Bon Les Feuilles Mortes

Or, Happy Autumn Leaves!


Yes, Summer is officially over, and we move into Autumn, with today's Autumnal Equinox


The First Day of Fall.





It seemed like we had a terribly short Summer, and a rain-soaked one as well, so, here's hoping we have a nice, mild (perhaps, occasionally, crisp) Fall season.


And, who better to take us into this, but the great Mile Davis


Autumn leaves - Miles Davis





And, we have a vocal, from the man who introduced the song;


Yves Montand - Les Feuilles Mortes





And, one of our personal favorites, from the late, great Eva Cassidy


Eva Cassidy - Autumn Leaves





Bonus Riffs


Autumnal Equinox 2011: Sky Show Caps First Day of Fall


The September Equinox Explained


Autumnal Equinox




 

"Build That Afghan Prison Now! ..."

Boy, to take a little liberty with the song, what a difference a week makes ...


There, we had President Obama, on the heels of unveiling his "Jobs for America" package, hitting the stump and exhorting Congress to "Pass that bill now!" 


 


Funny, in what I read about the proposal, and Obama's stumping, I don't recall seeing anything about a massive, Fortress-of-Solitude-like Afghan Prison, there were no impassioned cries of "Build that Afghan prison now! ..."


Glenn Greenwald has the dirt;

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.  Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan" which includes "detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees."

Yikes!


McClatchy Newspapers'  Saeed Shah, back in February;

The U.S. plans to hand over the new Bagram to the Afghan military next January, a demanding target that some think it will be unable or unwilling to meet. Afghan guards are due to start arriving this spring to be trained. This appears to be the reason, officially at least, for expanding the capacity so dramatically, from 600 prisoners at the old site to 1,000 currently and up to 2,300 when the new building is completed.


"This will be the enduring detention facility for the next 50, 60 years. It's world class," said Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, who's in charge of U.S. detention programs in Afghanistan and who was visiting Bagram. "For the Afghans, this means that they will immediately be able to separate the insurgents from the criminal population."

"For the next 50, 60 years?"


You mean we'll be housing, and feeding and, otherwise taking care of Afghan prisoners (some who may, or may not, be terrorists - they being held with that "Do Not Pass Go" justice system - secret evidence, no charges, no trial - from the previous war criminal administration, which means Obama has looked in the rearview mirror, at least, once), for decades to come, so, like, who's going to pay for this?

One obstacle is funding, though. It costs $5 million a year to maintain the new facility, plus an additional cost per detainee, Garrity said. That's way beyond the budget of the Afghan authorities for a single jail, so it remains unclear how the new prison will be financed.

Oh, let us count the ways ...


More, from Greenwald;

One last point: recall how many people insisted that the killing of Osama bin Laden would lead to a drawdown in the War on Terror generally and the war in Afghanistan specifically.  Since then -- in just four months since bin Laden's corpse was dumped into the ocean -- the U.S. has done the following:  renewed the Patriot Act for four years with no reforms; significantly escalated drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan; tried to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process; indicted a 24-year-old Muslim for "material support for Terrorism" for uploading an anti-American YouTube clip after he talked to the son of a Terrorist leader; pressured Iraq to keep U.S. troops in that country; argued that it has the virtually unlimited right to kill anyone it wants anywhere in the world; and now finalized plans to build a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.

And, he finishes most wryly;

If that's winding things down, I sure would hate to see what a redoubling of the American commitment to Endless War looks like.

Help Me Mr. Wizard! ....


 


Bonus Riffs


Tom Engelhardt: Scamming Washington - Exclusive Letters from the ScamiLeaks Archives


Ambassador Crocker Meets Eddie Izzard


Krugman: Reclaiming America’s Soul


Does He Get To Keep The Bag Man?


Top Ten Cloves: Other Things The CIA Tried To Use With The Afghan Warlords


PNAC Going All Xe On Us


Again, Why Are We In Afghanistan?

Top Ten Cloves: Things Peyton Manning Might Be Doing While He Recovers From Neck Surgery

News Item: Peyton Manning's receiving stem cell therapy thrusts medical procedures back into sports spotlight


10.  "Hmmm ...Maybe since 'Modern Family' won a lot of Emmy Awards, they might have a spot for me ... A broken-down, ex-football-player, uncle-type role ..."


