Two tidbits, an announcement and a request

[beautifulduckweed]

Tidbit 1: It really blows my goddamn mind that some people were worked up about a Muslim congressman swearing into office using the Quran. In fact, it really, really motherfucking blows my mind that they expected him to swear in using the motherfucking Bible, and viewed his desire to take a ceremonial oath on a book that actually, y'know, means something to his faith, as somehow un-American and dangerous. What in the cunting motherfucking shitfuck is wrong with some people? Seriously.

Tidbit 2a: Finally watched The Prestige last night with ibnfirnas, xwrn and Antonia. What a fantastic movie. My expectations were pretty damn high, because a) Christopher Nolan, b) Christian Bale, and c) DAVID GODDAMN BOWIE AS NIKOLA GODDAMN TESLA, but this movie exceeded all expectations. It was over two hours long, but every single minute was essential to the plot--and best of all, I really had no idea how and where the movie was going to end up. The ending? Blew me away. Even the cheesy dying-gasp-of-air speech and Big Revelation were riveting. I will be buying this when it comes out on DVD, oh yessss, preciousss.

Also? The slash for that movie practically writes itself. And I'm not normally one for slash fiction.

Tidbit 2b: Finished watching Capote on Wednesday night. It was another movie that blew me away; Philip Seymour Hoffman deserved that Oscar and then some. The movie's take on Capote as an utterly self-centered being with the occasional self-aware glimpse of what he'd become was just brilliant. Watch this movie. Do it.

Announcement: I'll be in Califnordia from tonight through Wednesday evening, gallivanting with assorted people at assorted times, but primarily with redsouffle, ariiadne, xwrn, vyrin and tarentel. We're going to catch a taping of The Price is Right live, eeeeee! If you need to get ahold of me, call me. This is going to rock so hard.

Also, a request: if anybody has suggestions for songs to play as we drive into Los Angeles, I'd love to hear 'em. So far, the contenders are:

"Los Angeles, I'm Yours" - The Decemberists
"Take California" - The Propellerheads
"California" - Wax
"Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns n Roses
"Paradise City" - Guns n Roses
"California Love" - 2Pac
"LAUSD" - Jurassic 5
"Californication" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Ænema" - Tool (I get the impression Maynard James Keenan isn't very fond of LA from this song; what about you?)
"Beverly Hills" - Weezer
"Burn Hollywood Burn" - Public Enemy
"Celluloid Heroes" - The Kinks
"Hollywood Freaks" - Beck
"Surf Wax America" - Weezer
"L.A." - Elliot Smith
"Boyz-n-the-hood" - Dynamite Hack
"Straight Outta Compton" - N.W.A.

Comments

[darwinpolice.livejournal.com]

I have said this many times before and I will say it many times in the future. If you feel that it's important to swear on anything but your own sense of honor and decency, then I do not trust you.

But on a more important note, how hot is Scarlett Johansson? The answer is "real hot."

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

1. Yes. We are pretty much exactly on the same page as this one. Though should I ever be elected to office, I think it'd be pretty goddamn funny to swear on Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion.

2. Scarlett Johansson is quite edibly hot. However, while she's normally a competent actress, she didn't do so well in The Prestige. In fact, she was pretty much the weak link in the movie. If she'd managed to exude the charisma of, say, Catherine Keener, or even the raw sex appeal of cinema sirens like Brigitte Bardot, she would've done much better. But as it was: damn that was some fine booty, and damn that was some boring acting.

[paraleipsis.livejournal.com]

1. This makes me wonder whether various elected officials who were ostensibly Quakers, e.g. Richard Nixon (. . . we're not proud of him, but it's true), opted to actually abide by their own faith enough to not swear oaths, and what Mr. Prager would think about that.

2. Yeah, she doesn't have much going on in this movie. I loved her in Lost in Translation and I wonder if she's one of those young actors, like Claire Danes in the nineties, who are perfectly able to tackle realistic, contemporary material but not yet prepared to stretch beyond that idiom.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

"Made it Fine" by Jump, Little Children

(an excerpt...)

