Solemn Avalanche

They just played "You're No Rock and Roll Fun" by Sleater-Kinney on Pimp My Ride.  That's fitting.  Allergy season is kicking off, that makes me happy, because I was having a major fucking problem not spending $30 every few weeks on allergy medicine.  Fucking trees.

Robert Pollard has over 1500 songs credited to his name.  This makes him one of the most prolific songwriters of all time.  But that ain't all of it.  He has a huge suitcase in his house that is full of tapes, which are full of songs.  They say they contain somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 songs.  20,000 songs!  And Pollard doesn't really show any specific drive to get them released.  I guess you wouldn't if you were writing a few songs a day, but who knows.  And the way he writes songs, usually, is by making huge lists of weird song titles, then later writing songs that he thinks would fit with the titles

quickly, an addendum to the death list:

Abe Vigoda:  I love the guy but times up.
Kirk Douglas: Yeah I dont actually like him.  Or his son.
Jimmy Carter:  The only viable president to be on this list for probably a few terms.  Though I dont really think he'll die, he might, and I cant pass up that chance.  I already dropped the ball with Anna Nicole (I tried to think of anyone who was younger, specifically the whole 'vh1 set' that might be a loose cannon.  I really would have put her on it if I thought of her.)  Also feel free to spread the rumor that she overdosed on TrimSpa.  I made it up but I want it to be true so badly.
Paul Harvey:  So I'm guessing you guys dont listen to Harvey, but I used to some drywalling, and we'd listen to him a lot.  Not really my choice but whatever.
Merle Haggard:  My favorite living county singer.  So yeah.


Honorable mentions:  Hank Aaron, Pele, Thomas Pynchon, Stan Ovshinsky (the battery guy in Who Killed the Electric Car), Joel Goddard.  Obligatory rapper:  Keak Da Sneak.

Hi.  So every year I try to make a list of people I think will die in the coming year. Not that anyone cares.  Anyway so over the years I've picked a few, including Hunter S. Thompson, James Brown, and I think Gerald Ford.  Here:

• BB King - Yeah your time's up.  Plus you havent actually released anything I've ever been even remotely interested in.
• Wilford Brimley - Die-uh-beet-us is comin' to getcha!  Besides, I've never liked you, not as the Liberty Medical guy, not as the Quaker Oats guy, not as the guy on that 80s tv show.  And you look like death.
• Charton Heston - This year we're taking the gun "from your cold dead hands." 
  
• Peter Faulk - Feel regretful that I just watched Princess Bride because if I hadn't, you'd still be living in 2008.
• Fidel Castro - Provided you ain't already dead, seriously this is your year.  Not that you are a threat in the least and maybe our government should get its head out of its ass and realize that a trade embargo on Cuba is pretty dumb.  Cuba's bad, but China, the communist nation that actually poses a threat?  Yeah go ahead and deal with them because they can make us some cheap furniture.
• Phillis Diller - I really like her, but she's pretty old.  I'll say she'll make it to her 90th birthday, but that's it.
• Walter Cronkite - I thought he died years ago.  "This just in, Uncle Walter's dead.  And that's the way it is."
• Muhammad Ali - Yeah he might as well have died ten years ago.
• Magic Johnson - You know how people said that he doesn't have HIV anymore?  Yeah I'm here to say not only does he have it, but it's taking him down.
  
• Norman Mailer - OLD. 
  
• Kurt Vonnegut - Great guy, but put in in the same category as Norman Mailer.  Nigga's old.
• Warren Buffet - Literally the only investor I know.  And he's the coolest guy ever.  Lives in the first house he bought, even though he's the second richest man in the world.  He's cool.
• JD Salinger - Back in the day I loved The Catcher In the Rye.  Loved it.  But Salinger went all weird and hasn't really done anything else since then.  I'm hoping he dies, then they find a Catcher In the Rye Pt. II or something.  That's really the only reason I want him to die.
• Sandra Day O'Connor - Really if a Justice has to go I'd rather have it be one that is retired and not one that can be replaced with Harriet Miers or something.

