Behold: The Political Power of Carly Simon In Action

From AllHipHop.com:

President George W. Bush has pardoned rapper John Forte, an affiliate of the Fugees, who has been serving prison time for smuggling drugs, sources told AllHipHop.com.

Forte was one of 14 persons that Bush has pardoned or granted commuted prison sentences.

This wave of White House pardons is Bush's latest, as he has less than two months in his presidency. A pardon cannot be overruled.

Forte was arrested at Newark International Airport in 2000 and charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to distribute. Police caught him accepting a briefcase with about $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine in it.

Forte was hit with a 14-year sentence in a federal penitentiary under minimum sentencing laws even though it was his first offense and he was a non-violent offender. He began his bid in jail in 2001 and has fought the laws vehemently.

Through the ordeal, he maintained his innocence and turned down a plea deal.

John Forte has released two albums, Poly Sci and I, John.

John found an ally in legendary singer Carly Simon and her son Ben Taylor, both close friends. Forte lived at Simon's estate in Martha's Vineyard for about six weeks in 1999 and even spent the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with the family. Simon and Taylor have lobbied on Forte’s behalf since he was incarcerated.

Much speculation has been made of others Bush may opt to pardon. Most of these involved those that government employees that may have unjustly interrogated suspected terrorists in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

A pardon of these cases would severely impede president elect Barack Obama from investigating such crimes.

Man, I remember when Forte got arrested. It was right around the time when I was still listening to Wyclef's The Carnival a lot. And we all thought Bush was gonna go out by dropping a bomb on Iran or some crazy shit. Nah, he's going out wacky.

Flight of the Conchords! *gunshot* New season! *gunshot* In January! *gunshot*

Spielberg and Will Smith Remake "Oldboy": Oh, Dear God, No!&

From the Guardian:

Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are planning to collaborate on a remake of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy, according to Variety. The pair, who have been looking for a project to work on together for some time, are said to be in early discussions about reworking the acclaimed Korean thriller, which centres on a man who is kidnapped and held in a dirty cell for 15 years without explanation.

There are so many things wrong with this idea, but I'll start at the incest: Really, Spielberg? You're going to add that to your resume? Same with you, Will? I think no, which means extracting a crucial aspect of the story.

And speaking of the story: It's the weakest part of the movie. And typically when you decide to do an American remake of a film, it's because the story is worth translating. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely fucking love Oldboy, but the plot is insanely convoluted. What makes the original great, though, is the stunning direction and imagery of Park Chan-wook, and the insanely visceral performance by Choi Min-sik. I have nothing against Will Smith nor Spielberg, but neither of them are going to improve on either of those things. So just leave it alone.

If anyone is going to do this remake, it should be David Fincher, whose style clearly influenced Chan-wook. And the only other person who could bring Min-sik's loony energy to the character of Oh Dae-su is the reanimated corpse of Klaus Kinski. Since the latter isn't likely to happen, this shouldn't happen at all.

Oh, and about Prop 8 II: The Racial Statistics

As mentioned in my previous post about Prop 8, the reported statistic that 70 percent of African-Americans in California voted yes has been getting a good amount of traction in the press. I quoted it as well, with some reservation, because it reeks of scapegoating.

Well, somebody over at Daily Kos has broken that number down. It's a long and, for the math-phobic, headache-inducing read, but the blogger's bottom line is this:

In other words, Proposition 8 would have still passed by 81,565 votes, if Black voters had done no more than reflect the rest of the state's will on the matter.

Still, I do agree with Andrew Sullivan that the gay community needs to do more to engage minorities as we, as a country, continue to try to make that transition from tolerance to full acceptance of homosexuality. Not that whites are any more enlightened, but the black and Latino voting bloc is crucial when it comes to passing legislation, and they need to be spoken to directly -- as any successful politician would have to -- in trying to win votes.

