B-Sides

For the new readers, a few more from the archives.

I learn about television news, sleep on the ground, try to stop the National Guard from killing a news anchor, and meet a girl -- all in the shadow of a monster hurricane. (Into the Maelstrom/8.24.07)

I introduce you to the toughest, meanest woman in Iraq: My ex-wife. (Bulletproof Hearts/3.25.07)

I am Osama bin Laden. (And Now, a Very Special Holiday Message from al-Qaeda/12.20.06)

I compare Gene Simmons to David Hasselhoff. (Kitsch a Falling Star/8.7.06)

I deny the existence of Jesus (while making fun of James Cameron) and live to tell about it. ("I'm the King of the Jews!"/2.27.07)

I show you what it was like growing up in a war-zone. (A History of Violence/11.1.06)

I assert that everything you know is bullshit. (Return of the Attack of the Creeping Surrealism/9.20.06)

I am the Prince of Darkness. (And Now, a Message from Satan/9.19.06)

I claim that the Foo Fighters are better than Nirvana, hip-hop stopped being good 15 years ago, and that I owe my life to a guy named Robert Rivero. (Shut Up. Listen. Learn./11.19.06)

I explain how 9/11 saved my life, as well as the soul of our country (at least temporarily). (Five Years On: 9/11 in Two Parts: Part 1/9.11.06) (Five Years On: 9/11 in Two Parts/9.18.06)

I have an idea what it will take to stop the brutal tradition of "honor killings," but you might not like it. (Killing in the Name Of/5.17.07)

I deserve to be made fun of, and The Daily Show is more than happy to oblige. (Ripped from the Headlines/2.20.07)

I come to the aid of a damsel in distress -- well, a reporter in a bikini anyway. (Career Suicide Blonde/7.12.07)

I finally find it: The silliest, most infuriating non-issue to ever be shoved down the throat of the American public. (Jock Bitch: The Ongoing Saga of Imusgate/4.13.07)

I am George W. Bush. (Tempus Id'jit/9.27.06)

"If You Can't Do Something Smart, Do Something Right"

"This is what they feared... and they were right to fear... because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak... So no more running. I aim to misbehave."

-- Captain Malcolm Reynolds

Yes, the above reference is strictly for the nice people who've been reading for months (and because there's a Firefly marathon on Sci-Fi today).

Consider this a commercial.

Later today, I'll be telling my side of the fired-from-CNN story in detail -- so feel free to check back in this evening.

Listening Post

Happy holiday Monday!

Stereophonics -- My Friends.

Mike Check

And now, because it's a Sunday morning, an analysis of the ballsiest, most self-indulgent run-on sentence in history. It comes compliments of celebrated author Michael Chabon, from his column in the January/February issue of Details, and via a personal story.

When I was a kid, my grandfather decided one day that, after nearly a lifetime together, he wanted to teach my grandmother how to drive. He pulled over into the parking lot of a shopping center (one which could claim as its anchor a Sears that he happened to have a bizarrre personal vendetta against because it had once sold him a faulty air conditioner, but that's another story) and told my grandmother to switch places with him and take the wheel. She reluctantly acquiesced, sliding into the driver's seat while my grandfather, holding my five-year-old body in his arms, planted himself directly opposite her. For whatever reason, probably old-man recalcitrance, he didn't bother strapping a seatbelt across the two of us. When my grandmother stepped on the gas, the car lunged forward, pushing my grandfather and me back in our seat. Scared to death by the sudden movement, my grandmother immediately stepped on the brakes, throwing us all forward inside the car. This violent stopping and starting seemed to happen at an almost machine-gun rate -- over and over; forward, stop, forward, stop -- until my grandmother finally jammed the brake pedal all the way to the floor -- wrenching me out of my grandfather's arms and slamming my head into the windshield. The impact left an ugly spiderweb across the glass and blood pouring from a gash in my head.

Why do I bring this up?

Just read this, and pay attention to the commas:

"And yet when I heard this gifted and intelligent woman, Annie Druyan, wondering, fervently but not without a sense of her own goofiness, if perhaps, ages hence, some techno-magical future alien race might not be able to reconstitute, from the record of her brain waves, the feeling of her incipient passion for her man and for the work that they undertook together, as equals, partners, and lovers, to re-create the sense of how it felt to be Annie Druyan on an afternoon in New York City during those infatuated, boundary-breaking, termination-shock-crossing years, I knew that I was listening, carried as by a lonely probe across the distances, to the voice of the 1970s."

If you'll excuse me now, I'm going to go wipe the blood off my forehead.

This Year's Love

Over the past several chaotic days, quite a lot's been written about me -- and a few longtime readers have been astute enough to pick up on a pretty noteworthy fact that's been buried in much of the copy.

Jayne and I are having a baby.

In some ways it's damn cool that it was officially announced in the New York Times, but I have to admit that I wanted to mention it here first.

Oh well.

The due date for the new Pazienza is August 4th, and Mom and Dad couldn't be happier.

Everybody's a Critic

So, the government of Myanmar has apparently prohibited its citizens from seeing Rambo, the fourth film in the eponymously named franchise and the most admirably foolish idea to come out of Hollywood in about a decade or so.

Those who've been caught watching bootleg copies of the movie now face ten years in jail and twenty lashes.

As if these people haven't already suffered enough.

TV on the Radio

So, I'll be on Sirius radio this afternoon for an hour -- for anybody who feels like hearing me talk about all this nonsense (for the record, my voice sounds like Urkel gargling hydrochloric acid).

Indie Talk, Channel 110 beginning at 5pm ET.

Happy Friday kids -- it's the aforementioned TV on the Radio, with Wolf Like Me.