This month marks the 30th anniversary of the formation of one of the most influential, yet unexploited bands of the 1970s. In commemoration, you can now buy your ringtone versions of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, a song about lead singer Ian Curtis’ chronic infidelity to his wife, and Transmission, the band’s other most popular release.
Ian Curtis fell victim to the effects of his own music in 1980 in a massive murder-suicide. Fortunately, since nobody really wanted to hang out with him because he was “kind of a spaz,” the murder part of his murder-suicide was embarrassingly unsuccessful.
Thirty years later, it’s finally not considered morose among polite company to celebrate his lifetime work and vision, nor to market the crap out of his legend an mystery. To this end, you can find tickets to the Ian Curtis documentary, Joy Division, and the feature film, Control, for select engagements in the UK at MoviePhone. Matinée tickets are half off, so take the kids!
However, I refuse to let his legacy disintigrate, slip through my finngers, and find itself ingested only by the jerks, making money off his memory now, who would have also made fun of his music 30 years ago. Somebody who may have admired him 30 years ago deserves some exploitation of the dead guy. Right? Well, I’ll pay my price in hell if that’s not true. Otherwise, check out my iPod compatible iTunes iMix which is also compatible with iPhone:
iTunes Store
![icon]()
We the contributing editors of harikari.com are huge, HUGE fans of The Daily Show. (Well except for Mr. Barnes who doesn’t have expanded cable at his house. What is up with that Mr. Barnes?)
The rest of us hope that you are all devoted fans of the show.
I for one often think as I write stuff for this blog (yes my mind wanders as I write… that’s what makes it so damn hard!) why bother? People shouldn’t waste time here reading our stuff, they should just watch The Daily Show, it’s the best commentary on American politics anywhere; TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, blogs… there’s nothing better. (Countdown with Keith Olbermann deserves special mention as a very close second… oh an there’s that Colbert guy too…) Why The Daily Show? Because it cuts through to the heart of the topics of the day, and… it’s funny.
Case in point. Last Monday night the guest on the show was none other than former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton who has been the butt of many jokes on the show for the last couple of years. I for one was very surprised that he agreed to be on the show. He didn’t even have a book to promote. He just came on to discuss politics with Jon Stewart.
It was a very entertaining interview, and yes John Bolton was a bit of a dick like you would expect. Watch it.
Then the next night, Jon did this follow up piece that almost made we wet my pants.
What else can I say.
If you haven’t already seen it, watch it! And if you have seen it, watch it again!
Fox News reported yesterday that, “Comedy Central’s fake news stars have no intention of making a run for the White House.” Oh really? Did Fox ever really think they would make a run? It’s news that they’re not running?
Jon Stewart said this about the shirt:
Nothing says “I am ashamed of you my government” more than “Stewart/Colbert ‘08.”
And ashamed we are.
Stewart had more to say about reports of people actually getting their news from The Daily Show:
“There’s no way you could get the news from us,” he said. “I’ve seen the show. It couldn’t happen.”
Funny… That’s what Daily Show viewers say about Fox News.
John Hodgman, the PC in the new Mac commercials, was interviewed this week by Engadget. He’s a really funny guy and somehow, even though he’s not the product being advertised, has become the star of those ads. Makes me wonder if there are any people out there thinking, “If I like the PC better in the Mac commercials, will I like a PC better in real life?” or is he just the likable, bumbling fool who you’d have a beer with but never trust with your data?
Here’s an excerpt:
Seth Stevenson over at Slate thinks that the ads have backfired because your, “humor and likability are evident,” and that he’d “much sooner associate with Hodgman than with Long [the guy who plays the 'Mac'].” Are you becoming an icon for diehard PC users?
The villain of any story is often the most compelling character. Justin, who is brilliantly funny, of course must play the hero, and the Luke Skywalkers of the world always catch a certain amount of flack. It’s unfair, but inevitable, and I don’t think it has caused people to buy more PCs anymore than it caused people to root for the empire over the Jedi. The Jedi still are the best. And they don’t get viruses.
How did you maneuver me into a Star Wars discussion? Damn internet.
That is all.
The whole interview is here, and the Slate article is over here.
He’s also got a recurring role on The Daily Show, which is always hilarious.
