With this newest installment of the increasingly popular "Celebrity Gift Suggestions", I am responding to an increase in demand by lending a hand to several families at once. I am talking about the loved ones (and trophy wives) of the CEOs of America's leading car makers.
Alan Mulally of Ford, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Richard Wagoner of GM saw it fit to fly to Washington in their individual private jets to explain to the government how their companies are doing so badly that only a dose of socialist welfare will keep them over water.
Now, the perfect gift for those three gentlemen must be ...
The Greedy Bastards edition of "Simplify Your Life!" Unlike the book I suggested for Kenny Rogers, this one is not available anywhere yet. But I am just disgusted enough to write it.
I hesitate to call Ted Haggard a celebrity, as he is more infamous than famous. I guess a better description of the man best known as Pastor Meth would be lying, hypocritical scum.
But it's the season to be giving and loving, and lord knows the man put his family through enough and they deserve a little support - and what am I if not giving?
For Ted Haggard, I suggest two gifts: "Praise the Lord" tumblers and Jesus air fresheners.
Because nothing fills that void left behind by crystal meth like cheap liquor downed praising the almighty, and nothing chases away the aroma of santorum like a pine scented messiah.
Ho, ho, fricken ho. As the first snow is decorating the roofs I can see from my window, I decided to give the gift of inspired ideas this holiday season to the many families of celebrities I am sure are reading my blog.
It must be hard when you have to buy something for somebody who has everything. I know Oprah said she really loved the Lalique decanter that Luther Vandross gave her a few years ago, but are we really sure she did not use it as a gravy boat because she already had fourteen others?
So this year, at absolutely no cost to the public, I am presenting gift ideas for celebrities on my blog.
First off is that icon of country and pop music, one of the most successful recording artists of all time, Kenny Rogers.
For Kenny, I suggest his family buy the book How to Fold by Pepin Press:
Kenny has known for years when to fold 'em. It's about time he learned how to fold 'em, too.
How to Fold is a whopping 432 pages and comes with a CD ROM. It's available for less than 20 bucks from good book stores or online. Are you reading, Rogers family??
The North Korean government has been releasing all kinds of photos of Kim Jong Il posing with soldiers to prove that he is not, you know, pushing up posies. Only problem is: As The Telegraph notes, the photos look manipulated. Holy Weekend at Bernie's, Batman!Here is another photo of Kim visiting with a special undercover task force of the proud North Korean army. You be the judge... I think it looks legit, personally.
Over the past few days, two of my favorite singers passed away.
Dee Dee Warwick... Dionne's sister, who called her "the singer in the family." She may not have had Dionne's perfect command of melodies, but she more than made up for that with extra helpings of passion and soul. She sang the original version of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me", later recorded by the Supremes with the Temptations as well as Gladys Knight and the Pips. And I'm pretty sure that if you give her wonderful recordings a listen, she will indeed make you love her. Dee Dee was only 63 years old but had spent her final months in a nursing home due to bad health.
Levi Stubbs, the unforgettable lead singer of the Four Tops, also passed away. He was 72 and had long been plagued by serious health crisis, including cancer. Levi is often underestimated as a "shouter" because he is best known for songs like "Reach Out, I'll Be There" and "Standing in the Shadows of Love." But the strength of his voice came with impeccable control and could reveal an unexpected tenderness, as on the Four Tops original recording of "I Believe in You and Me" - a song that requires a humongous vocal range and was later covered by voice acrobats David Peaston and Whitney Houston. But to me, the Four Tops version will always be the ultimate rendition of this beautiful love song, due to the unparalleled Levi Stubbs.
On a recent trip to France, I picked up a new graphic novel by one of my favorite authors, Lewis Trondheim. The upcoming English translation from First Second publishers will be called Bourbon Island 1730, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. In previous works, Trondheim has dealt with everything from offbeat sci-fi humor to Seinfeld-style character studies and almost Proustian philosophizing. And almost always, he has done so with funny animal characters. This time, he and co-writer Appollo take a look at a dark chapter in the history of the latter's home island, once called Bourbon but nowadays known as La Réunion.
The tale starts out as an adventurous tapestry of engaging characters: the ornithologist trying to find the maybe-not-extinct-yet dodo, his young assistant who is fascinated with the stories of Pirates on the island, the farmer's daughter who has romantic ideas about the escaped slaves living in the jungle while her father is a former pirate who took advantage of the French government's (historically authentic) amnesty offer.
