First, a little about James Brown dying on Christmas.

God damn, JB. That one took me by surprise. I gotta figure he’s one of the great geniuses of our time. Nobody could ever deny him as a performer, a singer, a dancer, a songwriter. But to me it’s the music that gets me high – all those tight as hell, stop-in-the-exact-center-of-a-dime bands he had over the years. One time in 1969, James had a sold out show in Georgia, but most of his band quit. So Bobby Byrd took a Lear jet to Cincinatti, picked up a young band he’d seen called the Pacemakers from an empty bar gig they were getting paid $15 for. They flew directly to Georgia, came out onto stage with their hero who they’d never met, and still were the baddest band ever. That’s how 17 year old Bootsy Collins got in James Brown’s band.

Giving James credit as the producer of all that music, obviously you gotta keep in mind he’s not playing those instruments (although I saw him do a smokin organ solo one time) and he’s got hundreds of amazing musicians playing with him over the years that need to share that credit. But if it didn’t take genius to put all those people together and make that type of funk then how come nobody else did it? And if you ask me nobody to this day has matched the JBs. You wanna be blown away, pick up Pass the Peas: The Best of the JBs. I have had it in my head for years that if Skander Halim ever makes that Vern Tells It Like It Is movie the opening credits have to use “Hot Pants Road,” because I want that to be my theme music. I guess you can’t go wrong having theme music from the same people who did Black Caesar and Slaughter’s Big Ripoff. (read the rest of this shit…)

If you grew up in America like I did, you probaly grew up fearing some dictator or despot from somewhere trampling on freedom. You had your nightmares of Hitler and Mussolini if you grew up during World War 2, the spread of communism during the Vietnam era or what Reagan called the Evil Empire during the ’80s. Or our younger folks are growing up hearing about Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and all the various oppressive Islamic regimes. Maybe you read 1984, Animal Farm, V For Vendetta, the Handmaid’s Tale, Star Wars the official novelization. For life-long Americans, living under an oppressive regime is the stuff of cautionary tales. Thank God it’s hard for us to imagine living in a country or a planet where you have to fear the police coming and taking you away at night for your political beliefs, for a misunderstanding, for a vendetta, because your neighbor accused you of being a traitor, or for no reason at all.

But with the continually snowballing monumental incompetence and belligerence of the Bush administration, with the Patriot Act parts 1 and 2 still on the books, with the Iraq war still spiraling out of control, Afghanistan still falling from our grip, Osama bin Laden still on the loose, bodies still rotting in the streets of New Orleans, North Korea going nuclear thanks to our Conan the Barbarian approach to diplomacy, and the republicans facing the task of convincingly rigging the mid-term election when the whole world expects them to be crushed into oblivion by the angry populace, it’s easy to get paranoid about what these assholes might want to pull next. (read the rest of this shit…)

This column used to be about movies, not Bush, so what the hell. I’ll do an oscar column. If you don’t give a shit about the oscars no problem, go read something else by me, such as my book. thanks.

I like to watch the oscars but I got a sixth sense for not being able to guess what’s gonna win. Every once in a while it fucks up on me and I guess one of the dark horses. I knew Polanski was gonna win for THE PIANIST, to name the one example. But for the most part, I am not an individual to be betting on any oscar pools. This year, I really thought BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was a lock. My feeling was, this is not only widely acclaimed and award winning, its also a great movie that everybody seems to like. I can’t tell you how many people I know who were just like me, surprised how much they liked a movie about gay shepherds. It’s just one of those things like ice cream or root beer or something. Who likes movies but doesn’t like BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN? (read the rest of this shit…)

So Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face with a shotgun. Big fuckin deal. I know it sounds like some cold blooded badass shit for a guy to do but keep in mind it was AN ACCIDENT. So it doesn’t make him tough. Being clumsy is nothing to brag about.

I know this is last week’s scandal but I want to spend a couple paragraphs on it because you can’t help but draw parallels between Cheney’s flurry of buckshot and every other colossal mess these morons have created. Have you heard the details of the hunting setup at this place? They were hunting domesticated, flightless, penned in quail. And even still, they had to DRIVE UP to the place where the domesticated, flightless, penned in quail are. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Actually not even that. It’s like driving up to a barrel full of fish that can’t swim and shooting them. That’s not hunting, real hunters don’t do that kind of shit. It’s just animal cruelty. What I’m saying is this is classic Bush administration: set out to do something that is morally wrong, then do such a bad fuckin job of it that it turns out way worse than anyone could’ve imagined it would. (read the rest of this shit…)

What is it about the Super Bowl that can drive men to madness? Look, I’m not really a sports guy, and especially not a football guy. By football I mean the American kind with the bigass helmets and giant shoulder pads to make everybody look like monsters, not the European kind where there’s less pads and people bite each other on the balls and shit. In this american type of football the whole season is leading up to the big day, zero hour, Men’s Christmas. The Super Bowl. See, I’m a man and I can prove it, but the fact is I don’t always watch the Super Bowl. I really don’t give a shit about football. That’s just how the Lord made me.

But a couple weeks ago the Seattle Seahawks were in their first playoffs in more than twenty years. Early afternoon the day of the last playoff game I was still waking up when I looked out the window and I saw a dude walk past my apartment with full head-to-toe Seahawks gear and a giant Seahawks flag over his shoulder. I almost spit out my non-alcoholic beverage because you don’t usually see that in this town. We’re used to our teams losing and those types of extremists usually have to be shipped in from the suburbs. I mean yeah the Mariners had a good season a couple years ago, the Sonics had a championship back before you were born and the Storm got the title recently. (That doesn’t count to these type of dudes because men don’t paint their bodies and set things on fire to celebrate women’s accomplishments. Maybe some day.) And the Seahawks have usually been the worst of all our teams. But there they were winning their first playoffs since 1984 which means they get their first Super Bowl since God made Adam, Eve and Steve. (read the rest of this shit…)

Happy new year everybody. Couldn’t be worse than the last one as far as my country is concerned. I hope.

Last year my resolution was what I called A COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE, and I guess I’m not the one to judge this but from my viewpoint I think it worked out pretty good. What I tried to do was just remember that you poor bastards out there are wasting your time reading some of this stuff so I should try to make it good. If I wrote a review and I wasn’t sure it was very interesting I wouldn’t post it right away so I could come back to it later and try to make it better. I’m sure I still put some duds up there but probaly alot less than I did prior to my Commitment.

This year though I’m not gonna renew the commitment. What I’m gonna do instead is called STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE. See, if you have a commitment to excellence, what the fuck is that, anyway? All you do is say you’re commited. It’s like saying the flag salute every morning, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna go out there and stand up for the values you just pledged allegiance to, it just means you’re there in spirit or something. The difference between striving and commitment is the difference between trying to impress your new girlfriend and laying around reading the newspaper while your wife does the dishes. You still love her, I hope, but you’re just not striving. (read the rest of this shit…)