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Paul Wesley

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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. I was in undergrad when she did "Mandinka" on Letterman. It made a huge and immediate impression. Mainstream pop and rock was still in the deep pits of hair metal, and the few rock bands that were fronted by women (Heart) were doing God-awful corporate power ballads. And onto that scene comes a young Irish girl who writes her own songs, shaves her head, dresses like a punk, and has a totally unique perspective on the world and an incredible physical voice to match. I wore out those first two records. The songwriting on both of them is just fantastic. If you were older than about 13 or 14 when she tore up the picture of the pope, you'll remember how venomous and ubiquitous the backlash against her was. Sinatra was talking about slapping her, comedians of the day (Andrew Dice Clay) did bits mocking her. I don't think she had a single ally amongst any religious group -- it wasn't just the Catholics, but leaders of all denominations denounced her. Politicians denounced her. Even music fans booed her when she appeared at a Bob Dylan tribute concert. I can remember a few people standing up for the Dixie Chicks in real time. I don't remember a single person in any position of power standing up for Sinead. It's pretty crazy to think how universally she was criticized for saying things that we think of only a few decades later as factual - that black boys were getting killed by the police, that the Catholic Church was enabling child abuse, etc. I have listened to "Emperor's New Clothes" a thousand times, and I'm still really moved by it. "Everyone can see what's going on They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable, Not because what I said was wrong. Whatever it may bring, I will live by my own policies. I will sleep with a clear conscience, I will sleep in peace."
  2. Man, I am really sad for my beloved home state. Does Texas have anyone in a leadership position who's not an ignorant, thin-skinned fascist looking to systematically grind up all the actual experts in the right-wing hate machine? p.s. This thread makes me want to write a check to The Texas Tribune for reporting these stories. They should be getting more attention.
  3. It was kind of refreshing for a pop music documentary, right? It didn't follow the standard narrative at all. And, yeah - respect to Ridgeley. Very gracious.
  4. That record totally holds up, doesn't it? Very simple songs, but they're catchy, they have hooks everywhere, and the vocal performances are fantastic.
  5. Awesome that you are writing and composing in such contrasting genres.
  6. 4 seats, section 114 on the aisle. $1000 Sounds expensive, but with the ticket insurance, face price was right at $250/each. If you want them, you can Venmo me the $. You MUST have the Ticketmaster app in order for me to send you the tickets (photos won't get you in). I've been on these boards since Greg Davis was throwing 2-yard out routes on 3rd-and-long.
  7. Great post, and right on the money. All the old Texas fans - which includes the guys making the decisions for UT today - remember the last 8-10 years of the SWC. It was the early years of cable TV, and conferences were figuring out that Notre Dame didn't have to be the only school getting big $$$ for TV rights. The kind of money that conferences were getting in the late 80's is small potatoes compared to today's massive deals, but at the time, it was still an eyebrow-raising step up in the college football ante. Texas fans found themselves in a league with a 1-state footprint and a bunch of schools with small followings and very little bargaining power. It sent us into a death spiral. Recruits were leaving the state in droves, in favor of OU, Nebraska, Notre Dame, and the SEC schools. Recruits wanted to play in the venerable stadiums filled with 90K fans, not in Ownby or Robertson. I mean, if Texas didn't care about winning anything on a national level, that was a perfectly sustainable business model. But if Texas aspired to be a perennial top-10 team, it's definitely not. It wasn't then, and it isn't now. I would have been perfectly happy in the original iteration of the Big 12, but as the mid-sized public schools (Mizzou, Aggies, Colorado) peeled away and Nebraska collapsed (and blamed Texas for all their woes), our league literally started re-creating the SWC. It's not sustainable. We've seen how that ends for us - watching our home-state talent shun Austin, and watching schools with a lot less valuable brands getting bigger $$$$ because they're in better leagues. And Mitch is right - the school most responsible for a decade of Texas' on-the-field bed shitting is Texas. In the time where this conference realignment continued, we had Mack mailing it in for YEARS before handing off the reins to a couple of clowns. Finally, as for former Kansas State AD Tim Wieser and the rest of the Big 12 officials taking these laughably bitchy shots at us like spurned 14-year old girls: Texas is going to be just fine. No, "we might as well lose to Alabama" was not the logic in Austin. It was more like "we are not going to be able to compete with Alabama as long as we are yoked to 10 shitty also-ran schools in shitty nowhere towns like Manhattan Kansas that are run by shitty also-ran chucklekfucks like Tim Wieser (his psychology degree from Emporia State not withstanding)." And also "we aren't going to be able to compete with Alabama and their SEC money in this modern-day recreation of the gasping, wheezing SWC. Clearly it hurts his feelings that his school hasn't beaten us since three presidential administrations ago, so he's just pretending like they're on the other end of this winning streak. He's going to be really disappointed to see a re-energized Texas program. The jury is out on whether Sark is going to be able to harness that energy the same way Mack did in his first decade, and whether Sark can likewise turn those advantages into a perennial 10-win program. But there's no doubt that Austin is going to be buzzing with excitement and recruiting momentum over the next few seasons.