Oh, and about Prop 8

If Facebook Status messages are an accurate barometer for the mood of the nation's youth more than 24 hours after the election (better than YouTube comments), then the mood among twentysomething liberals on this side of the United States (the ones on my Friends list, anyway) is a mixture of pride and anger: proud of America, pissed at California. How could a state help elect the first black Muslim socialist terrorist president while simultaneously denying gays the right of marriage?

Y'know what, though? The only thing that surprises me regarding the Prop. 8 results is that people are surprised it passed.

Look, the presidency of Barack Obama is going to change a lot of things about this country on a cultural level. One thing it won't change, however, is how America feels about homosexuality. When every major presidential candidate opposes redefining marriage as between something other than one man and one woman, that should give you an idea of where we are collectively on this issue. We have reached a certain level of tolerance -- most Americans today appreciate gay-themed television shows and movies, have gay associates, and hell, even support the notion of civil unions -- but have not crossed that crucial plateau of all civil rights movements, the one that separates mere tolerance from actual acceptance. Even as they shake hands with an openly gay friend, too many straight people still need the comfort of knowing that person is "the Other." And one of the last things heterosexuals have to give them that comfort is disallowing the redefinition of the word "marriage."

How, then, do we get over that bridge? Not sure. I do know we have placed a supposedly transformational figure in the White House, a figure who at this moment holds a lot of influence over the attitudes of the nation -- especially African Americans, 70 percent of whom in California supported Prop 8. Several articles have pointed out that number, and while I find it somewhat divisive to blame the increased amount of blacks and Latinos who voted for the passage of the proposition, it should be addressed by the gay community, as Andrew Sullivan has said, and Obama is the man in a position to make a signiciant difference regarding that demographic specifically. He has repeatedly voiced his opposition to any sort of national gay marriage amendment, saying it should be left up to the states and individual denominations, but has also pledged federal recognition of state-sanctioned civil unions. Believe it when you see it (which probably won't be until after 2012, if it happens). It is a start, though.

Of course, I'm sure the gay community is tired of being stuck in such a disheartening stasis. For every Massachusetts and Connecticut, there's a California, Arizona, Florida and 27 other states with same-sex marriage bans. It's tough. And I say that with no little empathy. Gay rights has been a huge issue with me since teenagehood. It was the first politically divisive subject I took a definitive stance on -- most likely because my aunt, who had known a lot of gay people acting in New York during the '80s (many of whom succumbed to AIDS), ground a forceful brand of tolerance into the heads of her nieces and nephews from a young age -- and remains the one position where there is zero grey area for me. The first article I ever had published (using that term loosely) was a debate in the Oxnard High School paper with my hyper-Christian (but otherwise hip -- again, loosely speaking) math teacher the last time California went through this. Prop 22 passed by a much large margin in 2000 than Prop 8 did two days ago. So the wall is chipping. But you can't submit to the shock, because historically speaking, it's not particularly shocking. You just have to keep hammering the wall.

And look on the bright side, California: At least you get the Super Train!

A Pearl of Wisdom from President Obama: "We can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house."

Every presidential election for the last twentysomething years, Newsweek conducts its Special Elections Project, in which its writers embed with the campaigns and provide a "behind-the-scenes" expose of the race, from start (the primaries) to finish, on the condition that the report not be released until after the final vote. Considering this particular election took roughly three decades and was filled with some of the wackiest characters in modern politics, their backstage look at the 2008 race should be a fucking doozy -- and in reading through the first three of seven chapters published on their Web site today, it's proving to be extremely fascinating already.

We get to see the chaos inside the Hillary camp as her hope for the nomination got completely sideswiped by Rocketship Obama. We see the beginning stages of McCain's transformation from Mr. Straight Talk to whatever kind of weird mumbling he was doing by the end there. We get to see Obama stacking his pick-up basketball teams with Duke and Princeton players and kicking ass against the Illinois state treasurer. We learn that some in the Clinton camp referred to the private plane of one of Bill's buddies as "Air Fuck One." And we get to hear Obama say this in regards to a primary debate question from Brian Williams:

"I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

(BTW, I love hearing Obama swear for some reason. It's the main reason I downloaded the audiobook of Dreams from My Father and listened to it on my drive from California to Portland. Yeah, it's touching and everything, but you haven't lived 'til you've heard our president elect say, in an impression of one of his high school friends, "You ain't my bitch, nigga.")

