Hi, y’all.

You there: sit up, in the name of the law! -The NYPD

Here’s Whiskey Shivers performing “Jealous Heart” from their album Rampa Heart. This group is playing a free show tonight in Austin at the Scoot Inn (supposedly our city’s oldest continuously operating bar) at the end of the Thursday Night social bike ride — so if you’re local and want to hear them, hurry on over around the time this post gets published.

Gothamist reports on video evidence that with fewer Occupy Wall Street protestors to bother, police in New York City’s historic Union Square have resorted to harassing people for bad posture:

Solomon Seagal, a Brooklyn resident who videotaped this interaction, tells us the officers were patrolling the park ordering multiple people to sit upright. ‘Then they ordered this man [in the video] to simply leave the park,’ Seagal tells us. ‘One person checked the park’s rules and found there was nothing they were doing wrong, so it was clearly the police harassing them for no reason. It is ridiculous how much the NYPD think they can get away with.’

Meanwhile, members of “Bloomberg’s Army” are regularly seen violating local law by smoking in public parks.

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Welcome back!

Breaking Bad ends in August. Are you excited too?

Thanks for your patience with the recent Firedoglake outage. You can bet it was frustrating & upsetting to all of us on the staff, especially since it was entirely out of our control.

But at least our lives aren’t as bad as the poor, miserable creatures in tonight’s video selection — oh the humanity (or perhaps felinity)!

I’m a big fan of Breaking Bad, which concludes starting in August. Vulture has a lengthy interview with creator Vince Gilligan about the end of the series. The part of the article generating the most buzz is the way he calls out haters of wife Skyler White:

[W]ith the risk of painting with too broad a brush, I think the people who have these issues with the wives being too bitchy on Breaking Bad are misogynists, plain and simple. I like Skyler a little less now that she’s succumbed to Walt’s machinations, but in the early days she was the voice of morality on the show. She was the one telling him, ‘You can’t cook crystal meth.’ She’s got a tough job being married to this asshole. And this, by the way, is why I should avoid the Internet at all costs. People are griping about Skyler White being too much of a killjoy to her meth-cooking, murdering husband? She’s telling him not to be a murderer and a guy who cooks drugs for kids. How could you have a problem with that?

I think something similar happened with Betty Draper on Mad Men especially in the early seasons — I find January Jones to be an extremely capable actress but she catches a lot of flak for being the moralizing response to Don’s lothario, and in general I think she gets criticized because she makes us uncomfortable — her characterin many ways represents the silent victims of patriarchy.

And did you know there’s now a phone app which helps you fight the Koch Brothers and other corporate bad guys at the supermarket? It’s called “Buycott.” From Forbes:

You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries. 

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson JNJ +1.3%.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

According to Twitter, Buycott is a victim of its own popularity — if you try it out, give them a few days to work out growth problems!

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Hi, y’all.

A mint plant shades a tiny volunteer tomato plant.

Last night a friend dropped by to plan some upcoming activism and talk about gardening. He showed me how I can cut ‘suckers’ off my tomato plants and turn them into more tomato plants. All the tomatoes already growing in our garden are volunteers — sprouted from dropped seeds or compost. I love the almost overwhelming bounty of gardens — the more you get into it, the more food you make.

What do you think of this child abuse advertisement which appears differently depending on your height? Gawker reports:

Using a technology known as lenticular printing, Grey Group designed an ad that contains a “secret message” that is only visible from the POV of children (~4’4″).

To adults, the billboard will contain the simple, yet powerful message, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.”

However, children will instead see the far more useful instruction, “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you,” along with the foundation’s phone number.

Tonight’s musical selection is “Robin” from Top Less Gay Love Tekno Party, which wins for the best band name I’ve heard in a while.

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It’s Cartoon Friday again!

Tonight’s selection is I Met the Walrus. This is Oscar-nominated short film, much like last week’s selection, animates a real life conversation. In this case, a 5-minute reduction of a 30-minute interview between Jerry Levitan, then 14 years old, and musician John Lennon in 1969. According to the Wikipedia entry, Walrus is a highly recognized work of art:

The film has won many awards including a 2009 Daytime Emmy in the New Approaches, Daytime Entertainment category, Best Animated Short awards for the American Film Institute and the Middle East International Film Festival. … It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows. It was selected to be one of 25 YouTube videos to be part of the first Guggenheim Museum/YouTube Play “A Biennial of Creative Video.”

Kristen Schaal performs Bob's Burgers' Louise and also voices Mabel Pines on the humorous & hearfelt cartoon Gravity Falls.

