Rose City Weekend

It's tomorrow, and that's all you need to think about this weekend.

Cheers, Mates

A combination 70 years in the making!

Happy birthdays to JCG and Herr Docktor. Damn, they're looking suave and dapper. I still don't know how that managed to be born on the same day, but that's their problem. Having seen (and shared in) drunken debauchery, nudity, and other horribly scaring and unmentionable things - that's my problem. I love you bastards guys!

And don't think I forgot about Little Grush lurking in the background...he added another tick on the calendar on Wednesday.

Stringer Bell Needs To Get Paid

But if he really wants to earn big bucks, he could just move to Baltimore. Or Scranton.

Having Lame Jack Off Material Is Now Felonious

In an obscenity first, a U.S. comic book collector has pleaded guilty to importing and possessing Japanese manga books depicting illustrations of child sex abuse and bestiality. We all know it was shitty and juvenile, but obscene?

Christopher Handley, who was described by his lawyer as a “prolific collector” of manga, plead guilty last week to mailing obscene matter, and to “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.” Three other counts were dropped in a plea deal with prosecutors.

The 39-year-old office worker was charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Handley’s guilty plea makes him the first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography. He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Comics fans are alarmed by the case, saying that jailing someone over manga does nothing to protect children from sexual abuse. “This art that this man possessed as part of a larger collection of manga … is now the basis for [a sentence] designed to protect children from abuse,” says Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. “The drawings are not obscene and are not tantamount to pornography. They are lines on paper.”

Congress passed the Protect Act after the Supreme Court struck down a broader law prohibiting any visual depictions of minors engaged in sexual activity, including computer-generated imagery and other fakes. The high court ruled that the ban was overbroad, and could cover legitimate speech, including Hollywood productions. In response, the Protect Act narrows the prohibition to cover only depictions that the defendant’s community would consider “obscene.”

“It’s probably the only law I’m aware of, if a client shows me a book or magazine or movie, and asks me if this image is illegal, I can’t tell them,” says Eric Chase, Handley’s attorney. Chase says he recommended the plea agreement to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.”

The case began in 2006, when customs officials intercepted and opened a package from Japan addressed to Handley. Seven books of manga inside contained cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts. One book included depictions of bestiality, according to stipulations in Handley’s plea deal. Frenchy Lunning, a manga expert at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, was a consultant in the case. She says the books were from the widely available Lolicon variety — a Japanese word play on “Lolita.”

“This stuff is huge in Japan, in all of Asia,” Lunning says. Handley, she adds, “is not a pedophile. He had no photographs of child pornography.” Handley remains free pending a yet-to-be scheduled sentencing date. Mike Bladel, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, declined to state what kind of sentence the government would seek, but claimed there were hundreds of obscene panels in the seized manga. Chase says he’s hoping the judge will take into account the circumstances. “He was a prolific collector,” says the lawyer. “He did not focus on this type of manga. He collected everything that was out there that he could get his hands on. I think this makes a huge difference.”

This is a real shame because all that tentacle rape and ridiculous ultra-graphic sexuality in manga is neither child porn or titillating in any manner, but is now getting lumped in with those "illicit" materials. In reality, it's just a pathetic, adolescent exaggerated sexuality for losers who can relate better to a silly, cartoonish version of womanhood and sexuality than face real life versions. I want to see those people punished, but not with jail or anything like that. Let's just go back to scorning their sad lifestyles and berate them as a society for sexualizing the unsexy.

Fear And Gaming

Best. Board Game. Ever. Playing is winning.

Boom.

With Leather found this awesome bus race footage from Ohio, of all places. Yes, you read that right, and the bizarre tingly awesomeness I feel from watching a bus plowing into another bus simply cannot be described. It’s like watching Optimus Prime give a prostate exam to a Tyrannosaurus Rex, only with more debris flying around and more profanity. And even that visual image doesn’t do it justice.

Explosions And Boobs

No, really - explosions and boobs. A different set every time you refresh.

Jon Peters: Super Dickbag Of The Universe

Any interest in reading the memior of hairdresser-turned-studio-mogul Jon Peters, y'know, the guy who told Kevin Smith that he didn’t want his Superman to fly or wear a cape, but that he had to fight a giant spider in the third act? Film Drunk spills it:

Recently, Peters was given a $700,000 advance to write a tell-all book, but canceled the deal for fear of getting sued when Deadline Hollywood Daily posted the book proposal (though the book itself is still presumably going forward). And you know the book will be good because Peters turned down the deal by saying, “I somehow feel that the cat got out of the bag before it was ever in the bag, and the cat became a wild jungle tiger on the loose.” God, I want to make love to that sentence. Vanity Fair fact checks some of the more interesting stories in the book proposal, including:

He used karate to settle scores.

He was trained in pubic-hair care - After landing his first hairdressing gig, at a Manhattan salon that catered to prostitutes and strippers, Peters became a “‘muff dyer,’ a specialist in coloring and coiffing pubic hair.”

He was fierce when cuckolded - In the late 60s, Peters caught his second wife, actress Lesley Ann Warren, in bed with Warren Beatty and chased the actor around the block, “instilling more fear in the serial Lothario than the rednecks who would kill his character in the upcoming Bonnie and Clyde.”

