Public Address - Hard News (Home)

I'm a Heathen | Oct 11, 2006 09:34

I saw Stephen Baldwin in a TV interview recently and thought he seemed quite strange. Then I read this story on Salon and I am now convinced he's a raving lunatic. The least talented of the acting Baldwin brothers, Stephen underwent a born-again experience on September 11, 2001. He gave up his coke habit and became the most loopy, unpleasant and apocalyptic sort of evangelist Christian.

Check this from the story:

Now Baldwin has released a memoir, "The Unusual Suspect," a reference to the one critically acclaimed film for which he's known. The book, the "Gospel according to Stevie B.," is part testimonial and part evangelical manifesto, a cocktail of anti-intellectualism and a biblical interpretation that would have Jesus spinning in his grave, had he stayed there. Baldwin preaches that free will is a lie of Satan -- we must shut off our brains, he says, and be led by what God tells our hearts. Furthermore, he writes, efforts to end global poverty and violence are just the sort of "stupid arrogance" that incur God's wrath, which we'll be feeling any day now in the coming apocalypse. I suppose when the star of "Bio-Dome" is advising the president and converting kids by the thousands to his gnarly brand of faith, the end is, indeed, nigh.

"The Unusual Suspect" features an open letter to Bono, lambasting him for lobbying for debt relief for developing countries instead of preaching the gospel on MTV. Bono must be in league with Satan, whom Baldwin spends a lot of time thinking about. "I am smart enough to know that Satan is alive and well today," he writes. "Satan has all kinds of power, and he is able to control the minds of anyone whose mind isn't controlled by God." Baldwin's theology -- and criticism of secularists and Christian poseurs like Bono -- is written with remarkable confidence for someone who can only recite six of the Ten Commandments and four of the Twelve Apostles.

Thing is, Baldwin is on his way to fundy stardom with an evangelical roadshow that targets the skate 'n' metal demographic and lures it into what Salon describes as "his church of celebrity and absolutism." He is also a "cultural advisor" to President Bush.

Baldwin calls God "Homey" and lauds one of his young skate crew as a "gangsta for Jesus". He's also very matey with Ryan Dobson, son of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson:

In Dobson's book "Be Intolerant," he rails against relativism, homosexuals, environmentalists and "inclusive, open-minded Christians," charging his readers to "get your armor on and take up your cross." He knows just how to instill pride in the heart of his father. "I bleed conservatism, Dobson told me when I met him at a Christian publishing convention in Denver last year, crossing his ornately inked arms over a T-shirt that says, "Jesus Loves My Tattoos." "I see conservatives like me everywhere, at hot rod shows in Vegas, surfing top breaks on the coast, crazy motocross freaks like me living for Jesus. We know we're right, we have the power of the truth behind us. And because of that, I see cities on fire."

For Dobson, Baldwin and young Americans the nation over who yearn for the certainty this brand of Christianity pitches, the personal is political. Absolutism reigns in the new evangelical youth movement, shining through the chaos of modernity, global terror, media bombardment and glorious moral relativism. Baldwin pitches the ultimate dumbed-down fundamentalism, offering reductive, brainless theology. "I sleep good at night because I am totally content in the knowledge that God is in control," he writes, a conviction glittered up with the fact that it sprung from the mind of an honest-to-God celebrity.

Fuck off, that 's all. Just fuck off.

Dobson's Dad, meanwhile, has declared that Rep. Mark Foley's grooming of 16 year-old Congressional pages - which prompted several of the boys to seek help over the years - was just "sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages." Lovely.

Adam Bogacki hipped me to this New York Times story about the astonishing (and growing) extent to which faith-based businesses are granted exemptions at all levels by government in the US. Don't want to pay any taxes or bother with health and safety or environmental regulations on your bowling alley or daycare business? Just hang up a cross on the front door. All the other suckers will carry the can.

In other fundy news, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has confirmed on his website that masturbation during Ramadan constitutes a breaking of the fast, even if no spoogeing happens as a consequence. But if you just happen to accidentally touch yourself in a pleasurable way, that's alright: unless semen "really comes out". Don't you love it when they talk dirty like that?

