PTWSTSTS: News for People Who Hate News

NY Times has an article on the recently completed filming of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. All-in-all it sounds pretty damn good. The director is a reasonably unknown Aussie but did direct the excellent Nick Cave penned The Proposition. Nick Cave, and his buddy Warren Ellis, who teamed up to compose the great score for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford are also writing the music for The Road. Javier Aguirresarobe, who photographed The Sea Within, Goya's Ghosts, and Talk to Her, is the cinematographer.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The movie stars Viggo Mortensen as the Father and Charlize Theoron as the Wife, with a little Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall for fun.

Now that we have all confirmed that Indiana Jones IV was a disappointment, I'm glad to have something else to look forward too.

Back in the Milwaukee and there are a couple of things to catch up on.
First off, my good friend Colleen was on Talk of the Nation today talking about travel and street foods. When I got her email telling me to check it out I didn't realize she would actually be talking to Neal Conan. Man, I'm totally jealous.
The other major note is of course the Small Cities EP relase. It was effing great. I'll post some clips and photos tomorrow. Here is the link to their performance on KARE 11's Showcase Minnesota (they followed Mario Lopez, which I think means that they can say that Zack Attack opened for them). The point to watch is toward the end when the camera focus unapologetically on David's crotch. Did anyone DVR this? Can we get a still of that shot?
There will also be a post regarding the new Indiana Jones, which will read something like a longer version of: "FUN!... dude, what the f*ck?"

I don't know what number we're on, but I didn't see this submission from k(i)d until now and I thought it was too disturbing to not post... Have a nice weekend, we're off to Minnesota!
(P.S. I don't know whose pregnant body this is... but I'm not the one to blame...)
(P.S. Sorry I got you pregnant)

I don't know about you, but I've got plans for Friday night. Plans to drive to Minnesota just to see The Small Cities in their cd release show at the Turf Club. That is, if I can get in. They're not only getting play on the Current, playing on Kare 11 tomorrow morning at 10 AM, hooking up with babes and doing lots of drugs, but they're playin' the Turf, man!
In all seriousness, their EP is fantastico. Super-fantastico, I might say. You can listen to its amazing beauty on their Myspace page, then you can go to the show this Friday at 9PM, then you can buy their EP for cheap-o.

One of the most wonderful parts of soccer is the tournaments. I wrote briefly about the bizarre upsets in this year's FA Cup tournament in the English league, but the Guardian has a really nice piece about Havant & Waterlooville (chant that!). They are a team of part-timers who fought to get as far as playing Liverpool. Here's a trash man and a shipbuilder and they're playing some of the best players in the world. It really is an interesting article.

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court decided that legally recognizing homosexual unions, but not calling it marriage was consigning them to a terminological second class. It's bizarre when this battle (in some places) has turned from actual rights to the semantics of whether its called a union or a marriage. I'm wary of involvement of the Supreme Court, but it is the job of the Supreme Court to ensure justice, just as they did in Brown v. Board of Education (curious... how many supreme court cases can you name off of the top of your head? I think I can do about 5 or 6). But California had already voted to allow the unions. I think that if this approach were used, then gradually more and more states would adopt the laws. Taking these cases to the court only gives people the impression that they're having an agenda forced upon them, which only makes things more difficult.
That said, I think there are real injustices to the non-recognition of marriages. I know this conversation has happened here before and some of us disagree on that. But to be honest, I have a hard time understanding how someone being referred to as in "a civil union" is a true injustice. Is there real hardship suffered from that term alone?

He's definitely gotten my vote.

Did anyone else catch this past week's This American Life? It was a joint venture between All Things Considered (the ultimate Dream Ticket: Michelle Norris and Ira Glass). It was The Giant Pool of Money, a story trying to track and explain the cause of the global credit crisis. It was wonderfully done. For all the reading I'd done about the mortgage crisis, I was still asking the question, "but how did it get that way?"
You can still download it for free. I'd be curious to hear what other people think. There were several times where Lyds and I looked at each other in absolute amazement. "They really thought that would work?"