Now I don't actually want any of these people to die, but if they did die, I wouldn't be sad, mainly because I have them on my list.

i ain't never embedded no video before. but i enjoyed the SHIT out of this.  it's bob dylan.  and yeah, fuck you lj because i just wanted to embed some video.  sorry it isn't youtube or google or something.  big security risk though.  it's fucking flash.  every website has flash, but yeah, it could ruin the site.  assholes.

fuck me.  it's been a while.  a year, one might say.  so in the next paragraph i'll update on my busy life since last october.

the end.

i didn't do anything, don't worry.  HOWEVER, i have listening to deerhoof's new album.  i liked their last one more than anything else of theirs i'd ever heard.  and this one is quite the same.  go here  to stream the whole thing.  and yeah if you've got firefox, forget it.  because firefox decided activeX is bad so they don't support it.  it's only essential to most audio-centric sites, not to mention a lot banking websites and such.  good fucking idea.  but anyway, it's like the last one, aka more coherent than their older stuff, but shorter.  so you get just as much goodness in half the songs.  because let's be honest:  the last album is a little tedious and you just end up skipping to the really good shit like "twin killers", "spirit ditties" and "siriustar".  obviously there's more than that but i'm lazy and don't want to end up writing the whole tracklist.

in the last six months i've managed to squeeze out one good picture of me.  that's my life.  it's a lot of pain, looking through hideous pictures, but eventually you come across one that is less ugly than the rest, and then you put it everywhere so it leaves a false impression of you.  the thing is the pictures are still ugly, but i got so little to work with here.

james brown died and i called it.  on here actually. 

andrew bird was a pretty sweet show.  luckily i was trying to save money so i helped this along by leaving my ticket at home, requiring me to spend ANOTHER $20.  fucking awesome. 

i've been rocking that family video store.  something like 16 movies for something like $7.  i've also been rocking that bittorrent software.  something like 40 albums for something like $0.  fucking riaa.  i've spent, literally, somewhere in the range of $7000 on cds.  what did that get me?  a bunch of cd's.  prices, as promised oh so many times, did not fucking drop.  remember back when universal said they were going to drop their prices down to $10 or lower on all cds?  haaaaaaaaaaaa.  that date came and went with not so much as a two dollar drop.  i'll say this, if cd's were $7 or so, i'd buy them ALL the fucking time.  so maybe in my heyday i was buying two cd's a week, i would have bought 5 or 6.  because it isn't so much the final cost that gets me, it's the unit cost.  how can i justify paying $18.99 (plus tax!) for an album i've barely heard (if at all).  herein lies the conundrum.  music i buy ain't on the radio, certainly not around this shithole town i live in.  that leaves downloading.  to the riaa that's evil.  but how the fuck else am i supposed to hear the music from this artist?  up until the last maybe two years, it was QUITE hard to find anything legal up for download.  now even with myspace and mp3 blogs and all that, you're lucky to get a song or two.  i can't justify spending three hours wage on two songs.  but $7?  yeah i'll blow that on something i've never even heard before.  because if i hate it, i'm only out a few bucks.  and music store employees could attest that i am way more apt to take risks on something i ain't heard, if they a.) read this, b.) were super attentive, and c.) talked to me about the reason i was purchasing the album.

in final newz, i HATE zanesville.  every single day i think about how much i hate my existence because i'm in zanesville.  so that needs to change.  after i sell a kidney or something.  that's it.

what to watch this week on late night television:

Monday:  toss up.  First I'd watch beck on letterman.  but then it gets complicated.  I'd go with Conan to catch the beautiful chan marshall as cat power.  though you could try to catch the yeah yeah yeah's on jimmy kimmel live.  i've heard they have a new song that's pretty good.

Tuesday: you can sleep.

Wednesday:  check regina spektor.  i dont even know what her own stuff sounds like.  but i do know she sang on a strokes b-side a few years ago.

