| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8297 Registered: 05-2005 |
On one side there's a chubby lunatic with weird hair, and on the other there's Kim Jong-Un. Randy, Rob, Austin, have you got an emergency plan? Are you stocking up with bottled water, tinned food and firearms? Have you chosen your last song? REM's It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), perhaps, or Europe's anti-war classic, The Final Countdown? I'm going to feel really bad about this post if there actually is a war. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3800 Registered: 03-2005 |
I am over the Trump thing. He is the president for people with low IQ's. They can have him. The REM song is crap. Not familiar with "The Final Countdown." If I want to listen to music with some political content I listen to McCarthy or Easter and the Totem. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1821 Registered: 08-2006 |
On one hand, this makes me sad. There's an unspoken precedent that's been broken here, and that's that when you're the country that can reduce all the other countries to smoking, lifeless craters, there's no need - and in fact no benefit - to raise the subject. Same rule applies when you're the kid who's 6'2 and 190 lbs in the fourth grade. Schoolyard taunts aren't just superfluous, they demean your biological achievement. Here Trump has taken piss on the entire nuclear-age history of presidential temperance, a lowering of the bar not easily reset by another election. That's regrettable. On the other hand, watching this shit show as absurdist history is political junkie crack. Trying to explain the daily parade of nonsense to the young guy who works for me is almost impossible to do - struggling to place events in context requires set-ups like "no one has ever said..." or "no one has ever tried to..." Everything is unprecedented in some way and my co-worker thinks I'm either exaggerating wildly or, worse, lying for affect. In some cases, I have to underline or highlight passages in the New York Times, which I've taken to bringing to the office every day because it's so popular. What am I listening to? The new Randy Newman album, "Dark Matter." It'd still be the album of the year even if there wasn't a tiny chance we won't make it to the end of the December. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 452 Registered: 08-2005 |
Randy, if you'd lived in the UK in the mid-1980s you'd be more than familiar with 'The Final Countdown' | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8298 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, The Final Countdown. You're welcome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRm Vcw | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3802 Registered: 03-2005 |
OMG, I feel truly privileged to have never heard that before! I could have lived without ever hearing it. This is a spoof, right? The poofy feathered hair and all? Rob, did this get played in Illinois? | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 1025 Registered: 03-2007 |
According to Wiki, it peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 18 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart. Don't know how you managed to miss it but be grateful you did. :-) | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8299 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, it's real. They mean it. Given that LA was hair metal central in the mid-80s, how did you manage to miss it? Were you listening to nothing but KKJZ back then? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3803 Registered: 03-2005 |
Wow that's impressive. I bailed out on radio in about 1976. In the 80s I lived in Los Angeles and I knew a lot of people who listened to KROQ which would not have played this sort of crap. Their specialty was bad 80s novelty "new wave" with the occasional good thing thrown in by accident. If I depended on radio over here I'd have never heard Magazine, the Fall, Cocteau Twins (well, not until they became major label and at that point who cares), or Nick Cave. Those people were my favorites in that decade. You had to build up your knowledge from 'zines and by trial and error in the cut-out bins. In the 70s (when I still lived in Fresno) I had a great friend who didn't go to university; he'd hunt up the greatest records touring the cut-out bins in the San Joaquin Valley during the day while I was in classes. In LA I didn't have anybody like that because we were all in classes. My friends were mostly listening to unforgivable dreck like Duran Duran or Gary Numan (sp?). I had (still have) one friend who was good at paying attention to what the slightly au courant mainstream critics were fingering and he brought forward some useful things. Point is, radio was totally excised from my existence. Today I realize that it would have been productive if I'd listened to KCRW, the station for Santa Monica College. Still, I am surprised. I've heard all the other dreadful things that came up with that youtube link of Padraig's. As for LA's own scene, I sure as hell wasn't going to be anywhere near the hair metal scene, which I suspect was really directed at the rest of the country rather than local fans. My idea of LA music back then was Wall of Voodoo, Dream Syndicate and X. Really liked Wall and Syndicate, was always lukewarm on X who (of course) the critics really liked. After that the goths took over. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 453 Registered: 08-2005 |
Ah, Wall of Voodoo. Back in the day, and I'm guessing I'm talking the mid-1980s here, I used to play pinball in the County Wine Vaults pub in my hometown of Bath (Bally Star Trek machine, fact fans). The pub was a bikers' haunt and I probably got away with going there because of my long hair, worn in two long plaits Willie Nelson style (I'm not making this up!), but it had a great left-field jukebox. Everything from Jefferson Airplane (hen's-teeth rare on a pub juke box) to Mexican Radio, my introduction to Wall of Voodoo and still one of my favourite songs. Ahh, wistful thoughts!! Enjoy the weekend, people! | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8300 Registered: 05-2005 |