He never forgave Sumner Redstone for peeing on his antique couch.

He rejected a brazen come-on from Barbara Walters - She invited him to her New York apartment for “a pre-interview interview. Keeping things very chummy, with no pretense of journalistic objectivity, she plied Jon with champagne and caviar, then changed into ‘something comfortable,’ leaving her bedroom door strategically ajar as she stripped down to her bra and panties, giving Jon a 20-20 view, as it were, of the Barbara W in all her glory.”

He almost fought O. J. Simpson at a Cartier store - Peters and O. J. Simpson nearly came to blows after Simpson made a play at a party for Peters’s date, the blonde model Vendela. Simpson tried to humiliate Peters with a joke that doesn’t even make sense, “announcing that if he, O. J. and Vendela had a child, it would look like Jon.” A week later, Peters ran into Simpson at Cartier, and O.J. apologized, offering his hand in friendship. In accepting the gesture, “Jon felt a weakness, and for a second, he thought he could take O.J. out then and there among the diamonds and rubies, but he held his fire. Cartier just wasn’t the place for a saloon brawl.”

Jon Peters isn’t a man, he’s a Gatorade flavor. Anyway you can go over to Vanity Fair to find out if any of his stories are actually true...not that you should care either way.

Your Tax Dollars In Space

New Kind Of Rape

Just want to share with everybody something totally retarded that came up in conversation, and of course it exists as friendly chain spam. Verbatim:

This is a true story.

The woman left the office after working hours and saw a little child crying on the road. Feeling pity for the child, she went to ask what happened. The child said, 'I am lost. Can you take me home please?' Then the child gave her a slip of paper and tells the woman where the address is. The woman, being an average kind person who didn't suspect anything took the child there. And there when they arrived at the child's home, the kind hearted woman pressed the door bell and she was electrocuted as the bell was wired with high voltage, and fainted.

The next day when she woke up, she found herself in an empty house up in the hills, naked. Condoms were all thrown around with semen all over her and flowing from her body. There were at least about 20 condoms! She had not even seen her assailants. That's why nowadays crimes are targeted on kind people like her.

Next time if the same situation occurs, never bring the child to the intended place. If the child insists, then bring the child to the police station. Lost children are best sent to police stations!!!!!!

Please send this to all your female friends/colleagues, and your friends with girlfriends and friends with wives. It is better to receive this a thousand times than is a victim once!

To keep my Identity and job safe I will just say that I am Officer Justice. Keep safe Ladies!

Please pass this on to family members. It is better to be informed. It is sad that we cannot even help children now!

One Love

Wow. There's so much wrong and totally ridiculous, I was shocked that there was even any thought whatsoever that this could be remotely true. Let's take it apart, line by line.

This is a true story. (anything that begins with those words, especially an email, is not)

The woman (THE woman? which one? the made up one this didn't happen to) left the office (the nonspecific office) after working hours (because she was working regular hours) and saw a little child crying on the road (y'know, THE road, wherever it is). Feeling pity (not concern or empathy or any other normal feeling) for the child, she went to ask what happened. The child (that nobody else apparently saw - it must have been a very remote road where not many people were) said, 'I am lost. Can you take me home please?' (good, the child was taught to talk to strangers) Then the child gave her a slip of paper and tells the woman where the address is (if that was the case then what was on the paper? did she not know where the address was, and if so how far was she going to go to drop the kid off). The woman, being an average (actually, far below in the intelligence department) kind (but not so kind that she previously pitied the child) person who didn't suspect anything (because a child alone crying on the side of the road is normal) took the child there (without bothering to find out how the child got from home to the side of the road in the first place). And there when they arrived (what is that grammar?) at the child's home (which must have been in the middle of nowhere for the next part to happen), the kind hearted (oh, now there's kindness in her heart) woman pressed the door bell and she was electrocuted as the bell was wired with high voltage, and fainted (that's not called fainting).

The next day when she woke up (that must have been quite a shock that knocked her out for at least 12 hours but didn't kill her), she found herself in an empty house up in the hills (in the hills of where? from where?), naked. Condoms were all thrown around (were all? - is this a story or a transcription from somebody without high school English) with semen all over her and flowing (really - how much was in there to literally flow out of her?) from her body (so someone used condoms because they didn't want to get a disease from her but not everybody because she was leaking semen? and it would have to be fairly recent, because that shit dries up). There were at least about (which is it - at least or about) 20 condoms (which means there were twenty people? or she got raped twenty times? or it's just another made up part of the story)! She had not even seen her assailants (is that insult to injury?). That's why nowadays crimes (nowadays crimes? not those ones of yesteryear?) are targeted on kind people like her (or the kind of people like her - total idiots who afterwards can't tell the authorities where the original house was that she brought the child to).

Next time if the same situation occurs (getting phantom gang raped?), never bring the child to the intended place (as if you want to pick up strange children). If the child insists (what are you, a moron - you do what a child insists of you), then bring the child to the police station (which should have been your only option to begin with, if you didn't just call them the moment you found the child). Lost children (who are being used to create overly complicated rape scenarios where multiple people can't figure out a less troublesome way to find victims) are best sent to police stations!!!!!!