A song for when you go
To keep you company
A song for when you go
Far away from me
A song for when you go
To California
West of the city lights
Across America
A song for when you go
Out on the interstate
Under the powerlines
Call me and I'll know
That you made it,
You made it fine
Call me and I'll know
That you made it,
Call me,
And I'll know
That you made it fine
A song for when you go
To keep you company...

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Thanks for the suggestion. Will download and check out.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked The Prestige! I loved it too. I love me some Christian Bale. Mmmmh. And Hugh Jackman? Sign my silly butt up.

I think one of the Indigo Girls did a reprise of "Straight Outta Compton." If I can resurrect it from my hard drive I'll send it your way. And I'd add for road-song quality if not geographical consistency, John Mayer's "Why Georgia?"

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

The Indigo Girls do "Straight Outta Compton"? Holy fucking crap, this I have to listen to.

And the eye candy factor on The Prestige was just ridiculous. Jackman finally starred in a non-crappy movie, and good on him. (I love the X-Men movies, but they're not exactly excellent cinema, know what I mean?)

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Though sweaty Hugh Jackman running around the forest taking those other mofos to SCHOOL is always a good thing. mmmh, sweaty Hugh in a wifebeater...yummers.

I'll see if I can dig up "Straight Outta Compton" for you...

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Aha. It's "Straight Outta Compton" done by Nina Gordon. I don't have it on my hard drive, but I'm looking for it. Grrrrrrrr.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Bless you, Devo-Man.

[freyley.livejournal.com]

did anyone notice that it's Thomas Jefferson's koran? And that the congressman who hates him is from Virginia?

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

1. Yes.

2. Yes.

3. Oh, irony cakes. You are so delicious.

[browse.livejournal.com]

Tidbit 1: I totally agree. Sheesh.

Tidbit 2a: I've been wanting to see this, but haven't yet. Thanks for the endorsement. I'll pop it to the top of my netflix queue.

Tidbit 2b: Rilly? I watched this just a couple of nights ago, and I felt like... "Ehh." I thought PSH did a good enough job, but the script was so slow, glacial even. I just wasn't feeling the love.

Theme Song: Evil California, by Annie Ross, from the soundtrack to the movie "Short Cuts".

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

2b. Yeah, it's slow, but I don't mind slow movies. My tolerance for slow is astronomical, actually. And I thought the pacing was perfect for the subject matter.

The Prestige? Not slow. Not necessarily fast, either, but every moment is PACKED.

Thanks for the song suggestion! Will check it out tonight.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes Southern California Wants To Be Western New York," even though it's adorably cheesy, by Dar Williams.

Movie SO GOOD.

[freyis.livejournal.com]

Dr. Dre - Gin and Juice
NWA - Forget about Dre
Dyablo - City of Tha Padres

In fact, the last one is so good that if you enjoy rap at all, I should put it up for you.

I just gotta say it . . .

[davethegreat.livejournal.com]

The congressman was NOT asked to swear on a bible. He, like all other congressmembers, was sworn in en mass without swearing on any religious books at all, just their own highly dubious personal honor. As they always do.

Swearing on bibles is something that some congressmembers do afterwards, in a reenactment that is nothing more than a photo op. Those reenactment ceremonies have as much to do with the congressmembers' official function as the civil war reenactors do with settling the slavery dispute. They are welcome to swear on the McDonald's menu and wear a tutu at those reenactment ceremonies. They are allowed to substitute lyrics from Rush's popular song "Come Sail Away" during those reenactment ceremonies. They can swear loyalty to the United Federation of Planets in those reenactment ceremonies. Because they are not real ceremonies.

Nobody asked him to use a bible in the official ceremony, and the only people that bitched about it's use in the optional reenactment Ellison chose to perform were some douchebags who were not actually involved in it in any way. I love ya, Candy, but all that information was on the very link you posted.

