It blows my mind that professionals with college degrees, in the year 2006, will still end an email like this. Adding insult to injury, this came to me from a PR firm, who’s only function as far as i can tell is to have lunch meetings and except absurdly large checks.
It’s not good, cute, correct or witty. Nor does it inspire me to ruminate over your poorly composed communiqué. People who do this should be made to go live in Dallas or something equally horrific.

I know this is everywhere, but I think it should be everywhere. The mainstream media is a disgrace and here Bill Clinton gets to call them on it. I hope Chris Wallace’s dad is thoroughly ashamed of him.

Update: Again, just pounding the drum here, this clip of Keith Oberman talking about the interview is almost as important as the interview itself. (Both this and the Fox Video are getting hard to find because of various take-down notices being volleyed by fox’s army of lawyers.)

Update: The Daily Show follows up the follow-up coverage.

I re-enterd Plano for the first time in about six years this weekend. It was for a good cause, but to be fair, even some of my friends were a little shocked – “Dude, your going to make Wade eat lunch in Plano, is that really a good plan ?”

No problem, really. For one, I am a champion…no stupid little suburban hell-hole is going to ruin my day. Also, I’ve developed some very effective coping mechanisms.

1. Appreciate Texas – While we are technically still in the lone star state when we’re dodging big-hair piloted Lexi (that’s the plural of Lexus, just so’s you know) in the Metroplex, is sure doesn’t feel like it. Personally, I take solace in the superior Kolaches in West and the Bio-willie signs in Knox, as two very excelnt reminders of what this place is really like.
2. Flaunt Your Superior Music Taste – So you have to go to Crate and Barrel in the Galleria ? Nothing says ‘I’m not from here, nor do I care to be,’ like Icelandic post-rock blasting from your beater-pickup in the parking lot. It’s almost like Sigur Ros is antithetical to hairspray.
3. Ask for a Large – When you’re at Starbucks (because if you want coffee up there, where else are you going to buy it) Don’t give into the Venti/Grande model. They get really upset about it too, which is funny
4. Get gone – Remember, Austin isn’t far. Breakfast at Kerbey Lane should be enough incentive enough to get any weary traveler back down the interstate.

So I survived the reorganization at work and oddly enough have now been given some additional authority over certain projects. Go me.

It’s really odd though – I’ll be in a meeting, the conversation will pause and all these director types will turn and look at me. Oh, they want my opinion.

And suddenly, to my surprise, I’m speaking. I don’t have a damn clue what I’m actually saying, although somewhere in the back of my head, the bullshit meter is off the scale. Although apparently the subjects and verbs are all agreeing, because people are nodding and responding as if I’m being coherent…which itself is pretty weird.

This is apparently what they call ‘management.’ Whoa.

…to have a music festival when it’s this hot.”

Yes we are. But it’s not that hot (well not as hot as it could be) and you’re wearing jeans and some strange New yorker garb (sorry Kendra). Cool points will also be deducted for poor use of expletive ‘freakin.’ ?

Enjoy the balmy fields my friends, we only erect temples to music in the park once a year.

Read about life and times at the Austin City Limits Festival in the much ignored music section of the site, and see the pretty pictures here, and better pictures here.

So this year there were no weddings, hurricanes or both to prevent us from attending the festival. This thing is really well done. First, the sets are just long enough to hold my attention, the variety is impressive, and the logistics are pretty damn well thought out – free water, miles and miles of port-a-cans, ample food and beverage (at almost reasonable prices), and even some ok stuff to buy.

I also never realized how many tourists come in for this event. There are a lot of out of town people… they’re the ones in heels and jeans (I’m totally serious here, no sarcasm).

Anyhow, here’s the lineup we’ve partaken of :

Day 1
Tristan Prettyman
Stars
Nickel Creek
Gnarls Barkley – Check your thesaurus for overrated, these guys are there
Gomez
Ray Lamontagne – A suprise, awesome live show
Van Morrison

Day 2
Centro-matic – damn fine live show
Phoenix – frenchies who rock out, and good
Galactic
The Shins –
They were probably really good, but seeing as there were so many people there (half the damn town) and that we had an incident with some inconsiderate youths who weren’t aware of some of the courtesies involved in festival going (like don’t walk on our blanket and don’t talk shit to my wife), we bailed a little early. So I almost punched a 17 year old, so what.
Moving on…
Calexico
What Made Milwaukee Famous
Explosions in the Sky – Oh, hell yes.
Willie Neslon – From so far in the back I could barely make out the jumbotron, but hey it’s Willie. (And no, i didn’t take the picture)

Day 3 – In which we are tired, but still walk alot. And we discover the chicken cone.
Jack Ingram – meh
Patrice Pike – hello L.A. rockstar
The New Pornographers – the Cd was better
Sonvolt – Always great
The Flaming Lips
Ben Harper – that hippie has gotten angry
G-Love and the Special Sauce – yeah, rad
Tom Petty – from at least half a mile away, as the first thunderstorm in six months rolled down out of the hill country.

Get more perspective on the fun times here.

Breaking ranks from the likes of Yahoo! and Google, Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy wales refuses to censor the Chinese version of it’s online, collaborative encyclopedia.

Wales said censorship was ‘ antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there’s no one left on the planet who’s willing to say “You know what? We’re not going to give up.”‘

These guys are going to save the world. Seriously.

Link to coverage in the Guardian
Link to BoingBoing
Link to donate to Wikipedia.

To the Tall Hippy Who Almost Killed Me In the Gold’s Parking Lot on Saturday:

Look man, I wanted to apologize.

Clearly you were in a hurry as you slammed your junker 1985 Red honda into reverse out of it’s parking spot, directly into my state mandated right-of-way. And clearly, I should have figured out some other less abrasive way to avoid hitting you than coming to a screeching halt on my moped. I mean locking up both wheels was a bit over kill. It must have been really hard on you.

However, I don’t think my laying on the horn and giving you the finger was entirely unjustified. You obviously disagreed, as you were able to break away from whatever life-changing, world-altering mission you were on to bring the aforementioned honda to a screeching halt ( A lot of good tires were unnecessarily wasted this day ), jump out of the car and begin lobbing F-bombs my direction. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

It was quite a funny scene really… you with your hippy-fro and chacos yelling at me on my wee moped with giant helmet and chacos. We had common footwear and we couldn’t get along…this makes me sad.

In hindsight, what I really regret here is that I didn’t use my state-mandated, impact resistant uber helmet to test the padding of your previously-mentioned goofy ass hippy-fro. Like say, as i ran you over with the wee scooter. Which wouldn’t really be painful so much as just extremely humiliating for you. Of course with your haircut, your probably used to that feeling.

So maybe it’s better the we just went our separate ways without trying to solve our problems like rational humans.

But like i said – My bad. My sincere apologies to you. I hope you got where you and your manly honda needed to go, without further hinderance from traffic of the two wheeled varietal.