Please send this to all your female friends/colleagues, and your friends with girlfriends and friends with wives (but not to your girlfriend, wife, or any family members). It is better to receive this a thousand times than is a victim (than is a? speak correctly!) once (actually, I'd rather the people responsible for passing it along get raped than have to read it ever again)!

To keep my Identity (capitalized for importance) and job safe (from what) I will just say that I am Officer Justice (of the made of title department, silly name division). Keep safe Ladies (also capitalized for importance)!

Please pass this on to family members (oh, now it's okay). It is better to be informed (better than what?). It is sad that we cannot even help children now (yes, you can, if you don't have fake, made up scenarios)!

One Love (oh, fuck you - what does that have to do with anything?)

Special thanks and a huge eat shit go to Liz Cruz in Payroll / H.R. at the Holmes Body Shop corporate office, as well as Laura Palma and Cheryl Weir, who helped make this chain find it's way to the gals who work for me at our office. 20 condoms all thrown around with semen for you ladies!

Bum's Knee

Jose Canseco got the bitch end of the stick in his debut in mixed martial arts, as he deserves.

He was defeated by South Korean super heavyweight Hong Man Choi by a knockout just 1 minute, 17 seconds into the first round. The referee stopped the fight when the 7'2", 330-pound Choi knocked Canseco to the mat and started punching his head. Me, I would have let it go for another minute. "That's a big man," Canseco said after the fight. "I ran into one of his left jabs and that almost knocked me out. You have no idea how scary it was facing a man that big." Funny, that's what your ex-wife said in regards to dealing with your roid rage.

Canseco did land the first blow with a right to the upper body of Choi but that was all the damage he could inflict on the Korean giant, who was built like brick kimchee shithouse. Shortly into the fight, Canseco claims to have hurt his right knee and was unable to do much after that, which is a convenient excuse for getting whupped. "I hurt my knee back home real bad but I didn't want to disappoint the fans," Canseco said. "I knew that at some point during the fight my knee was going to give out and once I was down I knew I wasn't going to get up. He's just too heavy to move." I think it was that massive left jab that may have been the issue more than the trick knee, but anybody who can punch you in the face so hard you hurt your knee is a superior opponent.

Canseco may have hit 462 home runs in 17 seasons in the major leagues, but has had little success in his numerous fights, and has never taken on professional fighters like Choi, who improved to 2-2 in MMA. He boxed Danny Bonadouchebag Bonaduce to a draw in a celebrity match in January, and lost to former Philadelphia Eagle Vai Sikahema in his first foray into celebrity boxing.

By his own acknowledgment, the baseball outcast who named alleged steroid abusers like himself in his two books needs money, and the main reason why Canseco has accepted a wide variety of offbeat jobs to make ends meet. With his record, he'll be bending over for a sawbuck in the alley soon. Canseco said he will work on getting his knee back in shape before taking on any more fights, even though it's only going to be an issue until it's healthy and then he'll find some other excuse. "I have no idea if I'll do this again," Canseco said. "I've gotta get better before I commit to anything like this". Yes, much better.

Super Marios

Ludacris On The MTA

Chinese Kevorkian

A Chinese man was pushed off a bridge by an angry passer-by after his threat to commit suicide held up traffic for five hours, Chinese media reported. Because sometimes, you need a helping hand.

Retired soldier Lian Jiansheng (66) broke through a police cordon and reached out to shake the hand of would-be jumper Chen Fuchao...before shoving him off the bridge. "I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interests," Lai was quoted as saying by a newspaper. "They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals."

Chen, who was 2 million yuan ($293,200) in debt because of a failed building project, fell almost 25 feet onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion and was hospitalized with wrist and back injuries. Lai was detained by police and thanked by those stuck in traffic. Chen was at least the twelfth person since early April to threaten suicide at the same spot, the Haizhu bridge in Guangzhou.

Pictures? Yes, here...

F-F-Fresh

How To Ruin Something

Take everything cool about Iron Man and completely destroy it. Or comics for that matter:

The heroes of Marvel Entertainment have foiled everything from bank robberies to alien invasions — usually with their fists. But when a young set designer is murdered during New York Fashion Week, solving the crime falls to more delicate hands.

On Aug. 26, Marvel will release the first issue of “Models Inc.,” a sartorially minded mini-series that unites some of its fashion-friendly supporting characters and pushes them into new starring roles. The runway divas include Millicent Collins (a k a Millie the Model), Patsy Walker, also known as the superheroine Hellcat, and Mary Jane, the model-turned actress who is the sometimes wife of Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man. The women team up to clear Millicent, who is the prime suspect in the murder of the set designer. Think of it as “Charlie’s Angels” set in the fashion world.

But what would the angels be without someone to guide them? Enter Tim Gunn of “Project Runway.” In the debut issue’s second story, Mr. Gunn becomes an action figure — jumping into Iron Man’s suit of armor to save a fashion exhibition from evildoers. It’s certainly a departure from Mr. Gunn’s usual role as a mentor to aspiring designers, but there is a connection. Mr. Gunn said he remembered comic books with Millicent, who first appeared in 1945. She was a comic romantic figure, who worked as a model for the Hanover agency.

