Tim Russert and George Carlin in Fred Phelp’s Hell

Funny podcast featuring lots of Carlin on death and dying as well as recent Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps on his passing and the spectacularly unfunny Capital Steps.
Listen here.
I think Phelps is plenty funny enough in his own right without all the whacky sound effects, IMHO.

New DJ Cheb I Sabbah Interview on Solipsistic Nation

Bazooka Joe contacted me to let us all know that:

Just thought I’d let you know that I recently had Cheb back on my show to talk about his latest CD, Devotion. Here’s the link.

Thanks, Joe!

New Negativland Site

Empty Handed just clued us in that Negativland have updated their site.:

“…they’ve got a crapload of more content online now (including the new album Thigmotatic, which officially goes on sale in a couple of weeks but is available for listening and ordering right now on the site).”

It now contains more and updated stuff if you’ve grown tired of looking at the older site.
Heck! Even the Weatherman has a little sub-site!

Go check it out.

Earlier Negativland Posts:

Don Joyce and Negativland

Negativland’s Mark Hosler Interview

Negativland in Portland part Deux

Negativland on KBOO

All about Dick

So long, Medussy

Another one gone.
Only one original cat left.

I’ll really miss her. She was a neurotic goofball, but really sweet and friendly. She either either got zapped by coyotes or stowed away in someone’s car and got lost somewhere (she had a habit of crawling into open windows of cars and falling asleep).

RIP: Mind Candy

I’ve known this was coming for some time, but now it’s official. Mind Candy, Vancouver’s greatest alternative book and video store will be closing up shop for good in a few months.
Now, if you want to rent Alejandro Jodowrosky videos or great cult TV series or some smutty comics, you have no one to blame but yourself, Vancouverite. You just didn’t want to drive a few measly miles out of your way to rent up some kultcha. Now you must schlep your sorry ass over to Movie Madness over in Pee Town when you want to see a bunch of Coffin Joe movies or Peter Greenaway flicks. Tsk, tsk.
Also, a hearty fuck you to the Vancouver Voice, for their apparent deliberate snub of Mind Candy (along with – ahem – The Catalyst!) when doing their lengthy article on Uptown Village and what a trendy, upscale and hip place it is supposed to be .
Vancouver doesn’t deserve you, Mind Candy. Let them rent 300 on Netflix.
I’m especially sad about the closing of Mind Candy, because it is the remains of what was Pegasus Books, a store run by a guy who I’ve come to be friends with over the last 24 years or so, Pat Richardson. He used to run the store in a dilapidated ghost-plaza on Grand and Evergreen for decades before partnering with movie and book collector Jerry, where they turned half of the store into a goldmine of movie rental weirdness. They moved the store a few years ago into trendy Uptown Village on Mainstreet and seemed to thrive for a spell. But a combination of a shit economy and a third partner’s departure made the end inevitable. So I’ve been renting every movie I can think of and copying it to my hard drive. Sigh. And pawing through old comics and remembering. Sad.

KBOO Book and Record Sale

This weekend is the annual KBOO Book and Record Sale.
Thousands of books, CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs and records to choose from, with all proceeds going to KBOO radio, your community, volunteer-powered radio station.

It’s all going down from 9am to 4pm at the Musician’s Union Hall, at 325 NE 20th Ave., in Portland.

They are still taking donations at the station until Friday afternoon, as well. You can visit them at 20 SE 8th Ave., in Portland, just off Burnside.

This also means that this Friday night’s Outside World (12am – 3am) will be the Broken Record show. Everything played that night will be available at the sale the following morning. People will be reading from random books and many DJs (myself included) will be playing records, tapes and CDs from the bins, often at the same time. It’ll be a hoot.

KBOO
90.7 FM, in Portland
or listen online at kboo.fm/listen

George Carlin 1937 – 2008

Rest in Peace, George.

Talkin’ Jesus Circuit Bend Blues

When I saw this $19.95 talking Jesus doll, all I could think was circuit bend project.
Looks like someone beat me to it.

Or how ’bout this…?

Them Librul’s Gonna Spend Up Our Tax Dollars In Darwinland!

Snide, amusing article on my Congressman Brian Baird’s planned trip to the Galapagos Islands regarding climate change from our GOP mouthpiece, The Columbian:

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird will lead a congressional tour of the Galapagos Islands beginning Friday. The 16-member group will travel via U.S. military jet to Quito, Ecuador’s capital, and tour the islands by charter boat, returning to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

Accompanying Baird, D-Vancouver, will be his wife, Rachel Nugent; six other members of Congress, including Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., who served with Baird on the House Science and Technology Committee; three other congressional spouses; and five staff members. Hooley is leaving Congress at the end of this year.

The Washington Post spoofed the trip as a junket Wednesday, noting tongue-in-cheek that its purported purpose “is to meet officials and scientists and search for elusive facts on global warming and marine science and such.”
(…)
He defended the trip as a way for committee members to see first-hand a place on the planet that holds answers to such global riddles as the effects of climate change and ocean acidification, a place where ocean currents converge and tectonic plates collide. What happens there is relevant to his own constituents, he said.

Baird can’t get any love lately, it seems.
Either it’s his reputation on the right as being one of the most liberal members of Congress on the West Coast or his support for the surge via his trips with Chris “I didn’t read the report” Shays.
It doesn’t help if you quote John McCain:

Reading published scientific papers isn’t the same as seeing the places where the research occurred, Baird said. “I don’t think there’s a substitute for seeing these things with one’s own eyes. It can make a real difference. I’m told it was a trip to Antarctica that made John McCain a believer in climate change.”

Masterful agitprop by the Columbian, though:

Baird, whose Web site includes a National Debt Clock, could not say how much the trip will cost American taxpayers. A search of travel Web sites turned up weeklong commercial tours of the Galapagos ranging in price from $2,300 to $3,000 per person, excluding airfare to Quito.
(…)

Baird’s congressional travel has attracted attention before. In 2006, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity released travel information for congressional frequent fliers. Baird’s $17,000 weeklong trip to Japan with his wife was the third-most-expensive privately funded trip taken by any member of the Washington congressional delegation between January 2000 and June 2005. The trip, which violated no House rules, was paid for by the nonprofit Japan Center for International Exchange.

Read whole article.

Vive Le Vinyl

Typo Led To Vinyl Sales At Fred Meyer

PORTLAND, Ore. — It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer retail chain.

This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.’s latest release “Accelerate” inadvertently entered the “LP” code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.

Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.

The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, California, Washington and Alaska.

Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles “Abbey Road” album. But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.

“It’s not just a nostalgia thing,” said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. “The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound.”