busting up some bush

i knew i voted nader for a reason. in this morning's boston globe, ralph nader and kevin zeese have outlined their reasons on why congress needs to consider the impeachment of president bush and vice president cheney.

they put it more eloquently than i will:

which is worse, a president who has a problem sticking his twig in the wrong place or a president who misrepresents intelligence in order to justify war?

go fast. turn left. crash hard.

so here's my big revelation to you all...i love auto racing. particularly stock cars (nascar). i don't mean i kinda like it and watch it when i get the chance. i mean love it - i have diecasts (little replica cars. kinda like hotwheels on steroids) of my driver's cars, i watch all the races, i even listen to the nascar channel on my xm radio. but i'd never been to a nascar nextel cup event. until this weekend.

a friend of mine pulled some strings and got me a ticket and a pit pass for the coca cola 600 in charlotte, nc. it's the longest race of the year at 600 miles and it's one of the biggest events because charlotte and the surrounding area are basically nascar central. the drivers live there, the shops are there, it's the place where stock car racing started. so it's a big deal. and i, along with 175,000 other people, was there. in a big suite (the friend's company had rented it for clients and prospects), drinking free beer, eating free food. pretty cool? you bet your ass it was cool. i was lucky enough to find a seat in the grandstands, so i didn't even have to sit and talk with people i don't know about things i don't care about when i really just wanted to watch the race. heck yes.

long story short, i was at the track for 13 hours on sunday, got to bed at 3.30, woke up at 6 to catch an 8.20 flight back home. so i spent a lot of my memorial day passed out in bed. and i'm struggling to focus at work today (that's becoming a pattern) since i'm flying out thursday to corpus christi to help my pop move halfway across texas.

all this travelling and experience will turn into songs. i can feel them brewing. i just gotta stop long enough to find a pencil...and stay awake long enough to touch it to paper.

a kick in

the shins. get it? went to grimey's today and bought the new-ish cd by the shins. it's really quite good. i'm pretty sure i'm the next to last person on this musical planet to check them out, maybe even the last one. what can i say? i keep my head buried most of the time to new music. especcially new music by the "the" bands.

also got the new wallflowers album. probably doesn't have the same type of street cred, but it's really damn good, and surprisingly political. i gotta work on that. it's also in dualdisc format. hoorah for dualdisc.

bearmoohda

so i've managed to spend most of my day avoiding work. here's the newest distraction:

pictures from bermuda

just found i get to leave work early today. as stone cold steve austin says,


"hell yeah."

oh yeah...happy 27th, babies.

the hangover continues

so i went to pm last nite with dawson to show off my pictures of bermuda, drink scotch and smoke cuban cigars (contraband!) that somehow wound up in my suitcase. among other topics of discussion (no YOUR shoes are cooler!) was which bruce springsteen song is our favorite. it seems like a good enough topic, so i'm throwing it out to the masses (or the few, whichever the case may be):

what's your favorite springsteen song?
because his catalog is oh so large, you can list three favorites, if you please. feel free to explain why you picked them. here's my list (album in parentheses):

1. racing in the streets (darkness on the edge of town).
2. thunder road - (born to run, but especially the piano only version on the live 75-85 cd set).
3. spirit in the nite (greetings from asbury park).

who's next? if you're like me, you're just sitting at your desk, waiting for the man to tell you it's okay to leave early for the weekend, hoping nothing big happens. it'll pass the time, c'mon already!

such a frothy monkey

dawson wells' maiden voyage...we're goin' to state!

show alert

almost forgot...my friend and former collaborator dawson wells is playing tonite at frothy monkey at 7p. it's his debut solo performance. should be as entertaining as it is good.

let the hangover begin

so i'm back at my desk, working for the man, thinking about the vacation i just finished and the music career i'm still trying to start. you gotta love the first day back.

my hopes for a movie-esque holiday were fulfilled in the last few days of our trip. the wife and i walked all over the city, took a bus here and there, interacted with locals and spent 3.5 days looking (and feeling) like newlyweds. here are some things i discovered while on vacation:

-it's apparently impossible to take a bad photo in bermuda. i browsed thru the 210 pictures from the digital camera (picking up the film pictures today) and realized i could've photographed a dog taking a dump and framed it.
-delta stands for Dammit Everyone's Luggage is sTuck in Atlanta. our luggage didn't make it from atlanta to nashville until last nite...30 some odd hours after we did. not so much as an apology (yet). good job with customer relations, guys. go f'ck yourselves.
-fish chowder (the national soup of bermuda) is made with beef stock. that's a hard lesson for a vegetarian to learn AFTER consumption. no more soup-in' for newton.
-rum, when mixed with anything, is awesome.
-alcohol does not enhance one's rhythm or dancing ability. repeat, does NOT enhance. (learned through observation, not experience)

now if i can just shake this weird dizziness i've had since saturday and get past my urge for mid-afternoon cocktails, i can get some work done...

lost in the triangle

no. i haven't been taken away by the nsa or whomever for my comments about neo-cons. i've been in bermuda. actually, i should use present tense. i AM in bermuda. since sunday. it's nice. very f'ing nice. i've finally landed someplace that has free wifi access (the b&b where the wife and i are staying), so i thought i'd give a quick update. from sunday until today, we've been staying at the fairmont southampton. very nice, very ritzy, very, very expensive. very much not our speed. the good thing is, we didn't pay for the trip. work did. turns out i do pretty well at my day job, so they sent us, and a lot of my other good coworkers to bermuda for a reward trip. they left today. we went across the island, all 21 miles of it, to st george's to stay at this great b&b called aunt nea's. it's not as nice, not nearly as ritzy, half the price and is very much our speed. the only bad thing about st. george's is that the cruise ships dock here, so as i'm typing this i can look out from the balcony and see this behemoth cruise boat and hear some awful karaoke version of "honky tonk women". it might not be karaoke; it's possible the stones have found a new way to make an assload of money by playing to the senior citizen captives of ncl cruise lines.

we've seen some pretty cool stuff, and as soon as i get the pictures pulled off the digital camera i'll try to post some of them. we've taken catamaran tours, snorkled, and more or less been wined and dined on the man's nickle. now we're on our nickle and are enjoying ourselves very much, thank you. for those of us who like to partake of the more potent spirits, this would be an expensive trip. we're talking $14 glasses of scotch and wine. lucky for us, every dinner was preceded by a cocktail hour, so we managed to get imbibed without breaking the bank. i'm very much looking forward to spending the next few days sleeping late, wandering around this gorgeous little port town and letting myself recover from keeping my guard up around the corporate types. i think tomorrow we'll head down to the beach at tobacco bay or achilles bay and maybe take in fort st catherine's, the naval base that the british built some time after landing. i'm truthfully not thinking about anything past falling asleep in the next few minutes.

i'll try to come back tomorrow nite and give more details of our "roman holiday" type exploits. as for now, i'm going to finish my dark and stormy, catch up on some email and try to figure out how mick, keith and the boys got the stage show on the gargantuan IV.

why should i change my name? he's the one who sucks.

that's what i'd say if my name was john bolton. lucky for me it's not.

neo-con horse shit

there's no better word to describe the line that the neo-cons and their media outlets are feeding us:

horse shit.

a few examples:

they want you and i to believe that the democrats used a filibuster for the first time a few weeks ago to block a vote on a judicial nominee. they'd like us to not do any research to find out that the first filibuster to block a vote on a supreme court candidate happened in 1968 (october 1 to be exact). they even led the damn thing. now they want to do away with the filibuster altogether when it comes to judicial nominees. why? because they want to get judges that will promote their agenda approved without anyone being able to stop them. they call it the "nuclear" option. one of the judges they're trying to get approved likened a 1937 bill that is the basis for minimum wage a socialist victory and said that affirmative action creates racial segregation. no wonder they don't want anyone to oppose their candidates.

they also want you to believe that social security is failing. they want us to believe that the social security system is full of "worthless iou's." well, those worthless pieces of paper are guaranteed in the same way that all of our federal tender is guaranteed. so, president bush is telling us that all of our money is worthless iou's? he even goes so far as to say you can invest in t-bills. pardon me, mr. president, but aren't those the same worthless pieces of paper you're using now in the current system? there's a big, big difference between what you hear from bush and his cronies & what you will hear from others.

the moonshot is fake, the wmds really are over there, democrats aren't christians and social security is failing. to all of the above i say,

horse shit.