Bonus: I want to talk a moment about Bob’s Burgers, because it is the best cartoon airing on television today. I haven’t linked to it here before because it is currently airing on a major network — part of FOX’s Sunday animation bloc. At the same time, because it airs with the disappointing modern incarnation of The Simpsons and the often bigoted Family Guy (whose “ironic” racism is usually just racist), I worry that some people have overlooked this brilliantly funny show now in its third and strongest season.

It features H Jon Benjamin and other members of the Home Movies team, previously discussed here at Cartoon Friday, including creator Loren Bouchard. Another key member of the development team, Jim Dauterive, is best known for his work on King of the Hill, a show with some similarities.

Bob’s Burgers is about the Belcher family, who run the titular burger joint in a coastal city. The restaurant brings in barely enough to keep their family afloat, so in addition to being a full time job for Bob (voiced by Benjamin) and his wife Linda (John Roberts, who you may have seen work with Margaret Cho), the three Belcher children are often called into service. The kids are voiced by three more talented comedians, Kristen Schaal, Eugene Mirman, and Dan Mintz. With a cast of almost exclusively experienced stand-up comics and frequent guest stars from that field, it’s not surprising that the show is consistently laugh out loud funny.

What separates it most from other animated family sitcoms is not the talented cast but the way it treats the family. Unlike the darkly comic domestic violence common elsewhere, the Belcher family overflows with genuine love for each other. The comedy comes from their encounters with an outside world that often misunderstands them or would defeat them, except that their close connection and support always leaves them victorious. It might even seem saccharine, if it weren’t genuinely hilarious.

“Mother Daughter Laser Razor,” one of the best episodes of the recent season, is streaming free on Hulu for another three days. But, in three days you’ll be able to watch “Boyz 4 Now” free and I believe it’s one of Bob’s Burgers best episodes ever.

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Hi, y’all.

It’s gotten chilly again today in Austin — dropping to the 40s tonight with a strong wind all day that made it feel much colder than it is. I put my pajama pants on when I got up and didn’t leave the house all day.

It’s not Cartoon Friday, but I love Pogo. “Pogo,” in this case, is the alter ego of Nick Bertke, an electronic musician who remixes cartoons and other media into catchy, danceable hits like his famous, haunting “Alice,” which the AVClub wrote about recently in glowing terms:

Yet for all of the ways that “Alice” panders to the Internet’s seasoned nostalgia receptors, Bertke’s track eschews the cheap rush of familiarity of a Girl Talk banger or a quick-and-dirty YouTube parody. There’s an expression of longing in the best Pogo tracks, Don Draper’s “delicate-but-potent” brand of nostalgia that poignantly, yet futilely, tries to fill the void of something lost: time, youth, innocence.

Here his remix draws from the seemingly infinite repository of Spongebob Squarepants episodes, turning childish fluff into something that makes my feet tap and puts a smile on my face.

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Hi, y’all.

GetEqual TX members walk on the Capitol grounds before their sit-in.

What a thrill it was to be part of today’s action! There’s really nothing I’ve experienced in life like the rush I get from being part of a dramatic, nonviolent direct action and getting to use my journalistic skills to help people stand for something important. And since the Texas Legislature only meets for such a short time every other year, I am glad I got the chance to mix it up in there before it goes back to being, essentially, a museum for the next year and a half.

Tonight’s video is from College Humor. I thought it clever commentary on how protective people can get about “their shows,” even if their shows are classics that almost everyone else has been dissecting and discussing for years.

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Hi, y’all.

A dosa as big as my head? YES PLEASE.

My birthday was wonderful! After taking off early to enjoy a warm Spring afternoon in Texas, over a dozen friends of mine got together at my favorite all-vegetarian Indian restaurant and stuffed ourselves silly. Then it was back to my house for cake and port and talking till late.

I got some great presents, which was unexpected since I wasn’t expecting anything. My friends all know that I’m not a fan of obligatory holiday object giving. I’d rather be treated to a nice meal or just a warm hug then get another “thing” I don’t really need.

On the other hand, when people find something just perfect for me I love the thought behind giving. The best gifts, of which I got a few last night, are the kind I want but make excuses not to buy for myself.

Tonight’s musical selection is the recently departed George Jones singing “I’ll Be Over You (When The Grass Grows Over Me).”

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Hi, y’all.

Butter lettuce growing earlier this month on a traffic island near Kit's home.

It’s my 35th birthday tonight. I’m celebrating with Indian food and drinks with my friends — I’ll be celebrating, in fact, when this is published so Richard Taylor is your host tonight for any conversation or questions.

So far, my thirties have been wonderful — perhaps even the best decade of my life. My mother (Siun), delivered a bottle of Port to me to celebrate. The UPS driver told me, “Congratulations!” then asked, “Are you turning 21?”

My friends tell me I look youthful. I have friends of all ages, and I don’t ever feel old — except when I’m around other people in their thirties complaining about how old they feel.

