Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

The Cubs’ Rich Hill threw 45 pitches to the Brewers’ Yovani Gallardo’s 7 in the first inning. How do you think it’s going?

UPDATE:

Hey, hey! Cubs win 6-5! That was unbelievable. Back at .500 after Ramirez’ 2-run homer in the 9th! Only 6 and a half back. Brew Crew is going down! Alright, half hour to go, it’s Miller Ti–no, make that an Old Style! Sweet!

On Howard Stern’s show, both before and since satellite, he tends to bring in young women who are strippers or porn stars; this is a well-known fact of life and some of us appreciate Howard for it. It doesn’t really translate over the radio airwaves all that well, but the descriptive powers of Howard and his gang usually paint a vivid picture. These girls come in and inevitably take their clothes off and the gang then remarks about how hot they are. And then Howard usually asks about their home life; what happened to them that they feel the need to do this? This is, as true fans know, the fun part of the story.

Almost always, these girls would come from families in which the father was absent, or negligent, or abusive, and Howard would giggle knowingly at the “Love Me Daddy Complex.” It’s not funny, of course, but in the context of the situation you have to laugh. These girls are trying to get the attention they never got at home by taking off their clothes, or more. And some of their stories are so ridiculously over-the-top that you can only marvel at them.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, Glenn Greenwald has a fascinating look at Dick Cheney’s enablers, mainly Jonah Goldberg and Tucker Carlson, and this phenomena is clearly evident in their awe of the man behind the curtain. Greenwald’s point is more that they “search endlessly for strong, powerful, masculine figures so that they can feel those attributes and pose as one who exudes them,” but I think we have a bit of the “Love Me Daddy Complex” going on there as well. I have no idea what these men’s relationship with their fathers was, or is (I’m pretty sure Goldberg’s father is dead), but the way that they fawn over Cheney’s contempt, secrecy, and general disdain for the powerless (that’s everyone else, to Dick) tells me that something is missing in their own lives. Who else in their right mind would cheer this behavior?

Has it been proven that either of these man have not taken their clothes off for Dick?

As for the “love to have a beer with the guy” mystique that many, many (too, too many) Republicans used to defend both Cheney and Bush, I can only say this: I would love to have a beer with Bill Clinton, sure thing, and I would love to chase skirts with him too, why not? But if I said that I voted for the man–twice–for those reasons, or that it ever even crossed my mind until just now, I would, rightly so, be embarrassed and incredibly dim.

I bet Barack Obama would be a good guy to have a beer with too. Hell, Rudy Guiliani or John McCain might be interesting to drink with. Romney, not so much. But are we going to continue to be this stupid, America? Listen, future President in 2009: I’ll drink the beer. You stop the war in Iraq and fix the mess Bush has left, OK?

The Dick must be wrangled and softened! This sick bastard needs to be taken down one way or the other! There will be no statue erected! Let’s penetrate the mindset of all good Americans with these hopes! We must stand firm and not go limp in the face of adversity! The smoking gun shall come in the form of a mushroom cloud!

I don’t want to see him impeached. I want to see him prosecuted under American and international law as a criminal.

I agree with Sullivan. Sure, Cheney is a war criminal, this much is obvious. Impeachment is too easy. I see it as more of a consolation prize, but let’s go for the big money first. Bet it all on 22! Door number three! But this guy’s argument is pretty solid:

Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III.

- Bruce Fein, Slate

Ah, just cuff him and take him away!

Ugh.

It’s been a discouraging week at the Supreme Court. Over the last four days, there have been five major decisions, all of them 5-4 rulings, all of them victories for conservatives, and all of them backed by the same five-member majority (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy).

- Washington Monthly

It’s this kind of thing that makes the 2000 election that much worse (not to mention 2004). That vanity vote for Ralph Nader doesn’t look so hot right now, does it?

UPDATE:

“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Justice Stephen Breyer said.

- USA Today

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A real busy schedule lately, with Switchyard and recording and work and play, so this one will be short. Switchyard was cool, although we got the shitty weather day, and the first day kinks were being ironed out all day (a late start, slow stage set-up, etc.). That wasn’t bad for us, we got to push back our set time to an hour later but we had to cut a song or two. The crowd was nice for us and afterwards we mingled and laughed and drank excessive amounts of 312 beer, which I never want to drink again. As a proud Chicagoan, let me just say, I can’t stand Goose Island. Sure, it was free, so I drank it, but man, I’d rather have Old Style in a can all day than drink that fancy shit. (That doesn’t mean I don’t love me some Stella or Grolsch or Beck’s, mind you; I can get snobby just like the rest. But please, these yuppie microbrewery beers are so shit-tastically awful.)

One other thing about Switchyard: the set-closers, Suffrajett, rocked. I was glad I stayed and caught them.

Last night we went back to Prize Beagle and laid down another 3 songs. The song that had the working title of “Augustine” has been renamed and now goes by the much-simpler “Days of Chastity and Continence (not in rioting and drunkeness).” I will explain this at a later date. We did that one, and then put down “The Leaning Tower of Astigmatism” and “Lost Hi-Way.” I believe we have a couple more to record, but we are going to move into the next phase of over-dubbing, as the $in heads out of town for a bit. We’re playing it loose and easy, not rushing or forcing anything, so this could take a while. But I think it has gone pretty smoothly so far.

Next up: Summertime heroes Milk at Midnight take it easy for the rest of the week!

Where I ate before heading into the Prize Beagle studio last Tuesday.

Tomorrow, Saturday June 23, join MaM at Chicago and California Avenues for an all-day fest, the Switchyard Festival. We’re on at 3:30, see you there! (full-size poster .jpg here)

UPDATE:

New City Chicago weighs in:

Boasting a mostly local lineup, both days at the Switchyard Festival should be crawling with Chicago’s hipster elite. Saturday’s headlined by the intense, sexy and soulful Suffrajett, whose new “Black Glitter” is sweaty and full of punch and growl. Also performing are the respectable The Prairie Cartel and Ultra Sonic Edukators, but only after The A-Sides, Slings & Arrows, Milk at Midnight (a great band to see live) and Reptoids have their say.

Thanks, New City!

Taken at the Gravity Bar, Guinness Brewery, Dublin. This certainly cannot be true?

I got out of work at 5 and rode my bike around in circles trying to find a cheap place to eat some dinner. I settled on Whole Foods, mostly because I’ve never really ate or shopped there, and I thought I could find some “wholesome” food. This brings me to an earlier point that I forgot to make: I’m getting fat. I told the Chicagoist interviewer I was 140 pounds, but of late the scales have been tipping more towards the 145, 146, 147 mark. This is ridiculous because I have been riding my bike every day for at least three weeks now and I am back in tip-top condition. Where is this fat that haunts me? Or is it, more likely, just the extensive muscle build-up that has caused this major poundage uptick? Yep, that must be it.

It couldn’t be the beer belly, no?

So we were all talking about our weight on Saturday and it started to get pretty gay. Adam chastised us for our talk and I decided that the working title for the album would be What Is You…Gay? Anyway, I went to Whole Foods and walked around to the deli/food counter and tried my best to avoid looking at all of the incredibly beautiful, perfectly-shaped women that seem to inhabit this store. I bought a two-taco dinner with rice and beans–not exactly the healthy meal I was looking for–and decided to head outside and find a place to eat. I rode back toward the studio and saw an idyllic little picnic area to the right of the alleyway that leads to the Prize Beagle, so I pulled up and sat down to eat (pictures to come). It was real nice, this pretty little garden of green right in the middle of State Street at Huron, although the people looked at me funny when they walked out of the building there, like I was trespassing or homeless or something.

Since I work down the block from the studio I had plenty of time to kill waiting for everyone else to get there, so I decided to try and work on the lyrics to “Less Love, More Acid” as I sat there at the picnic table. (By the way, the proper way to write that title is to have the “heart” symbol instead of the actual word “love.”) Maybe as this progresses I will excerpt some lyrics, but for now let’s just say that the first lines to this song begin

less sunshine, more raincoats
more chemicals and disco balls

There is a decidedly darker tone to the songs we’re doing this time around, although I don’t think the music necessarily reflects a sense of “doom,” so to speak. I have avoided injecting politics into most of our music but I think it will be different this time around. “Kristol Ball” is obviously political in content:

siren song / always wrong / Irving’s son / hear me roar

and “Argument to End the World” may or may not be about an actual argument to end the world; it may also just be an argument between Rick and I.

I finished the first draft of lyrics to “Less Love, More Acid” (and polished them up Wednesday night) and headed into the studio. We got going around 6 or 7 and laid down another 2 or 3 tracks, focusing on the songs on which Rick plays bass instead of guitar. We were having tremendous good fortune using a click track for these songs, which I know can be tough, as I recently tried to play drums with some rock opera songs I was working on and it was frustrating as hell. Of course, it may also be that I am not able to play like Keith Moon, the way I kept hearing it in my head. It may be that I am a guitar player and not a drummer.

Anyway, Eric was earning the name “One-take Anderson” for most of the two sessions and then we finally hit a snag attempting to record a cover song and called it quits for the night. There are times where I think we’ll just have to throw the click away and play it loose, like we normally do. But so far the recordings have gone pretty smooth, with, I think, 5 or 6 songs in the can (drums and bass) and a few new arrangements and ideas that have made sense.

With a show coming up this weekend (The Switchyard Festival), MaM is looking to get back to Prize Beagle next Tuesday to continue the recording.

Next up: Summertime heroes Milk at Midnight hit the outdoor stage for some afternoon sun and fun!

A long time ago I somehow stumbled upon this site, called Right-Thinking From the Left Coast, and for a week or so it entertained me. It was filled with complete nut-jobs, right-wing wackos who tried so very hard to be macho men (I’m talking about the comments as much as the host). Back in those days, Bush was The Man and could do no wrong. There was such certainty, as there is at many right-wing sites (even still, at a few remaining sites), that they were “Right” and everyone else was “Wrong,” and liberals (the reasoned ones) were dismissed as wimpy idealistic hippies. You know the types–the ones that said going into Iraq was a “bad idea.”

I long since forgot about the site, but came across it again in a trackback from Andrew Sullivan’s site (where I have trackbacked from myself lately). Imagine my surprise to read what’s happened over there with that gang of testosterone-filled nuts. The posting was about Supreme Court Judge Scalia and his citing of fictional character “Jack Bauer” from 24 as justification for actual policy, which is frightening in itself. But then, RTFTWC agreed that Scalia was “nauseating” in his comments, which struck me as odd. It sounded reasonable; it made sense; why would he agree? I looked around and saw the comments on another post and found this fascinating rebuke from the site host, “Lee,” to his dwindling and angry gang of Bush Apologists:

Look, I know how difficult it is you admit you’re wrong. Look at this blog. Look at how it’s changed from day one. This entire blog is basically five years of me admitting how wrong I was about Bush. All I’m asking you to do is look at the evidence, leave out the lame-ass liberal media conspiracy cop-out, and tell me how you think a bunch of junior enlisted grunts are to blame for all this.

Hilarious shit. Look, I think it’s great that most of the wack-jobs have come around and understand now that they were completely and totally wrong about their big man Bush, but you know, too little, too late. As far as I’m concerned, Lee’s conversion is good for a laugh but nothing he says should take away from the fact that people like him helped create the world we live in today. The ones who talked so tough and dismissed everyone else can all fuck off now, because they got what they wanted, and guess what? It’s a pile of shit.

Is it possible that someone can be a liberal AND be correct about what a corrupt shitbag our president is?

Yes, Lee, it is, and we’ve been saying it for years. Nice to have you on board, but no thanks. You obviously were stupid enough to fall for it once, why shouldn’t it happen again?

