Hey ladies in the place, Rove's callin' out to ya!

SPLITSVILLE!

...Now if he could just teach David Gregory to do the Pop and Lock, the Festrunk brothers would be on the next Aeroflot back to Bratislava for that beet farming course, heads hung in impotent shame.

;>)

Realm Of The Senseless

I Don't Need Power When I'm Hypnotized

Love, The Red Telephone, 1967.

Tragic

Abracadabra, I sit on his knee. Presto, change-o, and now he is me!

;>)

I Was Born With The Hammer Down

Happy birthday, Mr. Kilmister.

Merry Christmas from darkblack

...Ah, the joys of the 'recycled Internet Christmas card'. I'm loathe to provide a 'classic' as opposed to new material but unfortunately, (like life for many of you also I'm sure) time is short and the demands on it are multitudinous.

Nevertheless...naughty or nice, my wishes to you all for a wonderful holiday season filled with love, dear readers.

;>)

Status Back, Baby

Happy birthday, Frank Vincent Zappa.

...And so another Zappadan ends - Or begins, if you prefer the alternate time/space construct.

I would like to thank Mr. Mark Hoback of Fried Green al-Qaedas and The Aristocrats for being a perfectly succulent cheese hostess this year, along with the many participants including but not necessarily limited to:

Urantian Sojourn, Ketchup Is A Vegetable, The Brain Police, Contingencies, Iranianredneck, Salmon Alley, Under the Lobsterscope, Bildungblog, Mikeb302000, Welcome to Pottersville 2, Outside the Interzone, Zen Comix, Mock Paper Scissors, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, The Jade Gate, From Laurel Street, I Painted My Fridge Red, Uncommon Squalor, Ornery Bastard, Loud Mouth Soup, Wisdom of the West, Illiterate Electorate, Like Dancing About Architecture, Rawrahs, Yoshizen's Blog, Luiz Woodstock, Frank Zappa in Hungary and France, News Hounds, the grrlicious Freida Bee, The Culture Ghost and The Guys From Area 51, A Modified Dog, After The Bridge, Mad Dog Media, Tiny Little Circles, ShortWoman, MF Blog, Dave Knows Portland, 68comeback special, The Adventures of Zevo Calamari & Boo, The Anchovy Daiquiri Shack, Blckdgrd and preeminent liberal meanie Blue Gal.

Thank them, and thank you all, dear viewers and participants.
Until next year...The poodle is closed.



;>)

Sunday Overnight - The Jazz Discharge Party Hats

Don 'Sugarcane' Harris, with Harvey Mandel, Larry Taylor, and Paul Lagos - So Alone, 1972.



The Band From Utopia, Yo Cats, 1994.



The Mothers, Big Swifty, 1973.



Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, Three Hours Past Midnight, 1956.



FZ, The Jazz Discharge Party Hats, 1983.

'Hey, have a nice one, guy'

;>)

Frank Quote Of The Day

'It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think 'I'm wrong.' The number of people who thought Hitler was 'right' did not make him 'right.'
The same principle should be applied to anyone who has an individualistic attitude. Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?'

Now The Sun Can Sun Burn You But Not As Bad As Those Old People Do

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Circumstances, 1972.

Even a blind pig can find a tasty nugget now and again

Oh, look who wants to pick a fight...with the wrong person.



News flash, Beck - Jane Hamsher didn't make or commission that graphic to be made, I made it.
She merely used it, without permission - once, on Huffington Post - and pulled it the same day.

Radical Right wing propagandists of your ilk have been hosting that image on continuous display for years. Score one for your side and wipe it on the wall, chump.

Frankly, I don't think I have much to discuss in terms of decorum with some TV dramedian who holds rather fanciful notions regarding race and American history...Do you?

;>)

And I Wouldn't Even Hear It Cuz My Radio's Loud

Public Enemy, You're Gonna Get Yours, 1987.

The Old Mutt And Jeff Game

In all the handwringing over the latest 'principled stand' that threatens to defenestrate a noble yet doomed cause (doomed given the current balance of true power in those United States), it might be instructive to view the situation through a law enforcement metaphor.

Here's the frame - Obama is the good cop. Lieberman is the bad cop. And health care reform is the suspect.

Obama (and ostensibly his administration, albeit who can predict the byzantine machinations among the players) wants to be perceived as approachable and amenable to reasoned debate and compromise for the 'greater good'.
In reality, their game is to string this along to the beginning of a potential second term where electoral consequences are no longer a concern and some form of 'real change' (a most bitter pill indeed for the rulers of America) might occur in spite of the best laid roadblocks.
Whether 'kicking the can down the road, then running to catch up with it' is a sound strategy or not is debatable, of course.

Lieberman (Obama's Senate mentor) knows, in spite of his post-Democratic realignment with the American Right and his guaranteed sinecure from 'interested parties' within this issue post-service, that his time (and thus his power) in government is fleeting.
Therefore, he can playact the heavy role with impunity and draw heat away from Obama, buying both deniability and time for an preelectoral optics massage while getting some personal jollies from booting his nemeses in the teeth.

Health Care Reform is the Willie Horton in the room...Those whose livelihoods depend on the status quo will demonize it, and those who seek change via tilting at corporations for uncompromised legislation that minimizes the profit motive will hold it up as an unfairly maligned political football. Meanwhile, it rots away in limbo while the signifying sound and fury rages.

