ah, monday, the day of random, broken thoughts. the first being that, ever since nick honomichl and i had a discussion on our mutual love for nu/alt-country/bluegrass, i haven't been able to take dolly parton's halos and horns out of my walkman and the awesomeness that is wilco (and did i mention resting my weary butt during wilco's set at bumbershoot in 2002 five seats away from janeane garafalo? did i?) out of my cd-rom drive. oh windows media player, what would i do without you?
next and speaking of country/bluegrass--i was watching the old VH1 Big in 2003 awards (which is apparently an awards show for the sake of having another awards show), and one of the awards was like best quote or something..and they gave it to natalie maines for her remark to a london audience that she was ashmamed that the president was from texas. i'm sure you all remember the rhubarb that followed: many radio stations pulled their songs, cds were burned, epithets were hurled. bill maher (who i want to punch right in his big, fat libertarian mouth mouth on most other occasions) presented the award to maines saying that she took the heat with grace and turned it into a stand for personal freedom, which i agree with. good on her, honestly. in her acceptance speech, she went on to say "i want to thank all the haters, because you make me strong, empowered, involved and proud. and i thought you might like to know that we have a new CD and a DVD...which is great for y'all because you can burn one and stomp on the other." hah. awesome.
there is one thing troubling, however--i STILL don't understand what the big fucking deal is...i mean, she said something mean about the president...and something relatively benignly negative at that. i have heard way worse things coming out of the mouths of npr commentators, politicians and the entire staff of the daily show with jon stewart. hell, i was at one of those special pearl jam shows at the showbox this year and eddie vedder was onstage in a bush mask, covered in blood...i think. something like that. is the only reason this is such a big deal is that the dixie chicks sing country music? is that it? was there this giant backlash because their core audience tends towards republican convervatism more than the audience of, oh say, bright eyes? because if that's true, that has to be the dumbest fucking thing i have ever heard. there is no real reason this crap should have gotten into the national news cycle. but it did. wonderful.
mmm. speaking of music...like grandpa simpson, i used to be with it...but then they changed what it was. also on this VH1 show, matchbox twenty played a song that has apparently been number 1 for 22 weeks and sold a bazillion copies and blah di blah. right. i have so NEVER heard this song. ever. in fact, i kinda thought matchbox twenty had stopped making music because nobody likes their crap. (the lead singer has a hot voice, though. he should sing alt-coutry. i'd buy that.)
oh, and lastly: i TOTALLY wanted to watch the new sci-fi channel cersion of battlestar galatica...until i found out that starbuck is now a girl. STARBUCK IS A GIRL!?!?!?! wha-huh-whuh? first of all, starbuck is CLEARLY a boy's name and second...what the fuck? starbuck is not a girl! i hate the sci-fi channel. bastards.
