The Factual Opinion

Music Of The Weak: Stunt Casting With Koots And The Best Of 2008 (So Far)

As promised, this week we take a look at some of our favorite songs of 2008 so far.  But instead of me blathering on about how great these songs are, I brought in some ringers:  my dad and his band, Koots, in their studio in San Bernardino, California.  ¾ of Koots and I played jukebox jury (their bassist, Larry Brown—no relation—was not present.)  I played them some songs and they told me what they thought of them. But first, they gave me a little background:

MARLIN BROWN:  We started in college.  We had a jug band group.

DON SILL:  I was playing with a couple of other people at times.

MB:  I had been playing with Toni Driver, a girl out in the desert, and she would come out here to Cal State and we would play hootenannies.

DS:  We’d be playing at the same concert.

MB:  Right.  And then Robin would come in and stomp his foot and click around and thump his guitar and do his thing, and we were real impressed with Robin.

ROBIN STRAHAN:  I was the new kid in town.

MB:  So that’s how we got started.  Larry, Robin and I started trying to shop our music around.  We ended up going into A&M studios and recording some stuff there that never went anywhere.  I can remember being on the top floor of Capitol Records with our tape, sitting there with one of their A&R guys.

DS:  I remember putting huge hours into a tape, getting it done and handing it to somebody.  And never seeing it again.  And nobody ever listened to it.  I mean, I don’t know what happened to it.  But, you know, you’re twenty years old.  You do that kind of stuff.

RS:  Well, Larry knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody.

DS:  Right, that’s always who you gave your tape to.

MB:  …and then life went on, and we all went our separate ways with marriage and kids and…  And then four years ago, Robin and I went to the Guitar Center to look at the vintage guitars.

RS:  And they were us.

MB:  [Laughing.]  We realized we were the vintage guitars.

RS:  Then we sort of dared each other to buy new guitars

MB:  We started pluckin’ around.  We’d do Simon & Garfunkel, and we’d do Buddy Mondlock.

RS:  Then we started writing our own stuff, and decided we liked our own stuff.  Marlin bought some recording equipment.

MB: [Laughing]  And the rest is history.

RS:  We put out our first album, and Don said “I want to be a Koot.”  He joined midway through recording our second batch of songs.

MB:  And then Larry said “I want to be a Koot.”

THE FACTUAL OPINION:  If it keeps up, you’ll double the number of Koots after each album.  Have you guys always been interested in music in general?

MB:  Since high school.  I think Don, too.

RS:  I used to go to sleep listening to Hank Williams sing.

DS:  I liked performing more than I liked the music.  I picked up the guitar and in about twenty minutes I was ready to go on stage.  I learned a song and I went up on stage and played.  Then, they said, “I’ve got a request,” and I did the same song again.

TFO:  That’s very punk rock.

RS:  Back in the day, if you played guitar and sang on stage, you met a lot of people of the feminine kind.

DS:  I showed up with a guitar and a bottle of Boone’s Farm I don’t know how many times.

RS:  There were ulterior reasons for playing guitar.

DS:  It wasn’t even ulterior, that was the primary reason.

MB:  I’ve got a picture of myself sitting on the Atlantic Ocean coast, sitting on a picnic table playing guitar, this kid is at my feet, and all these girls are standing around.

DS:  It doesn’t get better than that.

RS:  Let’s do that again.

TFO:  What kind of music do you guys like in general?  What gets your attention?

RS:  I like to be able to understand the lyrics.  I really, really, really like Counting Crows.  I know they’re not cutting edge.

TFO:  What is it that you like about them?

RS:  I like that they’re a throwback in a lot of ways.  I like their lyrics, they’re meaningful.

DS:  I like a little intellect coming through the words.

MB:  Crosby, Stills & Nash; The Beach Boys; obviously The Beatles; Spanky & Our Gang.  When you listen to the crossover between folk and jazz, it’s incredible.  The first The Mamas & The Papa’s album was a jaw-dropper because of the four-part harmony.  I like sound-scape music as well, when they paint an image with the songs—Enya or Sigur Rós.  When we record, that frustrates the hell out of these guys, because that’s what I go for.

TFO:  All right, let’s listen to the first song.

Fleet Foxes – “White Water Hymnal”

MB:  I think that’s great.  I like the rhythm, I like the harmony, I like the a cappella at the beginning, I like the rounding.

RS:  I thought to myself, “Marlin is going to like this.”

TFO:  I started you guys off with a little bit of a softball, because I knew that this particular song is in your wheelhouse.

DS:  I thought it was okay, but I’m waiting for the story.  I need the story in the song.  So it was okay, but I’m waiting for something to happen.  It’s not mine.

MB:  Is it something you would buy?

DS:  No.

MB:  I would explore this group based on that.  I would say, “That’s really neat.”  I might go on line and see what else they had.

TFO:  Well, thumbs up for Fleet Foxes.

Santogold – “Lights Out”

RS:  I like the sound a lot.  I can’t understand enough of the lyrics.  Reminds me a little of The Cranberries.

DS:  It sounds cool.

MB:  It’s a dance beat.

DS:  It’s not exactly what I… I’m a Koot!

MB:  It reminded me a little bit of Cyndi Lauper.  Just a touch.

DS:  Yeah, and I like Cyndi Lauper.  But I like Cyndi Lauper better.

MB:  I do too, because you can hear the words.  Robin has a thing about… we were talking about selling music, and doing stuff that would go into a lot of the TV shows, that you hear in the background and stuff.  So we deliberately try to write what that might sound like.

RS:  I can hear this very much as a TV soundtrack, or a movie soundtrack.

DS:  Somebody’s running through the park.

RS:  I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been used already.

TFO:  A lot of money’s being made these days on licensing, because the record industry’s falling apart.

MB:  We want to get in on that.

Sigur Rós – “Gobbledigook”

DS:  I like this the same way I like Joni Mitchell when she doesn’t make sense.  I trust her.

MB:  I like the rhythm.  I recognized Sigur Rós right off the bat.  I’m sitting here trying to figure out the timing.  I think it’s 6/8.

DS:  It’s 4/4.  It works. 

RS:  Although it might be 8/4.

DS:  It’s a multiple, and they’re doing a lot of backbeats on it.

MB:  It’s really effective.  This isn’t typical Sigur Rós, though.

TFO:  No, no.  That’s exactly what I like about it.  I was really delighted about this song, because I feel like they’ve been doing the same thing over and over again for the last 10 years, and to have something that’s such a new direction that still retains what they’re good at is really awesome.

RS:  Most people like that, to see bands change and evolve over time.

TFO:  Some bands can get away with making the same album over and over again, because they can sustain it.  But most bands who try to do that end up diluting their sound.

MB: [To Don] Exactly!

TFO:  Which is why [Koots’ upcoming single] “Spank Me, Jesus”…

MB:  …is gonna be a hit!

Air France - "No Excuses"

RS:  It sounds like something composed at the computer.

DS:  It sounds like, “I need one of these, I need one of these, I need one of these, and let’s crank it up.”

MB:  I have one in the works right now that’s the same thing, just made up of samples.  That’s what that is, all samples.  They just take a bar and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.  I think it’s fun to do.  I enjoy stuff like that.

RS:  And we expect you to enjoy putting out an album like that.

MB:  I see what they’re doing.  This is a dance tune for a club following, and it’s listenable.  It’s contemporary elevator music.

DS:  Fast elevator music.  Freight elevator.

MB:  I can make that music pretty easily.

TFO:  Yeah?

DS:  Not with us around.

MB:  Don is much more of a “Give me a guitar and a voice and don’t mess with any of that other stuff.”

RS:  I like it guitar and vocal driven.

DS:  I think Robin and I are on the same wavelength on that.

MB:  And I’m the stick in the spoke.

TFO:  Do you think that’s because you’re fascinated by the technology, or do you like the kind of music that produces?

MB:  We go through this all the time.  This is our discussion when we’re working on a song.  When we’re doing something, I hear it almost as a completed piece.  I hear what the sounds should be.  I hear what needs to come up underneath it.  I hear the different parts, and I’m willing to experiment to get it to that type of sound.  I think Robin and Don probably hear, “I really like the guitar here, and my voice needs to be a little bit louder here, and, wait a minute, the guitar needs to be turned up just a touch.”  But I think that the computer gives you opportunities to do things… Well, first of all, it creates a democracy of the music, which allows anybody to tap their creativity, more than ever before.  Because if you look at the stuff we did when we had reel-to-reel tape recorders…

DS:  Oh jeez, that was painful.

MB:  I had to build a 4-track tape recorder to do those first songs that Robin and I and Larry used to do.  Anybody can do that on the internet now.  What it’s changed, is now the talent has to be there.  You can do anything with a computer.  What really makes the difference is what you put into it.

DS:  It’s way more inclusive.  It’s a democracy now.

TFO:  And the good stuff rises.

RS:  Sometimes.  Sometimes other stuff.

MB:  I having a saying about everybody being in a band.  Everybody’s in a band.

RS:  But everybody’s not in a good band.

MB:  You either have to have a niche that you’re shooting for, or you have to be incredibly lucky.

Portishead – “Machine Gun”

[Don and Marlin look at one another and laugh.]

RS:  I’d really have to read those lyrics for a while to find out the justification for that particular percussion, because I find it distracting and annoying.

DS:  Yeah.  Why?

TFO:  Well, the track is called “Machine Gun.”

RS:  I picked up on that.

MB:  It’s what I’d call experimental music.  Although, she’s got a beautiful voice.

DS:  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, she’s just headed in a direction that I’m not in on.  She has talent, and she’s not wasting her time, but she’s not reaching me.  So, it’s probably my fault, not hers.

MB:  I can see where she’s going.

DS:  I’m just wondering why she’d want to go there.

TFO:  The idea of the dueling drum machines is either brilliant or idiotic.

MB:  It is brilliant.

DS:  But that lasts about ten seconds.

MB:  I would have mixed that differently.  I wouldn’t have emphasized the drums as much.

RS:  When I listen to music, I like to like the music I listen to.  You may like this, but I don’t see anything to like.  You might appreciate the effort and the intellectual thought behind it, but I don’t find it enjoyable.

MB:  It’s like Mahler.  Wagner and Mahler I don’t like listening to, but it’s technically wonderful music.