The current 'for profit' model of health care in America is not sustainable. Eventually, the greater portion of insurance and medication monies spent by people and families barely treading water economically will dry up (food and shelter concerns being more pressing), so many businesses that make money by this scheme must seek to maximize short-term profit now before the crunch occurs.

Just the facts, ma'am.

;>)

Frank Quote Of The Day

"When political leaders do not demonstrate honesty, when people lie constantly in the media - everybody get used to 'The Big Lie' as a way of life. At that point, honesty becomes a quaintly outmoded concept -- nobody wants to be honest anymore, because if they are, they might finish last.

I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance.

I don't think we have an honest president. I don't think that he is surrounded by honest people. I don't believe that most of the people in Congress or in the Senate are honest. I don't think that most people who head up businesses are honest.
We have let them get away with it because we're not honest enough to face up to the fact that we are 'owned and operated' by a bunch of really bad people."

~ The Real Frank Zappa Book, pg. 207-08, 1989.

Sunday Overnight - Make A Jazz Noise Here

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, When Big Joan Sets Up/Woe Is Uh Me Bop/Bellerin' Plain, 1971.



The Mothers with Jean-Luc Ponty, Be Bop Tango, 1973.



The Ed Palermo Big Band with Mike Keneally, Echidna's Arf, 1998.



Don 'Sugarcane' Harris, Cup Full Of Dreams, 1973.

...and one for that lovable lug driftglass...



Tom Waits, The Piano Has Been Drinking, 1977.

"I must stop Healthcare from coming...But how?"

Frank Quote Of The Day

'There is an organization in Texas called The Church of the SubGenius, devoted to the teachings of some guy with a pipe in his mouth named "BOB."
I'm not a member, but part of their 'theology' parallels mine.

As the planet gets more crowded, we must realize that 'slack' is precious, schmucks are plentiful, impingements are impractical and werewolf etiquette for self-defense is a personal necessity.

Techniques must be developed to enable each of us to escape the other guy's bullshit (just as he wishes to escape ours). Heaven would be a place where bullshit existed only on television.
(Hallelujah! We's halfway there!)

People should be encouraged to look after their own self-interest, but avoid inflicting themselves on other people -- especially don't inflict yourself on a schmuck. The guy has already made his choice. Cut the schmuck some slack.'

` The Real Frank Zappa Book, pg. 234.

Take it away, Don Preston, with the eternal question...

;>)

They Killed Her Too

The Mothers, Mom & Dad, 1970.

A Little Nostalgia For The Old Folks

FZ, Charva, 1963.

For those with an interest, the CBC has a 3-part audio documentary titled I Am All Day and Night: The Music of Frank Zappa that may provide some clues to the conceptual continuity of it all.

;>)

Frank Quote Of The Day

"I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really seriously ... I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously, I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen.
I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird."

~ from No Commercial Potential: The Saga of Frank Zappa, by David Walley

With A Vigorous Circular Motion

FZ, Yellow Snow Suite (excerpt), 1978.

Frank Quote Of The Day

'The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds good to you, it's bitchin'...if it sounds bad to you, it's shitty.
The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.'

~ The Real Frank Zappa Book, 1990.

The White Zone Is For Guitar Players Only

The Mothers, Cocktail Lounge Music, 1974.

Frank Quote Of The Day

Remember, Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.

~ Packard Goose, 1979.

Sunday Overnight

The Thelonious Monk quartet (Charlie Rouse, Butch Warren and Frankie Dunlop), Evidence, 1963.



The Dave Brubeck quartet (Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright, and Joe Morello), Take The A Train, 1966.



Miroslav Vitous, with Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin and Billy Cobham, Purple, 1970.



Mr. Sammy Davis Jr., with Michael Silva on drums and Johnny Mendoza on congas, medley: I've Got You Under My Skin/You Came A Long Way From St. Louis/You Are My Sunshine/ Bee-Bom, 1965.

Pundit Perino Purveys Perky Piffle

prop⋅a⋅gan⋅da:
1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
2. the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.

'...everybody accused the Bush administration of manipulating science..." - Oh, perish the thought.

...and then praising Bush for setting the table for the Copenhagen summit by promoting American non-involvement in the Kyoto accord, for the stated rationale that China and India weren't involved - oh, and the American economy, as represented by Republican pioneer-level donors, naturally.
Apparently, inactivity can be a spur to future action. In other late-breaking news, water has been alleged to be on the damp side.

Good of Perino to set the public precedent that previous administrations bear a certain responsibility for actions they commit that continue to occur after their term, however. We'll endeavor to keep this in mind for future reference.
Afghanistan, Iraq, the American financial sector meltdown, and how the U.S.A. is viewed internationally come to mind, initially.

What a charming little lobbyist for a failed ideology, zombiefied back into the public zeitgeist and granted some tawdry veneer of respectability for a mysterious reason.
Amazing how 'comity' and 'comedy' sound so similar, n'est pas?



'Tosses her head 'n flips her hair, She got a whole bunch of nothin' in there'

;>)

Your Teeth Are Showing

FZ, I Come From Nowhere, 1982.

Remember Thy Zappath To Keep It Greasy

Welcome all to the first day of Zappadan.

;>)

So Long It Hurt My Shoulder Sore

The Rising Sons, .44 Blues, 1965.

Whatever Gets You Inhofe

I Didn't Think, I Never Dreamed

Wings, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five, 1973.

Kabul, Mon Amour

One Billion Across Seven

Weather Report, Havona, 1977.

...for the folks at Urantian Sojourn.

Happy birthday, Jaco.