  9.  With all the doctors working on him, see if they can qualify under President Obama's new "Jobs Plan", maybe get some federal funding out of it ...


  8.  Will have time to figure out just what-the-heck Netflix is doing


  7.  Give Lorne Michaels a call, maybe hook again with 'Saturday Night Live'


  6.  See if Google wants a All-Star endorser for their new "Google Wallet"


  5.  Two words - "Fantasy Football!!!"


  4.  Might check out Sarah Palin, see if she's interested in hooking up with a "Legendary Quarterback"


  3.  "Hmmm ... Yahoo has an opening...I can even do some commercials - Yahooooooo ..."


  2.  Actually, having bolts inserted into both sides of neck and will announce shift to WWE as new terror, evil, bad guy, "Peytonstein"


  1.  "Damn everybody, I've always wanted to be... a lumberjack" 


 


Bonus Peyton Manning Riffs


Dan Childs: Peyton Manning’s Stem Cell Hail Mary


Jay Glazer: Manning chooses speedier recovery


Allen Barra: Goodbye to Peyton Manning, Greatest Quarterback of the 21st Century


Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Peyton Manning Threw Six Interceptions Last Evening


It's a "Who Dat" Kind of World Now!

Retro Garlic: "Google Wallet" ...We Were Close

We espied news today that Google will be introducing their long-teased "Google Wallet", an application for cellphones;

While this will be the official launch, the product itself will likely still be quite limited. The only officially compatible phone is the Nexus S 4G, which is only available on Sprint in the U.S. Google has an NFC sticker product to bring tap-and-pay to other phones, but it’s not clear if that will be ready at launch or not. Hardware to enable the payments on the merchant end is also needed. And again, MasterCard has been the only official partner on the credit card side of things so far. Perhaps Google will have more to say on that tomorrow. But the above documentation still points to PayPass-enabled Citi MasterCards as the only way to use the service for now.


It also makes sense for Google to get Wallet out there now before their next flagship Android phone, the Nexus Prime, launches next month. It too will have NFC capabilities built in and will bring the Wallet functionality to the much larger Verizon customer base.

Oh boy!


Can't wait for those news reports to pile up about these "Google Wallets" being hacked ...


And, the Retro part;


Tuesday, June 21, 2005 - Google Drops Bombshell - Will Compete With U.S. Treasury ...Markets Close Early and Troops Activated; eBay Said To Be Dumping PayPal

A day after news leaked of the 'Google Wallet', a pay system said to rival eBay's PayPal, Google late yesterday afternoon dropped a bombshell when they announced they will begin a new monetary system for the United States and compete with the U.S. Treasury.


[snip]


In a memo provided to The Garlic, by a person close to Google who wishes to remain anonymous, or would otherwise be terminated, shows that Google's money units will be called "Googlets" For higher denominations, a hyphen and Roman Numeral is added.


Ten Dollars in Googlets will be known as 'Googlets-X', $20, as "Googlets-XX, and so on. For odd denominations, a combination of Roman Numerals and regular numbers will be employed, such as $7 as 'Googlet-V2 or $23 as 'Googlet-XX3. There will be no metal coins in the Googlet Monetary System.

Oh well, we were close ...


 




Bonus Retro Garlic Google


Garlic Exclusive! ...Google Launches Search for Famed Woman Aviator


Stymied By Publishers, Google To Digitize Bazooka Joe Comics ...If Impasse Prolonged, Google To Continue With Baseball Cards, Shopping Coupons


Breaking News! Giant Search Engine Downed By GOP and RNC Staffers  ...Google Crashes! Besieged With “I’m Feeling Lucky” Searches From White House, Congress   ...Amazon, D.C. Novelty Stores Hit With Run On Magic 8-Balls


Top Ten Cloves: Other Great Things You'll Get Using Google's New Retooled Search Engine


Top Ten Cloves: Ways Google Can Provide Better Day Care


Life Imitates Art ... Or, Did Burt Lancaster Invent Google Earth?

Good Post - Will Bunch - "The 10 unanswered questions of 9/11"

If you have been paying attention to the media this week, be it television or radio (particularly NPR), you can see, hear and feel the tsunami of Sept 11th-related stories, building up to the 10th Anniversary this Sunday.



