Datarock - Fa Fa Fa from nettwerkmusic on Vimeo.
Hat tip to my internet Luddite friend Kiki for burning this band’s disc for me. To quote him: “Like Devo meets disco!”
Nina Simone remixes, which never get old:
(Hat tip.)
If you haven’t seen it, here’s the highlight reel of my last reading at Book People.
Amanda Marcotte book reading from Marc Faletti on Vimeo.
It’s a good time! Luckily, for those in Austin who missed the experience the first time around, I’ll be reading at Book Woman tonight at 7PM. Show up and buy some books, yo. Feminist bookstores were the backbone of feminism for a long time, and we’re lucky to have one of the remaining ones in Austin, and they could use the support. I’m sure readers of this blog will find many tempting tomes at Book Woman. I won’t make it out alive with my hands empty, I’m sure. Much to the consternation of those who have to share my living space, because the piles of books around here on my “To Read” list is getting insane.
Marc filmed my reading at Book People and reduced it to a 5 minute taster recap. Enjoy! And yes, that’s all hi-def and totally not YouTube.
If pressed, most of us bicycling fans will say we do it for the exercise, to save money on gas, and for the environment. But now this Hungarian PSA promoting bicycling has exposed the truth. You might not want to play this where office mates can hear it. (Via, with translation.)
But I can’t help but think that as silly as it is, there’s a grain of truth to the claims. Lack of exercise is brutal to the sex drive, and something as well-rounded as bicycling to get exercise probably does have some health benefits that carry over to the bedroom.
This is interesting. The show “Mob Logic” has found a pattern in their “man on the street” interviews—women, far far far more often than men, are afraid to express an opinion, defer to male companions, or don’t even really have a chance to defer since they get stepped on.
Via Jessica, this vlog is right on:
But I do have one quarrel. After all, pimps are glorified by the industry, so this isn’t even about sex. It’s about women—and how our place is on our backs, not at the mic.
Bonus video, after the fold:
I like to play Rock Band. They entered a B-52s song into the downloadables. It’s not the greatest B-52s song. Not even close. This is it.
My devotion to both Cindy and Ricky Wilson makes me a weirdo. I don’t care.
NOT Ann Coulter, as the screenshot would suggest. Just watch it and you’ll see.
I have to get a move on to get downtown and in line to see Be Kind, Please Rewind. So if I may pardon myself from writing an extensive blog post this Friday evening. If the movie is any good, I will probably review it here tomorrow.
I’m breaking my rule about negativity during this primary to post this, because I find the whole “Obama is a plagiarist” bullshit to be the height of asinine.
That said, I thought Clinton’s closing remarks were amazing precisely because they weren’t phony. She was laughing at how stupid the Xerox copy comment was as she was saying it, but she did it anyway, because not parroting that ridiculous charge would mean that she has to admit that the $3.8 million she’d spent on Mark Penn’s consulting fees in one month might as well have been flushed down the toilet.
But even though she was apparently borrowing John Edwards’ words, I felt that last moment was Clinton finally breaking free of the consultant albatross around her neck and being herself. And I like Hillary Clinton a lot. But one glimpse is not enough, when I felt like 90% of Obama was him being himself, showing his own judgments, and taking some fucking leadership of his own campaign.
The only way this could have been better is if he’d started throwing condoms at them.
People will no doubt think I’m an asshole for laughing so hard at that, but I just hate those flashy public proposals. I suspect a lot of men who do this instead of making it a more private, intimate thing are hoping to rally some public pressure to push a possibly uncertain woman into a yes. And as you can see, this woman is immediately demonized by the crowd, so my theory has that going for it. Good for her for having a backbone.
I had an opportunity to play Michael Jackson’s version of “Ain’t No Sunshine”. It’s quite possibly one of my all-time favorite vocal tracks. If you want to hear the whole thing, here’s the video:
The Verve remix album version of “See Line Woman” by Nina Simone. I dare you not to dance.
RH Reality Check and partners have put a call out for submissions from young people to make videos about the state of sex education. They got tons of entries and narrowed it down to 10. Now you can watch those 10 and vote for your favorite. Some of them are really, really funny so good luck picking a favorite. I’m going to be able to attend the unveiling of the winner in San Francisco in a couple of weeks, because I’ll be presenting at the Sex Tech conference where the winner will be unveiled.
I realized that I’ve been posting a lot of videos throughout the year, but I’ve neglected to put up anything from The Go! Team’s new album, Proof of Youth, which is one of the best of 2007 in my occasionally-but-rarely humble opinion. I shall remedy that now.
They’re really a genuine 21st century band. I defy you to come up with an easy categorization for their music. I say “hip hop”, because nothing else comes quite close enough to describe the way they combine an entire catalog of sounds.
For your thoroughly secularized holiday, a song by Gogol Bordello:
And thank you to the reader who sent me this picture of her disco ball-bedecked Christmas tree!
If you have money this year for charity, I recommend Katha Pollitt’s charity list for ideas.
Watching videos of representatives of organizations like the Abstinence Clearinghouse, the CWA, and the IWF always makes me tense, and I finally realized that it’s the women themselves (and women are the official faces of all these misogynist groups) that make me nervous. The permanent grins affixed to their faces from a youth misspent in drill team practice and the tension radiating from them that indicates they’re about to crap a diamond if they could relax their sphincter muscles enough to release it is a winning combination for making people uneasy. All that lying must do a number on your stress levels. I didn’t even realize a person could grin and grind her teeth at the same time.
Still, Rachel Maddow is on the video, and that makes it worth watching.
To which I have only one last thing to say, which is watch this clip from the movie Team America:
Some of Naomi Wolf’s writing on feminism in the past, oh, decade plus has annoyed me. So I’m glad she’s moving into an area where she can be more effective. This talk is good.
So I’ve mostly been offline for a day. Have there been any more resignations?
A video:
When talking to my mother the other day about some family history stuff, she lamented that, in our society, women have no names of their own. (Last names—talking ancestry, get it?) The fact that I didn’t mention this woman’s name and it was, from the comment thread, apparently up for discussion is more evidence of this problem.
Her name is Caitlin Upton. She’s a senior at Lexington High School. It’s tempting to be soft on her and say she choked, but if you’ve been training for so long to be on stage like that, things like that should come easy pretty quickly. Still, the amount of pressure on pageant contestants is pretty immense, so who knows? I imagine it’s like taking all the non-stop pressure on women to be perfect sex objects all the time and beefing it up like a weight-lifter on steroids. I’m amazed more women don’t crack by flinging their tiaras boomerang-style at the judges.
Victim/perpetrator of the patriarchy Miss South Carolina on why Americans can’t read maps.
John Hinderaker must be creaming his shorts right now. Pretty and stupid, too! It hasn’t been this good since the first half of The Stepford Wives.
Of course I don’t advocate this. But damn, it’s funny.
I’m sending the mouthwash bill to Flea. Had they leaned over and kissed each other, I would have had to go to the E.R. from the pain of my body rejecting the surge of too-cuteness.
I challenge you to look at Iggy Pop’s moves
and NOT say that this guy used Iggy as his inspiration.
(FWIW, I love Iggy and the Stooges.)
This Olbermann segment with a remix of Bill O’Reilly’s drooling, perverted interview with Amy Polumbo is a hoot. Bill can barely conceal his leering excitement at the idea of these pictures, which are, as previously noted here, the dictionary definition of tame silliness.
Not too many good live clips out there, so I was happy to find this one.
