mjp Books blog, Michael Phillips

She’s still here, damn it!

bernhardtWe saw Sandra Bernhard’s new live show, Everything Bad & Beautiful at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood last night.

She’s at the top of her craft, Mz. Bernhard, that craft being a unique Vulcan mind meld of comedy and music. Less cabaret and more pop/rock this time around, she sang songs by Bob Dylan, Prince and Lita Ford (Lita Ford?! yes! a funky version of Kiss Me Deadly), among others, backed up by a tight three piece band and a back up singer (“Who is also my makeup artist, so I get a two-fer!”).

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Patience is a virtue, but resignation is for suckers

I sent a guy named Bryan Hutcheson 250 copies of my “still no sign of Osama bin Laden” poem for an Iraqi war-inspired “peace card set” almost two and a half years ago, and the set never materialized.

The poem covered three 5×5 inch cards, and I hand printed those fuckers on the old letterpress, so that was a lot of time effort and materials, not to mention busting my ass to meet his submission deadline, which was November 1, 2002.

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Should have taken mom up on those violin lessons

Tara Burghart writes for Associated Press;

A bus driver for the Dave Matthews Band pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges stemming from the dumping of 800 pounds of human waste from his vehicle’s septic tank onto a sightseeing boat on the Chicago River.

The waste poured onto the open deck of the Chicago’s Little Lady tour boat, which was passing below with more than 100 passengers. The boat immediately returned to its dock and was disinfected. The Chicago Architectural Foundation, which operates the tour, offered refunds to the passengers.

Now that’s pretty disgusting, but it’s not the most disgusting part of the story, oh no. It goes on;

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Last night a dj saved my life! Yeah, maaaaan!

I know a couple of people who “dj,” one of them quite successfully in Hollywood, but I’ve gotta say, man, what the hell is that?

Playing records. that’s what it is. To elevate a dj to anything more is borderline insanity. It’s like saying the person who hangs the paintings up in a gallery is an artist, or someone who decides which six movies HBO will show all year is a filmmaker.

Guys, gals, you’re playing records. I understand that a lot of scenesters, debutantes and crank addicts value what you do, so you certainly serve a purpose in the wide world. But stop acting like you’re doing something important.

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If I had a hammer

For several weeks I’ve been meaning to tighten up the bolts on the chair I sit in here at the office. The problem has been that we don’t have the correct tool for the job here (or any tools for that matter), so I’ve just been carrying on as if nothing is wrong, in an increasingly wobbly and probably horribly dangerous chair.

Last night I was in the garage getting some drywall screws to use when we hang Carol’s show today, and I spotted a set of allen wrenches and grabbed them to bring with me today to fix the chair.

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This is a public service announcement – with guitar!

I was going to write something here entitled, “art is shit,” but that’s just so shocking and punk rock that I can’t do it. besides, everyone knows that most art is shit.

Speaking of punk rock though, in Kristine McKenna’s book Talk to Her, the late, great Joe Strummer said, “Punk rock isn’t something you grow out of, Punk rock is like the Mafia, and once you’re made, you’re made. Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of the attitude is ‘give us some truth.'”

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Never give a media giant an even break

Taking its battle against rampant piracy of films and music to the front lines, Warner Home Video said it will sell cut-rate DVDs in China in a bid to compete on the counterfeiters’ home turf.

Basic DVDs, to be available shortly after a film’s theatrical release, will sell in China for as little as 22 yuan ($2.65), the company said. Versions with more features will be available a bit later for 28 yuan ($3.38).

Meanwhile, the company said, they will continue to charge suckers in america $20 to $30 for the same movies.

You explain it to me.

10 things I’ve done that you haven’t

I swiped this from Mat Gleason’s Coagula blog. I guess it’s some viral list going around, which normally I would do my best to ignore, but this one is actually interesting. So yeah, here are 10 things I’ve done that you haven’t!

– Rode a camel along a beach in Tunisia.

– Grown dreadlocks all the way down to my waist. Twice.

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Come back, bastard!

