Fists With Your Toes

"I love my dead gay son."

My companion Meeks on the State of the Union:

We're like the asshole jock who was the star quarterback in high school until he broke his leg. Years later he still doesn't get that he's not a star -- he's just an asshole.

Other than that, I watched the American Masters documentary about Hank Williams. Fun fact: Hank met his second wife, Billie Jean, when she was dating an acquaintance of his. They were all out at some club, and when Hank and her boyfriend went to the can, old Hank pulled out his gun and let him know what the new arrangement would be. Ramblin' Man all the way.

"The voters have stolen my nomination!"

Take it away, Andrew Sullivan. Or rather, a reader of Andrew Sullivan who sent this in. Yeah, it's come to this. What's next, tumblr? NEVER!

Hillary's hanging on to the contest dramatically proves to me that she is unfit to be our president. It is so Bush-like, is it not? It's her Iraq. She has obviously failed, yet she keeps on just to prove she's not a quitter. Where have we heard that lately? How can we depend on her? Like Bush, she cannot admit a mistake. She can't admit failure. She is not rational. She'll take us down with her... Her campaign alone is a reason to vote against her.

Those triangulated Iraq votes are also kinda unforgivable.

Translated another way by a college senior: "Hillz is now that person at the party who's had 6 too many jello shots, is talking abnormally loudly and is incapable of understanding the fact that she has overstayed her welcome. And she's starting to hiccup... C'mon Hillz, let's get your coat and we'll walk with you to the door..."

I need some interns to start handling my witticisms.

Hail to the Thief 2.0

THE NUCLEAR OPTION: Hillary Clinton's campaign today acknowledged plans to try to win seating of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations to the Democratic Nation Convention at a meeting of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31... Read the whole galling thing.

Maybe Carville's right about Clinton's anatomy, because this really would  take balls, especially considering the sticky little fact that OBAMA'S NAME WASN'T EVEN ON THE BALLOT IN MICHIGAN.

Besides constantly struggling to keep my esophagus free of bile as this primary gets more adolescent and pandering by the minute, I've been dipping into Tribeca and listening to Make-Up for old time's sake. Here are three places the mongrel cat's been:

Lou Reed and Julian Schnabel banter after Sunday night's screening of Berlin, the concert documentary covering Reed's performance of his cult-classic in its entirety at St. Ann's Warehouse in '06, backed by a small orchestra, Antony and Sharon Jones.

Elaine Stritch dishes about her struggles in the brilliant new revival of Endgame at BAM, starring John Turturro, Max Casella, and Alvin Epstein. Everyone is so sharp in this; see it if at all possible. Sugar plum!!!

Elliott Gould talks at length about his big career flame-out in the early '70s: "My God, when I was about your age I was a very hot movie commodity, not knowing how it worked. I’ve realized that my problem when I fell out of favor in Hollywood was that I was unwilling and incapable of compromise."

(Photo from Dead Air Space; Radiohead's tour began last night in Florida. I was not there, but judging from these videos the usual blathering assholes were on hand.)

Well Played, Ignorant, Braying Jackasses of Pennsylvania!

CNN: Pennsylvania has high percentages of some core Clinton constituencies: Catholics, voters over 60 and blue-collar workers. She led strongly in all those categories, according to exit polls.

The Nation: Clinton was winning very big among Catholic voters -- roughly 70-30 over Obama... And Clinton was winning among women by a 56-44 margin.

Clinton, of course, is a Methodist WASP. But she says her grandpappy taught her to shoot guns in Scranton! And she did a shot of Crown Royal, too! How blue collar is that? Also, she's a SHE! That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

"This man has a bad heart, but I have plenty of medicine"

"I passed by a hallway a little later during the party and saw Hunter talking alone with Keith Richards, which was absolutely amazing to hear. It sounded like two dogs barking at one another, or the secret language of dolphins. It was almost nonverbal, but they both seemed to be understanding what the other one was saying."

-- From Gonzo, the big oral history of Hunter Thompson that Jann Wenner put out a few months ago. It's been a good guilty pleasure in the five minutes before I fall asleep.

No time, but I highly, highly recommend seeing Boom and Passing Strange. Boom closes next weekend, so you'll need to take immediate action on that, that'd be great, thanks.

Elsewhere, my Q&As with Stephen Malkmus, Dave Eggers and Wallace Shawn, who, after more than ten years has finished a new play, Grasses of a Thousand Colors, something I was very pumped to learn. TONY theater writer David Cote pointed out another interview with Shawn in which he's equally tight-lipped about the new play. But the full transcript of the conversation, with Don Shewey, ends on a very funny note:

Were you happy with Scott [Elliott's] production [of The Threepenny Opera]?
SHAWN: I adored it, I thought it was the most amazing group of performers.

I wish I agreed. I so didn’t like the production, the style didn’t work for me.
SHAWN: How would you…turn off that tape recorder and tell me how you would characterize your objections….

Oh man, I hope he pretended to turn it off and kept rolling. But I must say I skipped that production, though I love Threepenny in theory. For years I've been saying someone should do a DIY site-specific production in an abandoned building somewhere. Just not me.