Thursday: lady sovereign on letterman.  she's part of the whole dizzee rascal/m.i.a./streets london rap dance thing.  plus jayz loves her i guess.

Friday:  no.

speaking of m.i.a., has anyone heard gwen stefani's new song?  it's fucking horrible.  here.  i'm saying a combination of a bad stefani song, fergie's terrible repetitive rap thing, and m.i.a.'s weird vocal things.  but it sucks.

that's it.

and in case you didnt hear, janet weiss is the malkmus drummer.  the jicks just tightened up that rhythm section.

yeah.  so i was looking for info about joanna bolme on the internets, and i comes across this:  janet weiss joins the jicks!  now i'm obviously a huge malkmus fan, but when i saw sleater-kinney, i came away quite impressed with how good of a drummer weiss was.  and to hear her playing with malkmus, who evidently has "a bunch of ballsy new songs" is just awesome. 

that's all i've got.

i got yo la tengo's new album based solely on the first song.  it's fucking awesome.  the rest of it?  not so much.  actually it probably is, but i was disappointed that it ain't like the first track.  here's the dill: yo la tengo used to be this noise band, then they slowly started moving towards this slower, more mellow music.  i swear a few albums from now they'll be releasing a brian eno-esque music for airports or something.  but anyway, so then i hear "pass the hatchet, i think i'm goodkind" and i'm happy to hear that ira kaplan finally got his balls back.  alas the rest of the album isn't really like that. 

but it's probably still good.  i've been watching various political debates on cspan today.  i didn't work and thus didn't do a damn thing.  i did buy a pair of extremely tight dress pants at gabes today.  that's pretty cool.  i'll probably never wear them, but they were only two bucks.  they're tight even on my legs, and i've got scrawny legs.

yeah.  and i want to do something for halloween.  this will be the first in a while that i aint been to athens, cause i dont know anyone there this year.  but i still want to go badly.  so that's pretty cool.  i'll probably be spending this weekend doing nothing.  hilarious.

I love life right now. I haven't felt this optimistic in a long while, even though I'm going through my typical fall-depression (the autumn doldrums).  I'm in such a good mood I'm even using proper capitalization.

First, I was watching Meet the Press sunday and all four guests he had on, including a brother from the National Review, said the GOP is in big trouble.  That asshole Robert Novak predicts they'll lose 20 seats in the House, maybe more.  The NR dude says probably more.  And the polls they showed were reminiscent of the 1994 elections where the dems lost control o'er both their houses.  Anyway, so that was quite nice.  I'll admit, it felt nice to feel, for once, like someone I'm voting for might win.

Second, tv is finally getting good again.  Ever since the late 90's, television programming has pretty much sucked.  Dig this: 

• Sunday:  Amazing Race - the only reality show worth watching, nice sights.
  
• Monday:  Heroes - surprisingly good drama about people who have evolved to have special powers.  Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - Aaron Sorkin's latest show.  I've heard it's getting bad reviews, but I think it's pretty sweet nonetheless.
• Tuesday: Nothing.
• Wednesday: 30 Rock - maybe Tina Fey wasn't the reason SNL sucks, because I pretty much like this whole show.  Lost - as usual, I'm a pretty big lost fan.
• Thursday:  The Office - fucking awesome.  It's probably my most anticipated show of the week, taking the title from Lost.

Yeah.  I don't really like watching tv, but whatever.  The fucking ELECTIONS.  I'm so happy now.  They said they've pretty much given up on Mike DeWine.  Dems may take the Senate.  How sweet would that be.  Though it may not be as awesome as it sounds, because, as Novak said, President Bush may find that veto pen he's lost for the last six years.  Sad but true.