Newsweek also included a bulleted list of highlights from upcoming chapters, and let me just say, I can't wait for Palin to enter the picture, because -- as became clear with that "She's going rogue!" stuff that came out toward the end -- she sounds like a goddamn headache even for her own campaign:

- Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

- At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

- McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

There's also a note that Palin also spent way more than reported on her little shopping spree, and a pissed off aide gives us a classic line, referring to it as, "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast." Speaking of Palin, I really hope John McCain writes a book or gives an in-depth interview about this election before he's gone for good, because based on his concession speech and another Newsweek nugget stating that he truly did not want to go negative in this campaign, I do believe he is a man of some integrity who just got completely crushed by the modern electoral process and was pressured by the GOP to go with the Moose Hunter as a running mate. He just seemed like a broken man this last month, and there was more relief than sadness in his eyes last night that this whole damn circus was finally over. I'd love to hear him speak candidly about it.

Either that, or just watch him and Hillary "[down] shots together," as Newsweek reports they did.

Election Night: Portland Shits Its Collective Uncle Sam Pants

From WWire:



I was in that throng.

Lakers: 2-0 Your Favorite Team: Scared

Well, unless you favorite team happens to be the Celtics. But until we get that to that Finals rematch, the rest of the league is shaking, I'm sure.

BTW, I never realized how fun it'd be to be the only Lakers fan in a rival city's sports bar as the hometown team is getting nuked and their center goes out scoreless with yet another injury after missing the entirety of what was supposed to be his rookie season. This being Portland, no one got in my face.

Who in Ventura hates gays the most? The answer may surprise you...

As per the L.A. Times' Proposition 8 donor tracker, the city's biggest homophobe is: Lassen's Health Food! Apparently, the proceeds from all those free-range cantaloupes and all-natural wood chips (or whatever the hell they sell there) have gone toward making sure no queers threaten the sanctity of Mr. Lassen's marriage -- $27,500 of it, anyway.

Hope your clean colons were worth it, hippies.

Other big-time pro-Prop 8 contributors in my beloved ex-hometown, where even the organic grocers draw the line at gays tying the knot:

- CHERYL WILDE (WIFE OF COMMUNITY MEMORIAL HEALTH SYSTEM CEO GARY WILDE), $27,500
- BOHL, NIXON & SCHONEMAN, $2,000
- KARL HARER (HARER & MORTENSEN CHIROPRACTIC), $1,500
- LORI HOOKE, $1,200
- BRYCE JOHNSON, $1,000
- JOAN BEEM, $1,000
- JOHN JONES DDS, $1,000
- MARTHA SUTTNER, $1,000
- MARY HUXLEY, $1,000
- RIDGWAY POPE, $1,000
- TED COOK, $1,000
- TERRI KUMP, $1,000
- VENTURA PEST CONTROL, $1,000

Where are my leggings?!

Couple seeks live-in girlfriend to share everything (Gresham (near MHCC))
Reply to: hous-893351326@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-10-25, 1:42PM PDT


We are a young, attractive, straight, professional, childless couple with a nice new 3-bedroom house in Gresham, and we are seeking a young and attractive girl to come live with us on "girlfriend" type basis. Expectation from you would be for cooking, cleaning, shopping, sexual relations, and also just having fun with us doing everyday things and some weekend travel too. Like a 3-way couple kind of thing. In return we can offer fun, laughter, companionship, safety, security, comfort, room and board and comfort in our clean, newer, 3-bedroom 1500 sq ft house near Mt Hood Community College. No money will be exchanged since this will be a lifestyle relationship. Probably have questions, right? Contact us! Let's discuss.

