Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

In lieu of a booze photo today, we have a little Jack Nicholson moment from “Easy Rider.” Here’s to old D.H. Lawrence:

I guess we’re in the Red Eye but I haven’t seen it, only the online version on Metromix, with this wonderful description:

Milk at Midnight
Aug. 1 at Martyrs’
Locals’ “Less Love More Acid” offers bad advice but plenty of plaintive, impressive indie rock tunes.

Alright! Bad advice, indeed. And somewhere in there is our picture as well, reproduced here for your pleasure:

As commenter Sarah kind of said below, it seems like Gates has been portrayed by the media as the villain and Crowley as the cop just doing his job. But now that we know Crowley falsified his report regarding the 911 call, what does that mean for the “Yo mama” situation? Crowley claims he said it, but he also claimed that the call specified two black males breaking in to a home, which it didn’t. I’m just saying, isn’t the cop the one that should be apologizing for acting…mmm…how do I say…stupidly?

It’s very hard for me to accept, that with these facts, that the officer acted did not act stupidly and indeed, by his lights, did what exactly what he was supposed to do. It is very hard for me to accept that 59 year old dude with a cane, has as much responsibility in this situation as man, empowered by law, to carry a gun and arrest people. The argument seems to be that greater power does not actually bring greater responsibility.

The whole thing is over–or it will be after the beerfest tomorrow–but it still should be noted that Gates has always been the innocent-until-proven-guilty-guy who was arrested for the very arbitrary “disorderly conduct,” which may or may not involve shouting at a police officer after being accused of breaking into his own house and not kissing cop ass sufficiently.

Anyway, Yo mama so stupid she took a ruler to bed with her to see how long she slept. Oh, and one more thing: Yo mama so fat and stupid that she was fired from “Forrest Gump” cuz she kept eating the box of chocolates.

Big news on the Gates-Gate: apparently the beer and greet will take place on Thursday, and so naturally The Booze Cabinet heartily supports this use of alcohol as peacemaker. In fact, we’ve been advocating drinking and peaceful conversation for years, even before George W. Bush failed at them so miserably (drinking=FAIL; peaceful conversation=double FAIL).

One thing about that whole silliness: I read that arrest report and I’m still trying to figure out why Gates was handcuffed or what crime he committed. Disorderly conduct is such an arbitrary charge, and while I don’t see anything racist about it, it’s still another lame dick move by a cop. Happens all the time. But lame, still. It doesn’t matter if Gates said Jim Crowley’s mama is so fat that when you tell her to haul ass, she gotta make two trips. That’s not against the law. He coulda said yo mama so fat when she auditioned for a part in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” she got the part of the big Rolling Ball. No crime there! But hey, whatever.

As for drink orders, CNN says Obama will be having a Bud and Crowley a Blue Moon. No word yet on Gates’ beverage of choice.

I know I have a reputation for drinking shitty beers but that’s not all true. I love Blue Moon. And Stella Artois, Beck’s, and many wonderful Mexican brews. What’s Obama doing drinking a Bud? Better take off the Mom Jeans before you do that, or we’re gonna be in big trouble.

UPDATE:

What Bill Maher said:

I think Henry Louis Gates was arrested for the crime of not kissing the behind of the police officer.

I’m trying to watch the first-place (?!?) Cubs finish this game that is now in the 12th inning and meanwhile Bill Kristol is leering at Jon Stewart and making me ill. Still, the Palin coverage makes it worth it, and now Colbert piles on. The clips I have seen of her speech today are downright surreal. A true wack-job for the ages, Sarah Palin. Here’s a helpful look back from Gawker (“Sarah Palin’s Gradual Descent Into Incoherency“). Best description ever:

It’s like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged.

The Cubs? In the 13th, still tied. Come on! Bases juiced, no outs, end it! Fonzie, gimme some redemption! Yeah! Grand slam! Whooo! Wow, that was awesome. Looks like they’ve done it again, they’ve sucked me back in. Damn!

Ah, a nice cold margarita at El Cid! You gotta feel good about that situation!

From Michigan, another beautiful sunset. I’m not there right now, it’s just a little midweek treat. Ah, it’s Thursday already, isn’t it? Summer just flies…

Just saw this post on Sullivan about a guy who went to a Dave Matthews concert, got drunk and decided to sleep it off in the car instead of driving. The cops made him leave, and then arrested him outside of the lot for drunk driving. Dick move, yes. But justice prevails:

A Wisconsin appeals court on Wednesday commended Peterson for doing the right thing by trying to sleep it off, and said the trial court was wrong not to let him argue that police had entrapped him.