ryan adams @ tennessee theatre

trying this mobile blogging thing by sending a blurry picture from the ryan adams show saturday in knoxville. the picture sucks, but the colors are cool.

so much time and so little to do

with apologies to mr. wonka and a wink to my little brother,

"strike that. reverse it."

the past two weeks have been a whirlwind. for the second weekend in a row, the wife and i went to knoxville, this time so i could play a show and also to check out ryan adams at the tennessee theatre. one of our good friends is ryan's drummer and he and his wife were kind enough to hook us up with backstage passes for the show. long story short, we got to hang out on the tour bus for a while with brad and marna, chat with ryan for a few minutes, meet the band and drink a couple of beers that someone else paid for. i know that everyone's heard the stories about ryan's eccentric behavior. i don't know what this says about me, but he seemed really normal and really cool. just a nice, genuine, normal guy. his sets (2 sets, no encore, no bullshit) were great and rachel yamagata was fantastic. if you've not heard her, i would describe her as a fractured norah jones or possibly norah jones with balls. badass.

i had the chance to play disc golf with the little brother this weekend as well. i haven't played in a few months, but was able to hold my own. for all the jabs i took at my brother when he started playing, that's a fun game. find a course, buy a used disc or two and give it a rip.

last nite seemed like as good a nite as any to barhop, so i started at mercy lounge and wound up at the basement. john bruton (of "tennessee sucks" and 12th & porter fame) is working with mercy lounge now in some capacity or another and has brought back the monday nite event 8 off of 8th (formerly 12 @ 12th). last nite we were treated to music by jeremy lister, kate york (who did a great job hosting), betsy roo, tyler james, and mindy smith. others played, names were forgotten. sorry if i left you out. after that wrapped up i headed over to the basement to catch the end of the strays set. not that i expected any different, but they were great and just seem to get better and better. i can't wait to hear the record when it comes out.

1.15 found me 25 bucks poorer and 1 funny looking hand stamp richer as i fell into bed with the wife and the dogs. surprisingly, i've been able to function all day. maybe i should start going out more?

this is probably the most boring thing any of you have read in who knows how long. i'll find something more exciting to write about tomorrow. possible topics will include the story of my first experience with absinthe last week, preparations for my trip to bermuda next week or possibly, a confession of the sports variety that will shock the world!

the new

a friend informed me yesterday, as i proudly sported my new pink shirt, that pink is the new black. i scoffed at his attempt to rattle my confidence in wearing color. "no," he insisted, "i'm serious. pink is the new black." as i mentally ran through the options this opens up for me in the fashion world (pink shoes, pink belt, pink pants!) i realized that i have to have a second source confirm this rumour in order for it to be true. so i'm asking the fashion-conscious masses:

is pink the new black?

sociopolitical post of the day

yesterday must've been "push newton's politics button" day. everywhere i turned i was reading or hearing something about the war in iraq or the draft or the bush administration (it's rude to call it a regime). i didn't even listen to air america radio and i was worked up by dinner time. i'm not stupid enough to think that anyone wants to hear my opinions on any of the above, so i'm posting some links below (from the mainstream news outlets, mind you) for your reading pleasure. draw your own conclusions.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/03/iraq.poll/index.html - recent poll about the war in iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/03/myers.report/index.html - military pulled in more directions than stretch armstrong.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6862691?pageid=rs.PoliticsArchive&pageregion=mainRegion - a possible solution for the aforementioned stretching...if you're under 34, you better read this one.

brain mush

my wife and i spent the weekend in knoxville with my brother & his wife. we saw the black crowes friday nite (they're still good. go see them) and bummed around the rest of the weekend just hanging out. it's so nice to get away from your own house every now and again, even if it's just to sleep in your brother's living room and play drunken karaoke video games all weekend. we're going back this weekend for my show friday nite at market square (6.30...fun times for all) and to see ryan adams on saturday.

i also discovered that i like french music this weekend. i don't know if i like all french music, or if i just like what i heard. i rarely take the chance to just listen to how a vocal melody is structured without taking the words into account. neato.

i should, while i've got the chance, thank the folks at bliss in knoxville, for having me out to play the first friday event in market square. they've been very nice and are doing more promotional work for this show than most club owners i know (and they're not even a club). if you live in knoxville or are passing through, you should visit their store.