And reader David Cormack was in touch with respect to yesterday's post on Mr Dalrymple: "Whilst I do not agree with his slightly erratic invective on all things leftish, by golly he does write a pretty prose. He wrote a particularly well written article on Islam which in itself is not entirely without sense." Agreed, actually: it's a good read.

The world waits for the Pope's big call on whether limbo - the halfway house between heaven and hell inhabited by unbaptised babies - will be officially abolished or not, and whether that means that stillborn babies go to hell instead. In all seriousness, I hope they do something sensible here. The last thing that the parents of a stillborn child need is to be told that the baby they've just lost has moved on to an eternity of suffering. (Islam, it should be noted, argues that stillborn children go directly upstairs.)

This just in: the Antichrist will be gay. Yes, but at least he'll be tidy …

And also a report from the Values Voters Summit in Washington:

The day was not without moments of unintended hilarity, much of it related to the musical selections accompanying the introduction of each speaker. Even though seemingly endless oxygen was spent bashing Hollywood's "anti-Christian" bias, the theme from "Rocky" accompanied Perkins and Dobson to the stage, made only more amusing by Dobson's girly outrage at being spurned for the first 18 months of the second Bush administration. And even though homosexuality is the greatest threat to civilization, the panel "What Feminist Majority? American Women and the Values Agenda" took the stage to the gay anthem "I Will Survive."

Now that's funny.

PS: Dude, where's my National Party? First the climate change thing, then Lockwood Smith pops up voicing support for an incarcerated Iranian who has been repeatedly denied refugee status and is now fending off expulsion by refusing to sign an Iranian passport application. Ironically, Labour's David Cunliffe has previously written a letter in support of the man's case. Scoop has all the details. Labour won't want to lurch into another Zaoui debacle here.

PPS: I'm out out the door to Nelson in a few minutes, to record an episode of Off the Wire (now on Radio Live) this evening. We record at 6.30pm at Yaza Cafe and entry is free if you want to come along.

Digg this Scoopit!

Mr Dalrymple | Oct 10, 2006 10:53

Reader Stephen Walker got in touch yesterday with a WTF? as regards this Herald story about the visiting commentator Theodore Dalrymple, who told Herald reporter Simon Collins that the "sexual revolution" and a consequent plague of sexual jealousy are to blame for rising arrests with respect to family violence.

"I'm too creeped out to even google the guy," says Stephen.

Let me help. Dalrymple is not, we should be clear, your typical modern right-winger. He is a conservative, who alleges that the liberal left and the libertarian right are parts of one unholy conspiracy. He writes quite nicely in the Spectator tradition and compared to the likes of Mark Steyn he is both a gentleman and a scholar. His offerings on the mythologising of Lady Diana Spencer were dazzling, and his work as a prison psychologist (under his real name, Anthony Daniels) has offered him insights denied to most of us.

But he suffers from the usual failings of his ilk: a tendency to regard something as true merely because he has asserted it; and a predilection for fantasy about times past.

Take this essay, All Sex, All the Time (for the City Journal a publication of the conservative think-tank The Manhattan Institute, which commonly publishes his work), in which Dalrymple decries the destruction of Victorian morals around sex at the hands of a roll-call of criminals of the sexual intellect.

"A hundred yards from where I write this, 12-year-old prostitutes often stand under street lamps on the corner at night, waiting for customers," he laments near the top, going on to slate the local police chief for declining to victimise them, and local health authorities for their "proud boast that 100 percent of local prostitutes now routinely use condoms."

Not all of the prostitutes on his street corner are 12 years old, of course - in fact, only a tiny, tragic minority will be - but Dalrymple loves to generalise like this. People "often" and "frequently" do the most ghastly things in his essays.

But the very obvious flaw in his argument is not that. It is his implication that somehow such things did not exist, at least to the same degree, in the Victorian era. In fact, they were far, far worse. There were tens of thousands of prostitutes on the streets in Victorian London. And children? This brief account of the prostitution trade in that era reads like the horror novel of a madman:

"Pain became an essential ingredient for pleasurable sex … and since the defloration of very young virgins can be excruciating, Victorians were obsessed with a 'defloration mania.' The screams of children became indispensable, shrill torture was the 'essence of delight' and many gentleman would not silence a single note.