Like you, it blows my mind that people gave a rat's ass what book he used in his photo op, but it blows my mind even more that so many people who almost always know better actually believe this really happened. It didn't. Nobody tried to force anybody to do anything. No religious books of any kind were used in any official context to do anything. No bibles, korans, torahs or other Abrahamic texts were part of the swearing-in ceremony in any way nor were they scheduled to be. No leader of congress tried to impart his bigotry onto anyone else (Goode is, organizationally speaking, the equivalent of a guy working five cubicles away from Ellison, not the equivalent of Ellison's boss). Goode's insistence that a bible be used in Ellison's photo op carries as much weight as my insistence that the president wear a pink bunny costume every Tuesday.

Sorry, had to rant :)

That being said, it is really hilarious that he used Jefferson's Koran in the reenactment. Funny on a couple levels, one being Goode is a Virginian like Jefferson, and the other being that the Koran in question may be considered blasphemous by many Muslims due to the fact that it seems to not be written in Arabic, but rather a translated version written in English (judging by the English text on the spine of the book and the fact that Jefferson didn't speak Arabic as far as I know).

Re: I just gotta say it . . .

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

No, I got that the swearing in was ceremonial--note my use of the term "ceremonial oath" in the second sentence of my post. That term, "ceremonial"? I used it on purpose. To indicate that I understood that it was, y'know, ceremonial. However, people--a LOT of people--got hot under the collar over the fact that Ellison wanted to use the Quran for this purpose, which, frankly, makes the whole situation even more hilarious and people like Prager even bigger douchebags. And no, nobody tried to force anybody to do anything--I'm not sure HOW you got the impression you thought I thought Ellison was being forced to do anything--but a lot of incredibly stupid rhetoric was slung around, and I'm commenting on the rheotric.

Dude, you need to focus your devil's advocacy elsewhere, because our understanding of the situation is pretty much the same. Save thine ranting energies.

Re: I just gotta say it . . .

[davethegreat.livejournal.com]

What are you talking about? I didn't berate you about it being "ceremonial." I was talking about the bible thing being part of a "reenactment." "Ceremonial oaths" were not the issue, and nowhere in my text did I indicate that. The official, real, oath was indeed ceremonial. I just re-read my rant three times and still can't figure out where you got that I was bitching about it being ceremonial.

As for where I for the impression that you thought Ellison was forced to do something, it might come from this line here: "In fact, it really, really motherfucking blows my mind that they expected him to swear in using the motherfucking Bible." "They" presumably would be the people (Goode) causing most of this rukus, and "swear in" has an actual meaning: the ceremonial official oath of office that was taken sans book.

Re: I just gotta say it . . .

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

1. Ceremonial = not the real thing. Ceremonial = for show. In my head, anyway. I admit that this may not necessarily be true, but I DID get that the oath he took on the Quran wasn't the Honest To God Affirmation/Oath of Office.

2. Expected to do something != being forced to something. Expectations don't generally force you to do shit.

Re: I just gotta say it . . .

[davethegreat.livejournal.com]

To-mah-toes, to-may-toes . . .

:)

Semantics. I certainly can see the confusion, but I guess I have been through too many ceremonies that were official, and when the government "expects" something to be done, they usually back it up :)

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

Southern California Wants to Be Western New York, by Dar Williams:

Tempe Arizona thinks the Everglades are greener and wetter and
Washington D.C. thinks that Atlanta integrated better but
I think Southern California has more pain than we can say 'cause it
Wants to travel back in time, but it just can't leave
L.A.......

Everything else has been said.

Stupid brain fart....

[schrendymae.livejournal.com]

There is a great song about the price is right that I can't remember the name of. I will have to ask my friend miranda tomorrow (when its not 3am) and get back to you. its a must hear.

[(Anonymous)]

Does it make me totally lame that the only song I'd want to hear is Joni Mitchell's California? It's okay if it does, you can tell me. I trust you.

Just try to listen to California One as you're actually ON California One, at some point.

~Beth

[marsala1.livejournal.com]

You are so sexy when you swear....