PUNK ISSUE
Two new stories from your humble servant in today’s issue of LA CityBeat. The first is a erudite bit on the roots of punk (this being a special punk issue)...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2704&IssueNum=122

And the second is a scurrilous attack on the New Times "alternative" newspaper chain...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2698&IssueNum=122

And already my comments seem to be causing a minor flurry...
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/waiting_for_new_times.html#more
and...
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10408

From Chris Morris
Mick's screed about the NT/Voice merger is RIGHT FUCKING ON. Beautifully framed. And it's nice to see that it's got the NT people steamed. The truth always hurts. (BTW, spread the word: I'm gonna be hosting "Watusi Rodeo" on Indie 103.1 – LA area – at 11 a.m. this Sunday.)

If anyone has anything to add, I am, as ever, at byron4d@msn.com

LETS HEAR IT FOR JOHN DENSMORE
It’s refreshing to learn (from HCB in this case) that, here in Paris Hilton’s world, there’s someone who won’t do it all for money, and that one Door still stands by his former man. (Although if I was offered a million or so bucks for one of my cheesy old songs I might think long and hard.)
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-doors5oct05,0,7733555.story?track=tottext

HALF PRICE DRINKS
And if you want to hear one of the cheesy old songs and know why it’s highly unlikely that I’ll placed the dilemma of being bought out, even for a beer commercial, there’s a free MP3 download at...
http://vslam.blogspot.com/

IN OTHER NEWS
Terminal alcoholics who get nervous with an empty glass in front of the them can now rest easy thanks to a beer coaster that can tell when a glass is empty. The coaster, fitted with sensors, measures the weight of the beer and sends a signal behind the bar when it's time for a refill.

Stately Wayne Manor burned down. The old Pasadena mansion built by the Busch beer family and used in the 1960s Batman series (POW!) burned down last night. Nothing to do with the wild fires, seemingly a remodeling accident.

AND SOME WEIRD PICS...
If you wonder why we’re all fucking crazy in LA, what do you expect when shit like this appears in the evening sky (after a missile lauch from Vandenberg Naval Base, perhaps part of the Star Wars defense idiocy.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/vandenberg/

CRYPTIQUE – Now witness the firepower of this fully operational battle station.

The secret word is Diverse

H5N1
This virus, also known as the Avian or Bird Flu has been all over the news today, and Doc40 the Uberparanoid really wants to know why. I guess the trigger to the mini-furor it is the story of how researchers have replicated the 1918 Spanish Flu virus that started the historic pandemic that rivaled WWI in bodycounts. (Some girl sent over a concise report –
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/1006/620625089HM1FLU.html )
Since then, though, H5N1 has been the scare story de jour with talking heads telling us we’re all doomed, because we’re well overdue for a massive flu pandemic, although making no mention of how part of the doom is in that the Great Global Superpower offers only Third-World health care to its non-wealthy citizens, organized, if at all, by deny-all-claims insurance companies and HMOs. Then Sen. Barack Obama (we hope a future president) warns that, should H5N1 mutate from hens to humans, the US is totally unprepared and lags desperately behind the UK and other developed nations in vaccine readiness. Just to confuse us further, Bush himself makes mention of Bird Flu in some White House al fresco Q&A media opportunity and declares that, if an outbreak happens, he’s real ready for it. He will use the military to quarantine the effected areas. (As some girl noted "him and what army?") Since this is plainly asinine, we have to wonder what the fuck is going on?
Perhaps...
1) Bush’s handlers think macho talk about influenza will smokescreen the general condition of chaos and fuck-up that surrounds the President Inept.
2) Bush’s handlers think influenza panic will provide another stepping stone to their desired Neocon Global Police State.
3) The pharmaceutical companies think influenza panic will smokescreen the fact that they are robbing us blind on a daily basis, and Michael Moore is making a film about them.
4) All of the above.
5) All of the above and more.
I’d write more about this deeply weird facet of homeland security only I don’t feel so good.

The secret word is Poorly

SHINING
HCB has alerted us to the a fabulous faux-trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining that’s making the rounds. Easy access via this site. Hit the first link to the trailer, but also scroll down because there’s more...
http://www.tatteredcoat.com/archives/2005/09/28/the-shining-redux/

CRYPTIQUE – You wicked bloodsucker, we will annihilate you with a fresh revolutionary upswing!

SUPREME SACRIFICE
If your mind boggles that our pal Georgie Bush, in the wake of the Michael Brown/FEMA scandal, is now appointing a lawer pal, Harriet Miers – who has never been a judge, and about whom no one seems to know very much at all – to the Supreme Court, try a little inside info from wonkette...
A Legal Times profile of Harriet Miers upon her promotion from deputy chief of staff under Andy Card to White House counsel includes information not likely to show up on an official bio, among them:
She is immensely, perhaps irrationally, into birthdays: "She always remembers everybody's birthday, and has a present for them. She'll be finding a present for somebody in the middle of the night.... 'Can't it wait until next week?' 'No,' she'd say, 'It has to be done now.'"
She has dated Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht "over the years." [NOTE: Absolutely no other article online mentions this fascinating fact.]
She's nit-picky micromanager who failed upwards at the White House: "She failed in Card's office for two reasons," the [former White House] official says. "First, because she can't make a decision, and second, because she can't delegate, she can't let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents."
Not even the president can think of much interesting to say about her: In 1996, at an Anti-Defamation League Jurisprudence Award ceremony, Bush introduced Miers as a "pit bull in Size 6 shoes," a tag line that has persisted through the years, in part because colorful anecdotes or descriptions about Miers are notoriously difficult to find.
We're not even that excited about the possibility of her being gay.
http://www.wonkette.com/

The secret word is Time

MEANWHILE DOWN YONDER...
I happened across this New Orleans website by complete accident and aside from the recipes, pics and eclectic NOLA tales there is – if you scroll down a bit – also some excellent first hand refuting of the tales of horror, rape and cannibalism after Katrina that still seem to be accepted a fact by far too many. Do check it out for yourself before this ugly crap becomes ingrained as history.
http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/archive/2005-09.html

CRYPTIQUE – Fuck Thomas Hobbes and the Leviathan he rode in on.

IN THE MATTER OF PENGUINS
I’ve had a whole bunch of other things on my mind of late so I really haven’t been paying much attention to who’s been going to see what films and why, and also so many recent Hollywood movies have been so fucking dire that what little notice I did give to the subject was pretty damned depressing. In a spare moment, however, I did notice a report that March Of The Penguins has been the surprise hit of the summer, which, at first, made me very happy because I am a bigtime, lifelong penguin enthusiast, and intended to rent the DVD as soon as it came out. I was therefore somewhat taken aback though to find that March Of The Penguins has been annexed by the Christian Right who claim to have found God in the study of the emperor penguin, and now "rejoice in penguins as upholders of family values" and as "obvious proof of intelligent design." They are now apparently running special excursion to screenings and taking flashlights so they can note down anything God might say to them during the course of the film. First I groaned, but then I recalled how emperor penguins aren’t actually monogamous, and many change partners each year. Some are also gay. And, of course, they are birds, with their own unique but impenetrable belief systems.

The secret word is Snowed

WOULD YOU BELIEVE
Would you believe that, back in the day, these guys wanted me to quit the band so they could concentrate on elevating their musicianship without my insane distractions?
http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eslugnoir/Fuz/bonus.html

AUGUST WILSON -- RIP

I see the comments board has reached all the sevens. Dunno what the Rastas will have to say about that.

(Have much to say, especially about penguins, but it's been a hardwork weekend and it will have to keep to the morrow.)

The secret word is Later