Such a process netted the child into permanent prostitution. The result is that in nine cases out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, the child, who is usually under fifteen, frightened and friendless, her head aching. ..and full of pain and horror, gives up all hope, and in a week she is one of the attractions of the house." (quoted in Edholm, 1893, p.20).

Or this passage from a Victorian newspaper:

"Flogging or birching goes on in brothels to a much greater degree than is generally believed. One of Mrs. Jeffrles' rooms was fitted up like a torture chamber... There were rings in the ceiling for hanging women and children up by the wrists, ladders for strapping them down at any angle, as well as the ordinary stretcher to which the victim is fastened so as to be unable to move. The instruments of flagellation included the ordinary birch, whips, holly branches and wire-thonged cat-o'-nine-tails."

Suddenly, the liberal intellectuals whose mores are pilloried by Dalrymple, do not seem quite as bad. The author of the page I have linked to above notes that there were occasional social alarms about child prostitution in the era, but that "left unsaid about these waves of consciousness is the entire ocean of blame for the victim surging behind it." It also notes that it was fairly common for adult males to believe they could cure their own venereal diseases by having sex with children. So, yes, the local police chief and health workers don't seem quite so bad in that light either.

Liberals, in Dalrymple's writing, are a nameless force. He creates entire armies of liberal straw men, as Curtis Bowman (who is not so much scornful of Dalrymple as disappointed in him) notes in this critique. Bowman has written a series of such critiques, including one in which he identifies the Dalrymple Manoeuvre:

What, you ask, is the Dalrymple manoeuvre? If you've been reading my posts on Theodore Dalrymple, you know that it's the dogmatic insistence that some particular instance of anti-social or self-destructive behavior is the fault of liberalism. The insistence is dogmatic because it intentionally overlooks other possible explanations of the unseemly behavior. It's not that I habitually disagree with Dalrymple's conclusions; it's that the case that he makes in support of them is almost always inadequate.

I might add that it's also a bit dated. The sexual revolution against which Dalyrymple rails peaked 35 years ago: the credibility of Dr John Money (a favourite Dalrymple target, and, oddly enough, a Brethren child from New Zealand) ebbed away with it. The radical feminism he despises peaked a decade later. He ignores the fact that many feminists are equally as horrified by the pornification of culture as he is.

But back to Dalrymple's blaming of the "sexual revolution" and a consequent wave of "sexual jealousy" for a rise in arrests associated with family violence. For a start, as this Ministry of Justice report points out, the rise in arrests since 1994 is most likely due to a renewed police focus on family violence, and a direction to take it seriously and bring stronger charges against those responsible. It's also hard to see how oversexed liberalism explains the high rate of family violence in conservative Pacific Island families. Might this all be just a tiny bit more complicated than Dalrymple suggests?

Dalrymple's theorising also falls down badly when you look at one of the New Zealand success stories: in an environment which has far more strongly encouraged the reporting of such offences, the rate of sexual offending has trended down for more than a decade. Our incidence of rape is now markedly below that of Australia, Britain and many other countries. And all this with the godless liberals at the helm.

I find it odd that Dalrymple can believe that gender and sexuality are immutable and polar and yet somehow expect people who have never felt anything other than gay to just pull themselves together and go straight for the good of society. That he can rightly champion love and commitment yet refuse to recognise that they might exist outside heterosexual marriage. That the "enduring values" he champions have in fact consistently evolved over time (indeed, we would find some commonly held values of a hundred years ago repugnant now).

Basically, the world and its ills are a more complex business than Dalrymple and the people who are hosting him here (including the dreadful For the Sake of Our Children Trust) would have us believe.

PS: On a related theme, Cactus Kate has a great piece of writing about the "modern orgasm", what women want, and why it's not a good idea to base your sexual technique on porn movies.

Digg this Scoopit!

