Monthly Archive for January, 2008

By The Slice

Here’s a fascinating review of different regional pizza styles.

I’m from NJ and I’m a total pizza snob (and not afraid to admit it) and my favorite is definitely the thin crust stuff. No super doughy crust for me.

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Let It Ring

Still powerful:

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Stand up. Be proud. Don’t let the dream die.

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You Missed Pudge Fiske’s Home Run?

Ten years later, and this monologue rings truer than ever:

Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had a no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Oh, Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure fuck it, while I’m at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

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Crocodile Tears

Look, I’m sure deep down, Hillary Clinton is a woman who is passionate about her political views and the causes she champions and all that stuff. But, let’s be realistic here, people. Hillary Clinton is a political machine. Every single last thing she says or does is weighed to attempt to guarantee maximum political gain for herself. I mean, that’s cool, Bill did the same thing throughout his career. My point is that Hillary’s “emotional” episode from Monday? She might have been sincere about her desires to make a difference and all that, but the show of emotions? Well, let’s just say political machines don’t just let emotions show randomly.

And you know what? Even if Obama’s reliance on young people failed him in New Hampshire, or if women finally turned around and went for one of their own, you can’t deny that this didn’t help, at least a bit.

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Through The Looking Glass

The Museum of the Moving Image has an interesting online exhibition called The Living Room Candidate, which is all about political television ads throughout the past 50 years. It’s a really neat look into the evolving role of television in politics and how important these ads are to trying to shape a politician’s image.

At least you can look at this as an art experiment when you get bombarded with hundreds of these ads as 2008 progresses.

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