DS:  Well, it might be very difficult to insert a big toe during a kiss, but I don’t see why you would do it.

TFO:  I couldn’t handle that song the first couple of times I heard it.  Then I caught it one time and it blew my mind.

RS:  I didn’t like Bob Dylan the first time I heard him.

MB:  I think what happens is, your brain starts diminishing the effect of the drum, and you start listening for the lyrics.  At least, that’s what was happening with me.  I was feeling the rhythm, but not…

RS:  I guess I’m very suspicious of what I consider to be theatrics in music.

The Dodos – “Fools”

DS:  I like it a lot more than you’d think I would.

RS:  They’re not Australian, are they?

MB:  They’re not Russian, are they?

RS:  I like this one a little better than the one a little while ago, because this one has a little more of a traditional musical theme in it.

MB:  Again, you’re going back to some of the African roots of rhythm, with some of the sticks, the blocks.

RS:  They’re also doing something… I can’t quite get it, but I thought they had one time signature at the beginning, then they changed into a different one, then perhaps they’re doing two of them and meshing them together very well.

TFO:  I think the drumming on this whole album, actually, is the best part of it.

DS:  I would go back and listen to it.

Lele – “Breakfast”

[All three guys look at each other and laugh.]

MB:  Let’s go to Don for this one.

DS:  It’s like a mean spirited Flight of the Concords.  I love Flight of the Concords, and if they had an attitude, that’s what they’d be writing.

RS:  To me, this is not music at all.  It’s beatnik poetry.

DS:  Performance art.  He’s painting an interesting picture, but I got the whole thing real quickly.

Re-Up Gang – “20K Money Makin’ Brothers On the Corner”

MB:  I think I can speak for all of us…

RS:  Lay it down for us.  What’d you think of this?

DS:  “Shit, bitch.  Sure I love you”

MB:  When I hear this I wonder what I’m not getting.  First of all, I admire when you see the kids do this, and I’ve seen them do it spontaneously, when they can do the rap stuff and rhyme, I think that’s really a talent.

RS:  I thought it was mass hypnosis.

MB:  How they pull it off so quickly.

RS:  The first thing I thought of was my daughter’s old Sesame Street clock.  It went bad over time.  It wore down.  It used to be Big Bird, and in the beginning, you’d set the alarm and it would say, “Wake up!  It’s time to get up!  This is Big Bird, and it’s time to get up!”  But as time went on it slowed down and became very menacing, to the point where we were all afraid of it.  At the end, it would say, “Iiiiits tiiiiime toooo guuuut uuuuuuuuuu.  Thuuuuus uuuuuus Buuuuuug Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd.”

MB:  This doesn’t move me in the least, and I’m always amazed that people can listen to this and it does something for them.

RS:  Well, this is one of Martin’s favorites.  We’re listening to your top 10.  What do you like about this?

TFO:  Some of it’s production.  The effect you’re talking about—I like that about it.   The lyricists on it are really great.  It’s a little unfair.  This year has been a really, really weak year for rap music.  So, this song—I like it a lot, but it’s not totally representative of the best of rap music.  You know, for this Shakespeare program I’m doing, we’re taking a poetry class where we bring in stuff that has nothing to do with Shakespeare.  I brought in a rap song called “The F-Word,” because I feel like there’s a lot of similarity between what rappers do and what Shakespeare was doing.  He was inventing words, and switching words’ meanings, and he has such a love of language and playing with language.

DS:  And you’re getting that out of the rap, too?

TFO:  Absolutely.  If you listen to a great rap song, they’ll say lines with two or three meanings, they’ll invent words, they’ll twist the pronunciation of words, and it’s all crystal clear.  The metaphors and similes they use can be really clever.  There’s a hunger and curiosity about language that’s virtually nowhere else in our culture.  And then you’ll get deeply personal, autobiographical stories.  A lot of it does get obscured by the stuff that’s enormously popular, which is mostly two-dimensional.  But a lot of the stuff that’s out there is really great.

RS:  Then, is it music or poetry?

TFO:  It depends on your frame of reference.  I like what you said about “Breakfast” being performance art.  But I think rap is…  Sometimes it’s all merchandizing.  But at its best, it’s definitely music.  The best producers know their music theory, because right now a lot of the top hip-hop producers are crossing over into pop music, and in order to do that they need to know their shit, and they do.  So when you get a really good producer working with a really good rapper, it’s great music.

RS:  Once again I notice that every reference you made was about lyrics, and nothing about melody.  I would probably be more attracted to it if I were reading it as poetry.

DS:  I feel like I have to take a beating to listen to it, and if you just wrote it down I’d be fine.

TFO:  But then it doesn’t quite translate to being written down, either.  It’s almost its own thing.

RS:  Perhaps the beat provides the meter.

TFO:  It does.  It’s all about form.

RS:  It’s just totally lacking in melody.

MB:  It’s all repetitive.  Again, they just have a sample.  I would doubt they spend more than 15 minutes figuring out if there’s a melody line at all, and it’s all just repetitive.

RS:  Well, I haven’t given 15 minutes of thought to rap in 15 years.

MB:  It must be striking some chord with a large audience, that at first, obviously, was black.  But there must a lot of cross-over, because it sells.

TFO:  Well, it’s the dominant form of music right now.

MB:  It moves people in some way that it’s not moving me, which I find interesting.

Gnarls Barkley – “Going On”

RS:  I would perform it differently, but I like it okay.

DS:  I like his voice.

MB:  It’s almost like it’s a hybrid.

RS:  It almost sounded like it had Irish pipes in it.

DS:  A penny-whistle in the background.

MB:  The rhythm is very computer-driven, but some of the recording techniques they use are 70’s-ish.

DS:  Like The Four Tops meet electro.

TFO:  This is a perfect example of a hip-hop producer crossing over.

MB:  You can certainly see that.

The Mountain Goats – “San Bernadino"

MB:  It’s a hit!

RS:  I would say, out of all the songs you’ve played, I really like this.  I like it.

TFO:  This is a group called The Mountain Goats.

MB:  Very classical influence.

RS:  Thoughtful words.  You can hear the lyrics.  The synthesizer is restrained.

MB:  He uses the bow as the rhythm.  There’s no drums.  Does a wonderful build using very simple parts.  Sounds like two cello parts.  Very effective.

DS:  I like it.

RS:  So we all like it.  The Mountain Goats?  I’ll tell you, that’s the only name I’m going to try to commit to memory.

MB: I like this song, I liked the Sigur Rós.  I certainly remember the “Machine Gun.”  I think this was a good cross-section of current music.

TFO:  Any closing thoughts?

MB:  I’ll tell you, I think what’s happened in modern popular music is wonderful, in terms of what tools are out there now to give young performers and composers a wide variety of music.  This piece of equipment you’re recording on is 32 tracks of double CD resolution.  20 years ago, you could never have… This would have been a major studio, right here.  But to put this in the hands of some of the major artists… Sigur Rós, I’m sure, when they started out were not using much more than this.  I can tell by the quality of their first album, that it was fairly low quality recording.  They over-sampled so much that you’re sort of surprised.  This computer made it possible for anybody with talent and not talent to create music that was almost impossible.

Koots’ latest album, Buffalo Dreams, is available on iTunes.

The Virgin Read: Bendis And Oeming, Dripping All Over A Cheap Paper Napkin

Powers # 29
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Michael Avon Oeming
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

I love this comic.  Serious Face: LOVE it.  What is this, like the third time I've read it now?  I guess this no longer really qualifies as a Virgin Read.  But there I was, with all my choices in front of me….I couldn't resist the, um, power of Powers. 

I mean, the art is amazing.  I don't have much of a vernacular for art.  I'm one of those emotional, performing artsy kind of people.  So, the best way to describe how I feel about this comic book when I flip through the pages and look at the art – is that it's like chocolate ice cream.  And, sweetie?  How often do I eat chocolate ice cream (or yogurt or some sort of chocolaty frozen sensation?)  Uh-huh.  That's right.  Oh, he said, "Every night."  Every night I eat chocolate ice cream because I cannot resist its pleasures.  It is THE most delicious thing in the world to me – if we're talking strictly food here.  Other flavors can be thrown into the mix, but ain't nuthin' beats chocolate.  It always makes me happy.  It always satisfies.  It always makes my heart flutter a teeny bit.

And that is, seriously, exactly how I felt when I flipped through the latest issue of Powers pages saying to myself, "I can't do Powers again, can I?  I shouldn't right?  Oh God….but I WANT to."

How did the other choices compare?  It's not that they are just "plain old vanilla."  It's more like they are those really weird concoctions like pecan raisin ice cream ( I CANNOT have raisins in my ice cream.  Puh-lease…), or even odder varieties, like Wasabi or Ox Tongue ice cream.  Flavors that make you say, "Wow, that's weird.  I wonder how that tastes…"  But you leave it to wondering.  Because, would you rather have some weird, ice cream eating experience that summons up your gag reflex, or would you like to end your evening with some sweet comfort that is dependable and delicious?  (The prosecution is now resting.)

Then there's the story of this issue--such meaty writing.  (I like meat with chocolate.  Weird?)  Here's another note about this weeks Virgin Decision process from me:  I just didn't feel like exercising tolerance or sportsmanship.  I truly felt tired at the thought of trying something new – knowing that my review would probably read something like, "I don't know much about comics and stuff, but I sure didn't like this."

When I started reading this and saw those panels of the girl lying there on the first page, knowing what her fate might be, I said, out loud, "Oh my god.  Oh yeah."  And boom: loved every minute of reading it.  I felt like I was reading a novel more than a comic book.  I got so much back story and current story, got to  learn "what happens next."  Even though, when I first read this comic I was a little dismayed when Triphammer hit the scene (because he was so super-hero-y,)  I had no problems this time.  I mean, those panels, too….that art.  Amazing. 

Deena and Calista?  Total bad-asses.  Oh, man, and what's up with Ms. Stone?  And why does that gotta be her name?

Anyhow, I just want to rip out these pages and hang them on our walls.  And then I'd love Oeming to design my business cards.  And my website.

So, looks like I'm going to have to read some trades, huh?