Now here's an idea ... | Oct 09, 2006 12:22

No Right Turn has useful coverage of Friday's climate change symposium, as well as commentary on the respective speeches of David Parker and Nick Smith.

It appears Parker's presentation on government policy in the area could hardly have been more cautious, while Smith's on behalf of National represented a 180-degree turn on almost every stance National has had on the issue, and an annexation of emerging government policy. I/S proposes that the problem is now Labour's coalition agreement with those renowned climatologists Peter Dunne and Winston Peters, which is what basically killed the carbon tax.

Well, here's an idea: perhaps, in the interests of national welfare, Labour and National could identify points of agreement (which appear to be manifold), put together a policy, backed by the 75% of Parliament the two parties command, and bloody well dare United Future and New Zealand First to try and kill it.

Yet again, Don Brash may be the problem. I/S says that at the launch of National's policy, Brash "was quizzed about his position at yesterday's policy launch, and refused to admit that climate change was happening. His position (as opposed to his party's) seems to be that the primary risk to be managed is the political risk of New Zealand being seen to go back on its word - something which would undermine our entire mana-based foreign policy.

"As for Kyoto, everyone now accepts that its not going away, that new emissions targets will be set for post 2012, and that we will sign up for them. Both parties have also indicated interest in joining the AP6 - but as a supplement rather than an alternative to Kyoto and the UNFCCC. Neither wants to shift us into the US-Australian denialist camp."

UPDATE: Some else who was there took notes, and had Dr Brash saying " ... there is ongoing debate but the majority of scientists accept that it is taking place and as an insurance policy we need to be talking about ways of reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. If it turns out to be more serious then we have to step it up. We do need to take some steps."

Of course, some people will never be convinced, but wouldn't this be a good way to regain public faith and move on from the mudslinging?

Former Exclusive Brethren member Dave Tennent noticed my recent post, Lying for the Lord?, which pondered the EB's predilection for porkies. He explained it thus:

As an ex-member of the Exclusive Brethren I can confirm that Lying for the Lord is a well accepted maxim within the ranks. If I recall correctly, it was known as 'Divine Deception', and used whenever necessary to defend the faith. This worked OK for the past 20 years or so as they kept mainly out of the media spotlight - times have changed now and they are rightly being given a caning in the press for these blatant lies and deceptive behaviour.

Right. Nice to have that cleared up.

The Internet NZ blog has a follow-up on its recent release of scathing opinions from two senior economists on the submission of VUW economist Bronwyn Howell to the select committee considering changes to telecommunications regulation in line with government announcements this year. Howell insists (as ever) that there is no broadband monopoly in New Zealand and that broadband uptake has no significant relationship to economic growth, and regards unbundling as useless an irrelevant. Well, economists will always argue. But in her critique of the work of MED advisor Network Strategies, Howell appears to have seriously crossed the line. Their response to Howell's submission is frankly blistering and appears to demonstrate that she significantly misrepresented the company's work.

I fully intended to attend the ASPA Awards on Saturday night - having helped judge the best editorial category - but having caught a cold from one of the kids, I couldn't quite face a night out (I even went to bed early).

But congratulations to the victors: Craccum's Jeremiah Yen (best Cartoonist); Salient's Nicholas Holm (best humour writer - by some stretch, according to the judges); Claire Barry (best unpaid news writer); Critic's John Hartevelt (best news writer); Craccum (best cover); Ryan Sproull of Craccum (best editorial writer); Salient (best education story - for that story about VUW fee rises); Salient (best feature content); Critic's Ryan Brown-Haysom (best feature writer); Salient and In Unison (joint winners, best design); Magneto (best small publication); and, the big one, Critic for best publication. (Congratulations also, I might add, to The Listener for continuing to support these awards.)

Moving offshore, check out this almost hilarious clip from Fox News's Hannity and Colmes, which features Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter spouting crap that I doubt even they believe to try and minimise the Mark Foley scandal and blame it on George Soros, the Democrats and, well, anyone basically … This came after Fox repeatedly identified Foley on screen as a Democrat. NZBC's Rob O'Neill notes Fox News's ratings problems: a 35% year-on-year slump.