Well, this is the funniest damn thing I’ve seen today (well, the serious news department caption is what’s really funny):

Author Hunter S. Thompson stands in a pile of popcorn after hurling a bag of it at Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, co-stars of the movie based on his book, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," at the movie's premier Tuesday, May 19, 1998 in New York.
Author Hunter S. Thompson stands in a pile of popcorn after hurling a bag of it at Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, co-stars of the movie based on his book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” at the movie’s premier Tuesday, May 19, 1998 in New York.

Hey, just because he likes Judy Garland records and the Tony awards doesn’t necessarily mean anything

This DRUDGE REPORT site is really funny. I went there expecting some super-blog, or at least some original content. But all I found was a page of links. How did this angry closet case weasel a syndicated radio show (and a creepy form of right-wing-wacko web cred) out of a page of links to news sites?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s never been anything there that wasn’t reported elsewhere. I mean, my hat’s off to the guy, I guess. He’s pulled quite a con job. But the whole thing just seems weird to me.

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I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead, and while that news shouldn’t really surprise anyone, it is disturbing. Not because I’ll miss what he’s written lately (admittedly I did not keep up with the good doctor’s more recent work), but because we need people like Thompson to maintain balance in the universe.

If you’ve heard of him at all, it’s probably Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that you’re familiar with, and probably the movie rather than the book. Well, that’s your fault, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Not because the Fear and Loathing book is bad, on the contrary, it’s a modern masterpiece of freak-out prose. But he wrote about politics and culture with the same pedal-to-the-metal approach that he brought to everything he did. Pick up some of his other books and you’ll see what I mean.

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The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

!freeBSDIn a move of disappointing and confounding stupidity, recklessness, cowardice and avarice the FreeBSD team has announced a competition to design a new logo/mascot to replace the FreeBSD demon/daemon.

First off, I’m sure 99.9% of you are wondering, “Uh, what the hell is FreeBSD?” Fair enough. It’s a computer operating system, like Windows or Linux. I’m sure you’ve heard of those. It runs on about half the world’s web servers, and even under the hood of your pretty Mac, if you have OS X.

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How to lose ten pounds in five minutes!

dread01Well, not really, more like a mere 13 ounces, but they could feel like ten pounds in the shower. “They” being my now chopped off dreadlocks.

I include a photo so you can bask in the horrible impressiveness that was my locks. Five years of growth, average length 32 inches. Drying time after shower: one hour with a blow dryer, 2 or 3 days without (you can’t have wet hair for two days, trust me on that one, so it was an hour with the dryer after each shower).

Why cut them off after all that time spent cultivating them? Well, they were starting to become a burden and a pain to deal with.

As if the aforementioned drying time wasn’t enough, they also had to be tied up and out of the way for many things, even sitting on the toilet (more than you wanted to know, I’m sure, but here you are reading this, so deal with it).

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Estoy solo, pero siento que tu estas conmigo

I watched the “Alamogordo, NM” episode of Carnivàle dubbed in Spanish last night. Now, I don’t actually speak Spanish, which made it a bit of a surreal experience, but it’s a surreal show, so I suppose the whole scene was meant to be.

I had it in Spanish because the channel guides for TiVo and Cox cable were at odds with each other for about a week, and it screwed up a lot of recordings. By the time I noticed I’d missed the latest Carnivàle, the only available repeat was on HBO “Latin” which I didn’t even know I could pick up (and which – disappointingly – doesn’t actually dub any shows in Latin, which would be really surreal, but it’s understandable since only a handful of eggheads and hundred year old shut-ins understand the language, and they couldn’t really support their own version of HBO).

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Death wants more death

mortBe careful when you use Google to check up on an old friend. Sometimes you can get some fucked up results.

Mark ‘Mort’ Baumann

MINNEAPOLIS Former Mankato resident Mark James “Mort” Baumann, 39, of Minneapolis died Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002, at Minneapolis. He was the victim of a homicide.

Mr. Baumann was born May 18, 1963, to Ted and Mary (Gunther) Baumann at Mankato. He was a graduate of Mankato West High School. A musician, he had played in several bands.

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