-Nina Stone, 2008

Comics Of The Weak: Iron Man Was The One With All The Spiderwebs This Weak

100 Bullets # 93
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Eduardo Risso
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

This close to the end, it's impossible to go into detail about much of what occurs in 100 Bullets without ruining the twists and turns (most of which are laced in betrayal and death) that occur in each issue--then again, it's also hard to believe that the sort of people who would be most upset to have the story "spoiled" aren't picking up Bullets as soon as it hits the stands. While waiting for the trade is a pretty popular method for most fans of this series, truthfully, there's so much lagtime between what happens in the individual issues and there's so much happening in the individual issues that trade-waiters are just punishing themselves. While there's other examples of some brilliant collaborative partnerships in recent comics, like Bendis & Bagley, Morrison & Quitely, Ennis & Dillon,the Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso team have pulled off 93 (and counting) issues of a flawless example of two creators working totally in sync. It's hard to comprehend the idea that the two of them aren't sitting in a room together hashing out each moment of this series. While tolerance for grotesques and alpha male psychopathy is always going to be the first barrier that any potential reader has to hurdle, there's no comic currently published that's a better study in the machinations of power, control and arrogance.

B.P.R.D. The Warning # 1
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Anticipation for a B.P.R.D. proper mini couldn't be higher--while it's not universally agreed in the online world of people typing shit that the Mignolaverse has been sputtering out the watery bits for the last few months with their one-shots, Lobster The Predictable and Abe Sapian: This Comic Looks Like Those Dark Tower Covers And Reads Like A Video Game Introduction, everybody on staff at the Factual has tallied up our secret ballots and discovered that the B.P.R.D. 1946 series was the only story worth re-reading since Killing Ground was finished. No big shock that The Warning, which reunites the entire crew responsible for Killing Ground, is a comfortable return to form--even for a talk heavy issue, it's a rewarding little comic all on its lonesome. Part of the attraction with these stories is the familiarity with which the characters have become even as they've changed. Unlike the Hellboy stories, which are becoming somewhat stagnant as the character hasn't developed emotionally since whenever it was he quit his job, Abe, Liz, Kate & Johann continue to grow, and the rarity of something that basic in serialized comics is refreshing. (It's also part and parcel of why the Abe Sapian mini-series was such a disappointment--with a chance to focus on a character that's so lively in the official B.P.R.D. series, the crushing boredom of watching him revert to the scampering wimp he started out as without anything for it to be contrast against was far too reminiscent of when Hellboy first got going, and the majority of the characters were used as dialog vehicles to surround the only character that had been fleshed out enough to focus a plot upon.) While Warning may doesn't start off with the same level of ferocity and dynamism that was used to such success in Killing Ground and Universal Machine, it's got a mature level of texture surrounding what looks to be another worthy chapter in a spin-off that has completely surpassed it's source.

Secret Invasion # 4
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lenil Francis Yu, Mark Morales, Laura Martin & Emily Warren
Published by Marvel Comics

More than any issue of the entire Secret Invasion onslaught so far, this latest chapter showcases what a perfect little piece of idiotic adventure the whole thing is: it's a big old fight, like every other big old fight, and gosh darn look at the size of that gun! It'd be a hell of a lot easier to comprehend the love for this sort of predictable bullshit if it wasn't exactly like every other piece of predictable event bullshit that's ever been published, especially if it was being read by an audience that hadn't read this type of the War To End All Wars Fought By These Characters 900 times before. As much as the narration pushes the idea that "this time it's different" because of the entire "who do you trust" splash tagline, the page after page of alien characters punching, shooting, stabbing and slicing their way across Manhattan belies what Secret Invasion reads most like: everything else that's involved aliens doing that exact same shit. Mechanically, technically, Secret Invasion certainly operates with a bit more respectability to it than what was shoveled off the pile of repetition in the 80's and 90's, but when placed alongside Civil War and World War Hulk (the previous excursion in "Marvel's going to surprise you by not really changing"), Secret Invasion is more of the same, this time with a lower page count and a more consistent publishing schedule. (All that aside, it is kind of funny that Laura Martin and Emily Warren decided to make it look like Tony Stark's face has been sprayed with semen. Maybe that's why this comic is more expensive? Cum-shots?)

Final Crisis Requiem
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy, Rodney Ramos & Nei Ruffino
Published by DC Comics

A better title might have been "Final Crisis: Martian Manhunter Fan-Service Issue," as that's exactly what this is, from start to finish. Whereas Grant Morrison had used the Manhunter's death scene as an opportunity to showcase the extremism of his revamped bad guy and also as a distinct acknowledgment of the overwrought nature of the "kill a hero" aspect of an event comic, DC gave the job of apology/expectation fulfillment to Peter Tomasi--and he took that job and expanded upon it vigorously. There's a level of "fucking fan fiction" to Requiem that's only tolerable as far as one wants to see Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy together--for the Factual, that's a worthy distance. But regardless of Mahnke, the entire issue suffers from the worst revamp in the history of DC Comics, which is having Batman leave a "Choco" cookie on the dead Martian's coffin. He didn't love Chocos.  Oreos, motherfucker. Nobody gives a shit about "possible trademark infringement." Grow some cajones, Time Warner.

Ultimate Origins # 2
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Butch Guice & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

The Factual doesn't have an editor on staff ever since the writers strike ended and Aaron Sorkin had to fly home, thankfully we caught the initial copy mistake where we'd written that the issue of Ultimate Origins released this week was # 1.  (It's # 2.)  It's obvious why the mistake was made--the closest connection you'll find between the two comics is the opening recap page that runs down what happened last month, besides that, Ultimate Origins # 2 should probably just be called "we run down Captain America's origin Star Wars prequel style, meaning you won't enjoy it or find it the least bit necessary for your time." If it turns out that the (completely unverified and only mildly believable) rumor that the Ultimate Marvel line is headed wherever Milestone comics lives, then the idea of an "Origins" mini-series will probably be the weirdest idea for a mini-series this year. (Except for the Vertigo one where a cab-driving sidekick fights evil using his knowledge of shortcuts and street names.)  One wonders how much people would've liked Frank Miller's Batman Year One storyline if DC had followed it up by canceling all of the Bruce Wayne comic books.

Detective Comics # 846
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs & John Kalisz
Published by DC Comics

It's not too often that one can be pleasantly surprised by a really shit comic book, but when the forces of luck rain upon a forlorn super-hero junkie, it's similar to the sensation when a prostitute removes her dentures and tries to inhale your stomach lining for less than the cost of a movie ticket.  That happy occasion was set in motion courtesy of whomever is in charge of the Bat-titles by not allowing the staff of Detective Comics to muck about the treacherous waters of Grant Morrison's RIP storyline--it's going to be hard enough for Grant to deal with carrying Tony Daniel across the seas of inexperience, and it wouldn't have helped him in the slightest to rely on Paul Dini to pop out a couple of chapters on the side: Dini's a talented, intelligent writer, but he and Morrison's respective styles mix about as well as bleach and birthday cake. All that aside, it's just mean as fuck to give Dini and Nguyen Jeph Loeb's atrocious Hush character--Kazuo Umezu couldn't make that character interesting, and Umezu knew how to make 7-year-olds pretending to be chairs the best comic of 2007.

Captain Britain and MI13
Written by Paul Cornell
Art by Leonard Kirk, Jesse Delperdang, Scott Hanna & Brian Reber
Published by Marvel Comics

Here's the transcript of how Paul Cornell probably pitched this comic to Marvel:

Okay, so we'll use Secret Invasion as a jumping off point to deal with the inner-wrokings of what's going on in Marvel's British super-hero universe, and that way we can throw in a real-world figure like Gordon Brown. By the second issue, I'll kill off the title character and focus on classic British stories like Excalbur while slowly turning the Secret Invasion portion into an old Dungeons & Dragons campaign that I came up with when I was 19 and looking for work--by the third issue, we'll bring back the title character and it will have a whole "Merlin pulls a Jehovah" aspect to it as well--so by then it will be the real world, a spy drama, with super-heroes, and D & D, and Excalibur, and Christian reference points...look, by issue 16 I'm going to have a talking bear who is also a butler from an old Willie Nelson song who's a member of that organization Tori Amos started for survivors of incest, and the whole thing will be set inside a spaceship that's crashed into Steve Ditko's house. Get ready to give yourselves a pay raise, gentlemen: This Is The Comic The World's Been Waiting For.

The Last Defenders # 5
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Jim Muniz, Cam Smith & Antonio Fabela
Published by Marvel Comics

It's been awhile since the Factual Opinion's staff had come across a mini-series that lasts for six issues yet decided to dump it's entire premise midway through, retire part of the creative team, and lose 80% of it's main characters by the fourth issue. That's a whole lot of crosses to bear, so many that it's unlikely this son of a bitch is going to make it to the top of that mountain, no matter how many people are booing. You probably should just crucify this fucker right here--unless the final issue is 64 pages long and includes a letter of explanation from Joe Casey and Keith Giffen, Last Defenders is going down as the go-to example for what it looks like when writers are given creative freedom in the Marvel equivalent of a shuttered Chuck-E-Cheese.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Economist Vs. Idiot: Wherein Your Author Reminds You That He Is Not Bright, And Aggressively So

No World This Week: Comic books aren't the only thing that get delayed by a holiday, and with only a few days to deal with this issue, some babies don't make it to term.

Leaders

-Heh. Here's the cover story, the leader, in quotes, so I don't screw it up. (I'm going to quote a lot of this, so if you want to see it in full context, go here.) Anybody else, this is Full. Auto.

Regarding the G8 Summit: But what is the point of their discussing the oil price without Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest producer? Or waffling about the dollar without China, which holds so many American Treasury bills? Or slapping sanctions on Robert Mugabe, with no African present? Or talking about global warming, AIDS or inflation without anybody from the emerging world? Cigar smoke and ignorance are in the air.

Regarding--well, you'll see: The G8 is not the only global club that looks old and impotent. The UN Security Council has told Iran to stop enriching uranium, without much effect. The nuclear non-proliferation regime is in tatters. The International Monetary Fund, the fireman in previous financial crises, has been a bystander during the credit crunchy. The World Trade Organization's Doha round is stuck.

Jeezum crow, something crawled up in the Economist and died this week, eh? Pissy!