And here are my photos from the Murakami preview. (More on the Flickr.) The retrospective strikes me as mostly over-hyped, slick and soulless, but breezy eye candy nonetheless. I can't deny there's some fun stuff here. This was my favorite:

So will Daniel Day-Lewis have to give George Clooney his Oscar?

This would be encouraging news, except this is the Clinton Machine we're talking about:

"Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in a Wednesday afternoon email to campaign supporters and reporters. "The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead... They failed."

Plouffe's numbers have not been confirmed by any other news source. But other media outlets tracking the delegate count have come up with similar, albeit larger, tallies, calculating Clinton's net gain to be between six and eight.

And here's a cogent, cool-headed analysis of why Obama has a better shot against McCain, concluding with what I've been saying all along... to my constituents in the pivotal battleground borough of Brooklyn... who agree with me already.:

6) Finally, let's remember that the base of the Republican Party -- cultural conservatives -- is not so wild about McCain. They are accepting McCain with about as much enthusiasm as children take cough medicine. They know they need him, but they really aren't happy about it. The one thing that could energize the Republican base is their inveterate hatred for Hillary Clinton.

Bring me the head of Tina Fey.

From today's Times, analysis of Pew research about changing media coverage of Clinton and Obama after SNL's comeback episode, hosted by Tina Fey, made them feel so uncool. The Clintons ran with the depiction, using the same methods the right wing has used for years to get the press to print their lies: create a perception of "bias" reporters feel compelled to counteract.

Over the last few days, the tone of the Democratic contest seems to have shifted, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign more buoyant and Senator Barack Obama’s more defensive.

That shift may be traceable in part to the “Saturday Night Live” show on Feb. 23, when, back from the writers’ strike, it mocked the news media for treating Mr. Obama more gently than it treated Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton amplified that view later in a debate, and her aides stoked it all week, practically browbeating reporters.

Now comes evidence that the publicizing by the Clinton campaign and the news media may have helped flip the coverage as it questioned Mr. Obama more aggressively.

"I feel it in my core, down to my crust: There's only two families you can trust."

"Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there..."

And sometimes there's a slice of pizza, rapping about Hillary Clinton and America's last chance to keep the dynasty alive. Come on, Ohio and Pennsylvania and elitist Superdelegates! SHE'S ENTITLED!

{This song RAWKS.}

And here are five annoying but true reasons why Clinton is back in the game. {#1: The SNL Factor}

"I am looking forward to an orderly election tomorrow, which will eliminate the need for a violent bloodbath."

Photo via Brooklyn Ramblings, spotted on Crosby south of Houston.

I appreciate how, unlike John F. Kerry, Obama most ricky tick swats back at Hillaryland after her BE AFRAID BE AFRAID "Daisy" ad:

In fact, we have had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer, George Bush gave the wrong answer, John McCain gave the wrong answer.

I vividly remember calling into Clinton's office in 2002 to urge her, as my Senate representative (don't laugh), to vote against this trip to hell, and being treated with utter condescension by the smug intern who fielded the call. And later listening on the radio to the vote, with one of the few voices of reason in the Senate coming from a former KKK bedfellow.

A buddy of mine at the time was loving the Kool-Aid and spoke to me in patronizing tones about how we needed to disarm Hussein immediately because he was such a dire threat. And sure enough, he marched right down to the Army recruitment center to fight for this urgent cause!

Kidding, of course; by the end of 2003 he had relocated to Colorado for the snowboarding. Interesting times!

They Didn't Have Lord Huggington?

Happy Vealentine's Day everyone, har har. [Via Suicide Food.]

I spent last night at Brent Green's short film screening at the Kitchen; the live soundtrack was provided by Jim Becker (Califone), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Wilco, Freakwater) and Brendan Canty (Fugazi).

I had first seen his films when Brendan joined a larger group of musicians for a Rooftop Films screening at the end of summer '06; it's a spellbinding and occasionally unsettling mix of stop motion animation and painted illustrations, distinguished by an endearing low-fi aesthetic that leaves Scotch tape marks in the frame and disorienting gaps in Green's manic live narration.

He screened part of a new piece that was inspired by a house in Louisville whose owner had turned the inside into a wildly eccentric series of incongruously connected rooms. During my recent interview with Canty, he talked about the house; it's the same one used for the still unreleased Louisville Burn to Shine DVD. Green's short depicts less animation than usual; part of it depicts a young girl with live birds on strings attached to her hands. And some Abe Lincoln and Walt Whitman's brain getting dropped by doctors after his death.

The bird-on-string motif appeared again in the last film, my favorite both musically and visually, which he screened at Rooftop Films. It's loosely based on his sick aunt coming to live with him as a boy and it's filmed in the old now-creepy house in Pennsylvania where he grew up and, according to the film, saw ghosts. Like his other films, such as Paulina Hollers (above) it's whimsical and haunting and a little grotesque all at once.

But if you're like me, you can't help but laugh at a cardboard skeleton in a wheelchair being whirled around by stop-motion animation chickens. As for Fugazi, Brendan reiterates the general consensus in the interview.