stAllio!'s way
when it rains it snows pt. ii
i just received the
imn newsletter. at the top is a picture of me (actually a cropped version of
this picture from my
online press kit). right next to me is paul stanley. (
click here for screenshot)
at first i only knew about the pic on the
actual review page, which was a collage of images relating to the 4 cds being reviewed. i think a couple days passed before i realized that link to the reviews on the
imn main page had my picture alone:
a bunch of people go to the imn main page, & a bunch more get the newsletter. so i expect lots of people to start recognizing me on the streets soon. i'll need to get cosmetic surgery to change my appearance. eventually, that is, once i get tired of the rockstar lifestyle.
but seriously, i guess the lesson is to keep some high-quality images on your band's website where press types can easily find them (this is assuming you want press attention, of course). i hear references to 200dpi images as a good standard. i don't actually have any crisp images that big; the ones in my gallery are 1280x960. but they need to be pretty big if you want any chance of the pics seeing print (obviously this image hasn't seen print yet, only web use, so consider this a useful tangent from someone who works in print).
so anyway, paul stanley of KISS and stAllio! are the only two photos in the newsletter, both at the top. the equal billing means i'm equally as important as KISS, right?
take them at their words
like i was mentioning to quahogs in my last post, today i donated to
buzzflash so they would send me the new movie
outfoxed (as well as a copy of the new book
banana republicans. buzzflash can be a bit over the top at times, but they do a good job of collecting information so i don't mind paying a few bucks extra to kick it back to them.
outfoxed is a new documentary that claims to expose the manipulative practices and blatant right-wing bias of fox news. everyone knows fnc is biased, but they refuse to admit it. this is supposed to be the movie that proves it.
also interesting about the film, according to the
nytimes, it apparently pushes the envelope for fair use rights:
Though the existence of ''Outfoxed'' has been quietly publicized, its particular nature and content have been closely guarded for fear, Greenwald says, that Fox would try to stop the film's release by filing a copyright-infringement lawsuit. Nobody has ever made a critical documentary about a media company that uses as much footage without permission as Greenwald has, and the legal precedents governing the ''fair use'' of such material, while theoretically strong, are not well established in case law.
so clearly this is on my must-see list. i'm willing to chunk out
$16 to get a copy sight unseen (or you can get it from the
outfoxed site for $9.95 if you don't want to donate to any PACs or media outlets).
as further proof of fox's biased agenda, the outfoxed people have released copies of "the memo" sent out daily by fnc mgt directing that day's content. 33 days' worth of memos, to be exact, and
wonkette has posted them all. this is not subtle stuff; it's blatant right-wing editorializing. after reading through the whole list, you hardly even need to see the movie because they're already proven their thesis with this filedump.
there's no way i'm taking the time to analyze the whole thing or pick out a bunch of excerpts (
other sources have the excerpt scene covered but i at least want to post this one, perhaps my favorite so far:
Air America, featuring Al Franken and other liberals, got on the air last week, but at what cost? Well, in New York, it took the place of an ethnic show. In LA, it knocked off a Korean program. And in CHicago,a spanish language broadcast was replaced. None of these people are happy.
now that's just silly.
it's not
all damning... a few of the editorial decisions are even honorable (like the part about avoiding showing the victim's face when cover the kobe trial). but taken as a whole, it's hard to deny that john moody (author of "the memo") is trying to steer the channel's coverage in a pro-war conservative direction... and the movie supposedly shows just how much the memo affects content (check out
jon du pre clip on the site for a taste [i'm downloading the trailer torrent now]).
apparently the gay marriage amendment has been a total wash so far... it was never going to pass anyway, since even those who oppose gay marriage for whatever reason don't want to look like total bigots. the whole vote was always a sham, an attempt to force democrats to vote against the amendment so they could then point and say: "look at the queer loving democrats! they want to destroy our hetero values by refusing the demonize gayness!" but now they can't even do that, making it all a collosal waste of time when they could've been trying to pass actual important bills like
"pass a budget resolution or any appropriations bills".
quoth the fineman:
In proposing a constitutional amendment to define marriage only as "the union of a man and a woman," the GOP's goal was to put Democrats on the cultural defensive and to inspire religious conservatives who form the core of modern the party today. Instead, the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have exposed divisions among Republicans and, through a well-meaning procedural mistake, allowed the Democratic ticket to wriggle free of the need to cast a potentially harmful vote on the matter.
In the end, Frist and White House strategist Karl Rove couldn't decide whether they really wanted to pass the measure or merely have a vote they could campaign on. The result is that they got neither.
Rather than seek an up-or-down vote on a toughly worded version of the amendment, Frist and his allies (led by Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania) allowed discussion of a second, milder one. But since that one (which would leave latitude to the states) might actually pass, Democrats opted to mount a filibuster. As a result, the central (and only) vote turned out to be on a motion to shut off debate — a harder vote to use in an attack TV ad.
The procedural posture also allowed Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards to slip the noose. Since the motion to shut off debate requires 60 votes, the John-John ticket can pay homage to gay rights by merely not showing up — but can claim neutrality of a sort on the core issue by not having to vote on it.
the motion to end debate only got
48 votes: 48 more than it should've, but way way fewer than would be needed to actually insert homophobia into the constitution.
when it rains it snows....i wonder why
just when i'm still reeling from being booked at the
midwest music summit, i find this: a brand-spankin'-new review of
maura's milk chocolate bath in the
indy spins (local reviews) section of IMN. strange. (you also might want to check out the chatter on the
message board thread... naturally the talk is all about the cover.)
the review is by rob g of
the free zone. he's been doing a great job of supporting me since i sent them a package a couple months back...
last week they spent a good minute discussing the concept behind my
true data 12",
the week before they played a track off mmcb (though i forgot to listen that week, dumb dumb dumb), & they're even
name-dropped me before as well as played selections from
free speech for sale (which i sent them). so in short: you should check out the show, because it's possibly the coolest thing on indianapolis radio.
block the vote
no, i'm not talking about the gop's appalling attempts to actually
prevent democrats from voting, though that is where i
got the term from.
no, this is a little more urgent. apparently the arch-conservatives and homophobes in govt are currently debating the travesty known as the "same sex marriage amendment." & they hope to put it to a vote this wednesday!
i get a lot of mail from moveon & sometimes it seems like there isn't enough time in the day to even read them all... but this time around i made sure to
sign the petition immediately because this isn't just any crackpot bill they're talking about... they want to amend the constitution in order to discriminate, to inject a li'l bit o' hate that wasn't in the constitution before. if the us constitution is to mean anything at all, this must not pass. like moveon says:
This is unprecedented -- never before has our Constitution been amended to take away anyone's rights.
so
sign the petition & let everyone know you won't stand for this befouling of our most important document.
more spider-man 2 thoughts
now that i've had a few hours to recover from this hangover...
i've never been a big fan of dr octopus (though he's not as lame as, say, the rhino). but he was pretty fucking badass in this movie. i wasn't really familiar with
alfred molina but apparently he's done a lot of work (including several other movies i've seen).
the character work is fantastic. doc ock's arc is pretty good, and all the important character arcs from the first movie are continued here. even aunt may gets a couple powerful moments. and i was pretty satisfied with the ending, something i can't really say about the first movie.
so yeah, maybe it is better than the first one. i still need to see it again before i decide that, though.
dial tone
it was all a lie. tone loc was not at my reunion. but i had a fun enough time anyway. it was strange seeing some of those people again, some of whom i barely recognized or remembered. everyone was nice & some of them were pretty excited to see me. i even got a profuse apology from my high school "bully" (he never beat me up or anything, but abused me verbally... he's clearly done some growing up since graduation). there were a few people i wished were there but weren't (i tended to hang out with a lot of outsiders), but it was a good time.
i got pretty drunk on wine (which was free... until 10pm. what's up with that?), passed out relatively early for a saturday night, & woke up very early. now i'm nursing a hangover; nothing too terrible, just a bit of a headache & that mildly queasy sensation of feeling the previous night's toxins still filtering out of my bloodstream.
we also went to see spider-man 2 yesterday. good movie. my sister said she liked it more than the first movie. i don't know if i would go that far (maybe i need to see it again to really compare) but it is very well made & a worthy successor to the first spider-man movie, which i thought was great.