Lastly, cool movies and music are coming out.  I think I'll swing by and get Yo La Tengo's lastest album, cause I'm Really liking Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind

yeah.  something else i forgot.  after confidently voting my dogs into office, i can go to the record store and pick up PAVEMENT - WOWEE ZOWEE (SORDID SENTINELS EDITION)!!!!!!!!!!!  pavement are my favorite band ever, and wowee zowee is my favorite album of theirs and maybe my favorite album ever.  it's so awesome.  and they're re-releasing it, re-fucking-mastered and now it's a double and has a booklet with it.  i'm super excited.  they've done it with their first two albums so now wowee's up next.  here's rattled by the rush.  yeah it sounds good.  one might say, remastered.  so that's pretty cool.

speaking of cool music, i'm back into andrew bird in a big way.  now i secretly conjure up images of stephen malkmus (of pavement) and andrew bird going on tour together.  i think i'd travel a heavy distance for that.  here's andrew bird - why?  this was one of the cooler songs he did live cause it's completely solo.  here's a breakdown:  he live-loops all his music, so he'll play a line and then loop it and play over it.  so it sounds like there's a whole band there, but it's all him.  when i saw him he was playing with this dude martin dosh, and he opened for him, and he did the same thing but with drums and keyboards.  then he backed up herr bird.  it was pretty sweet.  here's some dosh.  hell, and here's some dosh and bird Palindromes.

So I think this will be a great end of the year for me, for once.  Here's how: 

• Come November 7th, I think the Dems will gain control of at least one house, maybe two.  MAYBE two.  Then we'll all be attacked by terrorists because we all know the democrats are soft on terror. 
  
• Then Novemeber 13th, Verizon should be unveiling their new LG9900 phone, which I shall be purchasing that day.  I kind of get off on phones, and I'm up for a new one, and it's the coolest fucking phone ever.  What's that, your RAZR is gay and doesn't work that well?  Yeah, you're the one who wanted to get the thinnest, nevermind the fact that those keys are incredibly annoying, or that Motorola is kind of shitty.  The only thing that sucks is I think it will get a lot of attention, and I've been pouring over every single mobileblog for the past three months trying to dig up shitty spy pictures of this phone.  Whatever.
• November 17th I should be seeing the Black Keys in concert.  It's been WAY too long since I've seen a band live, so this has to happen, even if the tickets are jacked up some shitty hit pop band like Fall Out Boy or something ($26 or something).
• At the end of December I'm going to New York (City) with Cody Kris Lance Andrew Howard and then I can finally eat some more of that Grimaldi's Pizza, which was the best pizza I've ever had in my entire life.  As I told Kris earlier tonight, I sometimes jack off to the thought of that pizza.  It's so good.  You know when you like something and it keeps getting built up in your brain and you build it up into something that is just so perfect that when you try it again it kind of sucks?  This ain't like that at all.  I'm fully confident it will live up to expectations.  I couldn't care less about anything else that happens there, as long as I get that pizza again.  It's made in a coal fired oven.  Under the Brooklyn Bridge.  It's the shittiest looking pizza you've ever seen, with burnt pieces and flecks of mozzarella and black pieces of burnt whole oregano.  But then you try it and discover it's quite orgasmic.

That's actually it, but I lead a very uneventful life.  The most exciting thing I've done in the past few weeks was deciding to go with two slices of swiss, instead of one, on my ham sandwich.  I hate my life.  And I think by December I'll have found out that Stephen Malkmus and Andrew Bird have new albums coming out very soon, which would make my year.  Malkmus is the greatest.

That is all.

hi.  erin mozena got married this weekend.  that was pretty cool.  now if someone is ever at eagle sticks for a wedding, and they aren't just giving you alcohol and you have to pay for it, may i recommend a mixed drink.  i happened to get a rum and coke before i left, and it was nearly all alcohol, for only slightly more than a beer would have costed.  see, truth be told i'm a cheap bastard, so i'm looking for the most bang for the buck.  and maybe i scrounged change off of everyone else and i only had to pay $0.50 for it.  then we went out some more.  and who cares

