How To Look Like An Idiot On TV

English comedian Russell Brand was on Morning Joe yesterday morning promoting his worldwide comedy tour “Messiah Complex." MSNBC's news anchors Mika Brzezinski and Brian Shactman, along with BBC's Katty Kay, ended up looking like a bunch of airheads by the time it was all over.

It started with Mika Brzezinski's insulting introduction of her guest.

Mika: Alright, joining us now, he's a real big deal, I know, I'm told this. I'm not very pop culture, sorry. Comedian, movie star, author, and host of the show, Brand X, Russell Brand.

What was very interesting to me was how these news anchors deflected anything serious Brand had to say. At the 2:16 minute mark Brand explains what he talks about in his new comedy tour:

Russell Brand: I'm talking about Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Gandhi, and Jesus Christ. And how these figures are significant culturally and how icon are appropriated and used to designate consciousness and meaning, particularly posthumously.

Mika: And what brings all those people together?

Russell Brand: They're all people that died for a cause. They're all people whose icons are used to designate meaning, perhaps not in the manner in which they intended.

Mika: Ooooh, I kind of like that. That sounds dead serious, then.

Russell Brand: Well, it's funny if you do it as a joke.


At the 3:47 mark:

Brian: I’m going to ask a serious question, I’ll try, I’ll try,  everyone asks what do you like better, TV, movies, or standup….

Russell Brand: …There are challenges in all those different disciplines. The thing I enjoy most is stand-up comedy because you're direct with your audience. You can’t be misinterpreted, people can’t get confused. You know what happens if you work in media? People like to, uh, change the information so they assume(?) some particular agenda. If you’re in a room with people then what you’re saying is clear. If you say something that people are confused about you can explain it to them then. If you say something as a joke people can’t pretend you’re saying it serious. So I like having direct communication with people because I believe people are very, very intelligent but the information gets manipulated a lot, people like to cause, you know, fake stirs and stuff.

Brian: Funny, the accent , when I see him in person, it’s totally fine, forget Sarah Marshall or the TV show, it’s fine. But on satellite radio in the car I can’t understand a single joke....

Later when Brand pretends he is a news anchor and begins questioning the others about Edward Snowden and Bradly Manning the others defect his questions and, again, start talking about his accent and other dumb ass stuff.

By the end Brand is taking them to task.

At the 7:47 mark:

Russell Brand: Look beyond the superficial. That's the problem with current affairs. You forget about what's important. You allow the agenda to be decided by superficial information. What am I saying? What am I talking about? Don't think about what I am wearing, these things are redundant. They're superficial.

Mika: I'm distracted....

Yes, Mika, and that is how you and most so-called news shows want the rest of us to be, too.

The Long Weekend

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
-Joseph Campbell


I've had a busy few days. My sister spent the weekend alone with her two dogs and my niece's two dogs but having six dogs in the house wasn't as crowded as it sounds, her dogs are small and one of my niece's dog's is very small while the the other one can only be described as tiny. So it really was like having two-and-a-half extra dogs around. They did bark at the neighbors dogs but since that is what dogs do it did not bother me, although my sister and I did try to keep the barking to a minimum. Sunday morning one of my sister's dogs set off a barking frenzy when she rushed the fence. My sister called her and when she came told the little instigator that she knew she was the one who started it all. That goofball stood staring at my sister with a "Yeah, wasn't it great!" look on her face.

One of my niece's dogs pretending to be a sphinx.

My husband and I hit a couple of yard sales where I found this Nambe serving piece for an incredible "this belonged to my mother's and I want it gone" price of $3.00 (1.92 GBS). Beautiful, isn't it?

I've been suffering from what is know as a frozen shoulder for the last 7 to 8 months and a friend who is an orthopedic surgeon suggested some stretching exercises about a month ago but they haven't helped as quickly as I thought they would. He suggested, once I decided stretching wasn't helping that much, that I have the scar tissue manually ripped apart after my shoulder had been numbed with a regional anesthetic. Since creating more trauma to repair a trauma sounded a little drastic for something that will heal itself with time, I started looking for an alternative. What I wanted was something that would ease the pain that was now spreading to my neck and my back as my body tried to compensate for the shoulder injury. I decided on Rolfing.

I had my first session yesterday and, yes, it is a bit painful but nothing compared to the pain that drops me to my knees or makes me nauseous whenever I move the arm attached to my bad shoulder too quickly. I was sore after I got home yesterday but this morning I went for a walk around the neighborhood and for the first time in months my shoulder did not ache. It also feels more flexible than it has before but that doesn't mean I am dropping the stretching. I'm hoping that it along with the Rolfing will help my body heal faster. And the extra benefits of Rolfing can only be a plus at this point.

"Oklaho-maaah Ciiii-teeey"

Gotta turn it up louder like my DJ told me
-Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me), Reunion

When I was a teenager Sunday's ended with me lying in bed with my radio tuned to 1520 and listening to KOMA out of Oklahoma City. On Sunday nights back then most Denver stations signed off early and the only station on the air still broadcasting Rock and Roll would be 50,000 watt KOMA. That signal was so powerful kids in Canada were listening to it. My listening experience wasn't all that great what with the signal fading in and out on some nights. I attributed that partially to the fact that my radio was an old Atwater Kent Cathedral Table Top Radio which someone left behind in one of the old houses we had lived in and partially to weather conditions between my radio and the KOMA tower.