I love Dave Chappelle. He is featured here in his own Mac commercial.
Keep in mind this is a Dave Chappelle video, if you are unsure as to whether playing this now is appropriate, it probably isn’t.
[youtube]62-I4ChZhY4[/youtube]
Every time I fly, I find myself annoyed by the preflight announcements. As they rattle on over the PA “…In the event of a water landing…” I want to interject “We will all die!”, but I never say it, don’t wanna jinx the flight. Instead I look at the illustrated safety card and think that about how ridiculous the illustrations are. The guy over at airtoons.com has come up with his own illustrations for the cards.
Today I came across this post on Boing Boing and it made me chuckle. The post is a summary of the original piece in the Economist speculating on what a truthful announcement would be like.
Highlights include:
The flight attendants are now pointing out the emergency exits. This is the part of the announcement that you might want to pay attention to. So stop your sudoku for a minute and listen: knowing in advance where the exits are makes a dramatic difference to your chances of survival if we have to evacuate the aircraft.
Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero.
Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it.
Please consume alcohol in moderate quantities so that you become mildly sedated but not rowdy. That said, we can always turn the cabin air-quality down a notch or two to help ensure that you are sufficiently drowsy.
But unfortunately, the airlines know better than to scare the flying public like that. Instead we all sit there half-listening, looking at SkyMall magazine wondering who in the world buys that stuff.
Leave it to Jon Stewart to breathe some life into the stale gay marriage debate brought up by the GOP again this year. If you missed the opening segment from Tuesday’s show, watch it!
I especially like this part about the dangerously high levels of cognitive dissonance that Bush supporters must live with every day.
And watch the diminutive Stewart take down the rather hefty Bill Bennett here.
If you haven’t realized by now that Stephen Colbert is brilliant and one of our nation’s greatest treasures, you need only watch this video on the Media Matters website:
Colbert lampooned conservatives who equated Ahmadinejad letter with Democratic-progressive talking points
Summary: Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert mocked various conservative media figures for recent outrageous statements, all of which had been noted by Media Matters for America.
Well, it looks like the probe into the CIA Leak is finally working its way up the political ladder. According to a story on Truthout.org, the indictment of Karl Rove is imminent.
From the article:
Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.
More cartoons about Turd Blossom can be found here.
Have you ever wondered why the heads of truly stalwart Republicans don’t explode when their man in the oval office says and does things that contradict the basic principles they say they believe in? Like when the President says it’s okay for the government to tap the phones of American citizens without obtaining a warrant? Or maybe when he says we don’t torture and the pictures say otherwise? Or maybe when the man that asks for our unconditional support for the troops doesn’t supply them with adequate armor? Or when his fiscal policy creates the largest deficits this country has ever seen?
You would think that Republicans that believe in a limited role of government would lash out at anyone who dared to ignore the law and spy on Americans. You would think that responsible Republicans would want to hold their leaders accountable for the gross misconduct of the military. You would think that troops-loving Republicans would want the government to supply them with the best possible armor. You would think that proud, self-made Republicans would demand fiscal discipline from their leader.
But, when their leader breaks the rules and spends recklessly on the war (but somehow doesn’t provide adequate armor,) they just shrug it off. Why aren’t they clenching their craniums tightly in an effort to prevent their heads from exploding? Well this new study suggest that our brains (Yes… all of us, even non-Republicans share this trait.) have an unconscious regulator that allows emotions to trump rationality, thus preventing catastrophic cranial damage:
Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain’s pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.
”Everything we know about cognition suggests that, when faced with a contradiction, we use the rational regions of our brain to think about it, but that was not the case here,” said Dr. Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory and lead author of the study…
…
Researchers have long known that political decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious emotional reactions, a fact routinely exploited by campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new research suggests that for partisans, political thinking is often predominantly emotional.
It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen said, ”but you have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, ‘All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.’ ”
He added, ”It speaks to the character of the discourse that this quality is rarely talked about in politics.”
Now think about “the character of the discourse.” There’s a whole lot more of “…but I have to be honest” and much less emotional partisan response on Comedy Central than there is on most major news network shows that I’ve seen. Apparently comedy can disengage the regulator.
It’s the comedy, stupid!