but i digress.  for some reason i watched the emmys last night.  or the grammys.  whichever is tv.  fucking colbert report didnt get shit.  i was a little peeved by that.  and steve carrell didnt win either.  i was a little miffed by that.  and no one from west wing got anything?  come on.  martin sheen?  no?  allison janney?  (interesting note, both janney and sheen are from dayton, ohio.  also: rob lowe.  dayton's pretty cool.  also guided by voices.  and phil donahue.  and the wright brothers.  charles kettering.  and kim deal.) how about john spencer?  a perfect, posthumous award for spencer.  come on.  freaking ray and walk the line and all that shit got awards just because the person died.  and it was people ACTING like that person.  spencer WAS that person.  he should have got something.  plus, i think the whole show was actually pretty good.  they've had a few bad seasons, but i think the last season was pretty good.  they handled the re-election thing pretty well i think, and they had some innovative episodes, like the live debate and all that.

though royal tenenbaums is probably my favorite movie, i've really been liking confessions of a dangerous mind a lot recently.  i liked it a lot more once i watched the behind the scenes things.  george clooney said he doesnt like how movies today are so overproduced (just like MUSIC!) and he tried to make them more realistic, including not using computer tricks.  all the stuff, like the tour of the nbc studio, was a single take exercise.  when one person would go off camera, they'd have to run around to the other side, change clothes, and then start where they left off.  awesome.

oh yeah, check out this video.  George Bush Debating  it's funny/depressing.  i almost care what he's saying there.  you should watch it though.  it even has a nice dance beat.  i just wonder how he pronounced "nukular".
-bates.

hi. my name is matt bates. i used to write here all the time. whatever.

yeah if you're in chicago, you should check out the bicycle film festival which is playing its final day tonight at Columbia College Chicago's Film Row Cinema.  At 3:00 they are playing B.I.K.E. which looks pretty slick.  it's about this underground bike gang called the black label bicycle club.  they're pretty crazy.  kind of like the hells angels were when they started out.  it's nearly impossible to join the club, all that.  very cool looking.  very violent looking.  okay.

so fuck. a lot happened. mainly, i'll talk about cycling. i've been riding the hell out of my bike the past few weeks. i've literally driven two times in that time. i love that living in this shitty area means that anyone not driving is automatically assumed to have lost their license via dui or something. i'm also, because of this, yelled at all the time when i'm on the road. i love the "git yer on the sidewalk where ya belong" from all the hicks. and all the honks and shit. usually, when someone yells, i give the thumbs up, when they honk i wave. cause i dont give a shit. and if someone wants to really push me, i'll swing out in the middle of the lane so they cant pass. i dont give a fuck.

enough of that. brent and nikki got hitched. that was pretty cool. later that night i almost got arrested. we were walking from jason & lindsay's house to the barn, and for some reason i had a beer, and a cop drives up, and somehow sees, from a block away, that i had one, and he pulls up, stops, makes me dump it out, checks my id. then i told him if he values his fucking life he'll just get back in the car. he did. or maybe i stood there deciding who i would call to get me out, and he then just got back in his car. whatev.

enough of cycling. not really. here's how it goes: since i was about 12, i've been way into cycling. prior to getting my license i used to ride several thousand miles a year. yeah. after i got a car and a job, that kind of dissipated. but i still followed cycling like a bastard. case in point: i've been a lance armstrong fan since he won the 1996 tour dupont, which doesnt even exist anymore. so you can understand how happy i was when an american won the 1999 tour de france. let the record state that america didnt give one shit about the whole thing. i have every times recorder, usa today, and anything else i could get my hands on that has a snippet of the tour. anyway, so fast forward eight years. lance dominated, and i dont like him as much anymore. i dont know if it's the fact that everyone likes him or something or what, or if it's just because he's a douchebag. anyway, i pretty much figured american dominance of the tour was over.

then floyd landis showed up. then he literally blew up on stage 16. i told anyone who asked me that it was impossible for landis to make up an eight minute deficit in the time remaining, which was basically the next day and that's it. then the next day, he put forth what, in the ten years i've been religiously following cycling, the very best ride i've ever seen. better than lance's l'alpe d'huez time trial in 2004, which was probably my favorite other ride.