-On the good news front, which wasn't good enough to put anybody in a good mood at Econo-Central, Ingrid Betancourt and the other Top-Of-The-Pile FARC hostages (including those three American defense contractors) were freed this past week, with no bloodshed. The credit goes to Alvaro Uribe and his defense secretary, and while they certainly had some behind-the-scenes help (American style), it's much deserved. Although the Colombian guerrillas still hold hundreds more, their power has continued it's down slide since the recent loss of many of it's leaders.

-The Economist points out what everybody already knew, that they are "attracted" to John McCain. (Their words, I ain't implying nothing.) But they aren't going to let that stop them from raking him over the coals for his recent shifts in policy, especially as the shifts, in their mind, will do little to help him. While the Economist may even agree with some of McCain's recent changes in policy (I don't remember them being against Bush's tax cuts, and they've never had a problem with offshore drilling) they astutely point out that one of the few major strengths in McCain's campaign is that whole "Straight Talk" thing--which won't last if he keeps trying to appeal to the far right. Unsurprisingly, the solution offered isn't much beyond a motherly cry to "stop hitting your sister." We'll see.

Letters

-The trend of extending the "whining assholes" section to multiple pages continues, but there was actually a pretty fascinating piece found by your tender moron this week: for those who haven't seen a publication like The Economist before, you'd be surprised by the advertisements, in that they are for the types of corporations and companies you usually only hear about on MSNBC when they air really boring Senate confirmation hearings. Jobs for the National Audit Foundation are offered, think tanks proffer their thoughts, and page long dossier style propaganda from massive oil conglomerates are the norm. If there's a model in a picture, it's usually somebody like Warren Buffett. (Who is more like Gisele than you'd imagine.) Anyway, a recent advertisement from Abengoa Bioenergy quoted a study by the "European Federation for Transport and Environment," and the director of said Federation wrote in to say "Hey, those guys misused our name and research, and their view on biofuels bears no resemblance to ours." I doubt if I'm explaining this well enough to make it sound cool. But it seemed pretty cool.

United States

-The title of the article that opens the US section this week is "White men can vote," so you kind of should get prepped if you're going to read it. As is the norm for someone like me, schooled in the politically correct "don't talk about controversial race stuff in any way beyond ohhing and ahhing" kind of news that America has, it's surprising to find the Economist quote somebody in Ohio who believes that plenty of people will not vote for Obama because of his race. When that kind of shit comes up, and it is shit, make no mistake, it's usually treated as if, because it's morally repugnant and hidden behind veiled smiles and glad-handed emptiness, that somehow negates the fact that racist shits are going to vote, and they're going to vote just like people who aren't stilted maggots. Openly addressing, and examining, the possible impact of closed-door racism is a little more than this short article deals with, but it opens the door to the possibility that the Economist might do some later in the election season. That's something that's necessary, and while it would make for sad and upsetting reading, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done.

-There's some odd gun laws going on in Florida right now, where due to a terrible statue gun owners can bring their weapons to work, as long as it stays in the car. Employers aren't permitted to ask if employees have guns. But if an employee lights up, Stone Cold Steve Austin style, and blasts some perpetrators with his weapon of choice, the employer (who wouldn't have any legal way of finding out about the possibility before hand) can then be held responsible in a civil suit. It's not just Florida either--Texas is currently dealing with a growing movement for gun owners to be permitted to carry a gun around openly. Like a cowboy. I can't imagine a decent reason on Earth why your everyday Joe (or Josephine) needs to wander around like that.

-College yearbooks are dying. Add that to phone-books and VCRs in the stack of things that irritated nostalgia-freaks bring up when they want to talk about how much better 1993 was.

-Lexington takes a look at Michelle Obama, and it's a pretty well managed one--it's clear that he finds her a bit irritating, but thankfully doesn't focus on the "I am proud of my country for the first time" comment that so many right-wing pundits like to attack her for. Personally, I didn't find that anywhere near as obnoxious as when she urged young people to avoid joining "corporate America," so close to Barack opening the doors for corporate America to give him funds, or her recent USA Today quote saying she that she didn't want to "be a distraction." Despite what TMZ might have you believe, it's pretty easy not to be a distraction. As Lexington points out in reference to that comment, one of the first things you could do is not express your political views forcefully in "speech after speech." That being said, there's a lot to like about Michelle--I just wish, like Lexington, that she wouldn't play the wilting flower when people disagree with her. It doesn't fit. She's a bright, forceful woman with a lot of well-thought out opinions, and she should be proud to get them out there--and when they're taken out of context by the media in an effort to discredit her, she should fight back. Pretending she "just wants to quietly support her husband" ain't gonna work.

The Americas

-Back in 1994, a bunch of Canadian foresters were worried about the response of environmentalists if they were to cut and burn all of the trees in a small provincial park. Now, forest scientists believe that was where the current infestation of pine beetles began, an infestation that may destroy over four-fifths of British Columbia's forest. It's already killed trees over an area larger than England. The more I read theEconomist, the more I'm struck by how many of the sorts of depressing events it details, the more often the same basic truism comes up: that those with limited viewpoints seem to almost always be at the center of the worst sorts of preventable problems. The more focused that an individual's political or social interests, the less likely they are to grasp the broader impacts of their actions. Then, of course I am reminded that, right or wrong, I am not very smart and have learned most of what I understand about politics and economics from board games. Board games that I was never very good at it.

-I don't have much to offer in the way of commentary or description to add to this article about the sad murder of Douggie Chambers, the Jamaican transit chairman in charge of fixing that corrupt enterprise, but it really shook me up that a man, who was working so hard to make things better for others, was executed in the street while taking a smoke break. As horrible as things are in Zimbabwe, Darfur and Afghanistan right now, that sort of stuff--such a pointless, shocking act of cruelty--still breaks my heart.

Asia

-Hold the phone: Homosexuality is classed in India's penal code alongside bestiality as an "unnatural sex offense." India? Home of Bollywood, India? I'm sorry, but that's just the silliest thing I've heard this week.

-The Malaysian governments chief political opponent, Anwar Ibrahim has been accused of sodomy by a male volunteer working on his campaign. I'd seen brief mention of this in other locations; not knowing much about Malaysian history or politics, assumed it was some weird personal vendetta, or just an odd moment of sexual proclivity. Turns out it's the second time the guy was charged with sodomy, and he served six years in prison before the verdict was overturned. (Public sentiment seems to be that he was as innocent then as he is now.) If he is innocent, then he's the victim of one of the strangest forms of smear campaigns I've ever heard of. He, and his party, seem to be producing quite a bit of evidence that this is the case. What sort of planning committee actually sits down and says "We'll win this election easy. Pay a volunteer to say the guy sodomized him. Boom goes the voting."

-The Japanese Transport and Construction ministry spent $20 million on taxis in 2006 alone. Is that over the top? Seems over the top, doesn't it? I don't think I know anybody personally who works in the petty cash department of a Transport and Construction ministry, but if you, dear reader, happen to know someone who does, and you can stomach their conversation, please contact me to tell me if I should find this shocking. My emotions: currently on hold.

Middle East and Africa

-For the first time in awhile, Robert Mugabe makes an appearance that's limited to the Africa section of the newspaper--for the last few weeks, months, etc, dude has had leader detail. Since not much has changed--he's a monster responsible for the death, torture and rape of any Zimbabweans who disagree with him--the article focuses on what they (and me, I guess) have been almost as furious about: the completely ineffectual and pathetic behavior on the part of the African Union and South African president Thabo Mbeki. The AU got together and discussed the situation, put out a bunch of recommendations like...you know what? It doesn't matter. Not at all. Nothing that the AU said means anything, because they have absolutely no penalties or power behind their words. Nothing at all. There's no consequence for Mugabe ignoring them completely. (Which is exactly what he did and is doing.)

In a way, in the only way, what the AU did was exactly what I'm doing, only with less vitriol. Posturing, a "tsk-tsk, you should stop being a monster." I'm totally willing to acknowledge A) my own powerlessness, B) my own self-loathing at the ineffectual nature of a blog-hate-a-thon for someone who knows that all my anger won't bring me out of my comfy chair and into the way of his dealings and C) that in the end, all I'm doing is preaching to the choir (as I can't believe that anybody who's reading this, this specific sentence on this specific post, would actually support the torture of a wife, the incineration of a six-year-old boy in front of his father, the rape of a woman who couldn't prove she voted for this psychopath.) I have that luxury--because I'm just another useless political commentator read by few and relied on by none. But the African Union? The president of South Africa? Sorry. They don't get to curl up and hide. Not when their neighbors are being torn to shreds outside their door. That's why they are in the business of running countries. This is what they get paid to do. If the job was easy, morons like me would qualify for it.

-The Economist seems to be backing off from last weeks fevered article regarding anonymous claims of an impending Israeli air-strike upon Iran. Maybe because they believe the State Department's claims that the anonymous Pentagon official who said it on television wasn't credible. Maybe because American diplomats are talking about resuming direct communication with Iran. Probably a combination of all of those claims. Iran, on the other hand? Well, Iranian newspapers have reported plans to dig 320,000 graves near the border, to speedily dispose of the corpses of the enemy. So there's that.

-Coke! The index of happiness! I liked this little piece, where it was pointed out that Coca Cola only fails in countries where the entire consumer market fails as well. Like Somalia and Eritrea. Otherwise, they do just fine all over the place in Africa. Coke: more of a success in Africa than Christianity, justice & France.

Europe

-How close does the Socialist party get to actually winning the presidency in France? This little article doesn't say, and it's so hot right now that I doubt the computer could google something serious without melting. The focus of this short piece is all about the current schism between the various factions of that party, which is sort of cliched, isn't it? Socialists, arguing with each other? Something tells me, I don't know what, but I bet that one person is acting like the other person is really stupid, and they're saying all kinds of passive-aggressive stuff. Well, except for ex-postman and photographed hoodie-wearing Olivier Besancenot who is launching a "New Anti-Capitalist Party" and is, easy expectation number 2 fulfilled, calling for a revolution. Ah, the French. Always working extra hard to make sure nobody can take them seriously.

-So, the growth in gross domestic product is dropping like a stone, and the unemployment rate is flying...sorry...like a bird, and neither the finance minister or the president of Spain think that should be referred to as a crisis. Even though all signs point to both continuing, all the guys in charge are sitting around pointing out the recent football win at Euro 2008. That's what they're focusing on. Say what you want about the economic stimulus plan, which is probably something like "ha ha ha ahh, shit didn't work!" but at least the US isn't trying to wave everybody's penis at the Boston Celtics.

