the glob

Long before I actually really truthfully played the accordion as a member of the band Marianas, I was a moron in college who liked to sometimes pose for the camera. During my sophomore year of college, I lived on the floor of a dorm that was completely inhabited by other males, and as seems to be par for the course, several of them were into playing guitar.

One night, Mike (left), myself (middle), and Evan (right) all got together and formed an impromptu “band.” Of course, both Mike and Evan could actually play their respective guitars when they were plugged in, but for one moment, we posed like we were the most bad-ass finger-tapping, guitar-soloing, accordion-wheezing klezmer rock band around. Or something like that.

Actually, I just think the picture is kind of funny.

(oh, and speaking of photos, thanks to Mouser for providing all these hilarious pictures of yore on a disc)

Last year sometime, TG and I ordered the box set of Errol Morris’ first three films. In order, they were Vernon, Florida, Gates Of Heaven, and The Thin Blue Line, and it’s interesting to watch the progression of Morris as a director and storyteller through these three documentaries.

I’d already seen The Thin Blue Line a couple years back, but TG never had and I wanted to see how it held up to a repeat viewing. Although it’s an easy film to digest just by watching it once, I felt like there were a lot of little things in it that I was able to pick up on the second time through, especially in the body language and in the odd wording of some of the interviews that Morris does with the different subjects of the film. Perhaps because it’s a bit older, and perhaps just because of the plain unique people in the film, it almost feels like a fictitious film at times, which makes it all the more haunting.

If you feel strongly one way or another about the death penalty, this is a movie that might just make you think about things in a different way or reinforce your beliefs. It shines a light on just how massively wrong a large criminal justice system (in Texas, interestingly enough) can get something and the consequences for one man because of that.

I’ve seen a lot of documentaries in my day, but this one is easily in the top five (like The Fog Of War, the score by Philip Glass is great). As a greedy film watcher, I wish that Morris would put out even more documentaries.

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded. And now we are having to deal with it and will.” – President George W. Bush on Good Morning America, Thursday Sep 1, three days after Katrina made landfall

Like just about anyone who follows politics and doesn’t get their news from a propaganda network, I realize that I shouldn’t put anything past this current administration. They’ve lied so many times in the past and I have a feeling that they’re just going to keep on pushing the lies until finally people wake up and realize that they’ve had enough.

The beautiful thing about the quote above and the linked video is that yet once again the president is completely caught in his lie. Unless he wants to argue that the video is edited, there is no getting out of this one and I for one hope that it plays (alongside his quote) on every single major news outlet for the next couple days.

It’s just one example, of course, and there are some people who still say that he’s doing the best he can and he’s a good Christian man so we should stand behind him because he’s our president that was elected by the majority of people, but this is a guy who on the above video heard dire warnings from a whole room of people (including the much-maligned Mike Brown) and then seemingly ignored them and went on literally three days of campaign stops (including this gem).

So yeah, I took a break from posting about politics on here, but this is something I read and think about too much to not write about. I want the Dems to collectively grow a backbone, I want GW’s approval ratings at sub 20%, and I want people to finally see what a complete debacle this administration has been. If I can help in that even a little bit, I’ll be happy man.