The story soon becomes something much deeper, however. It does not fall into the trap of romanticizing the past. Its depiction of slavery is brutal and moving. Bourbon Island 1730 could be to slavery what Art Spiegelman's Maus was to the Holocaust.
I took the liberty to translate a dialog from around the middle of this 288 page (including the helpful historical notes in the back) black and white graphic novel.
A young Yoruba was recently captured in his West-African home and sold into slavery. From outside his jail, he is suddenly addressed in his own language by an unknown stranger...
- What's going to happen to me?
- Tomorrow you'll be sold on the market square. A planter will buy you with a lot of other slaves and take you to his plantation. You'll be a pick-axe negro. They'll give you a garment you'll wear a year. And you will sleep in a cabana with the others. In the morning, before the sun rises, you will head out to the coffee fields. You will work all day without rest. If it's not fast enough, the commander will whip you. At nightfall, you return to the cabana. You'll be to beat to think of anything. You will sleep like a beast to try and recover before the new day. Sundays, you may sometimes rest. But the white preachers will take you to church where you will pray to their God. Forget the old gods: they never did anything for you and nobody here knows them. The new god isn't any better, but one has to pretend.
- Is there no escape?
- The Malagasies sometimes escape to the mountains. But the Whites will soon chase them down. Others build logboats to try to make it back to the big island. But I don't know if any of them ever survived the crossing. But you, little head, where would you go? Your home is too far away. You have nowhere to go. If the whites catch you trying to flee, the first time they will cut off your ear. The second time, they will cut off your foot and the third time, they will kill you. As you see, it's well organized.
- What about you? Are you going to do something for me?
- No... Here, take this knife. Kill Dhermitte if you can. If not him, any white will do. Don't use it against yourself - kill somebody else with it. They need to know that they, too, can die like dogs at any moment. I'm going to leave you now. It was nice to talk in the language of the old country again...
Bourbon Island 1730 is solicited for October 28 from First Second. Ask for it at your local comic book store.
I guess that's what you get when you have your merchandise produced on the cheap in Asia. Or maybe it is to imply that learning impaired students support McCain?
Anyway, it seems horribly unpatriotic to mistreat your native language with unnecessary apostrophes. I hope we soon will get to see a Democratic ad that ends with the lines: "John McCain. Wrong on Grammar. Wrong for America."
I am the4thpip and I approve and proof-read this message.
Also, as John McCain has a lot to learn in spite of being 200 years old, here is somebody whose drinking has probably made Cindy McCain a nice bundle of money over the past few years - Amy Winehouse, with "Teach me Tonight."
Update: It seems somebody at the campaign read this and fixed the spelling on the image posted at the online store. Of course, if they already have 300 boxes in stock, that won't help them much.
Haven't I blogged about this twice already? Penis chewing, meth smoking pastor Ted "Pastor Meth" Haggard is all done with the rehab program that would turn him back into the upstanding, Jesus worshiping penis chewer and meth smoker that he'll always be.
I'm having a serious case of déjà vu. So here is a Dionne Warwick, who has a cousin with a bit of a drug problem herself, with the song of the same title. "Déjà Vu" that is, not "Penis Chew."
There is no higher honor for Canadian comic book artists than being named "Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Artist" at the Shuster Awards, named of course after Superman co-creator Joe Shuster. This year's deserved winner is Dale Eaglesham for his work on Justice Society of America. And he was up against some stiff competition: Tom Grummett, Pia Guerra, Stuart Immonen, Karl Kerschl, Thierry Labrosse, Jacques Lamontagne.
I hope DC Comics will give Dale a raise now... The weak US Dollar can't be easy on Canadian creators working for US companies!
Here is a panel from Dale's earlier work on Villains United:
So everybody's speculating whom McCain and Obama are going to pick as their running mates.
For McCain, who is already falling behind in the polls, there are basically two strategies: He could pick a woman to get some of Hillary's voters who are still upset that she did not get a nomination. Or face the fact that he is quite unpopular in his own party and pick one of his former opponents from the primaries: Giuliani, Huckabee, Romney, Thompson.
Which is why I think Barrack Obama should pick Gladys Knight as his vice president. She is a woman like Hillary, a triple divorcée like Rudy, a Southerner like Huckabee, a Mormon like Romney and a TV actor like Thompson. She is the Super-Adaptoid weapon to counter every possible Veep McCain could pick!
And to prove that she performs well as part of a team, here she is with Marvin Gaye doing "I heard it through the Grapevine" with cabinet members The Pips in the background.
CDs with warning labels are nothing new, as one can find the "Explicit Lyrics" sticker on albums by artists as different as gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg and the early blues diva Bessie Smith.