anyway, cut to now when he has tested positive for high testosterone. first let me say this: if he was in fact doping, i hope he enjoys his two years off. but i dont think he was. these tests are never fully conclusive, and they're testing natural substances, which can spike. secondly, the governing body of cycling, the uci, went against protocol and announced that someone tested positive, then announced that it was landis. all of this before they had even tested the b sample. that's bullshit. even if he is cleared, he will now always be a cheater in the minds of everyone. so i hope they throw the case out just because of that. it's bullshit.

before i got, does anyone ever feel like this whole 'blog' thing is extremely narcissistic? cause i do. i just spent way too long talking about something no one cares about except me, yet i still wrote it. and because you're on my friends list, you have to see it too. ridiculous.  sorry.

-bates.

yeah. i need some new friends. mainly cause i dont do shit. everyone is gone. kris and lance: europe. andrew: somewhere. cody: north carolina. everyone else is engaged. things i've been listening to: that one tapes 'n tapes song, wire, led zeppelin, viva voce. supposedly viva have a new album coming out, but i ain't impressed.

brazil got beat by france in the world cup. thats pretty crazy. american george hincapie was leading the tour de france yesterday, but lost his lead in stage two. thor hushovd cut his arm at the end of the race and looked like he was fucking dying from all the blood loss. ivan basso and jan ullrich both got banned from the tour for allegedly being connected to a doping ring. thats bullllllllllshit. there's no concrete evidence. ivan basso was in mother fucking top form, and was my pick for the winner. jan ullrich is the only non-retired professional cyclist who has won the tour before, and he's more than likely going to retire after this year, and he was in great form. this leaves americans floyd landis and levi leipheimer as very serious contenders for the overall title.

in other news, i hate my life. in other other news, sleater kinney are breaking up? when the fuck did this happen. whatever. a few days ago i received ten magazines in the mail in one day. that's pretty sweet. i kind have a thing for magazines.

i guess i'm getting old. i say this because, upon learning that i have a myspace account, my younger cousin made a face of disgust, implying i'm way to old to be doing that. that's pretty cool.

i watched anchorman for the second time ever over the weekend. much funnier on second viewing. i pretty much hated it when i saw it a few years ago. i also watched elephant, which was pretty cool. i found my royal tenenbaums dvd again, so i watch it when i go to bed every night. this replaces lost in translation, which was there for way too long.

if anyone needs their house painted, talk to me, i'll hit you up. that's what i do best.
laters.

quickly, ecuador will beat england, portugal wil beat the netherlands. or maybe not. but those are my predictions. if you're lucky, maybe i'll hit you with a bracket. in other news, nothing else has happened in my life, ever. these past two weeks have literally been soccer and only soccer. yeah i'll be back later.

hi. basically i've just been watching tv constantly for the past three days. the world cup started friday, so i been watching all them games. germany-costa rica was okay, as was poland-ecuador and england-paraguay. but sweden-trindad & tobago was pretty sweet. i'm a fan of the underdog. actually i had a teacher in high school that said americans in general are the type to cheer for the underdog. anyway, t&t were supposed to get destroyed, instead they held on to tie the game. so that was pretty cool.

kris and lance are flying to germany today i believe. they've been in iceland the past couple days. so that's pretty cool. i live out my life-goals through my friends.

basically nothing else has happened in the past month. there's a funny story that happened last weekend but i'm too lazy to mention it. plus i'm watching netherlands-serbia & montenegro. interesting story: on june 3rd, montenegro declared independence. so technically this is two countries playing together. what's the capital of montenegro? podgorica. last week i learned all the capitals of all the countries in europe. so that makes me cool. i'm about halfway to all the capitals of africa. then i'll move to asia. then reluctantly to oceania. but yeah, that's about it. laters.
-bates.