-I don't think I could really do justice to this article on the fraught with danger relationship between Abkhazia and Georgia, but I do think it's a bit unusual that the Economist used the phrase "Hotheads in Tbilisi and Moscow said that war was all but inevitable." Excuse me? I've been dicking around with this newspaper on a continuous basis for over a year now, and I well remember that the Economist thought war was "all but inevitable", and that was in the last three months. That type of whoopsy daisy makes me almost want to write a letter, until I remember that I might have to read the letter, and then I'd have to man up and cut myself.

-I realize Charlemagne's beat means he's going to have to write about the European Union a lot. But for God's sake, this is the 900th article in a row. Enough. We all get it, Sarkozy is going to be a tough president to deal with for the next six months, his comments about anchovies make him sound like an idiot, and Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty. I need a bone. I want a bone. Give me a bone.

Britain

-Look, there's some okay stuff in here this week about Damien Hirst and Taylor & Wimpey (awful name for such an important company), but all of that fails to come anywhere near this: Bagehot has a gender. If you read this Economist Vs. Idiot stuff, you may have noticed that I always refer to the column writers by their nom de plummes, and they never drop the front. I'm sure there's a way to find out, but that's cheating, and you know it. Not any more.  Bagehot is a dude. There is a Miss Bagehot. They just had a baby. And is he phoning in a column with one of those things were a writer drops personal life stuff and then bores the shit out of you with their boring fucking life? Hell no, because Bagehot is the model of professional writing, the dude trumps every editorial page I've ever seen in an American newspaper.  No, he just uses the fact that he was watching the birth of his child to go into an in-depth column on Britain's National Health Service. That's why he's a player fantastique.

International (Possible Investment Opportunity Means It Deserves To Be Here)

-The International section is so hit or miss--sometimes it's great, other times it's the state of opera throughout the omigod i fell asleep while typing.   This week, it's brilliant: a well-researched and incredibly informative article about the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss-based organization of professional conflict mediators. The company, started by four people nine years ago, now has a staff of over 70 and are tied in with why Kenya was able to resolve their horrible rioting and conflict following their election results, closely involved with the still-in-development peace deals between the Maoists rebels and the government of Nepal, and already at work in countless other conflict zones--the article goes into more detail, you can catch it all there. Suffice to say, it's fascinating: the CHD is literally stopping violence through dialog. That almost trumps the Columbian hostage rescue for best news of the week.

Business

-Some articles are just going to write themselves: case in point, talking about the constant clusterfuck that is American automakers trying to sell gas guzzlers against skyrocketing oil prices.  If there aren't enough opportunities in your life to smirk, here's your huckleberry.

-Of course, if you want to smirk even more, Starbucks is closing 500 stores and cutting their workforce by 7%. If you've ever been to New York City, then I think you can guess why--having a Bucks on every corner is great when you need to go to the bathroom, but, oddly enough, makes for a terrible business model.

-You know who's in trouble? Opera. Yeah, who would've thought that opera would be in trouble? After all, opera has massive overhead and production costs, but there's such a huge fanbase for opera. Oh wait, their average patron is 65?  Let me see if I can get myself to the point of caring.

-Ambush marketing is sort of like viral marketing, or guerrilla marketing, in that it's one of those things that appeals to people who are too goonish to realize that just because they are acting like it's Seattle and there's a G7 meeting going on, they are actually advertising a product, nothing more. (Ambush marketing is where a bunch of hipsters get paid to hand the proles free hats with a logo on it at places like sporting events so that the logo will trump out the other companies that paid to advertise inside the sporting arena.  See?  Not so cool or interesting when you write it out.)

-Diane Greene was the choice for a full page focus in the Economist--which was a terrible blunder on their part, and doesn't do well to make the Economist look like they had the finger on the pulse of what was going on at VMware--the company that has fired Greene within days of the article. (Not because of the article, which barely moves past a puff piece and focuses, to its detriment, on what a non-alpha-male leader Greene was.) What's even more absurd is that Greene's firing wasn't a shock to many, as VMware is on the losing end of struggles with Microsoft--yet this article mentions nothing of bad times coming.  A disappointment.

Science and Technology

-Progress on the fight against SIDS, but don't read this if you prefer rats to roam free while human infants die. It will clash with your beliefs.

-If I read one more article about how red wine is the healthiest thing an individual can put inside their body short of a metal skeleton, I'm going to start pumping it straight into my wife's bloodstream while she sleeps so that there will be somebody spunky to talk to me when I am old, more obnoxious than now, and wearing a colostomy bag. Again, here it is: Red wine cares more about your body than any sexual partner you've ever imagined.

-We are still on Mars, and our robot found some shit that is sort of like soil. I somehow find it comforting that everything with this little Mars mission is going so simply--it's dull in a way, but far preferable than what Total Recall led me to believe this mission would be like.

Books and Arts

-A poet wrote a book about the status of India's literature and culture. Look, you can all pretty much guess what an "earnest poet" has to say about culture, whether it's India or Norway or Sri Lanka or Buttermilk Junction, Arkansas. Poets, man. There is no group of artists as elitist in their response to lack of attention or income. (Possible exception: improv comics?)

-I like the idea that there's a book concerned with the history of Communism Told Through Communist Jokes, but then again, it's those sorts of jokes that have never made me laugh, ever, where somebody says something along the lines of "how many things does it take to do a thing" and then they wait for you to say "I don't know" so they can respond "Blah blah vote for Obama" and then they chuckle at how clever and serious they are. Political jokes live with puns in that place called "Failure."

-Lewis Carrol was a mathematician. Did you know that? A pretty mediocre one too, so it's a good thing he was all about writing about a little girl and rabbits and drugs, and what not. He had some clever ideas about the mathematics of voting, but he didn't have too many clever ideas about much else. Example: He wanted to make a board game that would teach children Aristotelian syllogism, but not in a secret, metaphorical type way--he wanted them to actually make up shitty syllogisms and move around a colored game board. He named it "Game of Logic." I can't imagine why Milton Bradley didn't jump at that.

-They breeze over it in the review, so we've all got to check out Julia Blackburn's family memoir and find out what weird ass metal contraption it was that her grandfather made her father wear as a boy--apparently it was designed to prevent wet dreams. You totally just read that right.

Obituary: Sam Manekshaw

-Why they felt the need to use such a jaunty "Oi, governor! Got any mutton for a wank?" sort of picture for an Indian General, I doubt I'll understand. Maybe it's a really famous pic, or it's playing off the sense of humor that the guy had--a sense of humor that they sort of brush past in in the obituary, but not enough so I got a real sense of what was so funny about a badass military tactician referred to as Sam the Brave. Sounds like a real slick mother, and one India was lucky to have on their side. Not a lot of tough dudes make it to 94.

-Next week in the Economist....excuses?

NOTE: The political cartoon in the Africa section was found through google's image search function--if you are aware of where it was initially published, please let me know. I was unable to find that information myself.

Music of the Weak: My Morning Jacket and The Hold Steady Put Out Horrible Albums and No Age Doesn’t? We Don’t Understand Anything Anymore

Bereft of inspiration this week*, we turn to that age-old warhorse, the Mid-Year recap. Next week, we’ll take a special look at some of our favorite songs from this year. This week, we focus on albums that surprised and disappointed us.

*(Though we do quite like this Cut Copy Remix of Ladyhawke’s “Paris Is Burning”.)

DISAPPOINTING!
Lyrics Born – Everywhere At Once

Lyrics Born’s long anticipated debut album, 2003’s Later That Day, was iconoclastic in its seamless use of funk as the basis for its rap songs, resulting in stone classics like “Bad Dreams” and “Calling Out.”   Everything At Once practically ditches hip-hop altogether, and the result is… pretty awkward.  Lyrics Born doesn’t have nearly as much soul as he seems to think he does.  Nor is he nearly as clever: At the album’s nadir, “Differences,” he raps about the differences between men and women, including 1) Women take a long time to get dressed; 2) Women get pissed off if dudes look at some other girl’s ass; and 3) Women only get frustrated with their men because they’re worried about breaking up.  Next album, expect a song about the sad state of airline food.

SURPRISING!
The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride

Every time The Mountain Goats release a new album (which is about once a year), word on the street is how reliable and consistent the band is.  But they’re totally not!  The Mountain Goats’ 4AD output alone ranges from great (The Sunset Tree) to aiight (Get Lonely) to godawful (We Shall All Be Healed).  We were so sick of reading about this band (they’re like The Rolling Stones for thirty-something bloggers), that, even though John Darnielle wrote a song about our own home town, we weren’t looking forward to Heretic Pride—until we heard it.  Easily The Mountain Goats’ best late-period album, Heretic Pride is a set of simple and powerful songs which, as an added bonus, tone down Darnielle’s sometimes-irritating affectations (like his consistent use of goofy, yet self-serious similes.)

DISAPPOINTING!
My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges

Following up the triumph of Z and living up to the mantle of “The American Radiohead” would be tough for any band.  Evil Urges sounds like My Morning Jacket panicked.  They’re trying so hard to prove how ambitious they are that every song is just a little too overworked and packed with CREATIVE IDEAS to work.  Who knows, maybe these songs will realize their full potential live, as My Morning Jacket relaxes back into itself.  But for now, listening to Evil Urges is like watching a band play a show while holding their breath—totally uncomfortable.

SURPRISING!
Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple

In my darker moments, I think of Danger Mouse as a bit of a hack, who stumbled into ubiquity via an idea he jacked and tricked out with a gimmick.  This, despite the fact that he produced “Crazy,” Demon Days, and some of my favorite parts of Pieces of the People We Love.  As a producer, he’s just not very flashy.  His production doesn’t call a whole lot of attention to itself, which is one reason the first Gnarls Barkley album failed—when he doesn’t stumble on a juggernaut like “Crazy,” there’s not a lot to hold on to.  So I could be forgiven for my skepticism toward The Odd Couple, which sticks out in a pretty great year for soul music by draping Cee-Lo’s voice in reworked late 60’s psychedelia.  Conventional wisdom is that, since there’s no monster hit like “Crazy,” the album doesn’t quite hold up.  Conventional wisdom is wrong.  If Gnarls Barkley keeps up this kind of consistency, another transcendent song is inevitable.