But aren't you a biker, of sorts, too Simon? | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1822 Registered: 08-2006 |
Randy, you've really never heard "The Final Countdown"? My past does not include even five minutes of a metal phase (heavy metal, hair metal, death metal, etc.) and even I couldn't escape this. Maybe it's not even metal. Whatever, it just appeared places like black mold or Howie Mandel. I don't see how you could've missed it. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1823 Registered: 08-2006 |
Oh, and the Trumpanzee continues to pour fuel on his fire. This whole imbroglio is what you expected would happen, but hoped wouldn't, when Donald got comfy in his big-boy chair. The tit-for-tat taunts, the frat-boy posturing, the Three-Stooges stumbling about in The White House and Pentagon, the maneuvering among allies to fill the diplomatic vacuum. This country's getting knocked down a notch every time Zippy opens his pie hole or fires off a Twit. Me, I wish General Kelly would make him write an essay on the word "rectitude." | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3804 Registered: 03-2005 |
I swear to Buddha I'm not shamming; I never heard or heard of "The Final Countdown" until this thread. For Simon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtxYtM5H Muw Wall of Voodoo were the most brilliant pop music expression of LA noir. Stan Ridgway probably should have been a screenwriter, his lyrics were so visual and his delivery so evocative. He grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, an eastern burb of Los Angeles. He had his finger right on the pulse of the classic skeevy sort of person who'd come out here from nowhereville to chase utterly jejune dreams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLNBcSHV Vvw I suppose I could shift gears back to Padraig's original post and just say that Stan Ridgway depicted the no-hopers who just last year thought that voting for Donald Trump could be an option. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 76 Registered: 05-2005 |
Back to la fin du monde... Is The Final Countdown any worse than Two Tribes? It's the End of the World as we Know it is indeed utter crap. Simple rule of thumb, everything REM did post-Reckoning was awful but that shameful thing they did with the ever-dreadful B52s was a career-low. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3826 Registered: 03-2005 |
I am reviving this thread. How are people coping lately, whether with Trump in the U.S. or Brexit in the U.K.? Later today I'm driving up to visit family. This will include my sister who along with her husband voted for Trump. Yes, there are such people. I've been recently looking at real estate ads in Launceston, Tasmania! It's a touristy snoozeville of 86,000 souls but looks like it might have tolerable weather in a climate change world. (I live in Los Angeles; sun is overrated.) And it's cheap. And maybe people in TAS somehow escape the northern hemisphere's nuclear blast. (Yes, too much, I know.) Tell me I'm out of my mind Padraig. How long could a person live there before reaching for the single edge razor blade? Any ideas for other places to flee to? Scotland? But that's running from Trump to Brexit. Why are people so grudgeful? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8365 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, it's interesting, and wise, that you're looking at Tasmania's second biggest city. I just read an article on how the island's biggest city, Hobart, is beginning to price locals out because of all the people moving there from interstate. Hobart has become quite urbane with food and arts culture in the past decade (still not a place many touring bands go to though), but I think Launceston is still very much a bush city. This is all based on what I've read, rather than seen. Tasmania is the one state I've not been to. I don't think you're mad to be looking into such things, but if you are, make sure you read up on the practical side of things too, eg visas that would allow you to live there. Otherwise, I hear Anchorage is nice this time of year. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1841 Registered: 08-2006 |
Of the few things that might dislodge me from Chicago, Donald of Orange certainly is not one of them. If his schoolyard brinksmanship results in my nuking, they'll find my charred remains, middle finger extended and, with luck, an unpaid tax bill. Assuming the big, liberal, urban centers are gone then, I hope the Trump Bunch is left to make America great again with Sarah Palin's Real America – the shiftless mouth breathers they keep telling us we're supposed to pay attention to as the bellwethers of the country's beating heart. The people who aren't worried about all this nuclear bellicosity because their towns aren't even on North Korean maps. The people who keep getting caught at white supremacist rallies when they're supposed to be home sick from work. Nuclear armageddon? I swear there are days it seems like the lesser of two evils. But at least our national opioid crisis is official. I think that's something all Americans can get behind. 'Cause Puerto Rico just wasn't cutting it. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8367 Registered: 05-2005 |
The opioid crisis is monstrous. I've read quite a bit about it and every time I do, I have to remind myself that it's news, not crime fiction or a bad telemovie. It seems to disproportionately affect people in towns and states that voted for Trump, from what I can gather, so maybe that's why he has acknowledged it. Big pharmaceutical companies have a lot to answer for, I think. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1842 Registered: 08-2006 |
