Kaputo!

Well, the results are in: Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Based on new planetary criteria, it didn't make the cut.

But fear not, fellow astronomers, Earth is still balanced with eight neighbors! According to the redefinition of the solar system, the replacement planet is Karl Rove's big smug melon.

Who Do You Think You're Kidding, Humphrey?

Humphrey the Bear is one of my favorite cartoons...evah! The song from "In The Bag" is one of those songs that never strays far from my conscious, uh, mind.

Of course, I found it on YouTube. It's also available on the Disney Treasures DVD, Disney Rarities. Which comes in a collector's tin. Which I think is fantastic.

Enjoy.

Goliath Takes One in the Groan!

...as Archie Bunker would say. The Beaverton City Council voted unanimously against allowing Wal-Mart to build their Crapatorium in Cedar Mill.

I like to think it had a lot to do with my scathing indictment of those fascist pigs (see article below).

Although it had nothing to do with that.

Anyway...f- you, jackoffs (at least until Wal-Mart appeals -- blah!)!

Le Whuh?

While checking the hits on my CD Baby page for Heirs to the McQueen Fortune, I discovered someone came across us after typing "Baby papillon topless" into the french translation of Google Canada.

Go know, right?

The Great Wal-Mart of China

My spiel to the local rag about Wal-Mart fucking up the neighborhood...

Ah, Wal-Mart (or as my brother likes to call it the “Made in China Store”)! You just can’t get that many Chinese imports outside of a, well, I guess a Wal-Mart in China. More than 70 percent of the products sold in Wal-Mart are made in China. Now, I don’t have any problem with free trade between the nations of the world; I’ve always considered my self an internationalist. But I do favor my own country first. I think you always have to take care of your own backyard before you mow the neighbors.

One of my problems with Wal-Mart is their seemingly pro-american, thumbs-up-working-class aura that cremates all the working-class competition by suckering the working-class into thinking they have the best prices just because they sell staple items like diapers cheaper but set typical department store prices for other items. Sure, they sell music CDs for under $10, but who cares when all they seem to stock is such uninteresting tripe as “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” and any number of soulless carbon-copied mediocre neo-country pin-ups that’d set Hank Williams spinning in his grave like a centrifuge (which would be fitting since the prototype for that device, a whirling arm apparatus, was utilized to determine drag, which is the state of existence into which I’m immediately thrust when subjected to the aforementioned songs).

One time, in a moment of abysmal ignorance, I purchased a $10 pair of pants at Wal-Mart. By the time I reached the parking lot, they had a hole in them!

Nah, nah, I’m only joking. I would never buy a pair of Rustler Jeans. I’m just saying that, in my unscientific opinion, I think they sell junk. And plenty of it, as I perceive things.

And let us not fail to consider the scenario wherein after the decimation of all surrounding competition, Wal-Mart someday packs up and skips town. What then will Beaverton be left with?

So go ahead, build the Wal-Mart in Cedar Mill. Conjure for us the zenith of all gridlock catastrophes! Smother any remaining essence and character from the ever-dwindling numbers of charming small towns. Go ahead and employ our neighbors at what you consider “livable wages” – I’m sure your gargantuan organization is offering as much as you can afford. Why not build up China’s economy at the expense of America’s most precious commodity, its citizenry? All for a $5 tube top!

Maybe I’m wrong. After all, the Vice President of the United States of America thinks Wal-Mart’s doing great things for the economy.

Or maybe I’m right. And Wal-Mart is a gluttonous vortex of ravenous greed and venomous disdain for the working class, wrapped in a nylon, colorfast fabric American flag. On sale now for $19.86!

I’ll take one! And drape it over a Wal-Mart shopping cart – a casket for the ideals of small business.

He's Only Hurting Himself

Bush's reason for vetoing federal funding of stem cell research:

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said after rejecting calls that he change his policy. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect."

(Pause)

To reiterate, he's a selfish, murderous traitor to democracy.

Here's the obligatory pic of Bush looking like a douche bag.

Croc of Shit

I'm listening to Guided By Voices at work. Doesn't everyone? There's a line in "Quality of Armor" off the Propeller lp that sums up my notion of large-headed talking head Sean Hannity, whose show I had the displeasure of sampling last night as he whined at his college professor for giving him a bad final grade (he claimed he recieved the low score because he extolled the virtues of Reagan -- too bad Hannity wasn't a Central American farmer -- to his socialist instructor).

"Waah, I face discrimination for being a Republican... "

Douche bag. I suspect, as his college professor tried to explain over Hannity's interruptive whining and mugging, that he recieved the grade because that was the best his school work could generate. (The professor said he wished he could have given him a lower grade.)