Mr. Gunn will grace one version of the first cover of “Models Inc.,” drawn by Phil Jimenez, a popular comic book artist who also illustrated the cover of “Amazing Spider-Man” No. 583, which paired Spidey with President Obama. A sales analysis on the Beat, the comic blog of Publishers Weekly, estimated that more than 520,000 copies of the issue were sold. Can Mr. Gunn persuade fashionistas that these comic books are as valuable as the September issue of Vogue? He doesn’t claim to know, but he is as surprised as your average Hulk reader that he is now a Marvel action figure. “I’m not certain of the particulars of how I’ll be portrayed, but I’m really excited about it,” Mr. Gunn said. “To say I’m a character in a comic book is wild!”

Yep, gay men and materialistic women who love fashion, that's who reads comic books.

Chuckle-Off

In keeping with the theme of my present trip, I give advance notice of the ComedySportz 25th Anniversary World Championship, coming to Milwaukee this summer.

Founded in Milwaukee circa 1984, ComedySportz crossbred the laughs of theater games with the mood of athletic competition. For the uninitiated, a match is performed before an audience with two teams of comedy ‘actletes’ competing for laughs and points, moderated by a referee who keeps things moving and calls fouls. An average of seven to twelve games are played during a match, drawn from a repertoire of over a hundred improv games. Many of you have seen something similar if you're familiar with the show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but ComedySportz is actually funny.

Comedysportz has spread around the world, with theaters springing up from Los Angeles to New York and from Houston to Manchester, England. Starting July 6, 20 teams will gather in Milwaukee for a weeklong anniversary celebration and improv tournament. The final championship match goes down Saturday, July 11 with the winning team named ComedySportz Improv Comedy World Champion (for what that's worth).

I was with the Santa Barbara team for over five years, and even competed in one of the national tournaments...let me just say the Quad Cities area was pretty fucking beat, and I doubt much has changed in 10 years. Nonetheless, CSz rules, and I have to give props...

Agility

Terminator Reconstitution

Prior to dinner, Scarlett's step-brothers and I took in the new Terminator flick, and it was basically what I expected - moderately interesting but ultimately not a great film by any stretch. And that is the trouble in having to follow James Cameron and a franchise that is much beloved...or expecting McG to be the guy to do it. While Jonathan Mostow made a yawn-worthy Rise Of The Machines, following those footsteps for this sequel doesn't lower the bar so much that McG would have an easy task. But don't take my word for it, when the slobs from Film Drunk seem to have read my mind and saved me the trouble of having to articulate it:

Terminator Salvation might be the coolest looking, most visually impressive, best choreographed movie I’ve seen all year, and it would be even better if they’d actually finished writing the script.

SPOILERS, ETC - AS IF YOU DIDN'T THAT WAS COMING UP NEXT...

During the press tour, director McG had been saying all the right things - acknowledging that letting the Charlie’s Angel's guy direct a Terminator movie sounds like a horrible idea, and having a name like “McG” makes you sound like a douchebag. He went out of his way to show deference, which made his argument that he’d made a worthy sequel sound sincere. He even went so far as to say on a radio show that he was tempted to give out his phone number on the air “so that people who don’t like it can call me for a refund.” Hey, McG, does that offer still stand? I know a few people who owe you a call…

Terminator Salvation starts out on the right foot, immersing us in a fully-realized vision of the post-judgment day future. The cinematography is gritty and gorgeous, and the fight scenes, which begin early and continue often, are full of ball-rattling bass groans and whizzing tracer bullets. So far so good. But it isn’t long before you realize there isn’t much happening here beyond people running from explosions. The dialog is the bare minimum necessary for exposition and the plot holes start out niggling but forgivable, and eventually descend into utter ridiculousness. We’ll get to that later.

Okay, examples: early in the movie Christian Bale-as-John Connor is flying away from the scene of a battle, of which he was the only survivor. They’re flying over the ocean in a rainstorm and Connor’s talking to the resistance’s central command, which is headquartered in a submarine. Connor doesn’t like what centcom has to say (because Connor is a brash lieutenant who plays by his own rules, you see) so he does what anyone would do: he demands that his pilot open the rear plane hatch so he can jump out of it into raging 30-foot swells. We see Connor jump. Direct cut to Connor soaking wet inside the submarine, getting chewed out by the general for “do you know how much this little stunt of yours is going to cost us??! You’re a loose cannon, Connor!” - a vignette straight out of every 80s action movie ever. Now: even ignoring the fact that jumping out of a plane into the ocean would cause at the very least severe injury, how the f*ck are we to conclude Connor got from the surface of the waves to the inside of a submarine? I assume the answer is something along the lines of “Uh… Shut up, dude, details are for pussies.”