For better or worse, my quip above was dripping with sarcasm - the opioid situation is indeed a terror, but Trump's "crisis-izing" of it means next to nothing, especially as he provided no specific funding for it and is simultaneously working to neuter the ACA. More pomp, no circumstance, meanwhile Puerto Rico is in absolutely dire straights, a disgrace I expect will follow us for some time once the magnitude of the neglect comes to light. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3827 Registered: 03-2005 |
Puerto Rico is such an obvious opportunity for us to pull together. But Mr Division wouldn't know an opportunity from a breadstick. It is very bad karma on my part, particularly in light of the HIV epidemic I lived through, but I confess I look at the opioid crisis and think "well, thins out the Trump voters." I doubt that Rob would follow me all the way down this road as I tend to get rather Dr. Mengele about the swath of Americans committing suicide by opioids and crystal meth. And then these assholes have the nerve to complain about immigrants! Immigrants are people who take responsibility for their lives. Think about yourself Padraig: instead of wallowing in whatever limitations you might have confronted you decided to pursue your life on your terms. I'm convinced most of the anti-immigrant types know deep down inside that they don't measure up to the immigrants. Any of you familiar with "Respect Yourself" by the Staple Singers? (I'm sure Rob is.). Pull it up off YouTube and pay attention to the lyrics. It's as relevant today as it was over 40 years ago. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1843 Registered: 08-2006 |
Au contraire, Randy! You've warmed the cockles of my cruddy little heart! That's exactly what I was politely waving at with my way-too-obtuse initial snark about Trump's opioid declaration. Nothing seems to get him off his ass quicker than a bunch of crackers in distress. Not that they'll get shit for it, except maybe having their addiction reclassified by their insurance provider as an uncovered preexisting condition. Surprise! Turns out that pinko Kenyan did have a good idea or two. I suspect that's true about the immigrant-bashers, Randy, at least if they're paying attention. From my own vantage point, it's hard to watch the individuals I come into contact with and not think they're putting in more than they're getting back. The immigrants I interact with daily work their butts off, far harder than the natural-born Americans I know at their socio-economic level. There's no contest. And if this country works the way it should, there's no contest who's going to have the economic upper hand in a couple generations. Of course, the fentanyl doesn't help, either. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1844 Registered: 08-2006 |
Oh, and great call on "Respect Yourself." I think Mavis just played here, maybe last night? You can be damn sure she played that. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8369 Registered: 05-2005 |
Wow, I hadn't noticed this site's subtle shift to blue state, alt-left sarcasm. Still, better sarcasm than raiding Ikea for Tiki lamps and pillow cases (I've never been to an Ikea, so I don't know if they sell pillow cases, but I presume they do in red states anyway). Yes, I know Respect Yourself. Just watched this great version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oab4ZCfT bOI and, as Rob said, good call. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1210 Registered: 08-2004 |
Well the Brexit thing is an ongoing crisis. A government that are out of their depth. Newspapers that demonise our court system for trying to cushion the blow from the will of the people. Then there is the housing problem, interest rates going up for the first time in 10 years and crime soaring while emergency services are being cut. So all is cool. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3828 Registered: 03-2005 |
Jerry, the housing thing: when I'm in London I feel the same intensity that I find in Los Angeles. My current personal residence is a place I've owned for a little less than four years. Similar places around me are selling for near 50% more than I paid four years ago! There is no economic justification for this; it is clearly a bubble. At the same time we have larger numbers of people living on the streets. People allege that they're coming from other parts of the country for the mild weather but it's not true. Canvasses of homeless here find the overwhelming majority to be locals. We puzzle over the housing shortage, trying to figure out whether it's airbnb or overseas money buying places to hold vacant for investment or insufficient new construction that is causing the shortage. I suppose it's a little of all of these and it seems to be a problem in nearly every big city in the world. I notice that properties in Brisbane still seem to mostly go by auction. That's usually a sign of an overheated market. Newspapers: a foreign national should never be permitted to own a country's news media. The foreign national should also never be permitted to leapfrog this rule by acquiring citizenship in another country on a fast-track basis. You want to become a citizen? Fine, get in line and take as long as everyone else. Crime: I'm honestly amazed it isn't worse. On one hand we're asking people to get by with "gigs" instead of proper careers and on the other we're catering to outlandish concentrations of wealth among the lucky (crooked?) few. But people are not supposed to start conking other folks on the head for something to pawn? This Ayn Randian phase will not end well. With the U.S. increasingly looking like an unreliable partner I'm hoping the Brexit thing just dissolves and vanishes. There MUST be a growing number of people in the U.K. who realize that they need to strengthen their ties to their cross-Channel friends, not weaken them. As a postwar Yank it really pains me to have to describe my own country as an unreliable partner to our longtime allies. Clumsy, ham-fisted, pompous, too militaristic? Yes of course. But not flat-out unreliable. |