From the tragically sad and heart-breaking, to the softer, uplifting optimistic ones, perhaps, as one of the programs, on 'The Takeaway', has a series dealing with the children born after that horrible day.


And when this 10th Anniversary arrives, we will still be occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, not, necessarily, related to the events the Anniversary commemorates.


Today, Will Bunch has as his column a reminder, how after 10-years now, we still have so many unanswered questions;


The 10 unanswered questions of 9/11


Go read Will Bunch, it's a good piece.


And, one of the items is, perhaps, the least highlighted;


6. Who killed five Americans with anthrax in the fall of 2001?


There's much that has been written about the scientist who, allegedly, was behind the Anthrax attacks, and for my money, it plays out like a rough draft for the sequel to 'The Paralex View'.


Also, we would be remiss if we didn't point to Anne Applebaum's piece in 'Slate' earlier this week -"The Worst Mistake America Made After 9/11 - How focusing too much on the war on terror undermined our economy and global power."

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Places Muammar Gaddafi Is Hiding

New Item: Qaddafi’s Complex Falls to Revolutionaries


10.  Near the epicenter of the big East Coast Earthquake


  9.  Detroit - Grab one of those $1000 houses, and toss an idea, or two, to Mayor Dave Bing


  8.  At Hewlett Packard (he forced them to spin off PC Unit)


  7.  Sneakily, behind Hurricane Irene


  6.  As Rick Perry's Campaign Manager


  5.  The Kardashian Wedding


  4.  Some place the Navy Seals can't find him


  3.  The London Riots (he may have thrown a rock, or two)


  2.  As an anonymous,  wage-less writer for Huffington Post


  1.  With LeGone James - One non-finisher, with another

iUSA

Well, if we see President Obama sporting a black turtleneck over the weekend, perhaps that will signal the Apple has purchased the U.S. Government.


 


U.S. balance now less than Apple cash

Steve Jobs is now more liquid than Uncle Sam


[snip]


As Republicans and Democrats continue to work towards a compromise to the country’s debt ceiling crisis, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday that Washington now has a total operating balance of only US$73.768-billion.


Meanwhile, Apple currently boasts a cash reserve of US$75.876-billion, as of its most recent quarterly earnings report at the end of June.

 


If that happens, I, suppose, we'll all be mandated to purchase iPhones (which will help streamline the iLocater program), and changes will include download apps for things like Social Security Checks, Food Stamps. and such.


And Jobs can scratch the plans for building his new spaceship office, as, no doubt, he'll move straight into the White House, incorporating the Apple logo into the Presidential Seal.


Welcome, to the good ol' iUSA!

Paging Bob Hoskins

Boy, if the PartyofNoicans think this is their idea of a tough guy, no wonder they are so clueless.


House Republicans Psyche Themselves Up By Watching Ben Affleck Prepare To Beat Some Guys Up

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the party’s vote counter, began his talk by showing a clip from the movie, “The Town”, trying to forge a sense of unity among the independent-minded caucus.


One character asks his friend: “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later.”


“Whose car are we gonna take,” the character says.


After showing the clip, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the most outspoken critics of leadership among the 87 freshmen, stood up to speak, according to GOP aides.


“I’m ready to drive the car,” West replied, surprising many Republicans by giving his full -throated support for the plan.


The actual line from the scene is “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. We’re gonna hurt some people.”

 


I mean, he's an okay actor, and they're referring to his role in 'The Town', but, he's probably, more defined by 'Jersey Girl' than being a tough guy.


If you want a real tough guy, someone to put the fear of Jesus into you, that you gotta go with Bob Hoskins, from the very underrated 1979 gem 'The Long Good Friday'(whose cast also included the great, and gorgeous, Helen Mirren)


"The mafia? I've shit 'em!" - Long Good Friday final scene





Note, at the very end, the unknown rookie, Pierce Bronson, playing a heavy


Actually, it might do us all better if Obama effected a little Hoskins;
"I'll tell you something ... I'm glad I found out in time just what a partnership with a pair of wankers like you would have been ... A sleeping partner is one thing, but you're in a fucking coma ..."

Barry Crimmins - "Farewell, Hercules"

I had only met him once.


