New & Notable

DO Y'ALL KNOW about Audiofile, Salon.com's music page? It's a damn fine keeper, because in addition to some good music writing and interviews, they have a big selection of MP3 files that y'all can download for the sum of absolutely nothin' as in free (just right-click on Save Link As...). There are hundreds of songs offered here, with a new one added daily, although most of them tend to be on the obscure side. But as we all know, today's abstract obscurities are tomorrow's overplayed annoyances. I found songs by Spoon, the Wedding Present, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Patti Smith... It takes a while to go through it all alphabetically, but there's worthwhile stuff by artists like James Chance (Contort Yourself), New Pornographers, Cowboy Junkies, the Damned (Neat Neat Neat), John Doe, Albert Hammond Jr. ... It just takes patience, little grasshoppers, time and patience...

Audiofile also has links to what they call Great Literary Podcasts, including readings by Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Dylan Thomas ... Steven Van Zandt touches on the final days of The Sopranos, the future of rock & roll, and of course Bruuuuuuuuce ... and a brief but enticing Q&A with Joe Strummer biographer Chris Salewicz.that's gonna make y'all wanna read the book ... All adds up to a fine way to spend a morning or afternoon at work, no? Let it be our little secret ... we're just passing time before the afterlife here, at best...

Speaking of Spoon, the recent New Yorker has a nice little piece on the new album from the underrated Austin-based band, who I believe will be playing a free show somewhere in New York next month ... I wanna say July 11th...

The New Yorker also published a chapter from Falling Man, the new Don DeLillo novel; read it here...

For enjoyable summer reading in the often unintentionally comedic realm of Washington politics, peruse the various "character" letters penned by supporters of Scooter Libby pleading for leniency, clemency and mercy for the convicted perjurer, who was sentenced to 30 months for his part in the Valerie Plame scandal. Among those writing the federal judge on behalf of Dick Cheney's right-hand hit-man are disgraced politicians like Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Henry Kissinger, bringing to mind the hackneyed phrase, With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies ... In letters authored by the aforementioned maniacs, as well as in misguided missives written by other equally toxic creeps like Mary Matlin, Doug Feith and James Woolsey, Libby is brazenly portrayed as a statesmanlike cross between the Dalai Lama, Winston Churchill and Jesus Christ himself, instead of the vengeful party hack and Bush party line enforcer he has always been. Further evidence that more than six years into Bush's disastrous reign of error, administration supporters still function in a parallel universe completely cut off from our reality-based world, increasingly incapable or uninterested in separating fact from fiction. Wolfowitz in particular contributes 4 pages of blatant falsehoods, resorting to pitiful platitudes like "Mr. Libby is one of the least partisan individuals you will find in Washington" and the even more ridiculous "He never seems to take any pleasure in the misfortunes of others, even those with whom he strongly disagrees." When you stop laughing uncontrollably from those well-honed one-liners, by all means read the rest of Wolfie's stand-up routine as well as the other desperately deceitful letters on the always-rewarding smokinggun.com website and make your own mocking Waaaa-waaa!! noises as you revel in another neocon scumbag's fall from grace. I know I will!






















In a related note, Robert Zoellick, the new World Bank president tapped by Bush to replace the outgoing Wolfowitz, appears to be cut from the same mendacious mold as his prevaricating predecessor: a fellow signatory of the noxiously injudicious Project for a New American Century, pledging to do all he can do help the world's poor, etc. No big surprise, because catching these corrupt neocon Bushmen is like an endless game of whack-a-mole: as soon as one conservative boogeyman is disgraced and pushed out the door a la Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, et al, another one rises out of his stink hole like a prairie rat, ready to feed from the public trough and make as much money as possible for themselves and enriching their supporters while plying their trade in government service. That's really all they're about; everything else is window dressing, more of the old bait and switch. And why not? It's not like Americans are catching on to the whole mess...