  8. That was exactly my reaction. I'm not sure how it's going to be worse than 14-0 penalty disparities, or worse than Texas and OU watching their edge rushers get tackled without consequence all season... but It seems like when your league commissioner openly celebrates your failures, it's probably going to get worse.
  9. Someone on these boards recommended this episode of "You're Wrong About," and it speaks to these (impossibly huge) purported numbers. I tried to find a link to the podcast ('m sure it's on all the platforms), but I could only find this link to it on YouTube. They start breaking the numbers down after around 4:15
  10. I have some version of that... maybe Hercules(?). It holds four or five instruments, but I use it even if I'm only trying to temporarily put down one or two guitars. The multi-stand is one of the most cost-effective musical things I own (I think mine was $80 or so). The little individual fold-out guitar stands are just inherently unstable to even a gentle bump from the side. I don't trust them at all, and I almost never use them anymore. If I'm in a spot where there's not enough space for the multi-stand, I just leave the instrument's case on the floor and lay it down between takes.
  11. I just looked up the lyrics. "Lived nine lives, gunned down ten." I might have to keep singing "Lived my life, Gunga Din."
  12. Well said. There used to just be "the news," "the radio," and "the television," and Madonna was just relentlessly present on all of those media for a solid decade. The icons of today -- even Beyonce and Taylor Swift -- they just don't have those universal platforms that reach every demographic. These days, pretty much nobody is listening to terrestrial radio or watching live performances on network TV (outside of maybe Super Bowl halftime).
  13. Did they move to S Lamar and Oltorf (by that Office Depot) at some point? Or am I thinking of a different place that carried 2" tape?
  14. One of my all-time favorite movie scenes:
  15. I just think it's weird how hypersensitive Clarence Thomas is to the *possibility* that people will discount his Yale education, thinking that he only got in because he's black. And I wonder if it's crossed George W Bush's mind a single time that maybe his own Yale credentials are tainted by the fact that he was a legacy admission.
  16. It's a smokescreen. A double-bluff. A red XK27 technique.
  17. Here's one of the four or five most well-known Fox anchors telling viewers not to be distracted by Russian mercenaries pointing their missiles at the Kremlin, and reminding viewers to keep in mind what really matters in the world: Hunter Biden. Her last sentence: "They (the media) are covering everything about Russia and the Wagner Group as if it really matters to the US right now!" Sorry I couldn't find a shorter clip... and obviously, the chyrons were added by this YouTuber doing commentary and they're not the Fox chyrons.
  18. I don't know how the internal power struggle within Russia will play out, but it seems like the odds of Russia holding on to Crimea just went way down, right? I mean, a lot of these Russian conscripts got sent into Belarus under false pretense, they're fighting a pretty brutal war, and they're going to find out one way or another that the Wagner guys just moved against Moscow. And then they're going to be told to get ready for tomorrow's Ukrainian offensive. Smaller countries that get invaded (Vietnam, Ukraine, Afghanistan - by both Russians and Americans) - they don't have to win all the battles. They don't even need to win the majority of the battles or the most important strategic battles. They just need to outlast the invader's will to keep fighting. It's hard to imagine how the Russians (and their soldiers) are going to sustain their will to fight and die after the events of the last 24 hours... even if they have a hard time determining what the fuck just happened.
  19. I think that the moment that a big story breaks is the best time to flip on Fox News. The contrast between real news and what they do becomes even more stark. I was at a friend's house and he had CNN on when the Access Hollywood tape dropped. CNN aired it. Repeatedly. We flipped over to Fox, and there were talking heads saying, "Apparently the media is releasing a tape trying to embarrass Trump. Do you think the left is going to politicize this tape to hurt Trump?" And then all the talking heads talked about what liberals were doing to Trump... but THEY NEVER PLAYED THE TAPE. Which is sort of the antithesis of "We report. You decide." Not only did they decide, they didn't even report. Anyway, last night I was scrolling through BBC, MSNBC, CNN. Each one: "IS RUSSIA BREAKING INTO CIVIL WAR?" I flip over to Fox: "Experts think Biden is too old to lead," and there was a whole panel discussing his age. Back to the other stations: "RUSSIAN MERCENARIES MARCHING ON MOSCOW!" An hour or so later on Fox: "Lawmakers demand answers for Hunter Biden's favorable treatment" (or something along those lines). Then a panel talking about how the DOJ needs to be investigated because Trump got indicted but Hunter got a plea deal. Because, you know. "DEEP STATE UNFAIR TO TRUMP!" This was over a period of hours. I finally went to bed a little after 2 am. People who watch this shit literally are missing the biggest news stories of the year. Today's Fox News isn't even a propagandized version of the news. It's not even news. It's just an endless loop of conspiracy theories and manufactured grievances.
  20. locodos, I think I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying you knew Russia would join liberal democracies, but I just reread your post and you were saying the opposite. My bad. Too late to edit, unfortunately.
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