But a good decade or so ago I pulled a CD from a "marked down to next to nothing" bin that had a warning label of kind that I had never before encountered:
The music contained herein exudes an intensity rarely evident in popular stylings, and even infrequent within the "deep soul" idiom, and if you are not that familiar with Linda's output, I would genuinely recommend that you sample this CD in smaller doses.
I had never heard of Ms Jones at that point, but how could I not put down my 2 bucks and change for a CD that came with that kind of caveat?
Linda was signed to Loma records in the 1960s, but never achieved the kind of success that her stable mates Lorraine Ellison or Ike and Tina Turner were blessed with. The excellent double CD "The Best Of Loma Records: The Rise And Fall Of A 1960's Soul Label" contains no less than five songs by Linda, including her almost-hit "Hypnotized". She later signed to Sylvia Robinson's Turbo Records in the early 70s, and unfortunately most of the recordings from that era sound somewhat distorted whenever the technical equipment of the era was outdone by Linda's unique vocal range (which was basically all the time).
The first thing that will hit you - hard - about Linda Jones is that she never held back. Her rare joyous songs are ecstatic jubilations, while the majority of her tunes convey a sadness and drama that make you fear Linda has already put the razor blade next to her bath tub. Linda was a bit like Patti Labelle in so far that she did not seem to know any moderation, though her voice is very different from Ms Patti's.
If you compare Linda's recording of "I can't Make it Alone" with Dusty Springfield's version, you can't help but notice how much more Linda "got" the lyric. As incomparable and talented as Dusty was, as brilliantly produced as the "Dusty in Memphis" album is, I doubt you'll ever be able to enjoy Dusty's understated reading of the song again once you have sampled Linda's agonized, driven masterpiece interpretation of the King/Goffin composition. When she yells "Help me!" you just want to reach through your speakers and hold on to her for her own, dear life.
Linda suffered from health problems, including diabetes, and died at the very young age of 28. The pain in her voice was clearly driven by pain in her life, and maybe she explains her singing style best herself in her spoken, rambling ad libs in the middle of her knock-you-to-your socks cover of Jerry Butler's early hit, For Your Precious Love. If this version of the song sounds remotely familiar to you, that is probably due to the cloned version that Truth Hurts recorded for the soundtrack of the Will Smith movie Ali a few years ago. Personally, I would have preferred if they'd remastered Linda's recording to use it on the soundtrack to introduce more people to this forgotten diva. Anyway, here is what Linda said in that song, and if you click on the clip below, lord have mercy, you can hear her explain herself better than I ever could.
You know something ladies? And especially you ladies, I'd like to speak to you. Cause you know something, ladies? If you got a man, I don't care what kind of man you got he'll want you to get down on your knees sometimes and kind of crawl a little. But you know what? I got a man that's somewhere out there that I don't mind crawling to. Sometimes I wake up in the midnight hour with tears rolling down my face. And when I look around for my man, I can't find him. Hell, I fall a little lower, look a little higher Kind of pray to the Lord. Because I always believed the Lord can help me if nobody else could Well sometimes I think he don't even hear me! So I have to fall a little lower on my knees, look a little higher, Kind of raise my voice a little higher And this is what I sing when I call to my man And I especially want you ladies to listen to me Because maybe you can try this It might help you once in a while This is what you sing...
If you don't know what Homophobia means: it's not fear of humans, as the linguists among you might wrongly deduce. The word is a tad confusing because the behavior it describes, at least on the surface, is not fear, but hatred. Hatred of homosexuals, bisexuals, transgendereds.
Sometimes I feel like calling it a phobia is almost trying to excuse inexcusable behavior. Did the people who murdered Matthew Shepard really do so out of fear of something that they did not understand, or were their hearts just cold and spiteful organs pumping bile instead of blood?
I won't try and claim that I can figure out the root of a kind of hatred that unfortunately is found in so many cultures around the world. But I believe in my soul that education is a key, and that governments have a responsibility to signal that gays and lesbians are of equal value to society as everybody else. In that sense, I applaud the California Supreme Court for not only allowing many Cali lovers to finally tie the knot, but to hopefully also help us drive back homophobia in the long run.
Here is another very nice remix of Carl Bean's "Born this Way." Why does it seem that the music industry has been taking steps back since the 70s, if THE African-American label of the day, Motown, could release a rousing gay disco-gospel anthem back then, but nothing like that seems to be out there today? If I were you, I'd sit down and consider what you're doin'!
