Wed 18 Jul 2007
When I realized NBC had put up a lot of SNL videos on their official site, I lost about six hours of my life going through them all. This is when I first saw the digital short, “Young Chuck Norris,” which you too should watch here.
This digital short had Significant Personal Significance to me. Why? Because I alone among the Undercurrents crew know the pain of being sued by Chuck Norris. (more…)
Tue 17 Jul 2007
I lend my apathetic support to the Connecticut Convention Center. The second event this month that was really important and a must-not-miss opportunity, ConnectiCon, has come and gone without my attending. My friend from college even runs it, and I didn’t make it by. The first event that I missed, of course, was that Muslim thing that I decided to work through instead of go to. That’s the problem with us Americans, we do things like work instead of do things like learn about other cultures, LARP and (I guess the kicker is) vote.
Mon 16 Jul 2007
Local developer David Nyberg got a puff piece written about him this weekend in the Courant- he doesn’t wear socks!-
…and, oh yeah, he’s trying to gentrify Asylum Hill. (more…)
Mon 16 Jul 2007
This is a must-follow story. It stinks like the worst abuses in American history: nooses on trees, all white juries, officials washing their hands, threatening rhetoric from the state District Attorney. Six teens in Jena Louisiana may spend the rest of their lives in jail in a perversion of justice.
Click here for the Democracy Now piece on it.
Fri 13 Jul 2007
Scene One–Last night a mariachi band, Los Trovadores de America, made sweet music and dance at the Mark Twain House. The stage is set up at the bottom of the steep, grassy slope west of the Twain mansion, a sylvan oasis you can see if you look quickly as you drive by on Farmington Avenue. Little kids were dancing around to the fiddle/trumpet/guitar-driven beat, adults sitting in lawn chairs, sipping wine, eating picnic suppers. At intermission, either Mark Twain’s ghost, or a very convincing actor, demonstrated that he could hold his own with David Letterman any day.
Scene Two–Very early Thursday morning (more…)
Fri 13 Jul 2007
The warnings have begun. The risk level is likely to increase this summer, again, say “officials.” Could it be that this is the year, despite all our supposed security efforts and unprecedented assaults on civil liberties, that another terror attack slips through our defenses? One man has a whole lot to gain from such an attack: George W. Bush. (more…)
Thu 12 Jul 2007
At our house, a holiday atmosphere prevails on trash-day eve. Every Tuesday we prepare to discard, and it’s a relief to know that on Wednesday a weeksworth of hedge clippings, newspapers, junk mail, cans, bottles, and uncompostable kitchen scraps will be gone. (more…)
Thu 12 Jul 2007
Scott Harris, executive producer of the syndicated Between the Lines radio show, sent an urgent email this week to listeners of WPKN 89.5FM. It seems the new director, John Motavalli, has set his sights on Free Speech Radio News (FSRN). The national, community-based news program is heard M-F at 6pm on WPKN.
According to Harris, Motavalli’s desicion “is based primarily on his view that FSRN presents a ‘leftist’ slant on the news and he disparages the program as an ‘embarrassment.’” (more…)
Tue 10 Jul 2007
Michael Moore, how dare you try to distract me with your crazy facts. As Susan Dunne of the Hartford Courant puts it, “[Moore] doesn’t question any policy makers or high-ranking medical experts.” Doesn’t Moore know how to appeal to authority like the rest of decent American media? (more…)
Sun 8 Jul 2007
On the top bar of my Firefox browser sits a series of symbols – the projected weather for the next four days and nights. For today (Sunday) through Wednesday, the days are marked with an odd little red squiggly thing. When I look closer I can see that it is supposed to be a red thermometer with little lines of heat radiating from it. Hot weather ahead.
I spend most of my day in an air-conditioned office. At home we have air conditioning in the bedrooms but not in the rest of the house. After ten years of driving halfway across the state to go to court while wearing a suit and tie on the most miserable days of summer, I finally broke down and bought a car with air conditioning. Anyway I don’t like intensive air conditioning I just want it to be somewhat below 90 degrees and less humid. Those little red thermometers don’t pose much of a threat to me and mine.