It reminds me of the time I went to a bachelor party in Milwaukee and got drunk, had nowhere to stay (the strippers wouldn’t have me), so I went into the back of the car and slept. Made sense to me. The cops didn’t bust me, but they did bust a friend of mine who decided to drive home (the wrong way on the exit ramp). Now he’s a big-time lawyer who never drinks anymore.

The moral of the story? I don’t know. Cops can be dicks sometimes. Sleep it off if you have to. Gimme some truth or something.

So. Pitchfork. I went Friday and then Sunday. I complained elsewhere about the lines and the 312 beer so I won’t do any more of that. Apparently they figured out by Sunday that they should add more port-a-potties, which is rather slow reaction time in my book, but hey, it worked, kind of.

These were green people that I saw walking around.

I didn’t bring my camera on Friday so I don’t have many pictures of other bands, but this is the Vivian Girls, who I saw for a bit. I was expecting a little more S-K in their sound, and the vocals were kinda low, so it didn’t work for me. Not bad, but…maybe better on record? I don’t know.

All of my good pictures are of the Lips. And let’s face it, their color scheme goes well with my site. This is Wayne before they even started, getting people fired up.

Wayne in the big ball. OK, I have a complaint. The Lips were good, yes, and they put on a hell of a show, yes. But imagine how many more songs they could have played if Wayne had not rambled on, and on, and on, in between songs. Seriously. At least two more. There was nothing he said that we didn’t already know. Stop talking, start rocking!

But this picture rocks, Wayne on the doubleneck and drummer (name?) thrashing away. I was disappointed with the setlist though. I’m glad they played a couple new songs, and a couple of other “rarities.” But I was disappointed that they didn’t play more songs that either a) rocked, or b) hadn’t been rocked many times before. The “Yoshimi” songs slowed down were kinda lame. And yeah, I don’t need to hear “She Don’t Use Jelly” or “Do You Realize?” again for a long time.

Let me rephrase this: the Lips would have done better (made me happier) if they ignored the songs that are most popular (and overdone) and just kept it weird. I was skeptical that they even were following the Write the Night concept, but the setlist kind of bears it out. So maybe they did play the songs that most people voted for, but unfortunately they are way too popular (not cult-ish enough anymore) to have that setlist turn out well. Or, interesting. To me.

It’s hard to not enjoy the show though, and so of course I did. But as someone who voted excessively for “Pompeii am Gotterdammerung” from the last album, I was hoping for weirder choices, that’s all. Do we always have to be a crowd-pleaser, Wayne?

Pitchfork ’09

Post-Old Town Fest Tecate in a Shiner Bock coozy on the front porch, last weekend.

This is serious business. Was Prez Obama wearing Mom Jeans? I didn’t watch the All-Star Game (baseball and I aren’t getting along this year) so I missed all this. The White Sox garb I have no problem with, I’m glad he’s not taking the wishy-washy, politically expedient way out the way some do (ahem, Hillary in a Cubs hat Yankees hat), but those jeans? No. Not good. Dude, seriously, this is Serious Business. Lose the Mom Jeans and we’ll talk. And that pitch could use a little muscle, bring it up and put some heat on it.

In other news, it’s another busy weekend. I hope to see The Jesus Lizard and Built to Spill tonight (if my ticket connection goes as planned) and then the Lips and more on Sunday; no Pitchfork on Saturday for me. It’s crazy how the summer just flies with all the activities and stuff. Lolla is right around the friggin corner too, oh my.

Yeah, man, politics on a Friday. You heard me. Obama needs to let this happen: “open a full investigation of the many laws that were evaded, twisted or broken — pointlessly and destructively — under Mr. Bush.”

So why break the law, again and again? Two things seem disturbingly clear. First, President Bush and his top aides panicked after the Sept. 11 attacks. And second, Mr. Cheney and his ideologues, who had long chafed at any legal constraints on executive power, preyed on that panic to advance their agenda.

I know, they’ll never serve a day but history deserves to be informed. And when it all comes out they need to put it on a plaque in that George W. Bush library in Texas for all to see.

Dowagiac, MI

A pic from last weekend at Buffestalo. What happened was, there was this big water tank or something sitting out there and some people started talking about “Yellow Submarine” and how it could possibly look like that if it were painted right. Next morning I woke up and Eric was cleaning it and then the paint came out of the garage and people were doing it up and by the afternoon it looked like this:

Which was pretty impressive. Here’s the original: