Friday, August 9, 2013

Open Thread

 
It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - REM

21 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

This one is faster.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I'm going on a church trip to Canada. We are leaving sometime around 4am.

I'll probably wont be able to post from there. Maybe I'll be able to use the phone.

See you guys and gals when I get back.

bagoh20 said...

We're having one of L.A.s regular high speed police chases right now. Always a good time, and this one is getting pretty ballsy with lots of speed and maneuvering through freeway traffic.

http://ktla.com/live/

bagoh20 said...

Ha Ha! The butt head turned down a dead end street. Busted, and just in time. He was hitting 100mph and starting to run red lights through town. That's when it gets ugly. Ended kind of like an episode of Mad Men - nothing actually happened, just almost.

Anonymous said...

I fell in love with Eponymous, the first REM album I really listened to. (What a clever title!)

There was something cheery, ringing and upbeat about them, in spite of their opacity, that reminded me of some other group ... the Monkees? "Don't Go Back to Rockville" especially. "Last Train to Clarksville," geddit?

So I was vindicated when Michal Stipe explained to some rock journalist that the Beatles were never an influenced in REM's music. It was the Monkees he listened to as as kid.

According to a recent NYT article, Stipe still gets death threats about it from Beatles fans.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

This is a lawyer even Trooper could like!

bagoh20 said...

Ignorance is the entire problem, Fox News’ Kirsten Powers writes today in the Daily Beast, and it’s “Democratic ladies” who are pushing it, abetted by a national media all too eager to demonize anyone challenging them:

"Actually, the people who “don’t really understand” the issue are the Democratic ladies crusading against laws the majority of the country supports.

Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed. Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria."


The lady is a rare Democrat - one who is occasionally right about something and willing to criticize her own for something other than being too conservative.

Anonymous said...

For reasons not worth explaining, yesterday I was looking again into William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, and ran across this great quote:

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will--"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"--need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present--until next year--that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

--William James, Diary for April 30, 1870


The rascal, Werner Erhard, once babbled about "taking the stand that you are the stand you take," which sent my mind into loop-the-loops, but I suspect that was a fancier way of saying what James said in his diary plain and simple.

bagoh20 said...

Do you ever wonder if the world of ideas might be flat, and held up by a giant tortoise?

Revenant said...

It may be out of print, but the "Hindu Love Gods" album is worth a listen. It is REM, only with Warren Zevon on vocals instead of Michael Stipe. Most of the album is covers of old blues songs, but there are a few others.

Their cover of Prince's "Raspberry Beret" was particularly good, IMO.

Revenant said...

Here's the cover I mentioned:

Raspberry Beret.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I saw R.E.M. at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby. The singer guy spent the entire concert -- and I mean the entire concert -- standing perfectly still at the microphone stand at center stage holding onto the microphone with both hands as if it were a baby's bottle.

He was wearing sunglasses the entire time.

The band does their encore. The show ends. The stage lights go off. The house lights go up. The audience is out of its seats and moving to the exits.

The singer dude walks back onto the stage to the microphone and starts singing by himself.

Nobody can hear him, of course. Eventually they get his mic turned back on and they get some stage lights back on.

The guy is singing "Moon River."

Tripping on acid, really strong acid, was my surmise at the time.

ndspinelli said...

Independence Day theme song, I believe.

edutcher said...

Not the theme, but it has an important place in the story, as it's the point where Randy Quaid's character - who was abducted by the aliens - is introduced.

AllenS said...

From wiki:

After considering names like "Twisted Kites", "Cans of Piss", and "Negro Wives", the band settled on "R.E.M.", which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.

So, REM means rapid eye movement

ndspinelli said...

edutcher, Quaid may be abducted by some PI's hired by folks owed money, and brought back to the US. A good actor gone crazy.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

@ Bagoh
The statement applies to more than just abortion:

It applies to the entire pro-democrat media complex.

Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed. Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria."

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

A little tweaking and it wraps the whole enchilada.

"Despite frequently mocking any conservative activist as anti-science know-nothings, leftwing progressive absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, progressive democrats and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed. Follow-up questions to the left’s strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria."

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Crack Emcee said...

AllenS,

So, REM means rapid eye movement

Yeah, if you listen to their shit, you're guaranteed to go to sleep.

I'm making YouTubes of my stuff, and filling it in with a lot of background material - photos, links, etc. Haven't gotten around to the famous folks yet, but I will.

My shit never gets tired,...

Anonymous said...

When I started to listen to REM I couldn't figure out the lyrics and found them enigmatically charming. There's much modern poetry which sounds like the poet is declaiming something important but that's as far as you get.

I thought REM's "Fall On Me" was one of those and a decent one of those, but then Michael Stipe had to spoil it all by explaining it was an "oppression song" about acid rain and other things.