Ken Burns Hates Mexicans

Merry Christmas

Little Drummer Boy by David Bowie and Bing Crosby.

Image of the Day

Photographs by Nina Berman, from her series "Homeland."

Song of the Day

I'm hearing this song a lot these days a lot on the always badass Indie 103, 'Electric Feel' by MGMT, one of those tunes that keeps playing over and over in your head even when the radio's turned off. Not that the world needs another white boy hipster band outta Brooklyn but check out the video anyway, here, and I dare you not to bop your head in delight.

I'd post the song myself but embedding for the video has been disabled. Bastards. What I am able show, however, is a clip documenting the making of the music video. Watching the clip I learned that the song is about a woman from the Amazon "who has the power to shock people with electricity that runs through her veins." Hm. Maybe certain pop songs, like the making of sausage, should be a process best performed in secret. Oh well, at least it's a catchy tune and great to dance to.

MGMT is one of those bands who have managed to find career success in this post-radio, everything-downloadable, CD unfriendly music busines environment. An environment where songs reach the masses not via Casey Kasem and Top 40 (Kasem, for those of you under 30 40, homeboy was an old school DJ with a national radio show not to mention the voice of Shaggy on Scoobey Doo), but instead songs gain mass popularity through stretegic placement on teen friendly TV shows like Gossip Girl. According to Wikipedia, MGMT has had their songs played on, among many other shows and films, the premier episode of the new Beverly Hills 90210, Skins, the video games Midnight Club Los Angeles, FIFA'09, and Shaun White Snowboarding...not to mention, of course, the season finale of Gossip Girl.

Image of the Day

Ballroom, Renaissance Casa de Palmas Hotel, McAllen, Texas.

Cover Song of the Year

The genius of Pink Floyd knows no borders.

Image of the Day

John Lennon, October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980. 'Imagine' here; 'God' here; fascinating documentary clip here; his last interview here. 

You Go Joe!

I am so not a fan of Coldplay. Vapid. Boring. The worst of British big-name pop. But even my unobjective ears tells me there is merit to be had in guitar god Joe Satriani's accusation of plagiarism by the so-called "world's biggest band." Satriani claims Coldplay stole "substantial original portions"of his song If I Could Fly for the band's hit Viva La Vida, a song the group says was inspired by a Frida Kahlo painting.

Hm. Maybe someone should sue the lads for vapid, boring, and unoriginal thinking in their choice of cultural references.

Satriani is, of course, the guitar player's guitar player, famous as a teacher (among his students, Kirk Hammet and Steve Vai), and the guy with one of the coolest album titles in rock and roll history, Surfing With The Alien. Someone put together a comparison of the two songs in question. You be the judge...

What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Cable TV Talk Shows

"Rock critics," David Lee Roth once famously quipped, "admire Elvis Costello because rock critics look like Elvis Costello." Diamond Dave said this back in the day when the Van Halen singer actually had hair, fronted the most famous rock band in the world, and yet suffered the ignominy of having much of the positive critical reviews from both sides of the Atlantic going to the geeky, Buddy Holly-looking Costello. While there may have been a whiff of truth to Roth's observation, there's no denying Costello's genius and place in rock and roll history.

Straight outta the late 70s London punk scene, Costello snarled his witty, literate, and dense lyrics over pop music energized by the scene he emerged from. On a personal note, as a geeky critic type myself, Costello was always a favorite of mine.

Tonight the Sundance channel debuts Spectacle, Costello's new talk show. From the early reviews look forward to a engaging hour of television. Here's how Salon describes the show:

This is what heaven must look like for songwriters. You wander into the middle of a lively conversation between close friends Elton John and Elvis Costello, discussing the virtues of songwriting greats from Leon Russell to Laura Nyro. Next, Costello plays an odd acoustic version of "Femme Fatale" by the Velvet Underground, and Lou Reed wanders in to demonstrate the correct riff from "Sweet Jane," then confesses that his secret dream is to write a New York detective novel. Later, Tony Bennett, Rufus Wainwright and the Police stop by.

Heaven indeed. Tivo this sucker. Until then, enjoy the rare clip above from Costello's infamous December 1977 Saturday Night Live appearance. Costello was a last-minute replacement for the Sex Pistols who had cancelled due to visa problems (not to mention manager Malcom McLaren's propensity for media hype). Under no circumstances, Costello was ordered, was the singer to play his hit single 'Radio, Radio,' a biting critique of corporate-owned, soul-sucking radio (that you could dance to). Of course, live, that Saturday Night, a few notes into the agreed-upon rehearsed song of 'Less Than Zero,' Costello stopped the music and promply went into the controversial song. SNL producer Lorne Michael's went nuts and banned Elivs from appearing on the show for the next twelve years. Cheeky.

Image of the Day

Fun and useless free program over at Poladroid.com. Gives you the ability to drag and drop any image and turn into into a virtual Poloroid. Here are a few I made...

La Migra and McDonalds: No Place Like Texas

On April 16th of this year in the small East Texas town of Mount Pleasant, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials raided the Pigrim's Pride chicken processing plant, the biggest business in Titus County. Families were torn apart as fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands were arrested, jailed, and sent back to Mexico. Many were charged with identity theft, a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

In 1983 McDonald's invented the Chicken McNugget. As this Texas Monthly article on the Mount Pleasant immigration raid details, the implications of the introduction of this fast food staple expand to the social, geopolitical, and legal:

Consumers had already been introduced to other “further processed” products, yet it was the McNugget that came to represent the transfiguration of chicken eating in the eighties. Bird meat that had traditionally been bought in a relatively unaltered state and cooked at home would now be chopped and ground up and reshaped and seasoned and fried and frozen and reheated and passed out of a drive-through window. All those extra steps required thousands of low-skill workers. Between 1980 and 2001 the average American’s annual consumption of chicken jumped from 33 pounds to 82 pounds. In the same time frame, the Hispanic population of Titus County increased from six hundred to almost eight thousand.

To the existing plant in Mount Pleasant, Pilgrim’s added a 75,000-square-foot prepared-foods facility in 1986, and soon the town went from the kind of place where the few Hispanic families were known by name to the rest of the community (the Guzmans, the Delgados, the Rochas) to the kind of place where the chamber of commerce directory was printed in two languages. Not every immigrant worked at Pilgrim’s, but the plant was the hub, where gossip and invitations to weekend barbecues circulated, where mothers sold cakes in the parking lot to raise money for children’s school trips, where men organized soccer teams according to work assignment: Equipo Linea 1 (“line 1 team”), Equipo Fry Line, or Equipo Los Lavaderos (“sanitation workers’ team”).

The Texas Montly article by Karen Olsson is a must-read. It tells the story of 37 year old Francisco Garcia-Rodriguez, a 20 year employee of Pilgrim's, who was separated from his wife Maria, a legal resident, and his five children, all U.S. citizens. Texas Monthly is old-school and a paid subscription is required to read the article, but for those interested I've included it in its entirety after the jump.