary in some ways. I had never seen anything like it in my life. I smiled at each face I could see (most were sporting that chic Darth Vader look, so you really couldn't connect.) Fitzy and I flashed the peace sign as we marched by, and not a single incident of violence or upset occurred on our path. Of course, we heard and read what everyone else saw...and it's a fucking shame that those thousands who were peaceful were not as represented as those few who were agitators.

The Take Back Labor Day show was dynamite, the highlight for me was Atmosphere who played exactly the right tone. Slug and his mighty and verbose flow of words put a smile on my face and washed away the tension I had been carrying in my neck and shoulders after we had been walking the streets of St Paul for nearly four hours.

The Ripple Effect, on the second of September was a joyful celebration of resistance against the RNC as well. Matisyahu set a peaceful tone at the beginning of the day, only to be shaken up by Dead Prez who felt the need to call MN "the sticks" and prodded the crowd to chant "riot." Not a very fucking smart idea, considering the area was surrounded by police in riot gear and dozens of cops-on-bikes.

I witnessed some hippie-punks get hassled by some boys in blue. They were smoking...sitting by a tree and I saw two cops approach one young man with a back pack on. They calmly exchanged words. But then I saw the cop forcefully take the bag off of his back. He put rubber gloves on and proceeded to search his bag. All the while, a crowd gathered around the action and they were chanting "NO CONSENT! NO CONSENT!" The cops did the smart thing and just bolted. Peace resumed....We left after Michael Frant's wonderful, positive, inspirational set of music. After we left, Tom Morello and his gang of bandmates came, intending on taking the stage, only to be told by the cops that they were too late and their permit had expired at 7. Thing was, it wasn't 7 yet.

Read about what happened here.

I was lucky to hear the story from the mouth of Tom Morello, as he accompanied his old schoolmate, Ike Reilly, to the Happening that was going down at the Parkway Theater on Chicago Ave. It was "Wake Up World," a Lizz Winstead creation that gave us that much-needed comic relief we all needed to wash away the RNC Blues. Billy Bragg gave a powerful, funny and touching performance, with just his guitar and amp, his words and his full, captivating voice (like always). Following that we got to Hoot it up with Jim Walsh, Ike, Morello, Eliza Blue and Jennifer Markey.

Again, it was powerful, profound and just the antidote we were all so thirsty for. Highlights for me: Braggy's "Street Fighting Man," Morello's flawless, blood & fist pumpin (acoustic!) "Guerilla Radio",Ike's "Put a Little Love in It." Markey is fantastic balladeer, in the spirit of Lucinda Williams, she crafts ditties that tell tales of burning down Minneapolis, shooting down lovers who have done her wrong, and she does it all with a sense of humor and lightness to counter the macabre. Blue added her strong voice and beautiful banjo and fiddle to the mix, softening even the most testosterone-fuled offerings from Walsh, Reilly, Bragg and Morello.

I am proud of these Twin Cities, what they've endured and what they brought to the table as a counter-offer to the shitstorm of the RNC.

I <3>

been a long time....it's been THREE YEARS

On July 27th, I will have been writing on ("on"? is that right?) this blog for 3 years.

Holy hell.

I wish I had been more diligent about writing more--and I promise to, as I enter my fourth year of being a resident in the self-indulgent world of bloggage.

It's been a while since I've written at all. But, it's been a rockin-good summer so far, and that's always the way it should be.

things to write about...(someday!?)

*Wall-E and The Dark Knight (the best movies I've seen in a while)

*Our amazing trip to Rothbury, MI (felt like Glasto, a few times...)

*P-Funk at 10K. Hasn't happened yet. Will be groovin' and shakin' it hardcore on Thursday night. Mmm-hmm.

can't

hardly

wait.

***

his wishes

(click to enlarge)

Fucking fascinating (or, yep, that's right, repeat after me: Obama embraced Christianity as a young man, and is still holding on strong)

June 27, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor

Your Brain Lies to You

By SAM WANG and SANDRA AAMODT
FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like “I think I read somewhere” or even with a reference to a specific source.

In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility.

Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position.

Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.
Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to “stop the smears,” the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.

Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students’ impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.

In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true.

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes’s ideal.

Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, are the authors of “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”

Jerry's tribute in the Times

From the New York Times today........

June 24, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Dying Is Hard. Comedy Is Harder.

By JERRY SEINFELD
THE honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO. Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster.

You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke and another comedian would say, “Carlin does it.” I’ve heard it my whole career: “Carlin does it,” “Carlin already did it,” “Carlin did it eight years ago.”

And he didn’t just “do” it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.

But his brilliance fathered dozens of great comedians. I personally never cared about “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” or “FM & AM.” To me, everything he did just had this gleaming wonderful precision and originality.

I became obsessed with him in the ’60s. As a kid it seemed like the whole world was funny because of George Carlin. His performing voice, even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the naughtiest, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story.

I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, “Carlin already did it.”

Jerry Seinfeld is a writer and a comedian.