The whole film exhibits a similar dump on the chest of basic logic. For instance: why are the terminators that aren’t designed to fit in as humans still humanoid? There’s no logical reason for the machines to build weapons that have eyes and heads and legs and arms - or maybe there is, but the screenwriters never let us in on it. In another scene, Connor broadcasts his message to the rest of the resistance, who we see listening to him in L.A., New York, the South American jungle, etc. Here’s fun experiment - try to pick up an L.A. radio station on a transistor in New York. Maybe people pick up satellite radio on transistors in the dystopian future? Or perhaps Judgment Day mysteriously flattened the Earth? In another scene, John Connor tosses Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) a walkie-talkie. “Contact me on this,” he says. At which point Wright bids him adieu and… dives into a river. So… water-proof radios, I’m assuming? An even bigger problem: if the machines are building terminators whose sole purpose is to eradicate humans, wouldn’t the terminators have better ways of killing them than throwing them against walls? A choke, a stab, a neck snap - all of these would be efficient and effective. But at the time of Terminator Salvation, apparently all the machines have figured out is how to pick people up and throw them against things, which is lucky for John Connor, who can just yelp in pain and then run off to hide over and over and over again. I could go on.

They may seem like small details, and they are, at first, but they’re symptomatic of a film that just never took the time to fill in the holes. It plays more like a script outline than a finished script. And worse than that, they took the genuinely interesting idea of a human reanimated with robot parts who still thinks he’s human (Marcus Wright), and turned it into an allegory about how “everyone deserves a second chance.” This is me wanking. And that all-important question of what makes humans humans and machines machines, even when the machines can do everything a human can? That has an easy answer too! Humans are human because they have a heart! In fact, imagine the most retardedly literal version of that conclusion and you have the last act of Terminator Salvation, the most laughably terrible final 15 minutes since Indy and the Crystal Skull or Independence Day. Oh and hey, remember how Edward Norton kills his alter ego in Fight Club by shooting himself in the mouth? Yeah, there’s a dash of that thrown in too.

For their part, the actors don’t seem to know what the hell to do either. Christian Bale spends the movie half in Batman-growl and half going from zero to aneurysm tantrum faster than Nic Cage in Wicker Man. You spend a lot of time wondering why he’s yelling. Sam Worthington fares a little better, even though his Australian accent comes and goes (we never find out where he’s from) and we never get a good explanation of how he went from a murderer on death row who donates his body to Cyberdyne to the savior of humankind.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. The big terminator machines are pretty cool, and impressively rendered from look to movement to sound. Most of the action sequences are really well done - even the superior-in-every-other-way Star Trek suffered from quick-cut/shaky-cam disease, which Terminator manages to avoid. Even Marcus Wright’s reanimated superman act is fun to watch at first, at least before it turns into a dick-fisted homage to Terminator 2, with the good guy cyborg protecting John Connor from the bad guy cyborg. John Connor’s final fight with the machines (against digitized Arnold), is a lot like Linda Hamilton vs. Robert Patrick in that movie, complete with a pump shotgun, a smelting machine and liquid nitrogen. Only this time, Connor just kind of shoots a wall and lava pours out. Then he shoots the ceiling and liquid nitrogen falls down. Hasta la vista, coherence. Come on, McG, even a one-named douchebag can do better than that.

No More Cream Of Sum Yung Gi

Heard about China’s new sex park “Love Land”? Well that's all you will!

Love Land was planned to be a sex park that would feature exhibits on sexual history, feature naked human sculptures, giant genitals, and have a sex technique workshop. According to the park’s manager, Lu Xiaoqing, the park is said to help people “enjoy a harmonious sex life.” He added, “Sex is a taboo subject in China but people really need to have more access to information about it.”

Not if the government can help it.

The park was scheduled to open in October in Chongqing, but all the media attention apparently pissed off the Communist Party of China and they ordered Love Land to be knocked down, or as their government says, reloacted and re-educated.

Mr. Muscle March

If it's not abundantly clear, after a pro football player steals the all-important protein powder, it's up to all the ripped dudes to strike the pose of the wall-smasher in front of them to keep the "muscle march" moving and bring the thief to justice. Hot, sweaty locker room justice.

Wisco Week...and Weekend

Scarlett returns to the land of her birth, and I am going in tow! Here's a little about Mequon, Wisconsin that I'm sure we both didn't know.

Mequon (MEK-wan) is a city in Ozaukee County. It had a population of 21,823 at the 2000 census, and as of three years ago, an estimated population of 23,820. In July 2005, listed Mequon 19th among its 100 Best Small Cities in the United States, ranked jointly with Thiensville, a village completely surrounded by Mequon.

The area was originally inhabited by the Potawatomi and Menominee Indians. European trappers, explorers and traders used the Milwaukee River through the middle of what is now Mequon as a means of transportation. The name "Mequon" is thought to have come from the Native-American word "Emikwaan" or "Miguan," meaning ladle. This refers to how the Milwaukee River curves like a ladle in the Mequon area. The spelling was undoubtedly influenced by the French in the area at the time.

Between 1834 and 1836, Brink and Follett surveyed the land to create the town of Mequon. Around this time, settlers came from New York and England, soon followed by German and Irish immigrants. In 1839, a group of immigrants from Saxony settled near the Milwaukee River. In the same year, twenty families from Pomerania founded Freistadt (German Free place) in the western part of the Town of Mequon. The first Lutheran church in Wisconsin was built by these families in 1840.

John Henry Thien, a wealthy immigrant from Saxony, traveled north from Milwaukee and settled along the Milwaukee River, where his family built a dam and grist mill. This area, one square mile in the middle of Mequon township, was later incorporated as the village of Thiensville in 1910. The Town of Mequon was incorporated as a city in 1957.

