MICHAEL MOORE IN BIG RAPIDS

I attended a talk given by Michael Moore a couple of days ago in Big Rapids, MI. He has recently started a Slacker Tour to help spread awareness about President Bush and his incredibly treasonous and impeachable behavior. Big Rapids was his second stop, and I believe he spoke at Central Michigan later in the day.

The guy was pretty much as you've seen him on TV; sloppily dressed and informal, he spoke about the need to get out the vote and send Bush home. The crowd was enthusiastic and supportive. There were a pathetic few Bush supporters outside who completely failed to make any noise at all.

Something that a lot of people know, but you may not, is that Bush and Cheney only speak to pre-selected crowds of registered Republicans. As far as I know, this is not the case with Kerry, and is certainly not the case with Moore. Anyway, he spoke for about an hour, mostly about politics, barely mentioning his movie. He also showed a few humorous fake ads he had created, then he high-tailed it out of there, followed by raucous applause.

And yes, he's pretty fat, but he wears it well.

This guy just visited my blog. He's got a nice new blog with great photos of the London Underground. You should go see.

NIGHT OF THE RAMONES (4)

"I have been fortunate to have spent my entire musical career playing for Ramones fans, which I would like to believe are the most musically knowledgeable, coolest, and best fans any group could have. They have made all 22 years great.

Looking back at the last show, and at the time, is very strange knowing you are never going to experience that same feeling again, but rather than getting up there and not be able to perform at the level our fans should expect it is better to stop before that happens. A few friends were nice enough to join us at this last show which made this even more special to me."

—handwritten comments of Johnny Ramone, included as liner notes in We're Outta Here!

More Ramones: A webpage containing reviews of all the Ramones albums, plus some pretty funny comments, can be found here. An interview with Joey Ramone shortly before his death at If Magazine. Is this accurate? A transcript of Joey and Marky fighting on the Howard Stern Show.

NIGHT OF THE RAMONES (3)

Johnny—the Drill Sergeant. Born John Cummings on October 8, 1951, on Long Island; a veteran of military-academy life whose damn-the-torpedoes temperament was a crucial factor in keeping the band alive at its lowest ebb. Johnny contends, to this day, that he had no influences whatsoever as a guitarist. He picked up the instrument, belatedly, at 22, purchasing a $50 Mosrite in January 1974 on a trip with Dee Dee to the Manhattan guitar emporium Manny's. He learned only what he deemed essential to make his desired music: "Pure, white rock 'n' roll, with no blues influence. I wanted our sound to be as original as possible. I stopped listening to everything."

—excerpt from The Ramones...Loud and Fast by David Fricke

A new documentary about The Ramones is playing in selected theatres nationwide. The documentary, titled "The Ramones: End of The Century" reveals the darker side of the band, including singer Joey Ramone's obsessive-compulsive disorder, the heavy drinking of Marky Ramone, the non-stop drugging of Dee Dee, and the falling out between Joey and Johnny over a woman:

The filmmakers believe Joey and Johnny fell out for good when Joey's girlfriend, Linda, left him for Johnny (whom she married) in the early `80s. Afterward, the singer and guitarist would barely speak, even if they were sitting next to each other in the van.

Johnny says that while Linda's change of heart "factored in, the problems started and continued for other reasons. We had different ideas of what the band should be doing."

The estrangement was so great, Johnny didn't visit Joey when he got cancer. The guitarist says he felt it would have been hypocritical to do so.

—excerpt from the Monterey Herald Review

NPR audio interview with Michael Gramaglia who co-directed and produced End of The Century.

What if Dali and Disney got together and did...I don't know...some sort of animated film featuring Dali artwork? What if? Man, that would be great.



Dali's Destino
More Eric Meyer on CSS has a companion site with resources and downloads to help you follow along as you read. Highly recommended. I'm not buy the book myself, but I'm checking out the downloads.

You want colored scroll-bars, but you also want your xhtml document to validate. What do you do?

html {scrollbar-base-color: #f90}
Nothing will validate the CSS because the scrollbar tag is IE specific, but you can make the page validate by including the scrollbar styling in the html element instead of the body element.

NIGHT OF THE RAMONES (2)

"Well, in the beginning I used to share a loft and eat junk food. I remember the early days when we were all broke with nothing. I used to hang out at CBGB's because it was across the street, just to get warm. I'd rather drink a couple of beers, I guess it's nutritious—I couldn't afford to eat so I figured I'd go across the street and have a couple of beers for dinner. Things have picked up now ... "

—Joey Ramone, from a 1985 Interview

And yes, I am listening to The Ramones right now. You got a problem with that? Here's a nice FAQ page listing all The Ramones and their true names, among other things. Here is a history page with some basic information about The Ramones. Alternatively, here's a link to another page with more history, plus the different line-ups the band has had over the years.

Finally I present a link to episode two of The Clint Howard Show in which Clint interviews Johnny Ramone. It's totally hilarious.

NIGHT OF THE RAMONES

"The Ramones were loud and fast. Everyone knows that, even the poor, blind saps who never loved the band. But The Ramones were many other things, and gloriously so, from the moment of their inception in Forest Hills, New York, in 1974, until their final concert, #2,263, in Los Angeles on August 6, 1996.

They were prolific—releasing 21 studio and live albums between 1976 and 1996—and professional, typically cutting all of the basic tracks for one of those studio LPs in a matter of days.