so i was thinking here. i have a handful of friends, and this summer, i'll be alone. kris and lance, the two i hang out with on a regular basis, will be in europe for a month to watch the world cup. andrew will be, as usual, traveling the eastern seaboard. cody is living in north carolina this summer. and howard is getting married/probably going out of country like he always seems to do.

so my summer seems like it will be fucking awesome. to top that off, a week ago i decided i'd eat some beef jerky. now there's a piece of jerky stuck in between my teeth, and it ain't coming out. it's not visible, but i don't care.

ivan basso is dominating the field in the giro d'italia. if he maintains form he could win the tour also, which would be awesome. i'm a big fan of basso.

i went to fye today to buy a cd, which i haven't done in forever. i wanted to get yo la tengo's new one, the one where they're just playing a bunch of covers, live. they didnt have it. so i looked around a little bit more, then left, dejected and pissed. i settled on a picture of dorian grey.

that's pretty much all i've got. sorry to be a bother.
-bates.

what does meh even mean? for the record i've never used that word once, until this very moment. whatever, in other news i saw tha da vinci code last night. now i didn't think it was as bad as kris or andrew did, but it wasnt very good. a lot of the filming was very csi-ish, and i fucking hate that show.

the hippies won the amazing race, so i was pretty happy about that.

i've taken up stenciling, so i guess that's okay.

and, as i'm sure everyone has been waiting for, i'll hit you with a giro d'italia update. the giro, aka the toud de france of italy, has been going on for a few weeks or so. and chew on this: ivan basso is fucking killing. i've always liked basso, and now that lance armstrong is out of the picture i think this is his year for the tour de france. granted, no one has won the giro and the tour in the same year since probably eddy merckx, but i guess it's possible. the problem is form. you have to schedule your entire training schedule around the big races, and even though they are a month apart, that doesn't give you enough time to recover and then alter your training. it's a matter of specialization. people now focus on one race a year, which is fucking ridiculous. lance armstrong started that, and he's a douchebag.

anyway, basso is in the lead by about 3.5 minutes, and he's ahead of anyone significant (paolo salvoldelli, gilberto simoni, tom danielson, damiano cunego, danila di luca, victor hugo pena grisales) by over five minutes. also two things: victor hugo pena GRISALES? his name used to just be victor hugo pena. can spanish people just add names as they see fit, as if their names weren't long enough to start with? and i know he's columbian but it's the spanish influence. also tom danielson is supposedly america's heir apparent to lance armstrong, salvoldelli won the giro last year, simoni has won before, as has cunego. so it's a pretty close bunch. and the giro hits the mountains so it should be good.

and finally, czech this list of non-finishers: sebastien chavanel, roberto laiseka, brad mcgee, philippe gilbert, michael rasmussen, and alessandro petacchi. and petacchi, probably italy's best sprinter, broke his patella. i've heard that hurts really bad.

enough about gay cycling, i'm out.
-bates.

it's been a while so i guess i'll update on the most important stuff: tv. how about the season finale of the office? shit man. i've said it many times before, but the reason i liked seinfeld so much was because there was no romance bullshit. no serious episodes. friends, aside from being a terrible piece of shit, had serious episodes. seinfeld never did, and i think that's one of the big reasons i liked it so much. and that was the one thing i didn't like about the office - that they were building up the whole jim and pam thing. that being said, i was very happy at the outcome. very.

now that being said, lost was on last night. and it was awesome. why, you ask? because that stupid bitch ana lucia got killed. haaaaaaaaaaaaaa. i couldnt have been happier if i found out i was going to be on the show. so that was cool. but here's my analysis: they had the dude in the cell, and he somehow got out, shot ana lucia, then left. now, only three people knew the combination: ana lucia, locke, and jack. locke and jack were both out on the beach, with several witnesses. also, only ana lucia had a gun, because thats what everyone else was after. this concludes that ana lucia HAD to have been the one to open the safe, and the dude in the cell HAD to have taken the gun from her. she's a violent bitch, and wouldn't have given up without a fight. yet her body was sitting on the couch, in a very relaxed position. and she was shot in the stomach, and the bullets went through the couch. so i figure that next week, someone will figure this out.

am i a genius because i figured this out? yes. i'm amazing.

in other news, the west wing will have its last show sunday. that's unreal. the end of an era. speaking of seinfeld, thats how west wing should have went out. on top. when it was awesome.

