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HarlanCountyDVD

Harlan County U.S.A. (1976) Directed by Barbara Kopple; watched on Criterion Collection DVD. An urgent, immersing documentary of an Appalachian coal mining community’s more than year-long strike against corporate overlord Duke Power. The camera gets itself everywhere you would hope it could – the families’ homes, union meetings, planning sessions by the miners’ wives (who show at least as much grit as the men, often more), on the picket lines when the strikebreaking gun thugs attack, a mile underground in the mines themselves, at Duke Power shareholder meetings, and more. Unforgettable characters emerge, underscored by the raw honesty of the area’s indigenous bluegrass songs vocalized by subjects of the film. Parallels to recent WV mine explosion & 29 deaths are, unsurprisingly, present in several instances. A work of passionate storytelling, made at no small personal risk, richly deserving of its Best Documentary Academy Award, and absolutely among the great documentary films of the last 50 years. See it.


May 1, 2010 | 1 comment

Oregon Ducks Take Forever to Get Dressed

December 9, 2009 | Permalink

I’m going to slag off the University of Oregon football team. Not because they are going to the Rose Bowl and the team I support, Stanford, isn’t (I dislike such petty player-hatin’). I won’t even be mocking the fact that their mascot is the Ducks. …OK, maybe I will a little. But my real point is that U of O’s team should be called the Clothes Horses.

It’s not news that the athletic program in Eugene has assloads of money, very much of it flowing from alumnus Phil Knight, founder of athletic apparel behemoth Nike, Inc. As a result, this football team has a bigger wardrobe than a Lake Oswego debutante. I’ve been a football fan for a long time, and I’m used to your basic two uniforms per team: home and away. I’ll admit that the NFL’s mixing in nostalgic “throwback” uniforms appealed to my own history-nerdiness, save for the occasional ghastly misstep (of which I blogged not long ago). However, the Ducks have taken things to a new level, all but erasing the line between football season and fashion week. Check out this fancy shit:
preseason unveiling
According to GoDucks.com, this first re-design of the football uniforms since all the way back in… um, 2006, is all about sound science: Read the rest of this entry »


Citi Doesn’t Care What I Prefer

November 24, 2009 | 1 comment

As much time and hassle as it saves me, handling my accounts online isn’t completely free of drawbacks. Although I may provoke a flurry of patronizing tsk-tsking from the online-security paranoiacs, the drawbacks I’m going to address don’t have to do with whatever chance might exist of my identity being stolen. I’m talking about the unwanted extra email that so many of my online accounts continually send me, no matter how many times I “unsubscribe” from these “special offers and information for account holders,” or whatever the euphemism may be.

Let’s illustrate this bitch. On my Citi/AT&T Universal Card, I signed up as per usual for the “paperless” option—online statements, online auto-payments, emailed confirmations thereof, and emailed notices in case of any problems with limits or payment processing. When I selected these services, I was careful to specify my desire to receive no other emails from the credit card other than these specific statement and payment notices. Nevertheless, here is a junk email I received from them this morning. Read the rest of this entry »


Free Irony Supplement Available at CVS

November 4, 2009 | 1 comment

I like CVS. The one near my new apartment even has an Rx counter with a drive-thru window. Like most any Angeleno, I feel instant affection for any merchant that allows me to patronize their store without exiting my car. Plus, you gotta admire their self-sustaining marketing strategy. Supply and demand is for amateurs—these guys are rockin’ some cause and effect. Check it out:

Darn it. If I’d been paying attention I could have saved $5 when I bought¹ $20 or more of Halloween candy.

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¹ Yes, that’s right: $5, and one pronoun. Look at the flyer again.


Obama: Run the Goddamned Option!

August 18, 2009 | 2 comments

The following is text I composed for the “Additional message to President Obama” field, after I had signed my name to CredoAction.com’s petition “Tell Obama: The public option is not optional.” I urge all of you who read this while the health care reform issue is still current to do the same. Unless you don’t agree with me. No, fuck that — if you don’t agree I still want you to sign it.

Health care reform has been the issue of greatest concern to me for a long time. Therefore, in the following I will make every effort to temper my vehement language and trust that you will pardon me if a mild profanity or two do creep in.

If you punt on the public option, this whole initiative will have been in vain. All that would be left in the bill would be the window dressing. Window dressing, without a bloody *window*! Read the rest of this entry »


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