He was sharing the stage with Barry Crimmins, and, not surprising, Crimmins deferred the "headline" time slot to him, where, for an hour, or so, he strummed his guitar, talked, and joked, with the audience some, in-between singing some serious sweet tunes.


We speak of folksinger, and writer, and all-around cool guy, Bill Morrissey, who passed away this weekend, at the all-too-young age of 59.


 


This, from Wikipedia;

Bill Morrissey (November 25, 1951 – July 23, 2011) was an American folk singer/songwriter from New Hampshire. Many of his songs reflect the harsh realities of life in crumbling New England mill towns.
Over the course of his long career, two of Morrissey's ten albums received Grammy nominations and several have earned 4-star reviews in Rolling Stone as well as equal accolades in other major national publications.[citation needed] Stephen Holden, for the New York Times, wrote, "Mr. Morrissey's songs have the force of poetry...a terseness, precision of detail and a tone of laconic understatement that relate his lyrics to the fiction of writers like Raymond Carver and Richard Ford."[citation needed] He is also the author of the novel Edson (Random House/Alfred A. Knopf 1996) and the recently completed Imaginary Runner.


[snip]


Morrissey, best known for his depressing lyrics, also occasionally wrote such humorous songs as "Party at the U.N." ("It's such a happy community / Everyone's got diplomatic immunity") and "Grizzly Bear", about a frustrated working-class gentleman dating a wealthy young woman who wants to "dance till we dehydrate", while he just wants to "take her home and dance the grizzly bear".

And this, from Gil Bliss, in today's 'Boston Globe';

Mr. Morrissey’s music was distinctive, as he combined a growl of a voice with impeccable guitar picking, all supported by lyrics that reflected his strong literary background. His music had diverse influences, from Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk to the old bluesmen, especially Mississippi John Hurt, whose music Mr. Morrissey featured on one of his two Grammy-nominated recordings.

The most eloquent of tributes comes from Crimmins, himself;


Farewell, Hercules...

The end came for the folksinger, novelist and world-class romantic when he was alone on the road in Georgia over the weekend. I'm sure he died with his guitar lying in its open case on his motel room's other bed, a few boxes of his CD's deposited onto the floor of an inadequate, doorless motel closet, his neatly packed suitcase flipped open on an aluminum stand with nylon straps, a few scribbled notes on a pad on the nightstand, a well-dented bottle of Jack Daniels next to those final thoughts and an ashtray containing the remains of the last few mentholated cigarettes he ever smoked in his remarkable life. It was a life in which he lived most every emotion that he employed in hundreds of songs and a few novels that described the human condition in detail that would make an Egyptian crypt-carver envious.

  
I suggest you go over and read the entire post of "Farewell, Hercules...".


It's not just they shared stages together, performer-to-performer, road-warrior-to-road-warrior.


It's about losing (and celebrating) a close, personal friend.


Condolences go out to all of Bill Morrissey's family, and to the legion of friends, and fans, who now, much earlier than expected, have to assuage their pained hearts, through clear or fleeting, warm and sweet, recollections, few or many, of the great cool cat that Bill Morrissey was.


Bill Morrissey : Inside

Hix Nix Palin Tricks

Well, maybe they can re-title it as "The Defeated" ...


Palin doc headed for PPV as ticket sales plummet

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap) - With its Sarah Palin documentary "The Undefeated" increasing its playdates by 40 percent this weekend, only to watch box office revenue decline by more than 63 percent, distributor Arc Entertainment announced Sunday that the film will soon be available on pay per view.


The movie played in 14 Tea Party-friendly locations this weekend -- up from the 10 in which it opened last week -- but grossed just $24,000.


Starting September 1, subscribers to DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner can see the true Horatio Alger story of an Alaska woman's rise from self-described "hockey mom" to gubernatorial dropout to conservative cable news bastion talking head, all in the comfort of their own home.


In addition, the film will launch on DVD October 4 with a shipment of 250,000 units.

 


Hard to say "ticket sales plummeted", when on opening night, in Red-as-you-can-get-Red Orange County, Southern California, the theatre was empty - nobody showed up.


Why, on earth didn't some Right Wing Flying Monkeys, or, her own Mommy Moose PAC buy up all the movie tickets - just like they did for her book - to make it a runaway success?


To tweak LBJ, if the Wasilla Whiz Kid has lost the Teabaggers, she's lost the country.