We went into Prize Beagle on Saturday afternoon for our first session with Adam, our friend and fellow musician who was also the mastermind/producer/engineer for our world-famous “Why Don’t You Go? (Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh!)” recording, featuring the Hoyne Street Legion of Doom Choir (you can hear that and many more here or here). Adam is obsessed with hockey and paintings of Snoopy on black velvet, and I will have pictures up here soon to prove it. Anyway, the studio is one of the nicer ones I’ve been in, in terms of space and comfort, and is located around the corner from where I am working these days, near the shadow of the Holy Name Cathedral. An appropriate setting for a holy man such as I.

MaM went in with around 10-12 songs or ideas that we’ve been working on and playing for a while, and at this point it is a mystery as to what we will end up with. We threw down most of those songs in a pre-production session Saturday and then listened to everything and picked them apart. Even put a couple of covers in there for shits and giggles. Not all of the songs have titles but here’s some of the things we have scribbled on our marker board:

“Argument to End the World”
“Less Love, More Acid”
“Kristol Ball”
“The Leaning Tower of Astigmatism”
“Lost Hi-Way”

And a couple of others with working titles such as “Augustine” and “TM.” And a few untitled ones, or unfinished ones. We’re also planning on re-recording a couple of songs (“Greatest of the World” is one), and like I said, a couple of covers that may or may not see the light of day.

Now, I don’t know much about recording–well, OK, I did some recording in my days down in the basement at Hoyne Street with ADATs and a little bit of 8-track reel-to-reel, but if you ask me anything I can’t really explain much. Same with guitars and amps. After a show recently a guy came up and started asking about my guitar and humbuckers and I was just nodding and finally had to say “yeah, I don’t know, I just plug it in and play the thing.” You using a 220? Yeah, 220, 221, whatever it takes.

At Prize Beagle we are recording on a Studer A80 1″ 8-track analog recorder, which is nice because I had vinyl on my mind when we went in; my hope is to be able to press some records, a limited edition at least, with this project. Warmth is what we’re going for on this recording; that, and breakthrough rock and roll sounds to burn you down to your very soul.

So anyway, Saturday went from around 3pm til close to midnight or so and we left things set up to lay down tracks on Sunday. Everyone was hungry so we walked around the Chicago/State St. area looking for somewhere to eat and drink, and after a couple of misses we found a bar whose name I cannot recall, but I keep thinking it’s something like “Gordon Lightfoot.” Garrity something? I don’t know, but it’s close by, I’ll find out. We ate giant burgers and sandwiches and drank Shiner Bocks (welcome to Chicago!) and felt like out-of-towners.

We went back on Sunday afternoon and started in on the real recording, with Rick on bass and Eric on drums in the main room and me standing in the control room playing guitar straight into the board and singing. We cut about three songs (bass and drums) and called it by 7 o’clock. Then they brought in the hookers and blow and from there things get a little hazy…hey! Wait a minute! What happens at Prize Beagle stays at Prize Beagle!

Next up: The Tuesday Night Session.

Stay tuned for some not-so-live blogging from Prize Beagle Recording Studio, as Milk at Midnight lays down some new tunes over the next month or so. There’s no wireless in the studio, and so far very little downtime, so I haven’t had time to sit and write, but I’ll have a recap of what’s already transpired up soon. This is what summer is all about: rocking out in a windowless semi-air-conditioned room with the boys, drinking Old Style and getting irritable. Just kidding, it’s all glamour, fun, and games when MaM goes about its business (intentional British spelling, by the way). Also, stay tuned for a weekend show announcement, as the pale-faced MaM goes outdoors to bask in the sun and play to the masses. Sweet! Massive!

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a theme song. Look, I don’t need another reason to not be excited by her inexplicable inevitability as the Democratic candidate, but this is just atrocious. “You and I,” a song by ear-piercing Canuck Celine Dion, has been chosen (apparently by Hillary’s deaf campaign managers) to lead or follow Mrs. Clinton’s own ear-piercing appearances. Makes you long for some Fleetwood Mac, doesn’t it?

Democrats, don’t do this. Just don’t.