Alby's Latest Posts
DL Open Thread Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Democrats would have an easier time drubbing Republicans for corruption if there weren’t so many corrupt Democrats. New Jersey is proving a happy hunting ground for indicting crooked ones. While Bob Menendez is still in court explaining his gold bar collection, South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross has been indicted for racketeering. Norcross pulled […]
DL Open Thread Monday, June 17, 2024
There is no news today outside of the usual huffing and puffing from Trump and his acolytes in politics and the media, so feel free to discuss what you want. In America’s supposedly liberal media, Jeff Bezos hired some British Fleet Street sleaze to run the Washington Post and the New York Times is having […]
Song of the Day 6/15: Françoise Hardy, “Tous les Garçons et les Filles”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona Singer Françoise Hardy might have been the coolest person in a cool era, the pre-hippie 1960s. Pretty and waif-like, perfect shoulder-length hair, soulful eyes, legs meant for a miniskirt, demure, French. Hardy, whose death this week at 80 sparked a lot of happy recollections, was the most important of the […]
Song of the Day 6/14: James Cagney, “You’re a Grand Old Flag”
It’s Martha Ann Alito’s favorite holiday, so here’s George M. Cohan’s tribute to Old Glory, as delivered by James Cagney in his Oscar-winning turn as Cohan in the 1942 film “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” You seldom hear the tune, written in 1906 for Cohan’s musical “George Washington, Jr.,” these days unless you listen to military band […]
Song of the Day 6/12: The Unusual Suspect, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”
This YouTuber’s shtick is editing together movie clips to substitute them for the real vocals in popular songs. It looks like a lot of work, and most of the results are amusing mainly for the films the editor chooses to sample, because it’s not hard to find examples of the words in, say, Rick Astley’s […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Hunter Biden was convicted of being a gun-toting drug addict – or was it a drug-addicted gun toter? – and MAGAts, in true Old Man Yells at Clouds form, are angry about it, and in the stupidest possible way. They claim Joe Biden orchestrated the conviction of his son to justify his prosecution of Donald […]
Song of the Day 6/11: Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, “I Went to a Party”
Nick Lowe has been playing and touring with surf-rock revivalists Los Straitjackets for a decade now, and he’s finally done an album with them. “Indoor Safari” is set for release in September, and a leadoff single was released yesterday. I know new music is El Somnambulo’s beat, but I figure he won’t mind a band […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Ever wonder why the American public opposes Israel’s war on Gaza but its elected representatives are for it? Here’s why: AIPAC funneled money from Republican donors to Democratic candidates more than any other organization. Shalom my ass. In a tape made surreptitiously, SCOTUS justice Sam Alito admitted his Christian nationalism, telling his interviewer that compromise […]
Song of the Day 6/10: Imagine Dragons, “Sharks”
Donald Trump’s fear of sharks is well-documented, but I think it’s confined to the oceanic sort. That’s not the kind of shark Imagine Dragons sang about in this 2022 single, a No. 12 hit on Billboard’s rock chart, but the video’s casino scenes make me wonder if it’s about him anyway.
DL Open Thread Monday, June 10, 2024
If you’re looking for something more esoteric to worry about than World War III or the climate-induced collapse of civilization, you might want to look into the latest outbreak of avian flu, which has infected two farm workers – one in Texas, the other in Michigan – who caught it from dairy cows. Pasteurization kills […]
Song of the Day 6/9: The Sundays, “Summertime”
Americans insist on regarding “summer” as the period between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. That’s the astronomical definition of summer, but it’s not the only one. The length of the astronomical seasons varies, so meteorologists break the year into three-month segments. For record-keeping purposes, summer consists of June, July and August, which pretty […]
Song of the Day 6/7: Chuck Wood, “Seven Days Too Long”
I like soul music on Fridays as much as the next guy, but sometimes I get tired of the same old songs. So I turn to Northern Soul, the British movement born in the ’70s that kept alive obscure ’60s singles that never made the charts in the U.S. when they were released. A lot […]
Song of the Day 6/6: Jim Radford, “The Shores of Normandy”
Certain minds think alike. Mike Dinsmore posted this in the Open Thread while I was writing it up. It’s worth hearing twice. Jim Radford was a British folksinger and peace activist who was just 15 when he served as a cabin boy aboard a tugboat that took part in the D-Day flotilla 80 years ago […]
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