ALSO, the colbert report, the week after the white house correspondents dinner, saw a 37% increase of viewership over the average. my question is this: how. no one watches cspan. it wasnt covered in the news. this means it had to be those pesky bloggers. and most of those people already watch the show. so i don't know.

finally, i'm getting in great shape. running miles every day. that means i'm even cooler. i proclaim this as my 'summer of fitness'. i'll be awesome. and fit.

well fuck you too. here's what i have to say: what stephen colbert did at the white house correspondents dinner was fucking amazing. normally the hired help takes light and comical jabs at the president and media. colbert did much more than that. he stayed in character the whole time, and it was very evident from the beginning that he wasnt going to hold back. the jabs were light until he spit out "i believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in iraq." for me that was the turning point. from here on out he was all over bush like stink on a monkey.

then he turned on the media. he chided them for not actually reporting anything. "over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, wmd intelligence, the affect of global warming. we americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. those were good times...as far as we knew."

so i enjoyed the whole thing. as soon as it was over i was searching the news sites to see what they said about it. the vast majority of the news sites only ran one story, the ap story (don't worry, i'll link to it later). it talked about bush for several sentences then mentioned that colbert was also there. literally.

i chalked this up to the idea that the big media would just get to it the next day. not so. sunday saw nothing. again i held out, maybe thinking monday would be the big day. well here's what i've found:

cnn had a whole story on bush, and two paragraphs on colbert, each with one of colbert's lighter quotes. this was the ap story i mentioned earlier. this is because they didn't have anything else on the event.

fox news actually had more than cnn, but this was from a celebrity spotter, not a reporter. and he said he didn't like it but just said he thought he overstepped his bounds, which is quite possible.

nytimes had this to say:_______________. yeah that's right, they didnt fucking mention it at all.

wapo had about three sentences on colbert even being there, then three pages of how many fucking celebrities were there.

look at this! usa today noticed colbert was there. they actually give him about half the article, which is all i wanted. how nice of them.

peter daou said something too. he agrees with me! so does chris durang. imagine that.

other people who mentioned this were dailyKos who compared what stephen said, which got absolutely no coverage, with what a local named harry taylor said to bush at a town hall meeting, which got a hell of a lot of press. odd.

and blogcritics had an article called "stephen colbert: buried by truthiness" which is probably the best description of it. the other description i really liked was peter daou's "this is the power of the media to choose the news."

one of those links talks about how on the today show this morning they showed bush and twin talking and talked about how cute it was. matt and katie didn't even mention that colbert was even there. they must have gotten their news from the times.

now i would understand this if it were really marginal and unimportant. but evidently i'm not the only one. technorati, a site that measures blog searches and posts, has stephen colbert listed as the number two search for today. first? colbert. so he has the top two searches. he's ahead of immigration, which dominated the news today. so evidently some other people out there are trying to find out what happened too.

it's sad that no one can actually just say this to the president. satire has become the best way to speak your mind. no one would actually say this to the president, so they have to not say it, and use sarcasm to get the message across. it's ridiculous. i'm so disappointed at the media for this whole incident.

if you arent the type who happen to watch cspan very often, here's a transcript of colbert's piece. that also has links to the video of the whole thing.

if anyone else saw it, please tell me what you thought cause i'm curious to know. i wouldn't be so anxious to know but i haven't been able to read about it all day since no one, including the white house correspondents, saw colbert do a speech.

and somewhere i found this video of colbert on the daily show after last year's whcd, which contains the quote about the relation between the president and the media at the dinner, "we're both entrenched oligarchies with a stake in the survival of the status quo." fucking awesome.
-bates.