...The Ramones were also first: The first band of the mid-70's New York punk-rock uprising to get a major-label record contract and put an album out; the first to rock the nation on the road and teach the British how noise annoys; the first new American group of the decade to kick the smug, yellow-bellied shit out of a '60s superstar aristocracy running on cocaine-and-caviar autopilot."

—excerpt from The Ramones...Loud and Fast by David Fricke

I'm a pinhead and proud of it. When Joey died, I got really depressed. Cause: no Ramones reunion tours, no possiblity. Also it reminded me forcibly that time passes and the song don't fuckin' remain the fuckin' same. Fuck it. With the passing of Dee Dee and Johnny my depression grows. I'm such a big fan. Ramones music, to me, is the heart of Rock n Roll and American pop culture, along with such greats as Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis. They were all originals.

So, I've made a decision to do a series of Ramones posts exploring their history and contributions to the genre of Punk Rock called Night of The Ramones. I hope you don't get bored but there it is. Maybe you'll learn something new. I don't know how long this will last—and I will post on other subjects—but get ready for a shitload of The Ramones.

"Watching the responses of Bush and Cheney to 9/11, their obsessive secrecy, their endless political manipulation and exploitation of 9/11, their blatant supression of rights and liberties of foreigners, their taking our nation to its first 'preventive war' as aggressors in Iraq, their distortion of intelligence gathering, their Nixon-like rationalizations, I realized that--with the near certainty of a catastrophic terrorist attack against America one day--we have the wrong leaders.

Not because they are not able or well motivated or 'real Americans,' as President Lyndon Johnson used to say--for they are all those things. But they are also zealots who are convinced of their own wisdom, oblivious to not only what Americans think but the opinions of the entire world. Former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once spoke of this problem: 'The greatest danger to liberty lurks in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.' "

—excerpt from Worse than Watergate by John Dean

"I am just honored that people still like us, and people are still nice to me."

—Johnny Ramone, March, 2004

Johnny Ramone, guitarist of the legendary punk rock band The Ramones, died in his sleep Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 55 years old.

The highly influential guitarist was a co-founder of the seminal group, which many consider the first real punk rock band.

Ramone, born John Cummings, was surrounded by friends and loved ones Sunday afternoon when he passed away at his Los Angeles home, his publicist told the Associated Press late Wednesday night.

The guitarist, thought by some to be the fastest in the world, had been fighting prostate cancer, and had kept his sickness private for four years. The news of it only became public in June when he lapsed into a coma for a week and was hospitalized.

The Legend Lives On:  Long Live Johnny Ramone

"They were striding now, slashing the autumn grass with their shoes, beyond the tents in the hay-smelling, leaf-mold fields, Will glaring at town, Jim staring back at the high now-darkening banners as the last of the sun hid under the earth."

—excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury



Rowboat Veterans for Truth
This one's only for really obsessed fans of The Simpsons, a big big map of Springfield via kottke.org.

"For a "poor man's copyright," mail a copy of your work to yourself and then file it away unopened. If there is ever a copyright conflict, you have your manuscript sealed in an officially-dated envelope to support your case."

The Godfather horsehead pillow and film stills from Frank Miller's Sin City film via jason.

Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes
by Stephen King

I read this Stephen King article recently and thought it was well-written, but when I went to find it on the web today it seemed to have mysteriously disappeared—possibly because of copyright issues, I dunno. I made a quickie web page from a cached file and am presenting it here for your enjoyment. Maybe I'll get an e-mail soon telling me to remove it, but for now it is here so read it while you can.

I've got five new G-mail invitations to give away. First come first serve. Just e-mail me.

A way to use colored scrollbars on a webpage and have it validate. Check out this page from the Zeit.Ca website. I tested it out in the validator and it does validate. I wonder how it does cross-browser-wise...anyway I thought it was cool that you could do this and have it validate. Anybody using a browser where it doesn't work? Let me know. I'd be interested.

Have you heard of BrowserCam? It's a site where you can have screenshots taken of your webpages in various browsers. I guess I'd heard of it but never got around to hunting it down. I went there and had some shots made from some of my sites. You have a free trial for a few hours only, so you have to make them fast. Here is a webpage where you can see the screenshots I made.

...From booths painted cotton-candy colors, fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.
"It's just a plain old carnival," said Will.

—excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury



Shatner is back, baby!

Tantek responds to an article posted at Evolt titled Ten CSS tricks you may not know. An interesting article and response, if you're into CSS you should save these links.

Here's a great link for all you Kurt Vonnegut fans: A web page containing links to all the Kilgore Trout story excerpts.

"Will lay, eyes shut, hearing the beat of great oil-black wings as if a huge, ancient bird had drummed down to live, to breathe, to survive in the night meadow."

—excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Holy Internet, Batman! My image host has gone completely crackerdog!

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I've been busy. Mostly watching the U.S. Open and reading a bunch of paperbacks I got from the library book sale. Among the gems I picked up was an old copy of The Godfather with original movie photos. Nice. I also met and purchased (for the low, low price of ten cents) another old friend:


Here's something nice. I've been mentioned. Isn't that hyper-cool?

Here's something terrible. A girl gets fired from Friendster for blogging. I read about this at biz stone's blog.

"A calliope began to play oh so softly, grieving to itself, a million miles away."

—excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The September issue of rumble is online now. Rumble is a web magazine devoted to very short fiction and poetry.

Will Zell Miller roast in hell?

Z O G B Y:
Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and "Consciously Failed" To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York's Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals.

Justice Department censors Supreme Court quote. Man, I really don't trust those guys anymore.

Links via blogsnow.