DISAPPOINTING!
The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

We warned you about this one.  More than anything, The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive reminds me of Kanye’s Graduation, in which Kanye dumbed-down his flow (which wasn’t exactly brain surgery to begin with) and spent an album trying to bludgeon us with big hooks.  In hip-hop, you can get away with all this if you have novel enough ideas—which Kanye did, making Graduation a surprisingly decent album.  The Hold Steady, on the other hand, abandon their Thin Lizzy and The Boss-inspired classic rock sound for something more fitting with Vagrant, the pop-punk label that houses them, while the normally reliable Craig Finn spends the album lazily chasing after 7-word sing-along choruses.

SURPRISING!
Fuck Buttons – Street Horrrsing 

Everything about Fuck Buttons triggers my internal red flags.  For example, Wikipedia groups them in the following genres: Experimental, Progressive, Noise, Drone.  This is Tucker’s wheelhouse, not mine.  But Street Horrrsing is an at-times-unnerving, at-times-stunningly-gorgeous twist on post-rock song structures, with uncanny versatility—shifting from drone music to tribal rhythms to even dance-influenced stuff.

DISAPPOINTING!
Prodigy – H.N.I.C. Part 2

Prodigy completely blows all the good will built up with last year’s sweet, soul-dappled Return of the Mac by following it with an album that ditches The Alchemist for a collection of fairly anonymous beats.  Maybe we got spoiled by Beanie Sigel’s The B-Coming, and now we feel like every incarcerated rapper should put out a self-reflective album, but H.N.I.C. Part 2 sounds like something Prodigy wants his fellow inmates to hear in the hopes that they might actually think he’s, you know, hard.  He probably saved the self-reflection for his blog, which may be good for us, since we might have gotten an album full of astute observations like, “Why is it always one black person in shit that white people write?”

SURPRISING!
No Age – Nouns 

Maybe it’s the Vicodin talking, but this is sounding really good right now. Of course, so are nachos. Mmmmmm. Delicious.

-Martin Brown, 2008

The Virgin Read: Used To Do Something Called Bed Olympics On Tour, But For Now She's Reading Hellboy

Hellboy: The Crooked Man # 1
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Richard Corben & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Why did I choose Hellboy this week?  First, I'd recently read B.P.R.D., and although I didn't enjoy that particular issue, I was intrigued by it.  (Hellboy was mentioned a time or two in that issue, so I knew about a connection.)  Secondly, I've recently seen Iron Man (which was fine) and Incredible Hulk (which was stupid) on the big screen and therefore was treated to previews of the upcoming Hellboy movie.  Again, I was further intrigued.  Subsequently, there are all these 10 second youTube videos of Hellboy, which are so damn intriguing.  Lots of intrigue.

So, hey, obviously I'm a marketers dream right now.  Nevertheless, all those things DID in fact lead me to pick up this comic this week.  So, marketing staff: Well Done.

Now, what did I think of it?  Well, I really enjoyed it.  At this point, if you read my Virgin Read articles regularly, you know that I'm slowly making my way through the entire series of Buffy.  What you may not know, is that I've just finished reading Grapes of Wrath for the first time.  So, it may be no coincidence that upon reading this comic, I truly felt like it was a cross between Grapes of Wrath and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  And not just because the main character's name is Tom.  But, you know, Appalachian Mountains in VA is comparable to the feel of Depression Era Oklahoma.  Right?  And then all the witchcraft, Devil and darkness stuff?  The only current equivalent in my life I could come up with was Buffy.

So, when I first started reading, I immediately thought the Joad family in Grapes.   And so, the first time that a character was referred to as a "witch," my head was still in the realm of Steinbeckian fiction.  I immediately thought that we had some "mountain-folk-logic" on our hands.  You know, just some average, everyday ignorance attempting to explain what they don't understand by calling it, "magic."

Wake-up call!  I'm reading a comic book, and that means we've got a real witch here, folks.  The Devil to boot!  Again: Buffy-ish.

Of course, then we've got the Tom Joad-esque behavior of our Hellboy character (conveniently named) Tom.  You know, he's already "wanted" and figures he'll just sacrifice himself for the good of others.  Wait, I guess that's more like the Preacher Casey's behavior.   Or…actually, is that more Jesus-y?  Ah, I'm a Jew, and so I rarely pick up on Christian symbolism.  Looks like I just did, though.  So, hey.  Yay for me!  And Jesus?

There's a lot that I feel I still don't know about this comic.  I don't really know anymore about Hellboy than I did before reading it.  Who is he?  Why does he look like that?  What are his powers?  (Does he have powers?)  But rather than being disappointed in not knowing these things, I just feel drawn to reading the next issue.  I mean, if feels like I've read the first chapter of a longer book.  Which, since its issue one of three, I guess I did.  And, honestly, totally honestly, I'm definitely going to read the other two issues.  I'm  interested enough to make that promise.  I think along with the story that interest, that enjoyment?  A good part of that to do with the art.  I'm no Art Critic (nor am I a Comic Critic for that matter), but the art and story went hand in hand here.    In other books I've read, I often do all the reading and then go back and skim the pictures.  But in this case I read and looked at the same time.  In fact, as I went to the next page, first I took in the art, and then I read the words.  Not my usual order.  Things are changing.  A lady becomes a woman, a moon becomes a star, a baby chews beef jerky.  Evolution.

So, ah….that's all I got.  I'd like to read the next two issues before the movie comes out.   But if not, I may have to go back and read some back issues and get my questions answered.  Or, ya'll can fill me in!

-Nina Stone, 2008

Comics Of The Weak: According To Takashi Miike, That Was Real Vomit

Batman # 678
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

So you've got Final Crisis, which is sort of a comic mixed with an easter egg hunt for references to Seven Soldiers, Kirby's 4th World, Flex Mentallo and a dash of JLA, and yet it all sort of works.  Then you've got a Batman story which is an easter egg hunt as well, for references to all kinds of Bat-arcana, which is a bit more difficult and sort of like watching the Criterion version of Band of Outsiders, using the strange "visual glossary" special feature, where you can watch only the parts of the movie that details all of the cultural references and wordplay that was inserted into the film's narrative, and watching that will take almost as much time to watch as it does to watch the movie.  The comic itself is a struggle between the two main ideas of RIP--one of which is sort of the same basic story that was created to break Batman's spine (bad guy and team have a plan to break Batman down mentally) and Grant Morrison's other idea, which is that everything that's happened to Batman (the character) in all those years of Batman (the comic) has actually happened to the current Batman.  So RIP becomes a have your cake, have all of the cakes, eat them, and then go to the internet to find out what all the ingredients were.  All of the problems that Grant Morrison's run have had are still there, obviously Tony Daniel hasn't all of a sudden become Frank Quitely, and the comic itself reads as bombastic as possible, with roaring proclamations from each character every few pages--yes, it's entertaining, after a fashion, but it's not an immediate entertainment.  There aren't a lot of super-hero comics that come across with this much ambition, with this much lunacy--and for what that's worth, it's a successful diversion from the norm.  But that's the thing, isn't it?  How much does the regular Bat-fan want a diversion from the norm?  We can't imagine that's the majority--and while not having a majority like it doesn't mean something is bad, hell, a lot of people like the Sandra Bullock Crash, and that film is complete fucking shit, yet all of that does make Batman RIP seem like a story whose consequence, whose attitude of importance, is one completely without merit.  No matter what Grant does here, it's hard to believe that any of this will be acknowledged by anyone else.  The further along it goes down it's rabbit hole, the harder it is to believe that DC is going to have the Bruce Wayne here be the same Bruce Wayne that leads the Outsiders and eats on piers with Wonder Woman.  Which of course, shouldn't have anything to do with whether it's worth reading.  But it doesn't help.

Nightwing # 146
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Don Kramer, Sandu Florea & Nathan Eyring
Published by DC Comics

Nightwing is so goddamn strange.  It's the comic equivalent of that I Am Sam soundtrack, where a bunch of middling to bad musicians got together and did middling to bad covers of Beatles songs, all for the sake of  a terrible movie that was poorly edited.  Tomasi's work is better than that, sure, Dakota Fanning doesn't appear at all in Nightwing, he's just writing a relatively inoffensive super-hero story with terrible fucking tools, since Nightwing has no real adversary or purpose when he's divorced from the books he usually participates in--there's just no reason for this character to be doing anything.  There's nothing to it--he doesn't have Batman's obsessive grip on a barely remembered tragedy from his youth, he doesn't have the brainwashed worship of ethics and justice that gets Superman out of bed, hell, Nightwing doesn't have feelings at all.  The stuff that makes the most sense for the character is the thrill-seeking silliness when he goes skydiving or hang gliding, but that only makes up about one panel of the story.  The rest is all standard superheroics, ending with a weird idea that Superman should help build an Oklahoma City style memorial for dead super-heroes.  If that little twist was in The Boys, it would be treated as an off-hand joke; in the mouths of DC's mega-heroes, it's just tasteless.  So what we're saying would fix Nightwing (the title) would be if NIghtwing (the character) went on more extreme sport adventures while having feelings about it. 

The Boys # 20
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

When collected in the trade format, it's probably going to be the violence and nasty humor that punctuates most of the conversation--this issue is one that's short on both, being mostly (as Kevin Church so aptly put it) "How To Make Entertaining Comics Information Dumps" with a little dash of a big dick contest between Butcher and the Superman-pastiche.  The comic is gearing up for what will probably be one it's more difficult-for-some -to-stomach issues, as it's getting ready to deal with the events of September 11th, so it's probably for the best that this is a slow back-story issue--after all, Ennis is the same guy who lovingly depicted the assassination of the current US President a few years ago, and God knows that 9/11 is going to be just as tough of a beast to satirize.  While The Boys occasionally has the tendency to read like the long-gone DC series Hitman with all gloves set on fire, there's some nice stuff that happens in the title behind all the blood and vileness, continuing to make it the best i'm-so-sick-and-tired-of-spandex book on the stands. 

