Want a playlist to help wake you up this morning? I sure as hell needed one--and this did a pretty good job of waking me up.

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Consider it a public service--and, perhaps, an antidote to the swirling political stupidity that we can’t ignore, can’t avoid, and seem powerless to change.

Of course, I’m feeling a little cynical today…

Speaking of cynical, I tried to hold this back but my filters seem to be down right now. If it were a stand-alone post, it would be called “Uma Thurman’s Dad Loves Dick"--but that would be crass, so we won’t go there. Instead, I’ll just stick this little teaser in and let y’all decide what to do with it.

You mean you fantasize about being breast-fed by Dick Cheney?

Read the rest And thanks, Shawn. Kind of.

And, speaking of loud music, because we sort of were, check out Shawn’s swipe at a bunch of bands you probably like. Again, kind of.

Western fans appear mostly oblivious to their good fortune and ease of rebellion: American Hardcore, a wonderful documentary on the mutation of aggressive music in the early 1980s, nonetheless begins with an ominous montage of scenes from Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural cut with various old-school punk rockers bemoaning the nation’s “puerile fifties fantasy,” which included but was apparently not limited to cardigan sweater-type milquetoast fashion trends, feathered hair, wine coolers and consumer culture. It’s tempting here to offer a feigned swoon and falsetto Oh, the horror!. Everyone, however, has their lot in life and rebels have to rebel against whatever looks like the most promising proto-fascist symbol at the moment, even if those symbols are...well, feathered hair and wine coolers. “This isn’t baseball,” a member of The Adolescents, still angry over a plaque given to him to commemorate a 1981 hit single, rails. “You don’t give me an f--ing trophy. This is a war I’m in the middle of.”

Actually, Acrassicauda is in the middle of a war. The Adolescents guy was in the middle of puberty. There is a difference. Heavy Metal in Baghdad is Henry Rollins’ Black Flag tour diary Get in the Van on steroids; Blood on the Tracks with actual blood on the tracks. No matter how hardscrabble and beaten down by society rock dissidents of whatever subgenre prefers to imagine themselves, it simply cannot compare.

I haven’t seen Heavy Metal in Baghdad, so I can’t comment on that, but I have seen American Hardcore and found myself caught somewhere between digging the music, the interviews, and all the interviews and rolling my eyes at all the gee-golly-weren’t-we-just-the-most-rebellious-rebels talk. That stuff grates a bit but doesn’t take away from the story of hardcore in the US--and some of the footage of shows I never got to experience was absolutely exhilarating.

Still, whatever I got from American Hardcore, it doesn’t sound like it compares at all to Heavy Metal in Baghdad--I’ll have to check that out.

Read the rest.