LANOIS, ABRAMOFF, DICK

Saw the big Daniel Lanois show in Hattiesburg this past Friday...he played at a club that holds 125 or so people a week after he played Carnegie Hall and two days after hanging out at the Grammys with U2...His show was really good, and it was interesting to watch his technique...he never used a pick on either the Les Paul or the pedal steel...when playing the LP, he playing single notes with his fingers all against each other, like his whole hand was a giant flipper-pick...

I was intrigued by that because that sort of technique guarantees you're not going to be ripping hot licks, which is good. I tried it myself when I got home, but I don't know if I can pull it off--the flipper-pick, I mean..

Abramoff

And at the Lanois show, I talked to a friend of mine who lives in another town and it turns out he did some odd jobs for Jack Abramoff 3 or 4 years ago. This friend prefers not to be named, so I'll call him No Name. No Name lived in D.C. during this time and was hooked up with Abramoff jobs through a friend of his that worked full-time for Casino Jack.

There's nothing juicy to tell really--No Name just organized Abramoff's books, cleaned out his garage, and helped organize some files. No Name said there was what seemed to be some unsavory stuff in those files, but nothing obviously incriminating.

Dickshot

And No Name was telling me that he didn't like Air America maybe as much as he wanted to because he felt like they were just engaging in the same kind of smearing and name-calling that the right wing engages in, which is a criticism I've heard a lot. But I think if you actually listen to Air America, particularly my favorite show the Majority Report, you might feel differently.

I mean, it's one thing to tune in for a minute or two and hear Sam Seder refer to Sean Hannity as a "pig," or whatever, but if you hang around and listen for a while, you'll realize that for the most part, they are fair. For example, they don't smear all Republicans and conservatives--they acknowledge that not only is it permissible to have an opinion different than theirs, it's healthy and useful. But they do direct name-calling and derision toward people that really do deserve it--i.e., the neocon gang that lied us into the Iraq war.

But I say all that to say that I'm glad the Dick Cheney shooting spree is such a big story. Not that there aren't more important stories to discuss, but I think the left-wingers should always take anything that happens and say "how would the rightwingers mock us for this if this had happened to one of ours" and then do that times one hundred...

In other news, my father says he is becoming increasingly apolitical because the "two sides" are just so nasty to each other, and he may not even vote anymore. WTF?