April also marks one year that I’ve been editing MyFDL. I can’t say I’ve loved every single minute of it, but the joys far outweigh the stresses of this job. I love working with all of you here on the ‘Lake.

If you want to buy me a birthday present, become an FDL member, tell a new friend about the site, or start contributing diaries if you don’t already!

Tonight’s video selection is a TED Talk by Ron Finley about the importance of guerilla gardening in food deserts.

If kids grow kale, they eat kale.

We’ve been blessed with wet weather this Spring, at least compared to recent years. The garden is growing rapidly. I even experimented with a guerilla plot, putting different kinds of lettuce on a barren looking traffic island in the center of our street. A local neighbor saw my efforts and added to them — planting lilies around the lettuce plot and keeping it all watered. The lettuce is all gone now with the hotter weather, but I’ll try to plant some flowers soon.

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A little summer psychedelia for Cartoon Friday, in honor of Eeyore's 50th Birthday Party -- celebrated this weekend in Austin.

Sometimes, cartoons take us to imaginary or impossible places. Other times, comic or cartoon artwork can enhance the telling of true life stories, drawing nuance from the tales which would not be revealed in audio alone or even full motion video. Examples on the page are the slice-of-life anecdotes of Harvey Pekar or of Joe Sacco‘s war journalism.

Tonight’s selection is a colorful example in motion: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by artist James Blagden working for No Mas TV. It’s based on an NPR recording of the famously outspoken ball player, and No Mas comments:

In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis’ legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years we’ve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. … Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.

But of course legends are rarely so black and white, reveals an article on Deadspin:

Like most stories that sound too fantastical to maintain any shards of truth, it depends on whom you let tell it. Bob Smizik, who covered the Pirates from 1972-77 for the Pittsburgh Press(which eventually folded, after which Smizik wrote for the Post-Gazette), believes Dock’s version. He didn’t cover the game and was nowhere near overcast San Diego that day to watch it in person, but he says he was the first writer to break the story about the mythical acid no-no. Smizik’s piece was published on April 8, 1984, on the front of the sports section, under the tabloidy headline, “Ellis: I Pitched No-Hitter On LSD.” Smizik’s interview focused more on Dock’s work as a California drug and alcohol counselor, but the revelation about his psychedelic escapades was what anchored it and was where the tale first took flight.

…

[Donnell]] Alexander, who’s putting the finishing touches on the Dock life-story screenplay, is adamant Ellis felt the residual effects of high-grade acid that day, but most likely not to the degree most of us envision.

…

“Some people won’t accept this as a baseball story,” Alexander says. “The truth is, it’s a pure baseball story. What impresses me most is that Dock didn’t call in sick. You’ve got guys who will sit out if they’re havin’ a fuckin’ herpes outbreak. But this guy’s trippin’ hard on pure LSD from the labs at UCLA, and he’s like, ‘No. I’m going in.’ He was a gutty pitcher and it’s such a gutty performance.”

I selected tonight’s cartoon (with a little help from my friend S) in honor of this weekend’s festivities, the 50th Annual Eeyore’s Birthday Party in Austin. Unless of course it gets rained out. Many years ago I contributed to the first draft of the Wikipedia page on this annual hippie hoorah, then defended the page from the inevitable editorial disputes. I turn 35 this Monday, so I’ve been attending this storied event for longer than I’d care to admit but not nearly as long as some!

Eeyore’s Birthday Party began in 1963 as a spring party and picnic for Department of English students at the University of Texas at Austin by Lloyd W. Birdwell, Jr. and other UT students. It was named for Eeyore, a chronically depressed donkey in A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories who, in one story, believes his friends have forgotten his birthday only to discover they have planned a surprise party for him. Despite its name, the event does not fall on the official birthday of the fictional character. The original event featured a trashcan full of lemonade, beer, honey sandwiches, a live, flower-draped donkey, and a may pole (in keeping with the event’s proximity to May Day). For many years the party was a UT tradition, but subsequently the annual Birthday Party became a tradition in Austin’s hippie subculture.

When the festival moved from Eastwoods Park to Pease Park in 1974, Austin-area non-profit Friends of the Forest, an organization which distributes funds to other area charities, began arranging for food and drink vendors at the festival. They continue this task today along with arranging public services (toilets, buses, security, medics) and scheduling live music and family-oriented games and contests. The event is still known to most as a festival oriented towards modern hippies. It now boasts an annual attendance in the thousands.

 

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Hi, y’all.

Police in Dallas today arrested the wrong George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. No one is getting charged with war crimes. Here’s a live video of the surreal moment.

Protesters were gathered for the People’s Response. Reportedly, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War was also arrested.

More:

• Des Hommes et des chatons 
• #InfowarsPickUpLines

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