Considering that I do not, as of yet, have a permanent place to stay here in Portland -- as I expected to by this time -- I may soon have to consider pulling some shenanigans to get into a place like this. I smell a wacky sitcom premise -- Three's Company meets Tootsie in a bathhouse.

A Douchey Halloween

In the cumulative 16 hour drive between Oxnard and Portland, I had a lot of time to ponder my Halloween costume. It's been a while since I've dressed up for the holiday (which, fun fact, was supposed to be my birthday; I popped out two days late, unfortunately) -- the last time I recall was either my senior or junior year of high school, in which I combined a blue thrift store snow suit, a ripped Hulk Hogan T-shirt, multiple ties and a stylishly mussed hairdo into a costume I deemed "New Millennium Sex Symbol." Since this'll be my first Halloween away from home and in a major city, it sounds like a decent idea to get back into the spirit. I considered being a "hipster," but figured it'd be too much work, and I don't think I have enough time to find the "Vote" McCain shirt from The Colbert Report, which was my initial inspiration.

So I decided to leap to the opposite end of the cultural spectrum: douchebag.

Now, as with so-called "hipsters," there are several different species of douche out there: frat douches, club douches, rocker douches, even hipster douches. But I think I'm going to go with the prototypical douche: the guido douche. Being 50 percent guido myself, I feel like I can get away with it. All I need is hair product, a striped shirt, some kind of stupid-ass gold chain, designer jeans and, of course, bronzer.

In scouring the Internet for a quintessential douche to model my costume after, there were a lot to choose from. I sort of had Joey from the last season of The Real World in my head, but I'm afraid I'll give myself a stroke if I go around trying to act like him all night. Of course I studied the Web's definite douchebag archive, hotchickswithdouchebags.com, but the choices there are too overwhelming. A quick Google Image search brought up this pic, and I think this gives the general idea of what I'm going for:



This could turn into an interesting sociological experiment, too. I anticipate a bunch of actual douchebags -- dressed as pimps, most likely -- coming up to me asking, "Aye, where's your costume, boss?"

Of course, I'm hoping there's a party or something worth going to on Halloween. Otherwise, I'll just end up sitting around at home like a douchebag.

The Passion of the Neocons

I'll tell you one thing I admire about Republicans: for a party that doesn't care much about the poor, gay and/or melanized, they sure are good at playing the role of an oppressed minority group. And other than FOX News -- who've somehow managed to convince their viewers that they are not part of the mainstream media while simultaneously being "the most watched cable news network" and the only one with a direct line to the Bush White House -- no subsection of the GOP does "oppressed" better than Hollywood conservatives.

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/oct/24/liberals-have-the-edge-in-tv-land/?partner=RSS

HOLLYWOOD — At a recent event for Republicans in Hollywood, an actress was asked whether she had ever worn her pro-Sarah Palin pin to an audition.

"You must be joking!" she said with a laugh, adding, "But I see Obama stuff all the time."

It's no secret that the entertainment industry is overwhelmingly liberal — political donations this presidential cycle from the movie, TV and music industries recently were running about 86 percent Democrat versus 14 percent Republican.

But being outnumbered is one thing, being bullied by your liberal co-workers into keeping your opinions to yourself is quite another.

Is that what's going on? Yes, say many of the industry's conservatives. That's why secret organizations with such names as "SpeakEasy" and "The Sunday Night Club" spring up every so often. They're not conservative per se, they just let it be known that attendees of their gatherings may freely discuss politics without being chastised for not toeing the liberal line.

"Are you kidding me? Of course it's true," Kelsey Grammer said when asked whether the town is hostile to conservatives. "I wish Hollywood was a two-party town, but it's not."

Grammer said he knows of a makeup trailer that sported a sign warning Republicans to keep out and of U.S. war veterans who keep their backgrounds a secret from their Hollywood co-workers because they hear them belittle the military.

He even said that, earlier in his career, his job was threatened by a prominent sitcom director who demanded he donate money to Barbara Boxer's U.S. Senate campaign. To keep his job, he gave $10,000 to Boxer and the Democrats.