Thanks, Wikipedia! I'll be back on Monday, but through the magic of interweb, there will still be posts through the week as usual, and still the daily damage with DMFG at Velvet Glove - Iron Fist.

Tell Us Something We Didn't Know

A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. Because that's the Catholic way - shame, secrecy, denial, and lots of suffering!

Nine years in the making, and with a cast of thousands across decades, the 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions. It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers. And of all the lame conspiracy stories about organized religion, the best we can get is Angels And Demons?

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential. "A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," the final report of Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.

More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families — a category that often included unmarried mothers — were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s. The report, unveiled by High Court Justice Sean Ryan, found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless. Just like being a Catholic parishioner!

"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread." Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again. But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals. It's called religion folks, not responsibility - it's confusing because they both start with "r".

The report proposed 21 ways the government could recognize past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counseling and education to victims and improving Ireland's current child protection services. But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions — in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document. Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment.

The Irish government already has funded a parallel compensation system that has paid 12,000 abuse victims an average of euro 65,000 ($90,000). About 2,000 claims remain outstanding. Victims receive the payouts only if they waive their rights to sue the state and the church. Hundreds have rejected that condition and taken their abusers and those church employers to court. Or street justice...watch those dark alleys!

The report said children had no safe way to tell authorities about the assaults they were suffering, particularly the sexual aggression from church officials and older inmates in boys' institutions. "The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care," the commission found. "At best, the abusers were moved, but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely."

The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders — that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance. For who, the child? Or the molester? In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children.

But the commission said its fact-finding — which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland's industrial schools — demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations. It cited numerous examples where school managers told police about child abusers who were not church officials — but never did when one of their own had committed the crime. "Contrary to the congregations' claims that the recidivist nature of sexual offending was not understood, it is clear from the documented cases that they were aware of the propensity for abusers to re-abuse," it said.

Religious orders were chiefly concerned about preventing scandal, not the danger to children, it said. The commission also condemned Ireland's Education Department for aiding the abusive culture through infrequent, toothless inspections that deferred to church authority. Inspectors were supposed to restrict the use of corporal punishment and make sure the children were adequately fed, clothed and educated — but the report called those inspections "fundamentally flawed." How can you sum it up? "Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected."

Proof Of Awesome

It took a few days for people to post, but there's finally some clips of Mogwai at the Orpheum.

My Father My King
(behind us but near where we where sitting)

I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead

TGS Featuring...

Everything Tracy Jordan said on 30 Rock this season? Yes, everything.

“Is there nothing sacred? Have we lost our moral center? It just makes me want to pee on someone.”

“Frank, for all your hard work, please accept this set of solid gold nunchuks.”

“Well, if all you want is a hug from a black person, maybe you should just host the Price is Right.”

“I don’t need a birthday cause I buy myself all the presents I need. And because of my drinking, they’re often a surprise.”

“You wait til I test this noise out on society. Minds will be blown.”

“There he is. I owe you, Jackie D. When I’m on my deathbed frenching my wife, I will think of you.”

“There’s no link between diabetes and diet. That’s a white myth, Ken. Like Larry Bird or Colorado.”

“Do you know who I am? Seriously, please, tell me who I am.”

“Larry, what everyone needs to do is just take a deep breath, calm down, and start preparing their bodies for the Thunderdome. That is the new law.”

“I’m saying the Disneyfication of New York is over, everyone. At the stroke of midnight, your Lexus is going to turn back into a hot pile of rats fighting over a human finger.”

“I wished for you to get better. I was gonna to wish for breakfast in bed with Robocop while an elephant paints us.”

“I’ve been hearing, but I haven’t been listening.”

“What’s wrong, Ken. You got wife eyes!”

“OK. Sorry it took me so long to answer. I was just thinking about how weird it is that we eat birds.”

“I will be brief. I have decided to fulfill my dream of going into space. If you have a spaceship and are looking for a hilarious astronaut with an irregular heartbeat and thirty million dollars, I am prepared to leave as soon as tomorrow. I wrote that yesterday. I will not be taking questions.”

“Hmmm, usually this is the point in my process where Liz Lemon steps in and takes care of everything. Heavy is the head that eats the crayons. Gonna take a nap, see you in 10 hours.”

“The partying is just for show, and because I’m a high-functioning alcoholic.”

“Come on in, Jack, I’m just practicing sitting.”

“Liz Lemon, I might hug people too hard and get lost in malls. But I’m not an idiot.”

“Of course not, I transcend race.”

And countless more...

All The Constructors Got Points This Time

Someone’s slapped some sense into Max Mosley and the F1 bigwigs - they've scuttled the proposal for a two-tiered set of rules that had just about every team in Formula 1 threatening to quit racing at the end of this season.

Mosley who leads the sport’s sanctioning body, has long been obsessed with reining in F1’s stratospheric costs. His latest idea to cut spending was granting teams that abide by a a $60 million spending cap far greater technical leeway than those that opt to spend whatever they like. Which is odd to allow more opportunities for teams to have technological advantages when they're not spending the R&D money to develop them. Because teams complained they didn't want to spend as much money as they wanted or had. Most of the teams, led by Ferrari, rebelled and threatened to skip next season. Mosley found himself trying to stare down the powerful Formula One Teams Association - and blinked.

