Friday, October 28, 2011

Michael Moore Setting an Example - not Jamming Leftist Propaganda Down Your Throat

After hearing that Michael Moore was standing in with the Occupy Oakland movement today I stumbled upon his website and read his essay, "Life Among the 1%." He talks about how when he sold the distribution rights for his first movie, Roger & Me, he made a lump sum of 3 million dollars. Previously he had been collecting 98$ a week on unemployment and barely scraping by.

Here are the decisions he made about what to do with his riches:

1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.

2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: "One for me, one for the other guy." So I took half the money -- $1 million -- and established a foundation to give it all away.

3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews, helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.

4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).

5. Finally, I believed the concept of making money off your money had created a greedy, lazy class who didn't produce any product, just misery and fear among the populace. They invented ways to buy out companies and then shut them down. They dreamed up schemes to play with people's pension funds as if it were their own money. They demanded companies keep posting record profits (which was accomplished by firing thousands and eliminating health benefits for those who remained). I made the decision that if I was going to earn a living, it would be done from my own sweat and ideas and creativity. I would produce something tangible, something others could own or be entertained by or learn from. My work would create employment for others, good employment with middle class wages and full health benefits.

I haven't been downtown to Occupy Oakland and to be honest haven't really engaged in any serious political thought since college. I didn't even vote in the last election. Everything seemed too far removed and too far gone and participating a waste of my time. The Occupy Wall Street and especially the Occupy Oakland topic is inescapable at this point. People seem to be pretty adamant about protesting until something gets done, whatever that may be. I seriously hope we are in the midst of some actual change, not the fake Obama change.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

oaklands blowin up!

the choppers have been flying overhead non-stop since the riot squads finally put an end to occupy oakland.

and smokestack's and matty's new band big long now got a fresh demo tape. i took the liberty of making sure theyre on the youtubes:

big long now demo



Check out the couple of demo tracks we cut this weekend.

http://biglongnow.bandcamp.com

holy shit i miss new england.



"Hello Canine!"

local news in boston/new hampshire cannot be beat.

scal!!!



screw the lockout, scal is crushing it over in italy...

Monday, October 24, 2011

Dead Meadow



Saw this band in SF a couple weeks ago... also had amazing live sound. Heavy-ass Orange rigs blasting stoned out riffage. Highly recommend seeing it live and pulling grass-tubes on the way there.

Shellac





Saw these guys last Saturday at a 400 person club 7 blocks from my house. Fucking awesome, possibly the most incredible live sound I have ever heard. Ass-ripping rock n' roll outa some off the sickest riggage. Check em.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Friday, October 21, 2011

callous americans.



i had never read about this photo before..

"Ten years on, this is becoming one of the iconic photographs of 9/11, yet its history is strange and tortuous. Hoepker, a senior figure in the renowned Magnum photographers' co-operative, chose not to publish it in 2001 and to exclude it from a book of Magnum pictures of that horribly unequalled day. Only in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, did it appear in a book, and then it caused instant controversy. The critic and columnist Frank Rich wrote about it in the New York Times. He saw in this undeniably troubling picture an allegory of America's failure to learn any deep lessons from that tragic day, to change or reform as a nation: "The young people in Mr Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American."

whole article here!

jammer's cousin.



sounds like a case of our un-snipped brethren gone mad. jimmy and matty should should thank their lucky stars that smelly flap of theirs stopped growing years ago..

kook flip.

i'm surprised our friends at fix the metal haven't commented on this yet..

laugh tracks are never wrong.

scott hall aka razor ramone.



i loved the nwo in middle school and this is effed. aside from the espn cheesiness this an interesting little doc..

dude's fucked..

gang green!

heard this on an indy phoenix station the other night, got stoked..



best band photo ever?



i remember hearing all this on a comp. stolen from my brother. the tape was blue...



i miss the north east...

Friday, October 7, 2011

dr. steve brule. friends.



sometimes greatness is just too ahead of its time..

let's not forget about steve's BODY PARTS.

we got that broll..

i'm way late on this one but i don't care..

stuck in my head..

not even sure if i really like adam and the ants but fuck me this song is good..

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Mallis' Video about Occupy Wall st.

This is the talk of the town here in NYC. Very interesting to see the conflicting opinions of my law school v. non law school friends.

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

killer nuns.

something seems oddly satanic about this..

stay stoned party intellectuals.



hacksaw is back boys and girls. expect some bigtime power-posts fueled by my blogging juice.

phoenix is effing hot, all the effing time.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Liquor!



The Bruins Foxwoods bar tab the night they got back from taking the stanley cup. Look towards the bottom and you'll see the $100,000 30 Liter bottle of champagn they bought to chug out of the cup. Imagine the havoc that was wrecked on the floor of the casino when the liquor started thinkin.