Run Your Mouth

Heard on tonight's show:

• Eyesight to the Blind - Mose Alison
• I Am The Walrus - Scenario
• You Run Your Mouth and I'll Run My Business - Joe Jackson
• Love Is A Many Splendored Thing - Hugo Montenegro
• It's a Sin to Tell a Lie - Fats Waller
• Turquoise - Ken Nordine

Idiot Tag - yet another nod to Guy David

In The Land of The Blind - Nevermind the freudian implications of a one eyed man trying to rul the world. This is just a bit of silliness

Razz Ad - They made me play this one taselon.com is the site for Mr. Ralph's book

Debate Family - It's been a dream since the first debate to write a sketch that features this absurd style of speech extending out into daily life.

Crap on Discrimination - This came from a blog post that Laurence Simon had about this subject in Second Life. I Thought it would fit reasonably well on the show.

Mango - This was written by Anima Zabaleta. Sexy, no?

Tough Love for Third Party People

Coming up on this weekend's show:

Nothing. There isn't going to be a show this weekend but join us next weekend for another exciting adventure of the Black Tie Martini Club!


When third party candidates like Bob Barr or Ralph Nader complain about why they aren't more popular, they sound like Republicans. Primarily, they blame THE MEDIA. It's the media's fault that more people don't know who they are, it's the media's fault that they don't poll well enough to be allowed into the debates, it's the medias fault that they don't get as many supporters sending contributions.

Like traditional politicians, they never put any of that blame on themselves or on their organizations.

I'm not saying I'm against third parties, I'm actually very warm to the idea of breaking the stranglehold of a closed two party system. But most of the independent parties we have and the politicians who run for office from them aren't really ready for prime time. They especially aren't ready for the presidency. I'm sorry but some of these parties are little more than vanity caucuses for wannabe politicians. That doesn't mean they don't have some good ideas but you know what? we all have SOME good ideas. That doesn't mean we deserve special help to become president.

Both Bob Barr and Ralph Nader think they should have been in the presidential debates. They think the system is against them because they only allow people with 15% of the polls in their favor to debate. What I don't hear them addressing in their complaint is where the line should be drawn. Since neither are on the ballot in all 50 states, should Stephen Colbert be allowed to debate? Should I?

I don't think the system is really anywhere near as slanted against independents as most of these independents claim. Sure, the process of getting on the ballot can vary widely by state and some are tougher for independents. And yes, the media doesn't just cover anybody off the street because that person would like them to. I keep offering myself to the late night talk shows and I can't even get the TRL guy to return my calls.

But there really has never been a better time to be an independent politician or party. In the last couple years Barack Obama has shown that the right candidate can succeed with the right charisma, organizational skills, and some good old fashioned chutzpah. I know Obama is a democrat and not technically a third party candidate but how much help was his party giving him in the pre-pimary season which began two years ago? Do you remember how it was a done deal? Clinton had the money, the organization, the party support and was going to win it all because she could kick anybody's ass on either side of the aisle. Only she didn't.

With the internet, social networking, massive small donation, and excellent ground work, Obama went from being slightly more likely than Kucinich to win but less likely than Gravel to a tough party fight to being the likely next president of these united states.

The tools he used, are ones that anybody could use. Sure, he had some help from his party along the way but Ralph Nader had much more "celebrity" back in 2006. Which really had an advantage with the 'system'?

Quite honestly, I think the old model of the independents, to win smaller local and state offices and work your way up in party strength is still a good strong idea. And I think that with the right candidate, a third party candidate could win in this era of smaller independent media. But they aren't going to do it by blaming the media.

And as a side note to the Libertarians. Most reasonable people agree with most of your ideology. The part where we get a little nervous is when you start talking about privatizing EVERYTHING. There are a lot of us who would like to pay less in taxes and who would also like the federal govt. to leave us alone but we really don't want to give up on schools or medicaid or all that other big government stuff. You have one way of really convincing us though: take something and start doing it on your own. Start a number of free, privately funded, good quality schools. Create your own privately funded FEMA. Work together and solve one of these issues we pawn off on govt. that your ideology claims should be privatized. Then we'll believe you. You'd be unstoppable. And you'd get more media coverage than those other third party guys and gals.

A Political Post Devoid of Issues

Forget about the issues for a moment. Forget about the economy. Forget about the war. All that stuff can be complicated and many of us don't pay that much attention to politics most of the time. So lets look at this thing like it was a movie. We all watch movies.

Whenever people complain about Obama being too cool and not expressing their rage and catharsis; I always think that's the good thing about him. To me, and admittedly I am a huge Obama fan, he seems like the archetypical American movie hero. He's the strong silent type. He's a tall, handsome man who doesn't come from around here. He doesn't start fights. He tries to talk to people. Think of Alan Ladd in Shane or Clint Eastwood in the Leone Films. I think this is a large part of what people are talking about when they describe him as, "Presidential".

You know when people talk of Bush as being a cowboy because of his bravado and uh... fear of horses, that's true but only up to a point. Bush is like the hired thug in a western. He's not too bright but he's full of machismo. He's quick to fight. He's most concerned about looking tough and he's kind of a doomed character.

McCain, on the other hand, seems like that character's boss. The Rancher who has bought up half the town and is sending his goons to rough up the people who wont sell. He doesn't like getting his own hands dirty but he'll send his henchmen. He really hates the hero and just can't keep that inside. He had a plan, he was going to win and this interloper came in and blew it all to hell. How DARE Obama come in to try to clean up HIS town.

If we're sticking with the western theme, I suppose Biden might be the Gabby Hayes of this picture. A likeable old timer who isn't essential to the plot but is good for some comic relief, telling parapalygics to stand up or saying Hilary Clinton would've been a better VP choice.