I loved my old Atwater Kent even though it took awhile for the tubes to warm up and even though once they did they would make a strong buzzing/humming noise. I loved the orange/yellow light that the tubes produced once they were heated up and ready to go. I can still see myself lying in the dark staring at the warm yellow glow emanating from the back of the radio and listening to KOMA at a sound level that would allow me to hear the music over the buzzing tubes but not so loud that my mother would yell at me to turn the damn radio off. Sunday nights for three years, every Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer, I fell asleep to KOMA. Then in one of our moves my Atwater Kent was left behind. It could have been because it was one of those hurried moves or it could have been because the radio finally died and I deliberately left it behind, I'm not sure.

I do miss it.


For the history of KOMA go here.

For a small sample of the KOMA sound, check out the YouTube below:

File Under Little Know Facts And Useless Information

Do you know who invented the safety pin? A man named Walter Hunt in the year 1849. Do you know who then sold the patent for the safety pin for $400 US dollars (about $9,523.81 today)? A man named Walter Hunt. He also invented the sewing machine 10 years before Elias Howe Jr. which should have made him rich and famous. Unfortunately, he has a soft heart and no real business sense. He did not patent his sewing machine because he was afraid that building it would put garment industry seamstresses out of work. Others were not so scrupulous. Howe took Hunt's idea, improved on it, and patented it himself. Isaac Singer then took what Howe had done, improved on it, and started building sewing machines. For the next ten years Hunt, Howe, and Singer were involved in court battles for the patent rights to the sewing machine.

The man who invented both the safety pin and the sewing machine died at age 63 just before Singer agreed to pay him what today would be equivalent to 1.2 million dollars to settle his patent suit.


Short biography of Walter Hunt here.

Child Labor And Poverty Are Inevitably Bound Together

and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.
-Grace Abbott, American social worker (1878-1939)

The International Labour Organization (ILO)  launched the first World Day Against Child Labour in 2002.

Where I Would Like To Be Today

On The Cliffs (1917) by Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970)

Ladies Choice

I've been perusing the Denver Post Archives the last few days and found this article from January 8, 1928.

Step Up Girls, and take your pick. Here are some of the eligibles that are worth looking over and are considered excellent Leap Year prospects. These prominent Denver men have sidestopped the darts of Cupid for a number of years and tho up to date they have been considered invulnerable to the charms of the fair sex, are a little bit wary now that 1928, with its opportunities for women to do their own picking and proposing, is upon them. Will they again prove good dodgers? Left to right, Lawrence Lewis, Orville Dines, Baxter, Lanius, Leut. Harold Bellingham, Willis W. Case Jr, and Carl S. Milliken.

Is this some kind of misogynist joke on the part of the paper? Why do I have the feeling that these men were all considered lacking in someway?

These prominent Denver men have sidestopped the darts of Cupid for a number of years and tho up to date they have been considered invulnerable to the charms of the fair sex....

Oh, right, that sentence. Let's see what I found out about them.


Lawrence Lewis was a Denver lawyer and a US Representative from 1933 until his death in 1943. He was born in 1879, which made him about 49 years old in 1928. He never married so I think we can call him a Confirmed Bachelor.


Orville Dines was another Denver lawyer and I cannot find any information about him but I do know he was the cousin of Courtland Dines who was involved in a Hollywood scandal four years before Orville Dines' picture appeared in this article. Courtland Dines was shot on New Year's day in 1924 by silent movie comedian Mabel Norman's chauffeur. Back then that kind of thing would tarnish your whole family.


Baxter Lanius seems to have made his money in real estate and may have been divorced when he appeared in this article. Although I found nothing on him I did find an obituary for his son.


Leut. Harold Bellingham was the the head of the Denver Naval Recruiting Station in 1926. By 1928 he is listed by the Navy as being on U.S.S. Pecos outside of Shanghai. Now how is that for a joke on the ladies? Belllingham is the man who wasn't there.


I cannot find anything about Willis Case, Jr. He was supposedly killed by his girlfriend in 1934 after he refused to marry her. She then committed suicide.


Carl S. Milliken is the winner in this bunch. He was Colorado Secretary of State from 1921 to 1927. He was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1934 he was Denver's Manager of Safety where he was forced to resign when the Grand Jury ordered an investigation into his office for misuse of funds.


So, ladies, which bachelor  would you have pick?. 

Spot The Pessimist

They Pretty Much Operate On Adrenaline And Ignorance

I learned something today.   It used to be that if I wanted an adrenaline rush I could get just by driving on I-25.  This morning I was coming back home from the grocery store when the following happened:

From the Colorado Drivers Handbook, page 21.
I am the purple car in the above illustration.   Traffic is going 80 mph when the red car decides he needs to exit where the yellow car is exiting.  Does the driver in the red car think, "Oh, I've missed my exit!"
 No, he cuts in front of the blue car, across the green area (which was actually blacktop marked by white lines) and directly in front of the yellow car.  Now keep in mind that this illustration has about five less cars on it than when that yahoo pulled this stunt.

Crap like this happens frequently on I-25 and, interestingly, I am adjusting to it.  Today instead  being frightened I calmly watched it unfold and thought, "What an asshole."

My reaction is not as Zen like as I'd want it to be but I'm getting there.

Those Were The Days My Friend

We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
 

Today is my mother's birthday (June 5, 1928- March 22, 2002) so I thought I would post a photo from the late 1970's of her and channel 9 news anchor Ward Lucas taken at a party at her apartment.