A truly stinking Newsweek poll for the Republicans, which sees Bush's approval rating hit an all-time low. Are we seeing a scenario where even the Democrats can't screw up the mid-term elections?

From that great intellectual cheat-sheet, the New York Review of Books, the October 5 issue contains a good Timothy Garton Ash essay on Islam in Europe. Even better, a piece about Rory Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes, an amazing first-hand tale of the failure to win the peace in Iraq, and a fascinating review of George Soros' The Age of Fallibility: The Consequences of the War on Terror - but you'll either have to pay for those two or buy a copy of the journal.

And, finally, via Andrew Jull, an amazing clip from Feministing which explains why you can't say "dildo" in Texas. Not even in Austin. Because if you have six of them and you call them what they are - as opposed to, say, "educational models" - you are a felon under Texas state law. OTOH, you can put anything up your butt - so long as it's not a penis.

Digg this Scoopit!

But will it be sunny for the Big Day Out? | Oct 06, 2006 10:48

Are we in danger of lurching into a debate about actual policy? This novel prospect looms today at a climate change symposium in Wellington. Labour will have another crack at having a climate change policy it can stick to, and we'll get to see the fruit of Nick Smith's evangelising on the issue within his own party.

I'm genuinely interested to see what emerges. I think it has a greater bearing on our future than Don Brash's letter to the police over the election-spending issue (whatever the merits of the case, it has a whiff of desperation) or Helen Clark's absurdly half-arsed apology ("people should consult their dictionaries") for calling Brash "cancerous".

No Right Turn ventures on the prospects for National going green.

I thought this was quite funny: this week, National declares that the extra $200m over four years the government has produced for elective surgery merely entrenches waiting list culls. A year ago, National declares that its own proposal to spend an extra $100m over three years will "slash the 20,000 backlog of those waiting in high priority elective surgical service categories." Elsewhere, Dr Brash has been exhaustively namechecking a cancer victim.

Meanwhile, the revelations that the Exclusive Brethren's colourful private investigators claimed would rock our political establishment like, um, "TNT times five million" appear to be receding. Latest update: we'll get back to you. Ben Wilson had an answer for my question as to whether all private detectives are as freaky as these guys:

You only have to consider for a moment the kind of people who become private eyes and what they do on a daily basis to realize your question "are they all this weird?" is answered in the affirmative.

They're selected from people who were cops but got kicked off the force, or possibly left for health reasons, or never got in in the first place, due to psyche or health profiles not fitting the Bill. They may have tried to get into 'intelligence' too. Quite probably they had a go at security work, but found it too boring.

Their job consists almost entirely in poking their noses into people's private lives. Not just to get a scoop, but to get proof, usually so a spouse can claim something from them. They are often working for people who are pretty disturbed themselves.

Because they work alone, they don't have the moderating influence of other coppers and a chain of command, which reigns in the force detectives who might be inclined to slide to the dark side.

Also, they can often become highly paranoid, since the very nature of their work involves hurting people in ways that would quite possibly lead to retaliation. In the case of PIs casing out politicians, there's probably quite good reason for paranoia, since the various services that protect politicians are even spookier than they are.

At least they should be, otherwise there's a good chance unscrupulous people will get to politicians with all sorts of threats, ranging from embarrassment to assassination.

And Shannon reported that he once worked in a bar where Lew Proctor was a regular and formed, shall we say, a somewhat unfavourable view of his character.

Further evidence of Republican meltdown in the US: Ben Gracewood notes that one of the regulars at RedState, one of the most enthusiastically crazy winger blog sites, is resigning in despair, declaring that he can no longer cheerlead for the Republicans. The ensuing thread is quite interesting, as the slogan-shouters run up against genuine conservatives for whom it is dawning that the party of small government has been on a spending jag for five years.

Dan Horne wasn't so impressed with the Bob Woodward interview on 60 Minutes, noting Arianna Huffington's observation that Woodward's revelations about the White House state of denial are hardly news to some people. Well, no, but I think it's pretty clear that Woodward saying this stuff - after having written two pretty cuddly books about the Bush White House - has a particular impact.