Astonishing X-Men # 25
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Simone Bianchi & Simone Peruzzi
Published by Marvel Comics

John Cassady's absence couldn't be felt more strongly if they'd hired Toby Keith to handle the art details--there's probably some long form explanation for why Simone Bianchi's art is so unattractive, most of which probably comes under the heading of "what the fuck is this guy even trying to draw" but we'll just leave it at "ugly shit, in color."  Warren Ellis throws together some left-over dialog from Transmetropolitan/Fell/Stormwatch for the Beast and that little girl, mixes it with a Jenny Sparks Emma and decides to save the plot for later, even going so far as to end the issue mid-conversation.  Which is totally in his right, since the whole issue is a bunch of conversations anyway--any hopes that this version of the X-Men was going to be like an A-level Nextwave is out the window.  Just yap yap, it's the X-men as a toy poodle, there you go, have at it.

Punisher War Journal # 21
Written by Matt Fraction & Rick Remender
Art by Howard Chaykin, Edgar Delgado & Jesus Alberto
Published by Marvel Comics

It's been months since Fraction's War Journal made the switch from dirty black comedy Punisher to serious Punisher involving old X-Force characters, and it continues to be a totally baffling decision.  While no one is expecting this stuff to behave like the MAX contingent, there's really no good reason for this comic to be this bad, but holy Christ it is.  It's as if Fraction & Remender went through the archives, tracked down all the Punisher stories that weren't successful enough to keep the series from getting canceled, and decided that was the model they were going to follow. "Here it is!  Complete shit!  Copy it immediately!"  If the goal was to create something off-putting, then it's a success--there's really nothing else that occurs, beyond the opportunity to see Marvel file Howard Chaykin in the same category as Steve Dillon which must be labeled "talented individuals whose time we like wasting."

Secret Invasion: Front Line # 1
Written by Brian Reed
Art by GG Studios, Giuliano Mondi, Marco Castiello, Barbara Ciardo & Amerigo Pinelli
Published by Marvel Comics

Odd art credits in this--it's actually referenced as Art by GG Studios and includes somebody named Giuliano Mondi as the "Team Coordinator."  It still ends up looking similar to most of what Marvel puts out, only with extra panels where it's just characters against a complete white background.  It's not offensive, or anymore cumbersome than any seemingly computerized super-hero art, but the white background panels are odd looking.  Story-wise, this entire comic is reminiscent of that scene in Armageddon where the actor who played Long Duck Dong has a cameo in a cab driven by that actor who used to have a show on ABC's TGIF night.  It's just "normal" people dealing with the Marvel universe.  They've been publishing this kind of shit for years--the earliest the Factual remembers was the original Gotham Nights series, which was a real piece of garbage too--and it hasn't gotten any more interesting.  Independence Day isn't that great of a movie, and it wouldn't be any better if you just cut all the scenes where there's fighting and aliens and left all the parts where Jeff Goldblum gets drunk and kicks a trashcan.  It'd be shorter, but it would still be dumb as shit.

American Splendor # 4
Written by Harvey Pekar
Art by Darick Robertson, Ty Templeton, Dean Haspiel, Rick Geary, Greg Budgett, Gary Dumm
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

There's more cohesion then the previous issues in this run of American Splendor--it's still meta-comics about a guy coming up with ideas to make the comic you're reading, so enjoyment is dependent on how close you like your eyeballs to your navel.  Darick Robertson gets a chance to draw here, and it's rather pleasant to see someone whose work is a little less Haspiel, if only because Haspiel seems to be drawing these in the five minutes at night before he goes to sleep, yet he's still sort of the go-to Pekar guy sheerly by constantly showing up.  Altogether, this is probably the best issue of the series, but it's lacking the sense that there's real effort being put into the project itself--all in all, this second Vertigo series was just a  banal personal information dump from a man whose life is completely lacking in conflict.  It's great that things are going well for Harvey.  But it sure isn't that fun to read about.

Chas: The Knowledge # 1
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by Goran Sudzuka & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

How much does the regular Vertigo reader know about the "knowledge" anyway?  The offices here have framed original prints of Michael Apted's Up Series, so we're all well-versed in the arcane, yet absolutely remarkable, nature of the education of British cabbies.  While it's great to see Vertigo give Simon Oliver some more time after the cancellation of Exterminators, publishing a comic about a side-character from Hellblazer is a real odd choice, even odder, it's a side character who doesn't really ever do much in Hellblazer besides get pissy when people make fun of his wife.  Hopefully this is a mini-series that's being published because Oliver had a story he really wanted to tell--otherwise, it's just odd to find out that Chas was a character DC thought really needed more explanation.  He's a cabbie in a shitty marriage, with the worst possible best friend in comics.  We wouldn't imagine that needed five comic books to deal with.

Northlanders # 7
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Davide Gianfelice & Dave McCaig
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Whereas DMZ comes with an almost 100% guarantee that it's lead character won't die, regardless of how whiny and obnoxious he behaves, Northlanders doesn't carry such a predictability with it--remember the big nefarious guy who has been wandering threatening and foreshadowing shit regarding the hapless Sven?  Well, fuck that dude, he is totally dead in all the dead ass glory of a Davide Gianfelice splash page, and with him are a whole lot of other people, and Northlanders has gone ahead and jacked its status quo.  If this is the way Brian is going to roll with this series--a nasty few issues that only look like a slow build because they weren't as saturated in blood as this ode de carnage, then it's one that more people should be looking into.  Nasty, hellacious shit, and to all those people who called it emo-Vikings?  Ya'll are fucking insane.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Economist Vs. Idiot: The Ultimate Yo' Mama Battle

The World Last Week

-There is something pretty audacious about attacking an offshore oil rig and then immediately declaring a cease fire.  The oil rig is still on fire, and you set it on fire, and they haven't gotten fifty percent of the fire under control, and you call up and say, "hey, no punch-backs."  Nigerian rebels?  I salute your arrogance.

-While it's pretty great, if they are all guilty, that Saudi Arabia caught 520 suspected militants, it certainly seems to come a little suspiciously close to a certain spike in oil prices.  Could have we caught these cats before the whole 135 dollar barrel thing?

-Slobodan Milosevic's former party decided to back up a Serbian party called the "Democratic Party."  Milosevic?  Really?  How many of his buddies didn't go the way of the Hague?

-According to a torture poll in 19 countries, the majority of the world doesn't like 24.  Their loss!  Tony's back!

-If you like to keep up with the news more often then these little ditties, which God hopes you do, because I'm an idiot with a computer, keep your eyes on Bolivia--the number of provinces that have voted for autonomy from the government is now at four.  The four provinces make up, basically, the entire GNP of the country.

-Here's a quote from Obama that's kind of...well, less pretty and heartwarming than usual:  "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."  Which is sort of like saying, "We lie about shit to get votes, and sometimes when we're lying we raise our voices and stuff, but it doesn't mean anything."

-John McCain's response was "You know I was a POW right?  I can't lift my arms above my head, it's really fucked up."

-Ha, if you want to get hired by the Justice Department, don't write the words "social" or "environmental" on your application, because it turns out that they throw those applications away.  I do the same thing when models send in cards that I didn't ask for if the models are American.  Weird!

-Two of the largest garbage companies in America will merge and form the greatest garbage company the world has ever known, and they will begin a new ad campaign featuring an animated animal with a celebrity voice.  Part of what I wrote is untrue.  Or not?

Leaders

-You know who is a big deal?  Bill Gates is a big deal.  On the eve of his official departure from that company that he created, Micro-something, The Economist gives him a mighty send-off: cover duties, which is pretty rare for a non-politician, first billing in the Leaders section (where they focus on his past) and then a state-of-Soft piece later in the magazine.  It's all interesting stuff, albeit a bit of a retread--there's the futurist mindset that showed up when Gates was able to predict what could be done with PC technology part, the antagonistic relationship with the government portion, the failures of Vista updates--most of this stuff you've read before, even if you have the barest knowledge of what Microsoft does.  The only thing missing is the part where they offer predictions on whether this is a straight-up retire to the Gates Foundation thing, or whether he's going to pull a Shawn Carter.  We'll see.

-After last weeks aggravation--I say a lot of mean shit, but I don't think I've ever proclaimed that someone should straight up die, which is exactly what I said about Robert Mugabe last week--I was curious as to what the Economist would say after Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal.  After all, it's their journalism, coupled with the horrific propaganda that shows up on the Internet courtesy of Zanu-PF supporters that has brought about my own ire--what, exactly, were the writers who helped get me boiling going to say?

"It would be glorious if he were removed by any method at all."

I stand by my original statement.  The sooner Mugabe is out of power--whether it's by a fanatics gun or some unprecedented (and unlikely) courage on the part of the African Union or the Southern African Development Community--the better for the people of Zimbabwe and the world in general.  He can't be gone soon enough.  Until he is, the campaign of abduction, torture, rape and murder that he and his thugs have wrecked on that country will continue, and the proportion of blame for his actions that the rest of Africa, and the world in general, is responsible for will continue to grow.  Mugabe is never going to stop killing people. 

-The Economist rarely runs articles like this one about the potential for an Israeli air strike on Iranian weapons facilities--if you read it, you'll notice that the only source for the article is "a spike in chatter" over "recent weeks."  The quotes in the article, from John Bolton and Mohamed ElBaradei are certainly relevant, although neither seem to have come to the Economist by their own journalists in pursuit of this specific story.  While that sort of mysterious sourcing usually makes a news article, to my mind, a bit suspect, having it occur in a publication (that so rarely does that type of reporting) works in the opposite fashion, making it rather unnerving.

-The last time Compartamos (the Mexican bank earning huge profits on it's microloans) showed up in the Economist, the article was far less supportive then it is on this little go-round--when I read the previous article, the focus was on their usurious interest rates, now settled to be around 79% on the low side.  After reading the article, I can't say that I disagree with their assessment:  Compartamos certainly has a frighteningly high interest rate, and the majority of loans are too the poorest of the poor, but they certainly seem to be helping a lot of people out, and they are completely open to public scrutiny.  Maybe these guys aren't as bad as the legbreakers in a cop drama.

Letters

-There's two people who I just find ridiculously precious this week-a musician from New York who seems to have bought the "Iraq is getting better" issue because the cover featured an Iraqi luthier, which is a sort of lute, and wrote in that all the readers should go buy one, because...oh why not?  Anybody who opens a letter with "I am a musician by profession..." is always going to finish their statement with something silly.  Always.  The other person is somebody who wrote in to say that he prefers to be called Joe Sixpack instead of Joe Couchpotato.  Somebody took time out of their life to do that, and now I'm taking time out of yours to tell you that it irritated me.  It's like that song in the Lion King.

