Month: November 2011

Despite

London Calling

being one of my favourite albums, I’d never before realised what the cover was about:

[via Sheila O’Malley, whose now-waning period of Elvis obsession has been a joy to encounter]

It’s not so surprising that lobbyists are offering to demonize Occupy Wall Street for money. That’s their job, after all: latch on to whatever is happening, and demand cash to support or hinder or manipulate it.

What’s sweet is how fixated they are on finding some rich central backer pulling the strings. Maybe it’s Soros? After all, these people wouldn’t do anything unless they were being paid for it:

“It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.”

Mark Ames on Greece:

See the guy in the photo there, dangling an ax from his left hand? That’s Greece’s new “Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks” Makis Voridis captured back in the 1980s, when he led a fascist student group called “Student Alternative” at the University of Athens law school.

David Edelstein on the Rum Diary:

Rollicking car chases, colorful carousing in tropical settings, psychedelics jags with outlandish special effects: It should be just what the Doctor of Gonzo ordered. But Robinson doesn’t have the gonzo touch. Even if his Withnail & I featured a spectacularly dissolute antihero, it was soaked through with cold rain and the melancholy specter of alcoholism and failure. To work, The Rum Diary would need to make the case for all the excesses that killed Thompson, and Robinson’s heart (or talent) isn’t in it.

[why Edelstein? Because Sheila O’Malley recommended him, entirely accurately, as “best when he dislikes something”