Literally every team except Mercedes said they would pull out, and everyone’s best guess was that Mercedes was biding its time. That left the rulesmakers at the Federation Internionale d’Automobile in the untenable position of having a race series sans racers. Mosley finally woke up and caught a whiff of the java.

Sort of.

He’s agreed to a sit-down with the Formula One Teams Association teams before the May 24 Monaco Grand Prix. The teams will offer alternatives to Mosley’s proposal that include cutting back on wind tunnel testing and other cost-cutting moves, according to Speed TV. As long as the stupid cap system idea is dead and there's another season with the teams intact and involved, they can sit in a room until they're done counting their money and pinching pennies for all I care.

Too Many To Choose From

I don't he's got tourette's, plus he's pretty obnoxious and the whole thing's probably fake...but damn it if these one-liners aren't just funny even without context.

"Bitch, I love you"

"Don't talk shit about Total"

"I'd like to see you walk a mile in my shit"

"Fuck salt"

Sun, Fun, Stay, Play!

Just like the sign says in Bakersfield!

In a story so incredible I had to put three links to different reports in it, a man got high on PCP and ate his son's eyeballs out. Then the father attempted to hack his own legs off with an axe. The boy's mother, also a PCP user, came to the door just before the attack to deliver a pizza to their home, heard her son screaming for her to rescue him, but left anyway. If only she'd come earlier when he was hungry...

Five irony points if the pizza was Papa John's.

Pederast Beats Pervert

Woody Allen agreed Monday to a $5 million settlement in his lawsuit accusing American Apparel of using an image parodying him as a rabbi without his permission. Suck on that, retro-hipster predator!

Both sides announced the settlement — to be paid by American Apparel's insurance company — on the morning a trial was to start in federal court in Manhattan. Reading from a statement outside court, Allen said he hoped the outcome "would discourage American Apparel or anyone else from ever trying such a thing again." Super-prick and American Apparel president Dov Charney told reporters it wasn't his decision to settle. The company's insurance company "controlled the defense" in the case, he said. "I'm not sorry of expressing myself". Apparently, your money train had more say in how your expression was going to be handled, and basically, over you.

Allen, 72, sued the trendy clothing company last year for $10 million after the advertisements turned up on billboards in Hollywood and New York, and on a Web site. Using a frame from the film "Annie Hall," the ads depicted Allen as a Hasidic Jew — long beard, side curls, black hat — and featured Yiddish text meaning "the holy rebbe." Court papers filed on Allen's behalf had described the actor-director as one of the most influential figures in the history of American film, and say he believes maintaining strict control over his image has been critical to his success. The papers claimed Allen hasn't done commercials in the United States since 1960s, when he was a struggling standup comic. The billboards, he says, falsely implied he endorsed a clothing line known for its racy advertising — a "blatant misappropriation and commercial use of Allen's image."

American Apparel lawyers have called the $10 million demand "outrageous," especially since the billboards were taken down after a week. They also have threatened to call Allen's former longtime companion, actress Mia Farrow, and his current wife, Soon-Yi Previn, as witnesses to show that his image has already been devalued by scandal (Previn is Farrow's adopted daughter, dummies).

Allen blasted American Apparel, calling their First Amendment defense "sheer nonsense," and accusing of it of trying "to smear me." Charney insisted there were no hard feelings, saying the billboards were misunderstood. "We would never try to malign the dignity of Mr. Allen," he said. "I have respect for Mr. Allen. ... I hope to meet him on more friendly terms at a different point." He later added, "We were just trying to profit from his likeness and draw attention to the company without having to compensate him."

Don't worry, you dickbag - you'll have plenty more mentions in the news as your legendary harassment s.o.p. gets more notice in the courts. Stay classy.

Fluid Scupture

Want! Want! Want!

A Rose Is A Rock

Yes, MAGNA is coming up at the Rose City Rocks festival in Pasadena on Saturday May 30. It's only $5 and the band is playing a cherry 40 minute+ set with both old favorites and new hits. There's also literally dozens of other bands playing from Wednesday to Saturday in multiple locations, so it'll fill your musical appetite.

Myspace, website, or homepage your info source and updates...

Tonight, Los Angeles Is Howling!

A Vincent Moon clip of the band...if there's any bells rang, that's because La Blogotheque is also know as the home of the Take Away shows, that our pal Jeremy often shoots with audio by Rybot. Yeah, there's some MAGNA ones that will hopefully see the light of day.


UPDATE:
Damn, that was a great show! Having already done the first tour leg on their latest album, this time around was a more diverse and farther reaching setlist, with several first time performances for me.

Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home (Young Team)
I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead (The Hawk Is Howling)
Travel Is Dangerous (Mr Beast)
I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School (The Hawk Is Howling)
Christmas Steps (Come On Die Young)
Killing All The Flies (Happy Songs For Happy People)
I Know You Are But What Am I? (Happy Songs For Happy People)
Summer (Young Team)
Auto Rock (Mr Beast)
Hunted By A Freak (Happy Songs For Happy People)
You Don't Know Jesus (Rock Action)
Glasgow Megasnake (Mr Beast)
My Father My King (single)

The band managed to take at least one track off every album, and it was a huge thrill to see "Glasgow Megasnake" and "I Know You Are But What Am I?" played. Guitarist Stuart mentioned how much the band we happy to be playing at a beautiful theater like the Orpheum, and I think that translated on stage. The band itself, while never one to be gushing or overly-demonstrative, really expressed themselves in the most obvious way possible - through the vibe of their music. And at a show like this, that connection between the band and the audience was solid.

Most notable was their amazing rendition of "Christmas Steps". LA can sometimes be a crowd of dickheads, but this group was generous and respectful, and that was evident midway through the song, where the guitars and bass thin out to just one instrument, getting softer and softer until almost inaudible. The room was completely still, and as the notes were played, it was as though it was a challenge to see how much quieter it could get before the fans broke their silence - but we never did. I think everybody, including the band, was just stunned by the focus. The following section and crescendo were so much more dynamic because of the meditative calm of that moment.

Just a terrific show and a really inspired group of songs. It felt like a gift with such an array of songs from their repertoire, and while there's always one or two you hope the band will play, there's no complaining when a group of tunes like this is performed.

Autopia / Distopia Weekend

Super Saturday is here, and it's a sweet combo of high-performance racing and awesome music.

After a work exile in Palm "hot as balls" Springs, Rybot is back and hosting the screening of the missed F1 races as well as the apt-themed Mad Max series. It's unclear if everybody will manage to get through The Road Warrior or the three prior races, but there will be much in the way of cars. And then there's Mogwai. The Scots return and are playing the Orpheum Theater downtown, which is a sweet venue. Scartoe is in for another round with them, and Scarlett will be getting her first taste. I'll give the review afterwards...

Busiest of all this weekend are the Sri Lankian armed forces (how's that for a 180?). Sri Lanka's president vowed to end the decades-old war against the Tamil Tiger rebels within 48 hours. Gee, that's not ambitious.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa said thousands of civilians still in the war zone will be quickly freed from a tiny slice of the country's coastline still controlled by the guerrillas, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. "The freedom of the Tamil civilians held hostage by the LTTE is near at hand and the rescue of all civilians in the small patch of land held by the LTTE will be done in 48 hours".

As the fighting raged, hundreds of desperate war refugees escaped the conflict zone and a top U.N. official headed here on an urgent mission to safeguard the tens of thousands of civilians still trapped amid the heavy shelling. The government has forced the rebels out of the de facto state they once controlled in the north and cornered them in a 1.5-square mile strip of northeastern coastline.

As of this morning, two army units were fighting their way down the coast from the north and up from the south in an effort to link up, severing the rebels' last remaining sea outlet and completely encircling them. That's a pretty baller move. The two units were only 1.1 miles apart.

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said that Sri Lankan soldiers were probably fighting their final battle against the remaining rebel fighters, and reports indicated that even the relatives of top rebel leaders are starting to flee the war zone. At least 1,800 more civilians managed to flee rebel-held territory today, joining more than 3,700 who waded across a lagoon to escape yesterday. Rebels had fired on those leaving Thursday, killing four and wounding 14 others. Families packed onto inner tubes floated across the water, past rows of coiled razor wire.

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in overwhelmed displacement camps. The rebels have denied accusations they were holding the civilians as human shields and were shooting at those trying to flee. Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone. International concern has grown for tens of thousands of civilians under threat from the heavy artillery bombardments shaking the war zone, and the Red Cross warned of "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe" for the hundreds of wounded trapped without treatment.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion. Nambiar is expected to meet with top government officials after he arrives Saturday and push for ways "to secure the safety of the 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remaining inside the combat zone". The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from Jan. 20 until May 7. Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. Sri Lanka denies firing heavy weapons into the war zone.

Hard to say who will have a more relaxing and pleasant couple of days, but I think it's going to be me.

Breathe Deep

I've just made travel arrangements for Spain. A new study has found the air in Madrid and Barcelona is laced with at least five drugs!

The Superior Council of Scientific Investigations, a government institute with a fancy name, said that in addition to cocaine, the most prominent, it found trace amounts of amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid (a relative of LSD) in air-quality control stations in the cities. But it said there was no reason for alarm. How about celebration?

"Not even if we lived for a thousand years would we consume the equivalent of a dose of cocaine by breathing this air," said one of its scientists, Miren Lopez de Alda, in the statement. The scientific group added that "in no case should these levels be considered representative of the air in the two cities". Maybe I should just change those plans and go to Amsterdam instead.

In Madrid the test site was close to a ruined building believed to be frequented by drug dealers. And in both Madrid and Barcelona, the studies were carried out close to universities. The group also said that the study showed higher concentrations of the components on weekends, suggesting that drug consumption was up in these periods. Uh, duh. I wonder if this is the same group who said breathing car exhaust could be unhealthy, and did their study from inside a tailpipe. It's like saying there's a level of fart and methane in the air at Hometown Buffet. This more like the "your money has cocaine on it tale" than suggesting the air quality runs from good to fair to stoney.

I think I may dismiss the next shocking result of their study that libraries have books.