I just got some cool drawings from Collin Burton, the illustrator who drew the picture of Iggy Pop for the last issue of Crimewave. Right now, hes working on an animated video for the Monkey Power Trio song Someday Well Reach the Moon. If it turns out anywhere near as cool as weve talked about, itll be really great. Heres his conceptualization of the Cadillac space vehicle I mention in the song.
While Im on the subject of great MM.com readers, there are a few other things I wanted to share with you.
First, our friend Chelsea Lowe wrote to tell us about something called the Hunger Site. It looked to me like it must be some kind of scam, but she swears its legitimate. Apparently, if I understand it correctly, you just need to visit the site and click on the Give Free Food button. If you do that, the sponsors of the site, companies such as Toms of Maine, will donate one cup of food to a hungry person through established charitable organizations. If this is real, and Chelseas convinced me that it is, we should all probably be stopping there each day as we make our way between Michael Jackson stories.
And, while I cant confirm that shes a regular MM.com reader, Maureen Dowd had something interesting to say on the op-ed page of the New York Times the other day. Essentially, shes implying in this column that Karl Rove sent lil Bushie off to England so that theyd have images for the 2004 campaign, images that established him as real world leader, and not just a guy that takes month-long vacations. Not only did they sent him off to England for this purpose, but, according to Dowd, they sent along the props to ensure that American viewers got the point. Heres a clip:
How else to explain the same Bush advance geniuses who brought us the “Mission Accomplished” banner putting up a blue PowerPoint-ish backdrop for the president’s speech at Whitehall Palace that stuttered, “United Kingdom,” “United Kingdom,” “United Kingdom.”
The people in the United Kingdom already knew he was in the United Kingdom. And the kingdom isn’t very united at the moment.
Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, captured the spirit of the moment when he told NPR that the Republican National Committee should foot the bill for Mr. Bush’s extraordinary security, the largest police operation ever in Great Britain. All this, he harrumphed, “just so George Bush can use a few clips of him and the queen in his campaign advertisements for re-election next year.”
And this next link really is from an MM.com reader, a man in Ann Arbor, Michigan named Steven Cherry. A few days ago, while doing research in the Prelinger Archives, Steven happened across an old newsreel on the subject of despotism. Hes presently in the process of trying to get the piece shown on our local Community Access Television channel. Basically, the piece, created in 1946, lays out the criteria one uses when assessing whether or not a society is despotic. As you might have guessed, those same criteria when used today yield chilling results.
One of the things discussed in the newsreel is the consolidation of the media in the hands of a few. With that in mind, I thought that I should link to this article about the FCCs bid to further relax rules against that happening in the U.S. In this case, however, it looks as though public pressure might be working. The House and Senate have made it known that they plan to defy the FCC and Bush on this one.
Let’s end this note there. It’s good to end with good news.
On the subject of good news, its just been brought to my attention that my band has somehow managed to land on someones Top Five list in Iceland. While I dont think weve been played for the past few weeks by John Peel in the UK, I have been told that were climbing the charts in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Princeton, New Jersey.