How does a guy with such a big head and a pathetic nostomania of the dreadful 80s ever get laid? (This is not a reference to Psaur)

Even more pathetic than Hannity's show and notions, is the fact that anyone (me) even acknowledges him. He is a dinosaur, indeed. But still walking the earth. More like the alligator, ancestor of the saurians. With that gargantuan reptilian head.

A disgrace to Irishmen everywhere!

Absolute bollix!

Oh yeah, that GBV line. It's:

"The best defense is belligerence." The armor of the ignorant.

Did I Mention The Feebs?

No, but Seattle Weekly did in their announcement of the opening film of the STIFF Film Festival on June 2. The film, One Night in Portland, features the music of The Feebs, and received the "Most Kickass" award in the festival.

And be sure to visit The Feebs on My Space now! Report to Paneltown, you jackanapes!

The Fall of Troy

Watch the Trojan Nuclear Plant Cooling Tower Implosion in slow-motion here. Located on the Columbia River in Ranier, OR, the tower, owned by Portland General Electric, was part of the first and only nuclear power plant in Oregon. After closing in 1993, it has slowly been decommissioned. Complete decommission is expected by 2024. I'd seen the iconic tower a bunch of times driving on 84. Now I'll see more of the sky.

Anyway, they blowed it up real good yesterday.

Ich Bein Ein Theatergoer!

I saw this play last week (in fact I'm seeing it again tomorrow night). It was as brilliant as the review below explains. Compelling and dignified. Modest but certain in its revelations. Well cast, with an appropriately spartan stage design.

The lighting was indeed "ambitious and sophisticated in execution."

Plus, I've got a thing for the Assistant Stage Manager...

Storytelling, cast excel in play about the Lindbergh trial

by Ron Cowan
Statesman Journal
May 15, 2006

By now, cases such as the Lindbergh kidnapping trial of the 1930s seem quite familiar: media overkill, celebrities galore, a lackluster judiciary and expert witnesses by the truckload.

But the subject of John Logan's "Hauptmann," now at Salem Repertory Theatre, still takes on mythic proportions, pitting the anguish of an iconic American family against the fate of a befuddled German immigrant.

Logan, better known for writing films such as "Gladiator" and "The Last Samurai," throws in some allusions to the contrary but pretty much comes down on the side of the defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann (Jason Haines). Hauptmann virtually was defenseless against the world of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and a $1 million prosecution case.

Tautly directed by David Janoviak, with a flair for the dramatic, this is nonetheless involving entertainment, rich with the tapestry of a different era and an almost mythic mix of characters and events.

Did he or didn't he do it? It's never quite certain, though Hauptmann was found in possession of $14,000 of the $50,000 ransom for the baby and later found dead, and the prosecution had both compelling and improbable evidence.

What is more intriguing here is the touching of two distinctly different worlds, the wealth and celebrity of the Lindberghs and the impoverished, troubled life of the immigrant, automatically doubted when questions of guilt and innocence are raised.

Tormented by the police and without adequate legal support (having only an overwhelmed lawyer and $4,000 to mount a case), Hauptmann is little more than an observer hoping for the best and proclaiming his innocence to the end.

One of this play's strengths is its unconventional format, opening just before Hauptmann's execution in 1936 and flashing back to tell the story of the characters and the kidnapping, setting the scene, and then progressing through the drama of the trial.

Other than Haines, cast members play several roles, stepping in and out of characters as the play goes back and forth in time.

Haines is a profoundly affecting figure as Hauptmann, a bewildered and sympathetic man played with a German accent. He addresses the audience directly and participates in the action, letting us know he is telling his story so it can't happen again.

Another strong performer is Thomas Nabhan, particularly in the role of the determined prosecutor in the trial sequence, relentlessly berating poor Hauptmann and guiding his sometimes suspicious experts.

Peter Armetta, who plays a variety of expert witnesses and the odd Dr. John Condon, who inserted himself into the case as a go-between with the kidnappers, is particularly versatile at changing characters.

The excellent cast includes Susan Coromel, Josiah Bania, Tim Jaeger and Dawnie Drebin, all of whom elicit telling details in a variety of characters.

The set by Scott Grim, a gray courtroom/jail setting, does a lot with a little, and his lighting, using an expanded lighting grid, is ambitious and sophisticated in execution. Rebecca Turk's costumes suggest the era, without overdoing the nostalgia.

"Hauptmann" is not lighthearted fare, which has given SRT its greatest success so far, but it is the measure of a professional company that is willing to challenge and reward an audience with edgy and uncompromising theater.