And, so much for the juggernaut.


Highlights heading into the 2012 Campaign are, now, a cancelled pre-campaign victory bus tour, and a Susan- Alexander-Kanesque film that goes bust.


If Tina Fey has some smarts, she'll quickly punch out a Doppelganger spoof of "The Undeafeated", of which its' opening night will eclipse all the revenue of the Ex-Governor with Lipstick's box office.


 


Bonus Riffs


Andy Kroll|:  New Sarah Palin Hagiography: Springboard for 2012 Presidential Run?


John Cole:  So Much Awesome In One Place


Ben Child:  Sarah Palin likened to Joan of Arc in two-hour documentary film


TBogg:  Sarah Palin Is The Culmination Of All Human Endeavors and Wars And Probably Evolution


David Weigel:  Palin's Coming Attractions - What the new Sarah Palin documentary gets right, and wrong, about her politics.


Alyssa Rosenberg: Sarah Palin Taken Aback by Hollywood’s Reaction To Her

Really, Larry ...

People in glass houses ....


Former Government, and Harvard, hack, Larry Summers is in the news again today.


No, he isn't bellowing some inane financial wisdom, rather, dissing two of the original Facebook founders, the Twinkle Toes Twins, or whatever their name is;


Larry Summers calls Winklevoss twins 'A**holes'

"One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they're looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an a**hole. This was the latter case."

 


Ha, Ha, Ha, what a funny guy your are Larry.


Or, as Ryan Tate, over on Gawker states "Everyone at the money conference laughed, which means Summers has successfully found two people who are somehow even less popular than he is."


One thing people didn't laugh at, and you didn't learn, as a "college president" was managing your university's endowment, as Felix Salmon detailed, in his "How Larry Summers lost Harvard $1.8 billion", a few years ago.


I second Naomi Klein's call "Why We Should Banish Larry Summers From Public Life";

I vote to banish Larry Summers. Not from the planet. That wouldn't be nice. Just from public life.


[snip]


And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk. Larry Summers is the biggest Brain Bubble we've got.


Brain Bubbles start with an innocuous "whiz kid" moniker in undergrad, which later escalates to "wunderkind." Next comes the requisite foray as an economic adviser to a small crisis-wracked country, where the kid is declared a "savior." By 30, our Bubble Boy is tenured and officially a "genius." By 40, he's a "guru," by 50 an "oracle." After a few drinks: "messiah."


[snip]


And that's the problem with Larry. For all his appeals to absolute truths, he has been spectacularly wrong again and again. He was wrong about not regulating derivatives. Wrong when he helped kill Depression-era banking laws, turning banks into too-big-to-fail welfare monsters. And as he helps devise ever more complex tricks and spends ever more taxpayer dollars to keep the financial casino running, he remains wrong today.

It was funnier, Larry, when you used to sleep through meetings.


 


And, as far as Facebook goes, what is much, much more funnier, was Twitter's Biz Stone's turn on "Wait Wait ...Don't Tell Me" last weekend.


BEN SIDRAN - blue Daniel

DUH!

We haven't, until today, riffed at all on the faux Hatfield-McCoy battles of the Debt Ceiling debacle.


 


The Dems blew their chances for this to be a no-brainer last year, when they held all the cards.


The Party-of-Noicans want us all to fight over potato rations and dirty rain water, unless they get what they want, which is an end to Medicare and Social Security.


Lassie's friend, Little Timmy is warning the sky is falling.


Krugman is standing on a chair, screaming at the top of his lungs, but nobody in Congress or the White House is listening.





Mommy Moose is threatening The Crying Man, that she'll kick his ass (and knock out all his teeth for mumbling about it) if he caves to the Dems.


So, it took Matthew Yglesias, today, to give a proverbial "Head-Slap" to everybody 

Surveying the scene, perhaps everyone should take a deep breath and recall the traditional way the country has avoided default when the debt ceiling needs raising: Congress raises the debt ceiling.