Palin... I don't know what kind of movie archetype she fits. She's a new one. Many imagine her to be the Shannon Tweed character who takes off her glasses and lets her hair down right as the alto sax kicks in but that doesn't belong in a western really. But uh... she's a maverick. That's all that counts right?

Just Like a Georgia O'Keefe Painting (recap)

Heard on this week's show:

Crazy Rap - Afroman
The Brothers go to Mothers - Henry Mancini
Balls - Andrew Calhoun
Amsl's Song - Caleb Bullen

The Angina Monologues - I know, it's a really REALLY cheap joke. Get used to it. The show's full of them

John the Regulator - This song has been stuck in my head for a while and I couldn't stop singing it after the debate. But I didn't want to focus the whole show on politics again because I think a lot of people are just sick of politics at this point

Dick Randy - This was the way to change the theme of the show from politics to dirty jokes. This popped into my head as a concept when I watched an old episode of Lou Grant and they had issues with someone trying to censor theatre to adhere to 'Community Standards'. I couldn't help but wonder what the internet community's standard would be

Organ Emporium - If you're going to fill a show with dirty jokes, you can't go wrong with Big Organ jokes.

Pac 10's and 527s - I was talking with Anima Zabaleta about 527's and she looked up 527's on the internet and found that a number of these groups had dirty names.

Beavers - If you're going to make organ jokes, you need to make beaver jokes to keep things fair and balanced.

Come on Get Happy (recap)

Heard on this show:

Happy Town - Jill Sobule
Samba Triste - Charlie Byrd
Money - Gary Pine and Dollarman
Solar - Chet Baker

MyFace - I heard some analyst talking about Social Networking and when they said, "MySpace and Facebook" I thought of MyFace. The jokes are pretty obvious from there

Intro - I seriously do have to apologize to the ghosts of Cheyevsky and Finch. But I didn't want to do another big serious political show and thought at some point we have to just get happy and start enjoying ourselves despite what's going on.

McCain saves the Economy - I'm not sure I made this point that well. The point is that McCain is a known liar so if he tells us things are bad, we'll think they're good. Which would be a huge help to consumer confidence. I might have lost the point somewhat on this one. Sorry.

Only You Can Help - I'm most proud about this one. It really will come down to $10.00 a day for all of us if they take the full 700 billion. But of course that's for each and every one of us. As it is, if you actually pay taxes, your percentage will probably be higher. On the other hand, we might get something back for our sawbuck one of these days... maybe.

Dickipedia - Nixon jokes never seem to get old.

Family Day/Global Warming - Something of a celebration of uh... the WTF nature of modern life. See, it's ironic because I'm pretending it's all happy good news. Eh. I'll admit it, not classic material.

I love big dictionaries

Coming up on this weekend's show:

-No fucking clue. Sorry!

I'm a big fan of this koo-koo online world we live in. I podcast, I twitter, I blog (sometimes), I consult Google, Wikipedia and YouPorn several times every single day and feel like I'd be lost without them. So I'm not one of these old timey, internet-hatin' crochety (is chrochety the right word? Where could I find a good synonym for it?) geezers who think everything was better back in once upon a time land.

That said, it did occur to me that one of the great pleasures of my youth - I say 'great pleasures' but I mean 'great time wasters' - was browsing the dictionary. Not reading it cover to cover or looking up one word for one reason but kind of lazily flipping pages looking for words that looked cool or maybe risqué or even words I thought I knew the meaning of but knew I'd be hard pressed to define precisely. (define exactly?) I don't know that it was the most defning activity as far as my education or even vocabulary went but I feel it broadened my palette (wait is it palette that has paints or palate? I better look that up)

I don't even own a dictionary anymore. Not a real one. I own a couple specialized ones for novelty's sake but not the kind of imposing, exciting twenty pounder of a reference book that I grew up in awe of. When I was 18 and living on my own, one of the first things I spent real money on was a cheap websters for myself. You had to have a dictionary even as late as the 90's but now you really don't need one. You have a world of reference at your fingertips if you have a computer and a phone line or even a portable phone with internet access.

Sure you can still browse through the random pages of wikipedia just to find out random information like we used to randomly browse through the old Brittanica our grandparents had, and when you need a particular word defined you can get it online faster than your parents can look it up in some old book. But you can't really just browse through an online dictionary to get a sense of how vast your own ignorance is. You can't get the feel of turning ancient impossibly thin paper or feel for the grooves cut into the paper to help you turn to a particular letter. Which is one of those little delights that will be completely lost to future generations.

That said, I'm not suggesting for a second that bound dictionaries are better than online ones or that future generations with access to almost limitless information at their fingertips are going to be any less intelligent or informed than we. If anything they're going to make us look like the provincial rubes we made our parents look like as they did to theirs. But they're liable to miss out on the thrill of cracking those ancient tomes. Plus, it's really hard to use the internet as a step stool.

THINK

Coming up on this weekends show:

A Journey to the Heart of Darkness

That's really all I can say about it except it is going to be my emotional response to the re-fetishizing of war, torture and terrorism. It probably won't be a big hit with the conservative crowd.

By the way, keep an eye on factcheck.org in this campaign. They set the record straight about both candidates on a regular basis but see if you don't notice one side's errors being more like lies and less like exaggerations than the other's.

Both sides stretch the truth and spin, sometimes accidentally I'm sure. But one campaign has had to be seriously smacked down for what appear to be blatant intentional falsehoods, lies, or 'distortions' (to put it mildly).

Also, you should really check out the Daily Show's take on the Gender Card spin put out during the RNC. It's actually some of the best journalism I've seen in a while and it's also funny.

Don't believe either side but don't tune out either and give up. Look into it yourself and find what's true and what isn't. Its easier to do today than it ever has been. To do anything else would be Un-American.