Robert Harvey recommended the Slashdot interview (with questions posed by readers) with NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. I agree. I think it's compulsory reading for anyone interested in citizen journalism and the future of news.

Looking at another side of online media - the revenue side - this here is the blog associated with a new white paper on the online advertising market in New Zealand and an accompanying full-page ad in the NBR today. I'll read the paper and see what I think.

Swerving away from grown-up matters to rock 'n' roll now, Shayne Carter, who should know, pondered on the latest version of the Tui bottle opener award, as showcased here this week:

It looks pretty much like the old one but with sharper angles, so, yes, good for Jordan and his lion. Both models tho' are made of sturdier stuff than the old perspex/wood version. SJF won two of those in 1994. One got knocked off the table and snapped in half at the ceremony. They posted my male singer one to me in Dunedin and it too arrived in two pieces and has never been properly fixed. There was something symbolic in that, I thought...

Graeme Humphreys out of Able Tasmans had a very late entry for the Flying Nun lists discussion:

A certain deal of chuffedness here seeing an unusually strong Able Tasmans representation. Wow. Anyway, top 5 for me could well be 5 Skeptics albums, with special mention of If I Will I Can EP from the box-set, but for variety's sake:

Skeptics, Amalgam. Astounding sounds, astounding songs, no duds. I continually wonder what music they'd be making today if David D'Ath was still around.

Gordons, Gordons. Fit and unique and still punches harder than most things do today.

Bill Direen, Split Seconds. There are so many angular gems.

Great Unwashed, EP in that damned plastic wrapper that went all sticky but smelled really good. That a band as mighty as The Clean could benefit from Peter Gutteridge's input is incredible, but it's true (for me). Gutteridge rocks.

The Chills, The Lost EP. Terry Moore's contribution to The Chills is underestimated, but this is the release I like the most.

Songs? Can I?

'Mammouth', Skeptics.

'What's Going On?', Fetus Productions.

'Throwing Stones', Sneaky Feelings (David Pine)

'Wrapped Up In Myself Again', Double Happys.

'La Motta', Skeptics.

For new Able Tasmanic material may I point out that Peter Keen and myself have a new CD out called The Overflow, by Humphreys and Keen. Some people say it's really good.

Indeed it is.

Alex pointed out that Byrne and Eno are offering the original multitracks for two tracks from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts to anyone who wants to remix and mash them.

And then of course there was my provocation with respect to the announcement of Tool and Muse in next year's Big Day Out lineup. Yamis at Blogging it Real, who ranks Tool second only to Rage Against the Machine in the Rock firmament had words.

David Cormack told me this:

I hate Tool also, I hate Tool for the lack of irony and pretension.

But I love Muse. I love them for their lack of irony and their pretension. I think it's the fact that Matt Bellamy (lead singer) so badly wants to be Thom Yorke whilst Maynard James Keenan wants to be God.

Matt said:

Oh that's a bit harsh ...

I think for a certain age group, albums like Aenima and Undertow were pretty cool, and in my case partly bridged the gap between the charts and the alternative scene, and I'm not even a metal fan.

Plus I would argue a big portion of the overdressed indie/alt scene (well any _scenester_ i would imagine) is po-faced, at least from what I've seen of Auckland these days.

But I guess things were different in the raucous ol' flying nun days eh?

Well, gimme the Gordons over Tool, put it that way.

Jhonus quoth:

I'm really not trying to be edgy when I listen to tool. Honest. I find them to be an almost spiritual experience and they are in my opinion consummate performers, and consumate musicians. Perhaps you have the opportunity to see this at the big day out.

Anyway, good luck with those "edgy" comments bruiser. Now I shall go think up some almost witty stereotype about the kinds of people that listen to The Killers and Muse, then maybe i can crack a wee joke about their band name!!

*the sound of girls giggling*

Steven from Spare Room said:

Totally agree on the Muse thing - I blame Billy Corgan and Rocky Horror's Richard O'Brien for that indulgent twaddle. And Tool will prolly just whack up their H.R. Giger-influenced videos and get the strobes going.