United States

-One of the minor footnotes to the Supreme Court's ruling against Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban comes directly from Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta--the pot of money that goes towards dealing with the litigation that the Supreme Court's ruling will likely create also happens to be the pot of money used to fight crime--meaning that resources that could be better occupied may end up stuck in the morass of individual states dealing with the weight of gun-lovers fighting to change local legislation.  While there aren't many times that I've found myself in agreement with Justice Scalia, who I find to be a bit of a troll, it's somewhat difficult to disagree with his contention that the Supreme Court is not the venue for re-writing the Constitution.  (The fact that Scalia didn't say the same thing the 900 times previous is a bit repugnant.)  That being said, this is an event that's going to have some pretty extensive effects over the coming months, months I hope will be like the first Die Hard movie, because regardless of what the last one would have you believe computer crime is goddamn boring.  Ho Ho Ho!  [Lame pop cultural reference]

-If you like your fast food to be an ethical enterprise, then you probably want to make sure that you order the locations you visit like this: Taco Bell, then McDonald's followed by Burger King.  That's the order in which those corporations agreed to give raises to Florida's tomato pickers, who haven't received one in 30 years.  (The raise is an extra cent a pound.)  Another interesting point--Burger King officials had referred to the tomato pickers--who are mostly South American and Haitian immigrants--as "bloodsuckers" and "the lowest form of human life."  Finally, and here's the part I love the most:  If you shop at Whole Foods, Subway, Wal-Mart or Chipotle?  They've refused to give the raise for years.  Which means that people who eat at Taco Bell are more ethical tomato consumers than people who re-use canvas bags at Whole Foods.  In your face, San Francisco! 

-I haven't been to Missouri in years, and it looks like I better go soon, because this article about the economic problems and the fear of a Budweiser buy-out make it sound like the state is going to turn into a giant version of Flint, Michigan.  By the way, if you don't click on this article, you won't get to see what the asshole titled the article.  What a dick!

-This one is for the Factual Opinion's regular music columnist:  Lexington takes a look at Lil Wayne and Dead Prez.  I can't believe I just wrote that, but hey, it's totally true.  The esteemed political correspondant for the Economist who handles the America beat wrote the sentence, "The disrespect in question was a suggestion that the judge perform fellatio on him." 

The Americas

-Most of the South American correspondents probably got tasked with working on the big feature on the status of migration near the opening of this weeks issue, which might explain why the only thing I found worth checking recommending out of this section was the article about how the way America treats Cuba isn't as make-out-sesh worthy as the way the European Union does.  Still, not a whole lot of cash changing hands except for that marked "care of Venezuela."

Asia

-North Korea blew up a cooling tower, and might get off the terror list in 45 days.  The people of North Korea?  Still starving.  It would go against all of Kim Jong Il's history to make a sacrifice of whatever nuclear program he had (or has) for the sake of aid to the people suffering in North Korea, so whatever it is that China put on the table (regardless of their meaningless threats), it must be pretty special.

-China is pulling a scorched earth policy with the latest outbreak of avian flu, which showed up again on June 11th.  Why they are going to the lengths they are (at least 25,000 birds killed in just over a week) hasn't leaked out yet--they're keeping the information as secret as they can (which is easy, because, you know, it's China.)  There's still no cases where avian flu has passed from human to human, but somewhere in the past month, Chinese government policy is now treating it like it could.  That's awesome?

-Another ferry disaster in the Philippines, and as the article points out, little has changed to make future disasters unlikely.  There's no money, but plenty demand, for ferries in the Philippines--which means a lot of people without the qualifications to be in the charge of 862 human lives are currently calling themselves "Captain." 

Middle East and Africa

-I think this section has been covered enough this week.

Europe

-Lech Walsea has been accused of being a former informant to the secret police during the early 70's.  While he obviously disputes the accusation, it's sad to see that someone who worked so hard (and admittedly advertised how hard he worked) to bring democracy to his native country of Poland now having to deal with the slings and arrows at during the winter of his life.  Jesus, I just wrote "winter of his life."  What the hell is wrong with me?  Awesome 'stache, by the by.

-I know we all love Charlemagne, how can we not all love Charlemagne, but he/she already turned in a "The European Union hates a 'no' vote" column last week.  There's already two other articles about the recent Irish referendum in the issue.  I got it.  We all got it.  At least get some new quotes if you're going to cover the same ground.

Britain

-More and more American's are bailing out of London due to job cuts and the credit crunch, despite the fact that Brits are starting to dig them again.  (A May poll revealed that only 35% of the population believe that the US is a "force for evil," which also means George Bush and James Dobson don't have a monopoly on really ridiculous usages of the English language when it comes to describing people they don't agree with.  "Force for evil."  Fucking children and lunatics talk like that.)

-Britain seems to finally be moving towards doing away with anonymous witnesses, which is that oh-so-terrible idea where you allow people to testify in a court of law behind a screen, so people can't see them.  Which I guess looks like that part in the Golden Child were Eddie Murphy hits on the snake lady. 

-Bagehot decides to tear down Gordon Brown, a man who we'd all probably make fun of more often if there wasn't a certain American president who dismantles sayings and cliches all the time--apparently Gordon Brown actually said Nelson Mandela would be freed "in our lunch time" and pronounces the Dalai Lama "Dial-eye Lama."  There's more here, but honestly, I just ruined the best bit.  (Which is really early in the piece, so don't get all pissy.)

International (Project Failure Returns)

-Things no one should get paid to write about:  Finnish schools, devoted Classics scholars, and motherfuckingblogs.

Business

-While the usual article about micropayment set-ups is one that consists of all the companies that failed to pull it off, it seems to be working extraordinarily well for a bunch of online games.  I've never quite understood the attraction of spending hours wandering a virtual world and paying real money for a fake cloak, but enough people do that for some people to get rich.  I wonder what bread paid for by obsessive-compulsives tastes like?

-Spaniards have been receiving electricity subsidies for so long that the electricity "tariff deficit" is now around $22 billion.  Not only that, but the power companies have been forced to sell electricity at prices too low to cover the actual costs for years, continuing to make the problem even worse.  Bizarre.

-In a story that will probably follow me around in my own daytime job far more than I care to imagine, the incredibly successful South Korean department store Lotte will now attempt to move into China, a land lacking in department stores where sociopathic spinsters can spend thousands under the watchful wings of personal escorts.

Finance and Economics

-Japanese banks are some of the only gigantic financial institutes to escape the subprime crisis relatively unscathed, so now they are on the warpath to make sure that they can find themselves in a hole of their own because hey, it's not like things can get any worse, right?

-The Economist plays it light while dealing with the relationship between Bank of America and Countrywide, because hey, it's not like Bank of America is actually going to say "you know, we really shouldn't have done this."

-The big full page Economics Focus this week is focused on inflation expectations, something that's never been a strong suit when it came to divination, but what surprised me (and shouldn't have) was the reference to Milton Friedman as a "great economist" when I'd pretty much agreed with Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine analysis--that Friedman was sort of a queasy sociopath whose economic strategies seemed at best, optimistic, at worst, disgustingly cruel.  But hey, that's why Naomi writes for the Nation, right?

Science and Technology

 -While individual genome readings and personalized medicine isn't far enough along to refer to as being in the infancy stage, there is an aspect of individual diagnosis that is moving along a little quicker: metabolomics, or, as my friends like to call it "the study of metabolotes."  While the article doesn't delve into the possible science fiction future of metabolomics, I think any sufficiently immature individual will walk away from this article with the same thought I had:  eventually, after you use the toilet, the toilet will be the one who tells you that you have cancer.  Because it will read it in your leavings.

-Keeping up with a gastro-themed newsweek, there's a group of people working on the Human Microbiome Project who are tasked with classifying bacterial genes, of which there could end up being around 200,000.  So far, they have produced enough information to theorize that antibiotics, vaccines and improved sanitation are responsible for a "massive rise in inflammatory bowel disease."  Did you know there was a massive rise in that?  I didn't.  I guess that isn't something a lot of people talk about.  Just something that a lot of people have.

Books and Arts

-I'm not going to read Joseph O'Neill's new novel Netherland.  Why?  Because of this:  "Yet the plot is light and fragile.  Single pleasing paragraphs do not a sound novel make.  However beguiling the decor, however beautiful the carved cornices, the gleaming brass fixtures, if the joists of a building are made of balsa wood it is not a good investment."  Dude you totally burned that guy

-The Economist has a heart, as evidenced by how upset they were made by reading Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, which certainly sounds like a book made to produce sadness.  There's only about 25,000 wild horses out roaming public land, about 30,000 in holding pens, and about 8,000 of the 30 are on their way to the slaughterhouse.  The ones roaming around get hustled off to death with helicopters.  Ain't no good times coming.

-The Economist usually likes it when academic books read like academic books, but nothing boils their oil then when writers take an important subject, do a shitload of research, and then turn out a book that's unreadable but to academics--hence their quiet contempt for Fixing Failed States, a book that they clearly wish had been published with the goal of a mass reader in mind.  It's an easy argument to climb on board with--Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are some major examples of collapsed countries, and it would've been pretty great to have a policy manual from brainaics while there's still time to do something about it.

Obituary: Arthur Galston

-While I doubt few knew his name, Arthur Galston's dual legacy as the scientist whose accidental discovery of usages for 2,3,4-triiodenzoic acid led to the creation of Agent Orange, and as the scientist who then fought to end the mass spraying of the herbicide is one of those classic stories of 20th century science that won't be foreign to but a few.  While he'll probably be most missed by those who took his popular bioethics course at Yale over the last twenty years, he was certainly a rare individual--a man whose dedication to knowledge and science never fell out of step with his belief, and fervent practice, of intellectual responsibility.  With hope, he instilled those some ideals in those with the chance to study underneath him--just as it was instilled in him by those who had him as a student.

-Next week in the Economist they hopefully had time to talk about the hostage rescue in Columbia, which is one of those stories I'd hoped would have a happy ending, and am delirious to find out it did.