It’s that simple. The same kind of “clean” debt ceiling increase that’s passed repeatedly over the past 100 years will allow the country to avoid default without tax increases, without defense cuts, and without slashing entitlement spending. Education will be spared. So will transportation, health care, farm subsidies, and everything else. The interest rates investors are charging the American government to buy our debt are extremely low right now. The world economy is suffering from an excessive demand for American debt, not by reluctance to lend. All we need to do to keep our finances flowing is to raise the statutory debt ceiling. At some point, things will change, and we may face a crisis that requires bipartisan dealmaking and “tough choices.” Right now, though, the only crisis we face is an entirely self-created one. House Republicans wanted to create a hostage situation to force President Obama to propose steep spending cuts. But when Obama came to the table with a proposal for steep cuts, it turned out that Republicans don’t actually want to sign a bipartisan deal. Which is fine. Don’t sign a deal! The absence of a deal in no way forces a crisis. Just raise the debt ceiling, fight the 2012 elections, and pick up the long-term budget issue then.


The world has plenty of problems on its plate right now. The long-term U.S. structural deficit isn’t one of them. The expiration of the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority is one. And the latter problem can be solved without addressing the former.

Naw, that's too easy ...


The new date now is August 2nd for the Economic Meteor to make it's fiery crash, which means we have nearly three-weeks for all this bullshit to continue, before, either Obama gives us more of that Hope & Change, and the Dems cave to the Party-of-Noicans, or, somebody pulls up Yglesias' post and the Lapdog media can go back to covering The Wasilla Whiz Kid (who, along with boasting she can kick anyone's ass in an election,  is aghast now over the price of Slim Jims).


Let's hope we don't have to bring Joe Gideon out for a curtain call;


Bye Bye Life - "All That Jazz" 1979

Bring Back The Pet Rock

When they get around to making the 'Idiocracy' sequel, this has got to find its' way into the script


On July 4th, while many where camped out on blankets, or stuck in traffic, awaiting the evenings' display of incendiary pap, I was doing some work, and had the radio on, only stopping, mouth agape, to shake my head in disbelief, when this report came on.





It was from PRI's 'The World';


Digital Pop Star Hatsune Miku’s First Live Concert

This weekend, one of the hottest tickets in Los Angeles was to a concert by Japanese pop culture icon Hatsune Miku. She’s a big persona but not a flesh-and-blood person. And her sold-out show, “Mikunopolis,” marked her debut in the US.


[snip]


But Miku is neither animal nor human. She’s a virtual “singer” whose only appearance on stage is as a life-like 3D hologram. She’s what you’d call a Vocaloid — basically the consumer-friendly interface for sophisticated voice-synthesizing software.


[snip]


Vocaloid was spawned far from the shores of LA. Hideki Kenmochi developed Vocaloid at Yamaha Corp. in Japan; then a host of other companies created characters and voices — like Miku, whose parent is Crypton Future Media — that give Vocaloid technology a more human range.


[snip]


The Vocaloid process does for singing what a keyboard synthesizer does for pianos. In the Vocaloid scene, this means a gifted songwriter may not have to rely as much on their own pipes or looks. But despite the sold-out concert in LA, the Vocaloid style is still an acquired taste, most popular among early cultural adopters in Japan


“According to our research,” Kenmochi says, “eight percent of female teenagers listen to only Vocaloid music. That’s amazing statistics.”

(Go here to listen to the Podcast)


Sold-out show? ... Shrieking fans? ...


Over a synthesized 3-D hologram?


Even Woody Allen, in his 1973 futuristic'Sleeper' didn't dream of such dreck.


Give me a F'ing break?


With all the music, hundreds-upon-hundreds-of-thousands, made by real, live human beings, available (an entire second argument, on if it's good or bad), across a multitude of genres, and people are actually going gaga over, as the article ends, "partying in a concert-sized video game"?


Didn't Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe do this before?


Help Me Mister Wizard!


Me thinks this audience would be prime, to bring back the Pet Rock to.


Wait ... Wait ...


Even better - a synthesized 3-D hologram Pet Rock!


 


Bonus Riffs


Adam Frank:  Rise Of The Machines: Japanese Popstar A Computer Construct


Pop Star Turns Out To Be Computer Generated


Jena Isle:  Aimi Eguchi and Hatsune Miku: Japan’s Computer-Generated Pop Stars Gain Millions of Fans; Miku has Upcoming Debut in Los Angeles


Idiocracy - Trailer


Idiocracy Brawndo's Got Electrolytes


Idiocracy, The Sequel