I did notice that the Violent Femmes are coming, which may prompt the student's association to start orientation early next year.

Am also listening to Lemonheads (via emusic - thanks). Sounds like Lovey-era. Apparently J. Mascis sent his guitar parts in via email...

Hamish also emailed:

Say what you like, every drummer I know (and I know a few) are big Tool fans. IMHO that's a measure that counts.

And Muse? They rocked BDO last time they came. It's space opera for people too old for Emo, and that's a good thing.

W00t!

Yes, apparently people like Muse. Including Jo from Hubris:

I like Muse. A lot. And yes, they are pretentious, but no more so than most other musicians, even if their arrangements can be a little more grandiose. Sometimes I'd rather hear classical piano and huge big orchestrations than people thinking they can change the world with a couple of strums on their acoustic guitar and a couple of slurred words. Bob Dylan, I'm looking at you here.

I suspect that they're no longer taking themselves as seriously as say The Darkness take themselves, and I don't often hear anyone accusing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' of being too pretentious. Muse aren't for everyone, obviously, and that's okay.

And who am I to contradict someone with the lady-cojones to take midnight panty-swims in Wellington Harbour at this time of year?

Thomas was a little bit angry with me:

In regards to your comments on the Big Day Out announcement, I just wanted to say that given I am a part of the target market for such an event (20 year old, white, well educated etc), your comments were fairly embarrassing. I like Muse, in fact I love them. They are one of the few genuinely creative musicians left in the world of banality that is commercial music today. Tool are also awesome, sure there fans can be munters, but for the people who "get it" (and you clearly don't), they are absolute geniuses.

My Chemical Romance? Get your hand off it Russell! Bunch of whiny emo crybabies complaining about the difficulty of being brought up in a nice home with nice parents. Still, at least they aren't Simple Plane.

The Killers? Meh, the lead singer apparently said their latest album was one of the best made in the last ten years. Egotism is only cool if your music is actually that good, and the Killers sure as shit aint that good.
In general I was very impressed by the line up. I just thought you should know, mainly because by writing this email I can avoid doing some actual work.

Anyway, I guess I will be seeing you on January 19 at Mt Smart?

At least Carmel agreed with me:

I could say that its because I'm the same age as you and not in the target demographic that I share your disappointment with the 2007 BDO line up announcement - however - I can't quite buy that explanation for the big let down. 2006 was so damn good - fantastic even - there wasn't enough time to get around all the acts, previous years were a mixed bag but always full of delights and cutting edge stuff.

So how can they get it so wrong this time? It's so well ... yawn ... uninspiring ... and hardly seems worth the price of the ticket. Hoping there are plenty of late announcements coming through given time. A very big let down so far.

And Paul Le Comte reckoned …

The big rumor of the BDO lineup hasn't eventuated yet - The Who.

Still, with them claiming that the Tool and the Killers as headliners, can't really see The Who warming up for Tool, can you?

Never mind, thanks so much for the heads up, I was actually looking forward to BDO and was going to shout myself as a present for finishing my Masters. Actually the line up is a little flat, where's the wow factor? Still there's hope for the dance line up.

Oh well maybe the next year will be my first BDO?

At least The Who are still on the cards for dates here on their world tour. I saw them at the Hollywood bowl 2 days after the Ox died, very weird, but fantastic.

Me, I'm hoping (although not very confidently) for Flaming Lips and Tegan and Sara (they said they'd come back!) for the alternative stage. The Pixies played the Euro festival circuit as recently as July, so they wouldn't seem out of the question, and the Arctic Monkeys rumour still seems to be a live one.

And, to conclude a very lengthy post indeed … I've linked to the clip of the Flaming Lips playing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on a cruise ship before. And goddamit, I'm linking to it again. Because it's awesome. Also, a completely silly mash-up of the Velvet Underground and the Archies.

PS: OMG. New season of 'Lost' on the wires. Big night in for mum 'n' dad ...

Digg this Scoopit!