The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo

Aimless surfing on the Internet turned up this video of Oingo Boingo on the Gong Show! Ahhh, two great tastes in one bit of video.




I used to love this show because it was a complete goof all the way around. Nobody took anything about this show seriously, including host and producer Chuck Barris. He was perpetually genial, stoned and eternally uncomfortable. The celebrity panelists often got into fights over ringing the gong. The show always teetered between manufactured chaos and enervated ennui. Painful when it was bad, which was pretty often, but lunatic genius when everything was working.

Only thing in this clip missing was Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine.

Random Blog Comment of the Day

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

New Blog on the Block

Darrell Phillip's move to FOX13 earlier this year is already bearing nice fruit: mymemphispolitics.com. It's a straight-up, plain-vanilla aggregator site, but it's nicely laid out. No commentary or opinion from a station blogger, unlike Nashville's Volunteer Voters, produced by WKRN. (Hey, Darrell! Give me a call. Let's talk....)

The tagline is "blog central for memphis politicians, pundits and everyone else." But with the name, I'm guessing they'll stick to mostly politics.

Nice to see someone take something like this up. Hopefully it leads to more blogreading and more interested voters.

EVENING UPDATE: Well, I don't know why, but I'm already seeing a steady stream of visitors from that blog. Welcome! I've been dormant a good while, so feel free to root around the archives some for the good stuff.

Dutch Treat Luncheon -- June 2007

Main Street Journal presents : June Dutch Treat Luncheon

When: Saturday, June 16 - 11:30 AM - 12:45
Where: The Butcher Shop, Cordova
June Theme: Memphis Aerotropolis Cleanup and the Cordova Strip Club Controversy

June Panel:
Councilman Myron Lowery (Memphis City Council)
Mark Chambers (President, Cordova Leadership Council)
Mike Hollihan (Senior Writer, Main Street Journal)
George Kuykendall (Director, Citizens for Community Values)

Moderator: Jonathan Lindberg, Publisher, Main Street Journal

* Please note there was a misprint in this month's issue of Main Street Journal concerning the date of the June luncheon. Please help pass the word.

The oldest and most influential political gathering in Memphis for over 50 years. Come be a part of the dialogue that is shaping Greater Memphis.

Open to all. Great food. Shared community. Meaningful discussion.

Sponsored by Main Street Journal.

Tennessee is the New Saudi Arabia

Someone with too much time on his hands has created this map, whereby each of the states of the Union is renamed for the GDP of a national economy it is roughly equal to.

Here in the South, Alabama is Iran, Mississippi is Chile, Arkansas is Pakistan and Kentucky is Portugal.

Illinois is Mexico and California is France, but let's leave it there, shall we?

Solid State Society

Whoa! When did this happen? I was cruising past the SciFi channel tonight and spotted an ad for the anime movie Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society. Apparently, SciFi now has something called Ani-Monday. I watch SciFi somewhat irregularly (mostly for Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who and sometimes Enterprise) but I haven't seen anything about this.

Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society is a stand-alone movie that builds from the series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which derives from the theatrical film Ghost in the Shell. The original GitS was a serious meditation about the line between man and machine when technology has blurred things to the point where fully cyborged humans are now possible. If a consciousness arises in their future Internet and claims sentience, who is to say it isn't human? The style of the animation and film was very much Blade Runner crossed with a touch of William Gibson's Neuromancer. It's as cyberpunk as cinema gets.

The Stand Alone Complex series shifted in nature to become a kind of police procedural with strong political thriller overtones. The focus is on the work of Section 9, a high-tech SWAT force for high-tech crimes, led by the hero of the film, Major Motoko Kusanagi, a fully cyborged "human." Only her brain remains from her former body.

The series delved deep into this world of the near future, very dystopian and still unequal. People with money or connections can get fully wired into a 'Net that interfaces directly with the optic and auditory systems, a 'Net that is to today's Internet as ours is to a telegraph system.

Political intrigues and strange new crimes are the subject of the show, and it's pretty darn good. It's not at all for kids -- Adult Swim was showing it after midnight. Blood and gruesome, sudden death were common, but the exploration of the political and power structures of this strange new world would bore the pants off most kids.

And now I get to watch the last of the series: Solid State Society! Thank you SciFi!

It's Miller Time!

Wow. Dennis Miller tears Senate Majority "leader" Harry Reid a new one.

Miller is right. If Reid is what passes for leadership, then this is indeed a pale grey age for Democrats. You have to go back to Bob Dole to find someone who understood the power and the role of the Senate. He may have been a banana peel in front of the '94 Republican revolution, but Dole definitely understood the purpose of the Senate in constitutional politics.

Reid will be forgotten before mid-century.