Nowadays, Grammer is a bankable actor who is unafraid to speak his mind. His advice to less established industry players, though, is to shut up about politics — "unless you think the way you are supposed to think," and that means liberal.

However, there are many who are trying to make Hollywood more accommodating to political diversity. Andrew Breitbart is one. At Breitbart.com, he's launching a "Big Hollywood" blog with 40 industry conservatives tasked with — among other things — highlighting liberal intolerance.

"There's an undeniably vicious attitude against those who dissent," Breitbart said. "Hollywood is the most predictable place on the planet, not exclusively because of politics but because of narrow-mindedness."

Breitbart maintains that liberals have pushed conservatives too hard in Hollywood and that Americans have noticed. His intent is "to stop the bullying."

One "Big Hollywood" blogger is Andrew Klavan, an accomplished novelist-screenwriter who made a splash with a Wall Street Journal article comparing Batman and the "The Dark Knight" to President Bush and the war on terror.

"It's not easy being different," he said. "The liberals aren't all that liberal. We think they're wrong, but they think we're evil, and they behave like it."

If you lean right, pitch to those who are sympathetic, or at least tolerant of conservative viewpoints, Klavan said. Mel Gibson, Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Surnow come to mind.

Klavan also said liberalism seeps into too much Hollywood content nowadays and offers as proof the several anti-Iraq war movies that have been box office bombs.

"These aren't even movies about the war on terror," he said. "They're Vietnam War movies, made by people who sit around at Skybar discussing their pacifist worldview."

TV also is too one-sided, he said. "They don't even make fun of Barack Obama," he noted. "How is that possible? The guy's hilarious."

Where were all the social justice advocates when Kelsey Grammer was being bullied into donating money to the California Democratic Party, huh? I didn't see the ACLU taking to the streets for the unnamed actress who was too scared to wear her pro-Palin pin to an audition. Won't somebody speak for the conservatives -- somebody other than the president who has been in charge for the last eight years?

BTW, this article must've been written a few weeks ago, since it fails to mention that while recent anti-Iraq War films have indeed sunk at the box office, the far more recent "An American Carol," David Zucker's so-called "conservative comedy" starring, yes, Kelsey Grammer, flopped harder than Rush Limbaugh getting pushed down a flight of stairs (I couldn't think of a better joke there, but I enjoy the image).

Barack O'BadBrains (oh, and I moved to Portland)

Obviously, it has been a while since I have updated this blog. A lot and nothing has happened in that time -- quite the existential paradox, I know -- but the first thing I feel compelled to mention is this: a totally fucking awesome Barack Obama shirt based on the cover of Bad Brains' debut album. I noticed someone wearing it this weekend at a soap box derby in San Francisco's Dolores Park (about the most noteworthy thing of that event). Apparently some dude in Oakland makes them. I figured I'd wait until after the election to pick up an Obama shirt, when thrift stores are likely to be flooded with them, but I might just have to order away for this one.

Other than that, I relocated to Portland two days ago -- quit the job I had for six years, left the city where I've been for 26 years, and now I'm here, reviving this blog from my room at the Sixth Avenue Motel just outside downtown, because I assume there will be a lot more to ramble into a vacuum about than there was in Ventura. It hasn't totally sunk in yet that I finally live in a biggish city, probably because until I've nailed down a permanent place to stay, I don't technically "live" in Portland. It still feels like I'm going to be leaving at some point -- I mean, I still might, given that I don't have a job (that's goal #2) and am surviving off savings which will soon begin to dwindle. But I have to keep reminding myself that I'm going to be here for at least the next few months. Otherwise, it feels like a vacation, the minutes counting down to when I begin my return to my stagnant life in Southern California. I drove out to North Portland to look at some rooms, and on my way back got this amazing view of the city at night from the freeway, the kind of image that used to make me wish I lived somewhere other than Oxnard. Now I'm actually living in that place, but it doesn't exactly seem real yet.

Seriously, I never thought this kind of luxury could be mine: