I won't complain about the weather in San Francisco after a taste of the ugly holiday cold in Wisconsin. Take a look at this forecast, though (the last column is chance of precip):

Fri Jan 07      Rain   55°/49°   80 %

Sat Jan 08      Rain   54°/50°   90 %

Sun Jan 09      Rain   56°/51°   90 %

Mon Jan 10      Rain   55°/45°   70 %

Yuck. On that note, I would like to push my favorite record to listen to during rainy days and quiet Sunday mornings.



The Clientele, Suburban Light [Merge 2000]

Gorgeous songs that recall the quieter moments of the Velvet Underground and Felt. A must-have.

allmusic says:

Even as the Clientele's hazy, soft-focus pop suggests the influence of virtually every musical ancestor worth acknowledging, the band's pastoral beauty nevertheless conjures a dreamscape entirely its own; fusing the heady otherness of psychedelia with the gentle caress of folk, Suburban Light swirls and settles like gold dust. Like the artist Joseph Cornell, the titular subject of one of the disc's most memorable songs, the Clientele assemble and juxtapose found fragments (collected from forebears like Love, Nick Drake, and Donovan) and transform their source materials into something magical and new; although the record's 13 cuts assemble various singles and scattered recordings, the finished product hangs together with a clear sense of purpose and scope. Over repeated listens, the songs grow both more distinctive and more interconnected, boasting a richly nuanced intricacy as intoxicating as it is elusive.

And maybe you should read this Boston Globe piece, which begins:

It always seems to be raining softly inside a song by the Clientele. A shaft or two of amber light may slant across a verse or a melody and linger for a moment, but what scant sun peeks through the British band's melancholic skies usually precedes the next inevitable poetic downpour. The cumulative sensory effect -- a sort of saturnine, wistful ache that suffuses the music -- makes the Clientele singer-guitarist Alasdair MacLean very happy. He enjoys, he says, capturing "that feeling of things slipping past."

Buy it.

The Nelson Report is a sort of insider's-insider tipsheet on what's really going on in Washington. It's available only to subscribers, though bits and pieces leak out. Like, for example, this big piece, which is so unpleasantly believable that I shuddered reading it:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news."

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

Not good.

[Via Eschaton]

Amazing. CNN kills Crossfire and declines to renew Tucker Carlson's contract.

The bow-tied wearing conservative pundit got into a public tussle last fall with comic Jon Stewart, who has been critical of cable political programs that devolve into shoutfests.

"I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp," [CNN Chief Executive Jonathan] Klein told The Associated Press.

He said all of the cable networks, including CNN, have overdosed on programming devoted to arguing over issues. Klein said he wants more substantive programming that is still compelling.

"I doubt that when the president sits down with his advisers they scream at him to bring him up to date on all of the issues," he said. "I don't know why we don't treat the audience with the same respect.

You can still get your dose of Tucker on "lefty" PBS, ladies. Check your local listings.

I hate that pompous little fuck.

Next on Salto:

A prankster finds a new low-level hire at Starbucks Corporate and proceeds to impersonate the Starbucks CEO by email. The prankster issues commands to the new hire, beginning with a command for the new hire to shave his goatee. The guy does it. Emboldened, the prankster gets ... creative.

The whole thing is here, including full texts of emails. It's astonishing.

Here's an outstanding example:

Date: Weds, 27 Oct 2004 10:47:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Orin C. Smith" |
To: rxxxxxxxxxx@starbucks.com
Subject: Re: Welcome to Starbucks

I understand how difficult moving is. As for what I told you to do earlier, we'll try it again shortly. I don't want to raise suspicions so let's give it a few days.

There is something else you could do for me. There is a Starbucks on 5th and King that I sometimes go to on the weekend since it's near my house. The service is usually really good but last time I was there I noticed this very, very heavyset girl behind the counter. I don't know the girl's name but she was quite repulsive to the eye. Obviously, as CEO I can't just walk into a Starbucks and start firing baristas and service people because I don't like the way they look, but this girl should not be allowed near scones, if you know what I mean.

I don't know if you want to earn a little extra money this weekend but I'd like you to go there, have a look around and see if you can find out which girl it is. She needs to be terminated. I want the fat girl gone. Let me know when this is completed.

Thank you,,

Orin C. Smith
President, Chief Executive Officer
Starbucks Corp.

Read all of them.

The effort to name the Bay Bridge after famous 19th century lunatic Emperor Norton (background here and here) moves right along:

More than a century after a quirky San Francisco character who called himself Emperor Norton I ordered a bridge be built spanning the bay, a move is under way to name the later-day Bay Bridge in his honor.

The drive was publicized by Chronicle cartoonist Phil Frank in his strip "Farley" -- perhaps a fitting forum for a man who walked the streets of San Francisco in the late 1800s with a plume in his hat and a sword in his hand, issued his own currency and declared that calling the city "Frisco" was a High Misdemeanor.

High marks from Salto for even considering this.

Even a gossip columnist [Lloyd Grove. -ed] has limits.

Paris Hilton has finally abused mine.

Over the past five years - without any discernible talent, education, scruples, manners, modesty or underpants - the pretty blond great-granddaughter of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton has waged a terrifying campaign for world domination.

The arc of Paris' "career" - from rich, witless party girl to rich, witless party girl with a hit television show - is an insult to the American sense of fairness: the idea that you get ahead by working hard, playing by the rules and acquiring a skill of some sort.

Paris has bothered with none of the above, and yet society continues to reward her with money and fame.

The British actor Stephen Fry put it best when he observed recently to Lowdown that being Paris "takes a startling vanity, an enormous lack of selfknowledge and a huge amount of greed and desire."

What is it about this otherwise unremarkable 23-year-old that can provoke such seething outrage?

Read the Paris Hilton Year In Review.

You know you want to.

[Via Andy P.]

I've got a couple of Google Gmail accounts to give away to regular readers who would like one. Email me privately.

No, probably not the first one that would come to mind. Probably not the second or third one, either. This campaign of deception has to do with the country-music charts.

Country singer Chely Wright said yesterday she was dismissing the head of her fan club and shutting down a team of volunteers after The Tennessean learned that some of them posed as members of the military or their families to promote her latest song.

Seventeen members of a handpicked team of fans contacted radio stations around the country asking for more airplay for Wright's pro-military ballad, The Bumper of My SUV. It was all part of an organized campaign by leaders of the fan club who encouraged the team to do such things as ''tell 'em your husband is a marine — whatever it takes.''

If you're like me, you're just, like, confused by this, right? How can country-music lovin' red-staters pushin' pro-military jonks be ... lying pieces of shit? Aren't they by nature ethically advanced beyond the ken of coastal elites?

Tards bilking tards. Think I'm being harsh? The song itself is pure demagoguery:

The Bumper of My SUV, which was written by Wright, tells how she was driving down West End Avenue in Nashville in her SUV when someone saw her bumper sticker supporting the troops and made an obscene gesture. The song calls for support of the troops no matter what a person thinks of the war in Iraq.

Wright said she sang it when she entertained U.S. troops in Iraq. The song received such a positive response that she thought people back in the United States ought to hear it.

Yeah, yeah. It's all about the troops. Die a fiery death, bitch.

[Via Andy P.]

Here's the eBay listing.

Here's the inevitable outcome.

Down with IP fascism.

I'm so sorry.

But it's funny.

Probably not safe for work.

She traumatized a dog ten times her size and took a piece out of our landlord, both requiring medical attention.

And she weighs less than five pounds.

The full story here.

Susan Sontag.



Wolcott's eulogy here.

...read Sontag on photography, war, and death in this superb New Yorker article.

...note a mini-scandal brewing re: the Sontag obit in the Times. Why? Omission of Sontag's long-term lesbian relationship with Annie Leibovitz...

Salto is sick in bed recovering from the stress of his trip, New Year's Eve, and the many, many alcoholic beverages he's consumed over the last five days.

APS and I made it back to SF safely yesterday. We wuz slapped up quite a bit on this trip by WY, UT, and NV, though -- a red-state triumvirate of snowy evil.

Pics comin'!